Johanna Blakley

For the last two years, the Lear Center has partnered with Zogby International on a survey that asks American citizens about their entertainment preferences and their political beliefs. We were eager to discover the cultural touchstones that united our often divided nation. I was very disappointed to discover how few touchstones there were. One of them was particularly surprising: the TV show House.

In both surveys, in 2007 and 2008, House scored positive marks across all ideological groups, and across every demographic tab, including age, gender, race and religion. When I’d mention this at dinner parties, people who knew the show would be initially stunned and then begin nodding, “Yes, yes, I can see that.”

See what? What is it about this show that manages to entertain and engage such a diverse viewership? Why is a show about a misanthropic drug-addicted doctor so appealing?

Johanna Blakley

I’ve always been a fashion magazine addict (I delivered newspapers as a kid in order to support the habit), and the September issues were always the most important to me. Turns out, I’m not alone. One in ten American women consults the September issue of Vogue magazine, and it made me wonder: what does the most recent issue tell us about ourselves?

Working as I do at the Norman Lear Center, I can’t help but notice evidence of the elaborate symbiotic relationship between the entertainment biz and the fashion biz. The September Issue, the new documentary about Anna Wintour and Grace Coddington’s efforts to churn out a fashion bible, may be the most obvious. But references to Hollywood and its dream factory are everywhere in the print edition as well, from the Charlize Theron cover (have you noticed that models never, ever appear on the covers of fashion magazines anymore?) to the Halle Barry, Jennifer Connelly and Marion Cotillard ads, and Michael Kors’ new “Very Hollywood” perfume. The fantasy that we all need to “get red carpet ready,” as the Kors’ ad instructs us, bleeds quite nicely into Emmy season, which, for many fashion-followers, is more about who wore what than who won.

While Vogue has always signified high-end aspirational fashion, the evidence of the financial crisis is clear in this September issue. Some may be embarrassed to suggest that shopping is a form of entertainment in the middle of a terrible recession, but Vogue editor Anna Wintour has no qualms about this. “Stores are fun, even if you’re not going to buy anything,” she explains, and it’s Vogue’s responsibility to make sure people keep shopping.