If it's Sunday, it used to mean the ritual self-flagellation of watching Meet the Press, Face the Nation, This Week, or some other routinely tedious yakfest in which Team Red spokespeople faced off against Team Blue spokespeople for some of the least engaging theater since Anyone Can Whistle hit Broadway for all of nine performances.
So instead of cozying up with David Gregory, Bob Scheiffer, Chris Wallace or George Stephanopoulos, take a look at this truly fascinating conversation with former Reason Editor in Chief Virginia Postrel about her excellent new book, The Power of Glamour.
It's about an hour long and covers more territory than a Christo installation!
Here's the original writeup:
"If you acknowledge that you find something glamorous it makes you vulnerable because it says something about who you are," says Virginia Postrel, author of the new book, The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion. "But I want people to think about what they find glamorous and learn from that."
She sat down with Reason TV's Nick Gillespie for an hour-long conversation about her new book, which is a meditation on how our perception of glamour shapes our culture, determines the choices we make, and reveals our inner-selves. The book is an entertaining romp, analyzing the deeper significance of the glamorous people and places that have shaped the last century of American culture.
Gillespie and Postrel discuss the glamour of the Tuskegee airmen (6:45); the glamour of California (9:30); the distinction between glamour and charisma (14:45); Obama's glamour vs. Bill Clinton's charisma (16:45); Marxist art critic John Berger's "desiccated" take on glamour (20:30); Joan Crawford role in "defining the modern woman to the general public" (25:20); how a "ridiculously glamorous" image inspired dancer Michaela DePrince (27:30); how Naomi Wolfe's projected her "single mother chic" image on Angelina Jolie (30:45); Oprah Winfrey's infatuation with the Mary Tyler Moore Show (32:15); David Bowie's ever-changing personas (36:30); how glamour "tells the truth about desire" (38:45); the democratization of glamour (40:45); the proliferation of glamour in a capitalist society (45:20); how Postrel's libertarianism informs her work (48:30); the "intense glamour" of planning in the early twentieth century (51:20); how understanding glamour provides insights into human behavior (56:15); and how the breast cancer drug Herceptin saved Postrel's life (57:30).
For more on Postrel's tenure at Reason, watch a recent discussion she participated in celebrating the 45th anniversary of the magazine, and read Brian Doherty's oral history of the magazine, on the occasion of its 40th anniversary.
Approximately 1 hour.
Camera by Jim Epstein and Anthony Fisher, and edited by Epstein.
This originally ran at Reason.com on Friday, November 15, 2013.
For downloadable versions, more links, and other resources, go here.
