SARAH BUITENDACH: A magazine and two songs represent the pulse of society
Loading player...
If you want to take the temperature of the globe, don’t bother with an infrared thermometer gun or hacking through the hard news — rather have a gander at what’s happening on the entertainment, design and arts scene.
It’s here that you’ll get a real sense of what’s making blood pressure rocket, what’s utterly tepid and who is blazing trails, politically and socially. This week’s cultural cacophony has been over two responses to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Hot off the press, Vanity Fair is the first example. The September issue ( of the iconic American magazine (which is over 100-years-old) will shortly be on shelves and is guest edited by acclaimed American author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates.
This month, Vanity Fair features, almost exclusively, the work of a black cast of top writers, photographers and creatives across genres. As this overview of the new issue by CBS ( puts it: “how does a publication that bills itself as capturing the cultural zeitgeist react to a time of Black Lives Matter?”
Let’s not forget, Vanity Fair made its name as a breathless chronicle of Hollywood starlets, amid the occasional whodunit involving the Jetset. Though that sells it short: many top writers — think Christopher Hitchens, Maureen Orth and Michael Lewis — have graced its pages. And its current editor, Radhika Jones comes by way of Time and the New York Times Books section — so she’s not all poolside bubbly at the Chateau Marmont.
Off the bat, this month’s edition looks to tackle a lot of tough topics around race within the US context. It will, no doubt, attract critics, but there’s no disputing that in its conception and execution, it makes a statement.
Before the issue has even been read, Vanity Fair’s cover alone has elicited an avalanche of attention. It’s a painting specifically commissioned by artist Amy Sherald, who’s best known for her official portrait of Michelle Obama.
In a palette of ethereal green-blues, she painted Breonna Taylor — the young Emergency Room technician from Kentucky who, in March, was killed by the police whilst she slept in her bed. To date, no arrests for her murder have been made.
For the full story of Taylor’s death, read this New York Times piece ( And read this Vanity Fair interview with Sherald here (, about her depiction of the young woman.
Prexit for Rule Britannia?
Meanwhile, across the ...
It’s here that you’ll get a real sense of what’s making blood pressure rocket, what’s utterly tepid and who is blazing trails, politically and socially. This week’s cultural cacophony has been over two responses to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Hot off the press, Vanity Fair is the first example. The September issue ( of the iconic American magazine (which is over 100-years-old) will shortly be on shelves and is guest edited by acclaimed American author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates.
This month, Vanity Fair features, almost exclusively, the work of a black cast of top writers, photographers and creatives across genres. As this overview of the new issue by CBS ( puts it: “how does a publication that bills itself as capturing the cultural zeitgeist react to a time of Black Lives Matter?”
Let’s not forget, Vanity Fair made its name as a breathless chronicle of Hollywood starlets, amid the occasional whodunit involving the Jetset. Though that sells it short: many top writers — think Christopher Hitchens, Maureen Orth and Michael Lewis — have graced its pages. And its current editor, Radhika Jones comes by way of Time and the New York Times Books section — so she’s not all poolside bubbly at the Chateau Marmont.
Off the bat, this month’s edition looks to tackle a lot of tough topics around race within the US context. It will, no doubt, attract critics, but there’s no disputing that in its conception and execution, it makes a statement.
Before the issue has even been read, Vanity Fair’s cover alone has elicited an avalanche of attention. It’s a painting specifically commissioned by artist Amy Sherald, who’s best known for her official portrait of Michelle Obama.
In a palette of ethereal green-blues, she painted Breonna Taylor — the young Emergency Room technician from Kentucky who, in March, was killed by the police whilst she slept in her bed. To date, no arrests for her murder have been made.
For the full story of Taylor’s death, read this New York Times piece ( And read this Vanity Fair interview with Sherald here (, about her depiction of the young woman.
Prexit for Rule Britannia?
Meanwhile, across the ...
