Anne Thompson's latest "Screen Talk" episode pivots on a counterintuitive premise: "The Devil Wears Prada 2" functions less as a fashion comedy sequel and more as an inadvertent documentary about the death of traditional journalism.
The film arrives as legacy media hemorrhages readers, advertising revenue, and institutional credibility. That the movie centers on a print fashion magazine struggling to survive in a digital-first world takes on new weight. What once played as satire now reads as tragedy. Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestly presides over an empire built on gatekeeping and print authority, the kind of power that feels almost archaeological in 2024.
Thompson also examines two Anne Hathaway vehicles alongside Lena Dunham's memoir "Famesick," which trades in the kind of unfiltered personal narrative that killed the old media business model in the first place. Dunham built her empire by refusing editorial mediation, by going directly to audiences. That approach displaced the Mirandas of the world.
The through-line becomes clear: entertainment culture has fundamentally restructured around who controls the narrative. Magazine editors no longer gatekeep taste. Celebrities with Instagram accounts do. "The Devil Wears Prada 2" watches that transition in real time, whether intentionally or not.