Luxury Porn

~ Laura

I love it! I hate it! I love it! I hate it!

No, I’m not talking about Caitlin Flanagan, though she is definitely in the “hate it” camp lately for that inexplicable remark about men being the head of the household on the Colbert Show. That’s not even funny as a spoof.

Tonight, it’s all about the Style section of the Times. Scum From the New Republic:

The Times is hardly breaking new ground with its foray into what may be best described as luxury porn. Most metro areas with the proper concentration of wealth boast at least one slick glossy peddling the luxe life. And, hot on the heels of “Thursday Styles,” last September The Wall Street Journal introduced its own shopping-on-steroids section, suggestively titled “Pursuits.” But it’s one thing for a bunch of glorified ad vehicles–or even the rampantly capitalist Wall Street Journal–to be hawking designer duffel bags and skin cream priced higher than Jack Abramoff’s legal team. After all, these publications unabashedly promote–and generally cater to readers who share–a Trump-esque mine-is-bigger-than-yours attitude toward wealth and consumption. It’s quite another matter, however, for the venerable Times to lend its imprimatur to a genre so awkwardly at odds with its own high-minded liberal sensibility and intellectual pretensions. This, after all, is the same paper that, last year, ran an eleven-part series on class in America, in which it described economic mobility as “the promise that lies at the heart of the American dream” and exhaustively pondered its apparent decline. Social consciousness for The Wall Street Journal may mean crushing the welfare state, but, for the Times, it means earnest editorials packed with noblesse oblige. (Classic snippet from last Thanksgiving: “There is no shame in the poverty Americans suffer today. The shame adheres to those who do nothing to change it.”) Wretched consumer excess may be the American way, but is it really the paper of record’s business to lend it respectability? The disconnect is jarring enough that even “Thursday Styles” appears to be grappling with this question. 

Yeah, but how cool is this dude? Like he’s got his own home museum. Damn, I want one, too.

Published by Laura

7 thoughts on “Luxury Porn”

  1. Hey, at this rate, your site is going to end up on some nanny filter!
    Haven’t people said the same thing about the travel section, too? I must admit to enjoying that section with what might be called voyeurism — that is, I’m certainly never going to go to one of those $2,000/night places that look so cool.

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  2. Snort. You would be surprised by the nasty google searches that people plug in and end up here.
    Look, the style section is fun. And, OK, I’ll admit. Often it’s the first section, I read. Sue me, I’m shallow. And like RC, it is all about voyeurism, since I can’t afford the pretty things.
    But I would argue that the Style Section is more about conspicuous consumption than the Travel section. A frugal traveler could afford to visit many of the places in the articles, even if they can’t afford the fancy hotels. Travel has an educational component. An article on $6,000 dining room tables doesn’t have any socially redeeming function.
    But I think the problem is larger than just the style section in the Times. How many front page articles did they have on the new Internet billionaires in the 90s? The Times hearts rich people.
    And the NR has a point. Doesn’t all this bling bling in the Style Section and the front page really make a mockery of any claims by the Times that they have a social conscience?

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  3. Speaking of the intersection of consumption and social conscience, has anybody seen the latest Time Magazine Style and Design supplement? It’s entitled “Green Living: Is Sustainability the New Luxury?” and it’s utterly obscene. Just a few highlights are a garden bench for $8,500, a chair with “sustainable aluminum shell” $1,800, table made from discarded wood scraps $2,500, and chaise lounge made of reclaimed cork $4,988 (it looks like it sounds, too).

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  4. I also admit to occasionally reading it and sometimes enjoying it. (FWIW, ‘Styles’ also serves as a ‘Living’ section and has stuff on parenting and relationships, Indigo
    kids, etc.) It’s not really my bag (I’m a sports kinda guy), but it’s occasionally entertaining.
    I object to TNR’s assertion that it is about ‘mine is bigger than yours.’ I think it is ‘This one’s really nice — you may not be able to afford it, but don’t you want it?’ If there is a portion of Thursday’s NYT that does go Trump, it is the ‘Homes’ section.
    I don’t have much of a social conscience, but I don’t see how this subsection (is it usually D or E?) somehow Trumps or undercuts NYT’s relentless front page concern for the poor. They published the ‘class’ series, they do Herbert and Kristof and they worry about ‘the neediest.’ Why can’t they do all of that and have a section for the many luxury goods buyers in their readership?
    One more thing: if the Styles section is bad, isn’t all the advertising in the front section just as bad? That stuff is all jewels, pearls and expensive lingerie. Ugh — Michelle Cottle always annoys me.

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