Passing the Vogue Cultural Literacy Test: A Challenge

Introducing my plan. Over the summer, a book titled Empire of the Elite: Inside Condé Nast, the Media Dynasty That Reshaped America by Michael M. Grynbaum came out. A book that revealed a certain Vogue cultural literacy test that was put in place by Anna Wintour in the 1990s. The test was made up of a list of 178 places, people, books, films, etc, that you were supposed to be able to identify. It is most likely outdated and presents a certain level of classism that kept Vogue in a castle in a land far, far away from the average person. 

Yet, while this literacy test is questionable, it piqued my curiosity. Along with that, it made me think of the characters in films or writers for Cosmo or Vogue that I used to idolize, and my former dream of being a journalist. I can still see it—a chic pair of tortoise shell glasses and a number two pencil tucked behind her ear. You know the character. Or maybe a cigarette placed delicately between her pointer and middle finger, wearing unrealistic heels, and drinking a black cup of coffee. I idolized those women. 

So… I am here in a new city, alone, attempting to find my footing (and a job, fingers-crossed), and as I do, I want to pass the Vogue Cultural Literacy Test. My goal is to complete it by the end of my stay at this house in Chicago in approximately 5 months. I thought, to do this, I would write about every single place, person, book, and film on that list of 178. Some of these I will know, some I won’t, hence this will be an opportunity to stretch my knowledge.

Up first is Pedro Almodóvar. He is regarded as one of the most successful Spanish filmmakers in the world and is known for telling subversive stories about sexuality and the complexities of familial relationships.

In reading about his story and his work, it was overwhelming. His catalog runs deep. He is known for films like Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), All About My Mother (1999), as well as Volver (2006), and so many more.

In this process of researching him, it was apparent how strong his love not only of filmmaking is, but also of the actual art form of the movie. In a 2016 interview with The New Yorker, he spoke about attending a Catholic boarding school. This was forced upon him by his parents in the hope that it would eventually lead to a life within the church. With Catholicism come juxtaposing elements. The beautiful aspects of the church and the religion, as well as its dark underbelly, which he witnessed firsthand. As depicted in the article, some of the priests sexually abused students, and with that, ruled the school with an “authoritarian” fashion.

This led me to my favorite quote within the piece, that despite its darkness, he was “moved by the mystery and pageantry of Catholicism,” which led to his self-description, “ I am a posibilista.”

The word is ascribed to someone of both practicality and optimism. This ascription moved him from the church and transferred into his role as a movie lover and a filmmaker, making Super 8 films while under the rule of a dictatorship.

The notion of a posibilista is so powerful. It marries two opposites together. Films, in so many ways, are our journey into understanding humanity. To do this, you need both practicality and optimism. Practicality triggers our innate survival instincts; it is what pushes us forward in our necessary pursuits, it is our logic, our sensibility, and it keeps us alive. Optimism allows us to dream; it is what promotes our passions and creativity, and it fosters hope in an often bleak world. Almodóvar depicted this in arguably the most succinct way.

Sources:

• Interview Magazine

• The New Yorker

I have avoided interacting with American Psycho for quite some time now. I originally tried watching it with an ex-boyfriend in high school. While I know the list refers to the book by Bret Easton Ellis, considering that this list was created before the film's existence, I decided to watch the film once and for all. What originally turned me off about this film was the misinterpretation of the satire for many men. This idea that Patrick Bateman would be deemed a role model. Along with that, the fact that it was this said ex-boyfriend's favorite book, and thus, he loved the film. At the time, I viewed his love for the book as the ultimate red flag (and arguably still do); our relationship didn’t last very long anyway. 

Yet, the film was made by two women. Directed by Mary Harron, who also wrote the screenplay with Guinievere Turner. In an article featured on Letterboxd, with Harron herself, they speak about the impact the film has had on women, and the differences if it had been a man written/directed the film. It was Harron and Turner’s idea to add two perspectives that were outside of just Bateman himself (differing from the book), but to add Jean and Christie, two women. Along with that, through their storytelling, they leaned in to the satirical elements, really playing Bateman up to be someone “dorky”. Ultimately, Harron pointed out the importance of the original critique that came from within the text.

