Innholdsfortegnelse for Holiday 2021 i Vanity Fair

Every year he was in office, I looked forward to President Obama’s reading list. I lived for the overlap. To share taste, to read in common, is to speak a common language. Did that scene from Richard Price’s Lush Life when the guy gets killed still rattle around in his head the way it did in mine? Had five years of intervening Franzen discourse changed the way he read Purity versus Freedom? Did he think the politics of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland helped make it her most complicated, and best, work? In 2017, the year Obama left the Oval Office, Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing appeared on his annual list. It also won the National Book Award for fiction that year—six years after her win for Salvage the Bones, making…

MONA CHALABI Data journalist and illustrator Paper is such a fragile medium—every time you touch it, you leave a trace. That’s what 2020 has shown more than anything else: how fragile our health is, our political systems, our planet. I guess I’m trying to surrender to that a little. MARILYN MINTER Artist and activist Dear 2020, You’ve been a real bastard. I have blocked you on social media, deleted your number, and torn up your picture. Hope to never see you again, baby. It’s not me, it’s you. Fuck off, Marilyn Minter MIRANDA JULY Director, Kajillionaire I don’t want to condemn 2020 for being so hard. It seems wiser to acknowledge that we were humbled, awakened, brought to our knees and into the streets. I will portion out my hope over…

ON THE DAY before Joe Biden is declared the 46th president of the United States, before the country will joyously throw off the shackles of Donald Trump’s reign of terror, Stephen Colbert is tired. Very tired. “I really haven’t slept this week,” he says. “So I would cry at an AT&T commercial right now. My nerves are incredibly raw.” For four long years, Colbert has been making comedy out of the tragedy of Donald Trump. It defined his show, it defined his monologues, it defined his jokes—it defined him. And now, in the excruciating hours of uncertainty, as votes are being counted in Pennsylvania on a Friday afternoon and the nation grinds closer to resolution, the end seems finally, fitfully, at hand. “You know ‘King John’s Christmas’ by A.A. Milne?”…

Hayley PHELAN “THE ORACLE OF BRIT,” P. 48 Phelan fell down an Instagram rabbit hole during her investigation of the #FreeBritney movement. “My fascination shifted from the pop star to the incredible community that has sprung up around her,” says Phelan. “And what their interest in her case says about our culture in general.” Djeneba ADUAYOM “GEMMA’S GIFT,” P. 60 The vision for the photo shoot was festive but with a twist, says Aduayom, attributing its success in large part to Chan’s “stunning beauty.” “I was really attentive to reading her energy on set,” says the photographer. “I wanted the images to be a little painterly, like a vision in a dream.” Annie LEIBOVITZ “IN COLBERT WE TRUST,” P. 40 Leibovitz photographed Stephen Colbert three days after Election Day, as…

THIS FALL, the quirky half-hour Dickinson, a surreal period dramedy inspired by the life of a young Emily Dickinson, grabbed a couple of unexpected honors: It will be the first Apple TV+ series to earn a second season, as well as being the first Apple series to get a season-three greenlight. The Morning Show and For All Mankind, which gathered Emmy buzz, had to delay their season-two productions thanks to the pandemic. So it’s the show about the poet that’s Apple TV+’s trailblazing debut, a marriage of feminist history and world-dominating luxury tech that is both entirely bizarre and uniquely American. Apple TV+’s strategy has proven markedly different than the massive libraries touted by other streamers, which heavily augment their original programming with shows they’ve bought the rights for. According…

What’s your idea of perfect happiness? Being healthy. Sometimes we don’t know that we’re not healthy because we’re not going to the doctor—like me, when I first discovered I had diabetes years ago. What is your greatest fear? COVID-19 and how it’s affecting everyone. Also, I’m afraid of not knowing when I’ll be able to perform in front of people again and enjoy an audience. Which living people do you most admire? President Obama and Michelle Obama. What’s your greatest extravagance? Shoes, purses, and drag. And my home. What’s the trait you most deplore in others? People who are not kind. What’s your favorite journey? To the stage. On what occasion do you lie? To my grandkids sometimes. I’ll lie a little or embellish the truth to make them feel…

The problem with advertising these days is that it is too focused on sales. For an ad like this one to be considered successful, it has to first get your attention and then provide you with something so amazing — like a set of features or unique selling points or a solid promise — that you’ll put down the magazine you are reading and rush to the store to purchase the product. To help increase the chances of this happening, some ads include a “call to action” feature, which is a gimmick so ridiculously unbelievable — like buy one and get 197 free — that you don’t have any choice but to put down the magazine you are reading and rush to the store to purchase the product. Good thing…

LIKE MANY INDUSTRIES around the world, the dream factory of Hollywood has been closed for business for most of 2020—and even as it staggers back to its feet at reduced capacity, we’ve only just begun to see the impact on film and television. After the unprecedented era of plenty that gave us both Peak TV and a surge in tentpole filmmaking, are we headed for a content desert? Maybe not quite a desert, at least when it comes to TV. There were 532 scripted shows in 2019, so if only 400-something made it to air in 2020, that’s still more than even the most binge-happy housebound viewer could take in. When the pandemic first hit and TV production ground to a halt, Rolling Stone’s chief TV critic, Alan Sepinwall, was…

Interior offices, DeLisle, Mississippi; Washington, D.C. Jesmyn Ward, a National Book Awards winner for two novels, logs on to Zoom. Behind her, children in fedoras clamber up the sofa, trying to glimpse the screen. The 44th president appears, ready to discuss his new memoir, A Promised Land. OBAMA: Are you still there, Jesmyn? WARD: Yes, I am. I don’t know what happened to my view. That’s okay. You’ve seen me before. You know what I look like. Ah, there we go. Can you see me now? I’ve been seeing you the whole time. I want to ask you about humor because it was such a surprise for me—but I don’t want to disparage your other work! I laughed out loud, like really laughed out loud (there’s no hyperbole here) several…

APART FROM CLOSING for repairs several years ago and a few days after 9/11, Balthazar has been open every day for the last 23 years. And then—COVID hit. Six other restaurants of mine have shut their doors due to the pandemic, but none affected me as much as Balthazar’s closing. The idea of a large, bustling restaurant such as Balthazar struggling for life is like watching an experienced swimmer drowning. I can’t stomach it and prefer to remember my restaurant as it was when it opened 23 years ago. I first saw the Balthazar space one early Sunday morning in 1995. It was a run-down leather warehouse called Aadar Leather. At the time, I was building a vodka bar two blocks away and had passed this worn-out storefront every day…