ReportWire

Tag: editor's letter

  • Our New Era of Political Theater

    [ad_1]

    As I write this, the FBI is raiding the home and office of John Bolton in what would seem to be a follow-through on President Donald Trump’s campaign pledge for retribution. In another era, this might be a whole week’s news cycle, but in 2025 we know that there will be some other onslaught tomorrow—maybe even later today. Seven months into his second administration, Trump has not yet fulfilled other promises—including to “make America affordable again” or turn the United States into a manufacturing superpower, but he has sought to deliver karmic justice to those he considers his tormentors. Besides Bolton, the administration has opened investigations into Miles Taylor, Letitia James, Adam Schiff, and Barack Obama, all while amping up the police state in policy and pomp from sea to shining sea. [Editor’s note: As of publication, and using the justification of the killing of Charlie Kirk, the administration has broadly vowed to investigate progressive groups. “We will do it in Charlie’s name,” Stephen Miller said. Read here Contributing Editor Ta-Nehisi Coates’ column on the revisionist response to Kirk’s death.] Call it muzzle velocity or shock and awe, or perhaps call it show business. There are lights, cameras, and action; there is even stage makeup. Trump is, among other qualities, a very effective drama queen.

    Photographed at Jefferson Market Garden in New York City.Photograph by Mark Seliger; Sittings Editor: Daniel Edley.

    Certainly, Chess director Michael Mayer took into consideration the drama of current Russo-American relations when he decided to restage the cult-classic musical. Set to a score by ABBA, Chess pitches a Bobby Fischer–inspired character against a Russian grand master at the height of the Cold War and will this month return to Broadway with a new book for the first time since its notorious New York opening in 1988. Intensifying everything that happens onstage is the real-world context of ongoing Ukrainian peace deal negotiations: a precedent-exploding summit in Alaska with Vladimir Putin, quickly followed by a redux of the Oval Office beratement of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was this time phalanxed by more than a half dozen world leaders (and a suit). Let’s not look to ABBA to forecast where things are headed for the Donbas, but “the fear and emotion and unpredictability,” as Chess writer Danny Strong says of the Cold War, all resonate.

    Jeremy O. Harris.

    Jeremy O. Harris.Photograph by Tyler Mitchell.

    When I arrived at Vanity Fair, staff writer Chris Murphy was underway reporting another tale from the theater world, this month’s profile of multihyphenate iconoclast Jeremy O. Harris. I first met Harris in November 2018 when I attended Slave Play, still off Broadway but already a cause célèbre. By curtain call, I decided to meet him. Who had these twisted ideas? (All of us, he might say.) I tracked him down in the lobby of the Bowery Hotel, where we sat for hours that night, and he’s been a friend ever since. “Jeremy has this gift of venturing into the shadows on our behalf,” actor Kaia Gerber told Chris. “He says the things out loud that most of us are too ashamed to even think.” Harris has a wave of new projects unfurling, including another run of Prince Faggot, a Harris-produced play that upholds his preternatural tendency for controversy. In Slave Play, the second act delivers. I hope for the sake of culture that Harris’s own next act is just as strong.

    Neither Trump nor Harris would appreciate this comparison, but they both know the power of provocation. Governor Gavin Newsom too. Other Democrats, take note.

    [ad_2]

    Mark Guiducci

    Source link

  • Radhika Jones Talks to the Original Funny Girl

    Radhika Jones Talks to the Original Funny Girl

    [ad_1]

    The VF editor in chief met with November cover star Barbra Streisand at her Malibu home to discuss her upcoming memoir, My Name Is Barbra.