This book was written as a satire, commenting on “yuppiedom” and existing as a male in a consumerist world in the 1980s. The male characters are dressed the same, they speak the same, they share the same business cards, only differing in font styles (is it “silian rail” or “romalian”?) and color (bone or eggshell?).

In an interview with Publishers Weekly in 2011, after being asked if the character was “an early sign of a zeitgeist,” Easton Ellis stated, “A lot of it had to do with my frustration with having to become an adult and what it meant to be an adult male in American society. I didn't want to be one, because all it was about was status. Consumerist success was really the embodiment of what it meant to be a cool guy—money, trophy girlfriends, nice clothes, and cool cars. It all seemed extremely shallow to me.”

This quote really struck me, for it's true. Even today, we are often deemed successful based on the material items of our lives. In a world where influencer culture is becoming more and more prominent, it calls into question this same idea. We idolize influencers often because of their money and the idea of being “cool”, and also the desire to have what they have. Yet, as seen with the breakdown of Bateman (minus, of course, the fact that he is a serial murderer), he could not handle the pressure of living up to a status based upon materialistic principles. American Psycho ultimately depicts the dangers of conforming to a consumerist society.

Sources:

• Genius

• Publisher’s Weekly

• Letterboxd

What is a contralto? When I started my search on Marian Anderson, it stated that she was a famed contralto. As someone who spent years in choir, I was surprised to have not heard of the phrase. But moreso, I was shocked that I had never, ever, heard of Anderson.

A contralto is one of the rarest forms of female vocal types. They sing with a dark tone and a low register, while also being able to reach high notes; many even perform in opera. Famous contraltos include Ella Fitzgerald, Annie Lennox, Tracy Chapman, and even Cher. Anderson was included in these lists when researching, but was also the only name I was unfamiliar with.

Anderson was born in 1897, a year after the landmark Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, which determined the “separate but equal” doctrine. She grew up in Philadelphia and loved to sing in the church; it was there that she realized (along with those around her) her musical gifts. With her talent, by 12, she became the breadwinner for her family after her father’s death. As she got older, she was introduced to Giuseppe Boghetti, an opera teacher from Philadelphia who entered her in the New York Philharmonic Competition at the age of 28 in 1925. Competing against 300 other singers, she came out victorious.

Yet, despite her victory, America was riddled with discriminatory and racist segregation laws that hindered her ability to truly shine. From there, she left to go abroad, and in the 1930s, her successes established “Marian Mania” all across Europe. Yet as Nazism began to rise, she returned to the United States.

Back in America, she was invited to perform at the White House by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his wife, the famed Eleanor Roosevelt. Along with that, she befriended Albert Einstein, with whom she often stayed due to the segregation laws that prohibited her from staying at hotels after performances.

Yet, perhaps her most famous instance happened in 1939, after being stopped from performing at Howard University due to a refusal by the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) to let a person of color perform. Eleanor Roosevelt, who was a part of the DAR, was appalled, resigned, and became determined arrange for Anderson a new location and an opportunity to perform. This so happened to be the Lincoln Memorial, and according to the Smithsonian Magazine, “Anderson, then 42, trilled out ‘My Country Tis of Thee (America),’ sending shivers up the spines of the 75,000—black and white—audience members who filled the grassy expanses on the National Mall.”

She became an understated Civil Rights activist who was deeply dedicated to her craft and love of music. She went on to perform with Leonard Bernstein and sang at two presidential inaugurations, for Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. Along with that, she famously sat for a portrait by Irving Penn, showcasing her beauty and class.

After learning just a bit about Marian Anderson, she appeared to be a woman of grace and elegance who fought and persevered for her love of singing in a world where she had so many obstacles. The Smithsonian states, “By the time of her death in 1993, she had received multiple honorary degrees and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Congressional Gold Medal, Kennedy Center Honors, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. She had performed at every major concert hall in America. And she had been a board member of Carnegie Hall for seven decades—firmly placing her in the pantheon of American music.” Her dedication is inspiring, and I truly enjoyed getting to learn about the famed Marian Anderson.

