What Vanity Fair thinks of Australia
US magazine Vanity Fair has published one of the most baffling pieces Dr Mumbo has ever read for its cover story profile of Australian actress Margot Robbie.
Judging from the comments in the article its author Rich Cohen hasn’t been to Australia, but he’s not shy of making a generalisation or seven about the place.
Cohen begins the profile talking about the “beautiful” 26-year-old who has a “catwalk way” before going on to explain that to understand Robbie you need to understand Australia which is a “throwback” country with “throwback people”.
“As I said, she is from Australia. To understand her, you should think about what that means. Australia is America 50 years ago, sunny and slow, a throwback, which is why you go there for throwback people,” Cohen writes.
The writer then goes on to talk about Melbourne and Perth’s love of soap operas. A fact Dr Mumbo was previously unaware of.
“They still live and die with the plot turns of soap operas in Melbourne and Perth, still dwell in a single mass market in Adelaide and Sydney. In the morning, they watch Australia’s Today show. In other words, it’s just like America, only different.”
It’s good to see the rustic charms of Karl Stefanovic, Lisa Wilkinson and Richard Wilkins and the Today Show have travelled beyond our shores.
Cohen concludes his musings on Australia, writing: “When everyone here is awake, everyone there is asleep, which makes it a perfect perch from which to study our customs, habits, accents.”
Indeed the insights about Australia continue throughout the article, with lines such as: “Her father does some farming and some other stuff. Now and then, she stayed with cousins who lived in the hinterland of the hinterland, where there really were kangaroos and a dingo really will eat your baby.”
Yep, really.
Unsurprisingly the piece is getting a bit of traction while the US sleeps online, especially on Twitter. For Dr Mumbo’s money this analysis sums up the piece:
EXCLUSIVE: Photo of Vanity Fair writer doing research on Australia pic.twitter.com/8MO87yB1wx
— Petra Starke (@petstarr) July 6, 2016
You can read the profile of Robbie in all its horrific glory here.
I still can’t decide whether I’m more offended by the sexism or the horrendous writing. It seriously reads like a satire of a profile piece.
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To be fair, Pauline Hanson
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Rich Cohen is one of the brains (?) behind the HBO show Vinyl, a ridiculously over-the-top revisiting of the cocaine and sex fuelled New York music scene back in the seventies. It has just been axed after its first chaotic series turned into a ratings disaster – something that doesn’t happen to HBO product too often. Now Vanity Fair and this Margot Robbie dribble – maybe Rich needs to get out of New York and reconnect with reality.
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This is the most bewildering line for me? “They still live and die with the plot turns of soap operas in Melbourne and Perth” We do?
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“Cohen begins the profile talking about the “beautiful” 26-year-old who has a “catwalk way”
Article:
“She is 26 and beautiful, not in that otherworldly, catwalk way”
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…and Eddie McGuire, and Sam Newman, and Jacqui Lambie, and Cory Bernardi, and…actually there’s quite a list.
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The word beautiful doesn’t need to be in inverted commas in this piece. We don’t need to cringe and cower, in case the PC Stormtroopers come thundering into the building. That’s how it reads when you do that. Man-up.
Margot Robbie is genuinely beautiful, so there’s no irony attached.
She just is. This Vanity Fair “writer” is obviously a complete drooling tosser, as is his editor, who epically failed to edit.
And I’d prefer to be one of the “throwback people” than one of the “throw-up people”!
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Lame.
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http://m.dailylife.com.au/news.....q14dy.html
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