    [ad_2]

    Radhika Jones

    Source link

  • Radhika Jones Introduces Riley Keough, VF’s September Cover Star

    Radhika Jones Introduces Riley Keough, VF’s September Cover Star

    [ad_1]

    Riley Keough, our September cover star, has been in the public eye since the year the Berlin Wall came down—as the granddaughter of Priscilla and Elvis Presley, she commanded her first headlines for the mere act of being born. Now she’s charting her own path to success and fulfillment with an Emmy-nominated performance in Daisy Jones & the Six; her directorial debut, War Pony, which won her the Camera d’Or at Cannes last year; and as a new mother. (Her daughter’s name, revealed here for the first time, connects the baby to her family’s roots.) Keough talks to our West Coast editor, Britt Hennemuth, about her life and work, as well as the tumult of the past year—the untimely loss of her mother, Lisa Marie Presley, and the settling of the Graceland estate, of which she is now sole custodian. “To be American royalty is to have the whole world watch you,” Baz Luhrmann, director of last year’s Elvis, observes in Britt’s piece. Keough handles that gaze with grace, even as she commits to her individual artistic vision. And in his suite of portraits, Mario Sorrenti captures the star quality that is all her own.

    Tennis fans worldwide are closely watching the Americans these days, seeking the next kings and queens of the court among a very promising generation of rising stars. As Caitlin Thompson, the cofounder and publisher of Racquet, writes about the US Open home-team hopefuls, it’s been a while since an American cohort grabbed the sport’s headlines in such a definitive way. Their backgrounds, styles of play, and temperaments couldn’t be more different from one another, but they’re united by their ability to shake off the baggage of the past—to not worry about living up to legends in favor of becoming legends themselves. Dana Scruggs photographed 13 of these young American players during downtime at Roland Garros earlier this season, where they channeled for her camera the charisma that’s serving them so well on the tour.

    What’s the opposite of serendipitous? Whatever that is, it explains how Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and other significant works of cultural criticism, keeps getting mixed up with Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth, a significant work of cultural criticism, though more recently Wolf has become better known as a spreader of COVID-related and other misinformation. For this issue, Klein takes her uncomfortable case of mistaken identity and turns it into a riveting exploration of the trope of the doppelganger in contemporary culture. The deeper she goes, the more delightful and disturbing it all becomes, as the two-Naomi problem starts to exemplify all that’s muddled about an era in which divided selves abound.

    [ad_2]

    Radhika Jones

    Source link

  • Radhika Jones Introduces a New Era of Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire

    Radhika Jones Introduces a New Era of Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire

    [ad_1]

    Two opposing but not mutually exclusive stories about our current political scene appear in this issue, an apt way to begin a year that will be the gathering before the storm. Let’s start with one perspective: optimism. As Eric Lutz reports in his column “From the Brink,” in the places where election denial was on the ballot during November’s midterm elections, many of those candidates not only lost, they conceded as much. Granted, that’s a low bar, but considering what happened on January 6, 2021, we’ll take progress where we can get it. Three cheers for democracy!

    Now for the darker view, from Jeff Sharlet’s road trip through Wisconsin following the Dobbs decision, when, as he observes, that state “became the only ‘blue’ state in which abortion is now effectively illegal.” Plumbing the depths of Trumpism—and confronting its signs and symbols in an eerie exercise of door knocking—Sharlet finds currents of fascism less nascent by the day amid talk of a coming civil war. It’s not a hopeful picture. But only by seeing that America clearly can we come to grips with it. I took heart from the teenagers Sharlet meets at the end of the story, out protesting the court’s ruling. As one of the girls says, the only alternative to pushing back is to “suffer like this, our rights stripped away from us by the minute.” They’re not scared; they know they’re worth fighting for.

    Magazine aficionados understand that it can be just as enticing if not more so to read the publication back to front. Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire is a classic back page—a window into the thoughts and dreams of a culturally significant person, accompanied by an illustrated portrait that captures their essence. Since 1993, that portrait has been drawn by Robert Risko, a VF contributing editor and master of gesture and expression. Every month, we at the magazine have had the immense pleasure of seeing an actor, a singer, a writer, an athlete, or an all-around sage interpreted through his eyes, from the first sketch through to the finished product. This month, Risko turns the page on his marvelous run as our Proust artist in residence. With gratitude and affection, we thank him for his service (and I thank him for the drawing that accompanies this letter!). Given that our plan is to enlist him for other features, we trust you’ll keep seeing his signature strokes in Vanity Fair. And we welcome Ryan McAmis, making his Proust debut this month with a rendering of one of my favorite writers, George Saunders. Ryan’s touch with texture and color has captivated us, and we hope you’ll feel the same.

    [ad_2]

    Radhika Jones

    Source link