Sources:

National Portrait Gallery

Smithsonian Magazine

Oyez

A reference to the opening line of T.S. Eliot’s famed poem “The Waste Land”. A poem that represents Eliot’s experience in London post-World War I and his marital experiences with his first wife. This first line is so regarded and famed that it defies previous determinations of spring as a season. Spring is/was often regarded as a time of rejuvenation and rebirth, flowers blooming, and the sun appearing. Spring is a time to leave behind the cold of winter. Yet for Eliot, with post-war looming heady, he viewed winter as allowing numbness but “kept us warm”, and spring forces life, which renders hardship when much of the world is recovering from loss and disarray.

I once considered myself to be a decent reader and depictor of poetry. Yet, now in my post-grad years, far from my former AP literature glory, I found it challenging. “The Waste Land” is filled to the brim with biblical, mythological, and Shakespearean allusions, many of which (at this point in my life) I was unfamiliar with. What remains true, and important, is this shift from hope, which furthers the idea of “post-war decay.” He references his home, London, frequently, as an “Unreal City.” According to the Poetry Foundation, ‘The “Unreal City’ is borrowed from Baudelaire’s “The Seven Old Men”: “Unreal city, city full of dreams, / Where ghosts in broad daylight cling to passers-by.” Eliot’s “Unreal City” is modern London.” In many ways, congruent with how the city was post-war.

It brings me to the question of how this is relevant to Vogue and the world of Condé Nast. Is it? Potentially no, but at the same time, much of editorial is influenced by things like poetry, books, writing, and art, especially those with rich imagery. Understanding and acknowledging a way of thinking that was novel for its time is relevant; the suggestion that spring wasn’t always the season people wished for in the dead of winter, but maybe the cold that winter offered comforted them. Yet this also showcases the note of classism that this very cultural literacy test is resting upon. To know this first line is to know the poem. This particular question on the test displays the hardcore nature of Vogue and the extent of knowledge that they expected their employees to have.

Sources:

• Poetry Foundation

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Chet Baker, Andy Warhol, Patti Smith, Cher, Linda Evangelista, Giorgio Armani, Warren Beatty, Dorothy Parker, Twiggy, James Baldwin, Janis Joplin, Audrey Hepburn, Malcolm X, Diane Keaton, John Galliano, Louis Armstrong, Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Arthur Miller, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Katherine Hepburn, Truman Capote, Prince, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King Jr., the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Marian Anderson, Catherine Devenue, Michael Jordan, Natassja Kinski, Jaqueline Kennedy, Pablo Picasso, Frank Lloyd Wright, Sophia Loren, John F. Kennedy Jr., Bianca Jagger, Brigitte Bardot, Kate Moss, Charlie Chaplin, Allen Ginsburg, Cesar Chavez, The Beatles. Shall I continue?

Richard Avedon was a true New Yorker. Born and raised in the bustling culture of New York City, he was fascinated by photography from a young age, and with that, his proclivity for being surrounded by artists and people of impact. Attending DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, he was introduced to none other than James Baldwin, with whom he co-edited their school’s literary magazine Magpie.

Avedon soon joined the Merchant Marines in the photography sector. During WWII, according to Avedon himself, his job was to take “identity photographs,” saying, “I must have taken pictures of one hundred thousand faces before it occurred to me I was becoming a photographer.”

This self-classification really highlights who he was as a photographer. He was a virtuoso at capturing real identity in his photographs, and as so many of his subjects and peers stated, he captured truth.

A perfect example of this is two of his portraits of Marilyn Monroe from May 6th, 1967. A woman living two lives. Marilyn and Norma Jean. He captured her lively and glamorous public persona, a woman dancing and laughing across a broad mural. Its opposite, a singular Monroe in the same sequined dress with a presentation of a woman lost in melancholic thought, her eyes displaying her as elsewhere.

His work as a portrait artist translated with his peers, notably with writers like Truman Capote and James Baldwin. In 1959, Capote and Avedon co-authored a book titled Observations. It featured portraits of Buster Keaton, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mae West, Pablo Picasso, and so many more, alongside an essay on Avedon by Capote. In 1964, Avedon and Baldwin collaborated on Nothing Personal, a book surrounding the complexities of American identity. The New Yorker states, the book “brought together four aspects of American life and culture—civil rights, the rise of black nationalism, our mental-health system, and the old Hollywood guard giving way to rock and roll—in a collection of Avedon’s photographs accompanied by Baldwin’s text.” Nothing Personal features the likes of poets, singers, and civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., as well as more sinister parts of America, including members of the American Nazi Party. A quote that really struck me from The New Yorker piece by Hilton Als was this: “What Avedon and Baldwin shared from the start, as creators, long before “Nothing Personal” was conceived, was an imagination that was not so much informed by reality as inseparable from it: they saw the exceptional in the real. Not the “sublime” or transcendent, but the brutality, theatre, innocence, and confusion that made up their racist, sexist, sexy, and impossible city of love and lovelessness.” This notion is powerful; it speaks to their dedication to authenticity within their work and not shying away from the ugly, even if it means unveiling a complex truth.

