'Tastemakers' chew the fat above the masses

The Globe and Mail ^ | 9/30/02 | Simon Houpt

[GeneD]

NEW YORK -- Magazines aren't just for reading any more. They are the centrepiece of brand identities, core products that can be extended into every avenue of life. Maxim recently loaned its name to a line of hair-colour products aimed at the randy twentysomething men comprising its primary demographic. Last June, Seventeen magazine opened a salon and spa in a Dallas mall, where overstressed teenaged gals could relax with a massage and pedicure on their daddy's credit card.

The challenge for brand extension is perhaps a little more acute for the publisher of The New Yorker, an institution that remains slightly at odds with the modern world's urge for profit. Its readers value the fact that the magazine won't stoop to engage in frippery such as, say, a New Yorker signature perfume. ("Subtly blends the essence of tweed and Calvin Trillin's bok choy stir fry.")

But in recent years the magazine has been tentatively extending its literary brand, with occasional series of author readings at funky downtown clubs, and the New Yorker Festival, which celebrated its third annual incarnation last weekend.

The magazine's eclecticism comes to life in the festival's popular lineups, which this year featured a couple of dozen author readings, panel discussions, interviews, and intimate tours through some of the city's cultural meccas led by New Yorker staff writers and others who have been featured in the publication. Individually, these kinds of events are a weekly and little noted feature of life in New York, but they gain attention when gathered under the umbrella of one strongly branded publication.

What is the New Yorker brand? People read the magazine not just because they want information; they read it to avoid being caught out at a cocktail party when someone asks what they thought of John Updike's review of Rohinton Mistry's new novel or whether they think Malcolm Gladwell has finally gone off his own tipping point. Its readers strive to maintain an element of being a member of the elite, of being -- to borrow a term from a recent Tad Friend article -- a "tastemaker."

From the beginning, the magazine was at least partly defined by exclusion. Founding editor Harold Ross famously wrote that the weekly was "not edited for the old lady in Dubuque." While that left more than 99.99 per cent of the U.S. population (along with all of Canada, thank you, Mr. Ross), not everyone else feels welcome.

In the magazine's current issue, Jonathan Franzen writes of a woman who felt so oppressed by his novel The Corrections, portions of which first appeared in The New Yorker, that she struck back at his presumed superiority by depicting his audience with this poisonous cartoon: "The elite of New York, the elite who are beautiful, thin, anorexic, neurotic, sophisticated, don't smoke, have abortions triyearly, are antiseptic, live in lofts or penthouses, this superior species of humanity who read Harper's and The New Yorker."

The issue of elites and the masses threaded its way through this year's three-day festival even before it began. Tickets for most events sold out within a few hours of going on sale at the end of August, disappointing those readers not savvy enough to be on the inside New Yorker track. Tellingly, two of the genuinely high-culture events failed to sell out by the start of the festival: a conversation between music critic Alex Ross and composer John Adams, and a panel discussion about the poet Elizabeth Bishop featuring 15 standout talents such as Robert Pinsky, Seamus Heaney, James Fenton and New Yorker poetry editor Alice Quinn.

The festival kicked off Friday with an evening of author readings scattered around downtown, including one event headlined by Franzen and David Foster Wallace. Hundreds of wannabe writers gathered in the East Village meeting house of the New York Quarterly poetry magazine, pallid Moby male lookalikes next to luscious long-haired women with square glasses and clunky shoes. "Good evening," said a prim woman with a fetching British accent. "I'm Cressida Leyshon, a fiction editor at The New Yorker." Around the room, a hundred pairs of eyes dilated with interest.

Franzen read from his new collection of essays, How to Be Alone, introducing it by explaining that it explored the modern quandary of how to "feel you have your own life in a monocultural world." One essay urges people to spurn the comfort found in being part of the masses, to have the courage to object to the intrusions of airport television and the bland clichés of Victoria's Secret suburban hookerwear. "I want to be alone, but not too alone. . . . I want to be the same, but different," he read. The audience of individuals nodded en masse.

Later that night up at the 30 Rockefeller Center headquarters of Saturday Night Live, the New Yorker elite went weak in the knees upon meeting a true master of the masses. Editor David Remnick, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of heavy books about Russia, proved he could fawn like everyone else when he spent 90 minutes asking Lorne Michaels and three SNL cast members softball questions that belonged on Entertainment Tonight.

Saturday morning, 500 strong souls roused early for a ribald panel on creativity and censorship at ABC's Times Square Studios, featuring The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin, new ABC Entertainment president Susan Lyne, South Park creator Trey Parker, and MTV president of entertainment Brian Graden, who helped bring The Osbournes to life.

An air of smug superiority -- of the culturally superior elites suppressed by the dunderheaded masses -- floated through the room one floor above the street. Sorkin fumed over his inability to have a West Wing character say "Goddamit" on broadcast television, while Parker explained he'd made buckets of money by having little animated kids say "Goddamit, Jesus Christ" on cable.

Lyne regaled the crowd with a clip of the pilot episode of NYPD Blue, which featured a brutish Detective Sipowicz grabbing his crotch. Lyne explained that when the episode aired nine years ago, 58 of ABC's local affiliates refused to carry the show. Now, illustrating how standards have changed in the few intervening years, only two affiliates still won't carry the show.

"And both of them are in Mississippi," said Lyne, as a knowing, East Coast chuckle spread through the room.

For 90 minutes, the four panelists shot fish in a barrel, beating up on the silent minority whose threats of boycotts keep the U.S. broadcast networks adhering to a set of content standards. No one from that minority was there to explain why standards might be a good idea.

The masses themselves were down one floor, oblivious to the tastemaking talk taking place above them. They blissfully ambled from the WWE wrestling emporium to grab a burger at McDonald's, watch a baseball highlights reel at ESPN Zone, and take the kids to Toys "R" Us.

[GeneD]

Say what you will about The New Yorker (I think it America's most overrated magazine, and its most precious -- this was the rag where the fool Adam Gopnik said the WTC's ruins smelled like "smoked mozzarella"), poor Harold Ross must be rolling over in his grave. He was a standards man.