Even In The Movies, Journalism Is Fucked

For the duration of my childhood, it felt like all of the romantic-comedy heroines were journalists. They worked at newspapers in Kissing Jessica Stein , Sleepless In Seattle , The Holiday , Never Been Kissed and When Harry Met Sally. If they didn't work at newspapers, they worked at glossy magazines like in How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days and 13 Going On 30. In Hitch , she's a gossip columnist, but that counts. Or maybe she could work in publishing like in Bridget Jones's Diary. But they were writers in big cities, and they cared deeply and seriously about their jobs.

The real plot of all of these movies, though, was the love line. Who would the protagonist fall in love with? Would it be that man (or woman) whom she hated initially? Usually, it would be.

The Devil Wears Prada was different. Those other movies were all about falling in love with a romantic partner.The Devil Wears Prada is a movie about falling in love with work. Andy (Anne Hathaway) is a recent graduate from Northwestern who wants to be a serious journalist, but the only job she can find is one as assistant to the editor-in-chief of Runway. Unlike the other heroines, Andy starts the movie with a boyfriend, Nate, who lived with her but was otherwise pretty unsupportive of her career. He was supposed to function as a kind of moral compass for the film in 2006. The Andy he knew at Northwestern didn't care about Paris Fashion Week, what designer someone wore, or whether her hair was right. The Andy he knew cared about journalism , about reporting , about trying to change the world.