Avedon became one of the most premier American photographers, working at Harper’s Bazaar, where he often freelanced. There, he photographed iconic covers and eventually guest edited in 1965, but according to the Richard Avedon Foundation, after “receiving backlash” for working with models of color, he quit. From there, he started his over twenty-year relationship with Vogue, working there throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

While working for Harper’s Bazaar, he first worked with Polly Mellen. She was a famed fashion editor whose career began as a pupil of Diana Vreeland’s, starting first at Harper’s Bazaar and then going with her to Vogue. Mellen and Avedon’s collaboration established a deep and strong friendship, starting in the late 1940s and continuing until his passing. Together they created iconic works, some including images of “Twiggy, the waifish 1960s avatar, one eye painted with a psychedelic flower, twinkling on the cover of Vogue in 1967. The actress Nastassja Kinski stretched out in the magazine’s pages in 1981, naked except for the boa constrictor coiled around her and an ivory cuff on one wrist.[...] Rudolf Nureyev was unaccessorized and completely naked in a spread that appeared in Vogue in 1967,” according to The New York Times. Mellen described her closeness with Avedon because he could see through to parts of herself she had hidden, and because of this, their bond was instantaneous.

This proves to be an outstanding element of Avedon’s personality. He embodied an ability to find truth in his subjects and in his friends, and ultimately made them feel comfortable. His work is powerful because of this inclination. Avedon, while known so well for his fashion and celebrity photography, was also a dedicated photographer of the everyday person. Perhaps some of his most poignant pieces stem from his period of photographing the American West. This was a project commissioned in 1979 by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas. For the next six years, he traveled across Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. During this time, he photographed drifters, construction workers, truck drivers, coal miners, waitresses, factory workers, and so many more members of the working class. One of his most famous from this collection is the 1979 photo of Boyd Fortin, a thirteen-year-old from Sweetwater, Texas, holding in his hands a massive rattlesnake, his clothes dirty, but no glimpse of fear in his eyes. This collection of portraits is, in my opinion, some of his most powerful and thought-provoking work. They showcase the raw, unfiltered nature of the working class and its hardship, and are still resonant in today’s climate. While each image is deeply individualized, the portraits present versions of people we have all seen before; all they do is exemplify truth. The collection was displayed in 1985 and includes some of his most famous works.

Along with Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, Avedon was featured in magazines such as Rolling Stone, Égoïste, and The New Yorker, along with many other publications. In 1992, he was appointed the first staff photographer at The New Yorker and worked there until he died in 2004, after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage while shooting an assignment in San Antonio, Texas.

In 2023, 100 years after his birth, Gagosian put together a collection to celebrate his vast and impactful body of work. They asked close friends, family, former colleagues, former subjects, and prestigious fans to pick one of their favorite Avedon pieces to make up the exhibit. This highlighted his immense talent and once more his proclivity for attracting interesting subjects.

Kara Vander Weg, a senior director at Gagosian, stated this notion perfectly in a 2023 article with Rolling Stone, “People have asked us, ‘How did he get these people to sit for him?’ And it was because it was an honor to be photographed by Richard Avedon. It was a mark of accomplishment. And also, they hoped that they were going to look their best.”

Avedon did just that; he made sure his subjects looked their best while also giving the audience a clue to who they truly were.

I highly recommend looking through his works on The Richard Avedon Foundation’s website. Be prepared to be blown away :)

Sources:

• The Richard Avedon Foundation

• PBS

• Amon Carter Museum of American Art

• The New Yorker

• Rolling Stone

• The New York Times on Polly Mellen

• Vogue: Avedon 100

• Gagosian

• The New York Times - Richard Avedon Book Controversy