It's Wednesday, and that means that we're here to personally recommend some ATEEZ related content. So, whether you're just getting into ATEEZ or it's been awhile since you've let yourself sit back and enjoy their content, we've got you covered.
As I watched the pictures and interviews of Hongjoong coming out of fashion week, I felt this overwhelming desire to watch The Devil Wears Prada, which I assume stemmed from Balmain’s use of a meme from it in their social media posts.
And so I set myself a challenge: I would watch The Devil Wears Prada, and I would connect it to ATEEZ and their lore so that I could recommend it here today. (It is currently available for streaming on Hulu.)
Now, I know what you’re thinking. The Devil Wears Prada has possibly the loosest connection to ATEEZ of any movie I could ever choose. But I did choose it, so now I invite you on a journey to consider desire, ambition, and ‘girl stuff'.
By most writers and critics nowadays, The Devil Wears Prada is remembered as one of the greats. A stellar cast, a rock solid script, and a point of view. But by the public at large, it’s a movie remembered almost entirely for its girl boss aesthetic, quippy quotes, and memeability.
And part of the reason it is remembered that way is because of the reception of the movie upon its release. While reviews written years after the release of the movie show a more favorable attitude, the ones written at the time of release mostly dismissed it as a movie for women, and I think we are all familiar with the respect given to most women’s media. It was labeled a romcom, despite having next to no romance, and placed in the destined for syndication bucket. Even good reviews of the movie called it “agreeably shallow” while the worst reviews labeled it “limp semi-satire.”
And if you consider it to be a movie about ‘Fashion’ and the ‘Fashion Industry’, I’m sure both of those criticisms are true. But ultimately, it is a movie about neither of those things.
Fashion and the world of fashion make up the setting in the same way that the dystopian world of Z makes up the setting of ATEEZ’s story. It’s the backdrop and the lens for an exploration of a story about dreams, ambition, and art.
Because incredibly, after all my worrying about how to connect ATEEZ and The Devil Wears Prada for the purposes of this post, it’s actually not that hard at all. Warning: minor spoilers for The Devil Wears Prada incoming.
The Devil Wears Prada follows Andy, a recent college graduate who longs to be a writer at one of the top New York publications as she gets a job working at the fashion magazine Runway. It’s easy to see why so many of the reviews called it limp satire because Miranda Priestly, Andy’s boss, is clearly meant to be Anna Wintour, with Runway being Vogue. But it’s not satire because the movie doesn’t have anything bad to say about fashion or the world of fashion. By almost every account, it seems to enjoy the world of fashion.
Instead, the movie is interested in ambition. What are you willing to do to achieve your dreams?
Andy is ambitious. Besides being smart, ambition is her defining characteristic. The Andy of the beginning of the movie is pretty dreadful in my opinion (for reasons I’ll expand on more later), but her motivations are clear. She wants to be a famous writer, and she believes that being Miranda’s assistant can help get her there.
At the start of the movie, this job is considered a stepping stone, a stop on the path to achieving her dreams. Something to pay the bills in the meantime. But over the course of the movie, this ambition starts to sour. Andy loses the things that make her her as she focuses solely on being the Best at this job. While she maintains she still wants to be a writer, she pursues the fashion world with gusto, her primary goal becomes winning the favor of her boss and getting ahead in this job.
There is, of course, a lot more nuance to the movie as she’s abused by Miranda and put in impossible situations where her friends often whine about her instead of helping her. But over the course of the movie, we see Andy start to morph into Miranda, a woman driven by ambition and obsession to be the best, and it is this moment of looking into her possible future self that snaps Andy back into herself.
And while ATEEZ’s lore thus far hasn’t focused much on ambition, these fundamental question of ‘what am I willing to do to achieve my dreams’ and ‘who am I even” have always been ever present in ATEEZ’s discography.
Even in Treasure, one of their debut songs, we see this glimmer of obsession. (“I’m desperate, give me some more / Higher and higher.”) And those themes of chasing their dreams, and the call of ambition remain present throughout the Treasure series.
In Desire, we see that pull of wanting something so bad it’s all you can think about. (“If I dream as much as I can see / If I can take as much as I can reach.”) And it’s no coincidence that in the choreography of Desire and Precious (two songs that I always put together in my head), we see this sort of slow descent into madness. (”I want more, I’m craving more / To a place no one has found yet.“)
As we move into The World Series, we have songs like The Ring, which alludes back to this idea of a crazed hunger for more, for power. (“I'm overflowing with that power I can't handle / The hidden darkness overtakes this way / The civil war of entangled desires.”)
And like Andy, ATEEZ has to find a way back to themselves. Turbulence, which canonically takes place before the songs of the Treasure series, expresses that desire to continue to be themselves no matter what. (“At the end of this road / If we must become something in this form / I hope to be myself.”)
In This World, they tell us, “Cloudy mind, I don't feel myself / Now it's time to fight, take back my life / The day I become myself, I will face myself in this world.” Their songs express a constant battle to be true to themselves even while chasing their dreams in an industry that seems to change so many people.
All of these songs can be read in the context of their lore too, and they would perhaps offer a different interpretation, but ATEEZ’s discography is not just about ATEEZ’s lore. It’s about so much more. Because just like with fashion in The Devil Wears Prada, the lore is merely a lens to explore incredibly human and universal experiences.
And I also think that’s the part that most people fail to understand about ATEEZ too.
As I mentioned earlier, I think the Andy of the beginning is pretty dreadful. She has a sneering attitude towards Fashion, and she believes herself to be better than her co-workers in almost every possible way. She cares about Real things—they care about silly stuff that matters to no one.
And truthfully, it’s hard for me to not read any person who has ever looked down on my interests into her. Whether that interest was *NSYNC, Twilight, or now, kpop, my interests are often things that have been scorned by society at large. Because the truth is, that most things designed to appeal to women or girls are dismissed as silly or frivolous. My collection of ATEEZ albums and photocards is silly while a room of sports memorabilia is impressive.
In many ways, Andy’s character almost works as a meta commentary on the critical reception of The Devil Wears Prada. It’s a movie about Fashion, so of course it doesn’t have anything of value to say. There can’t be any subtext or nuance in this shallow comedy.
And the same can be said for ATEEZ, and really kpop as a whole.
It’s just kpop.
All too often, I have heard people dismiss kpop music as manufactured and somehow lacking artistry as compared to western music. I can’t speak for all of kpop, but the idea is laughable when applied to ATEEZ.
I could expand upon the many ways ATEEZ has proved over and over again their own commitment to their art, but everyone here already knows. Anyone who spends any time with ATEEZ’s discography knows. Even their own storyline in the lore is about the power of art.
So yes, it is just kpop. But kpop is music, and music itself IS important. Music is art, and ATEEZ and the people behind their music are artists in the truest sense of the word. They use their music, their dancing, their platform to tell their story and share their point of view. And perhaps the story is under a veneer of glossy attractiveness and bombastic performances, but that doesn’t make the art any less compelling or real. It’s merely different, some might even argue better.
One of the long enduring moments of The Devil Wears Prada is the cerulean sweater monologue. In it, Miranda explains how Andy may think she has chosen to live without worrying about fashion, but in fact that sweater she is currently wearing was chosen many years prior by the people in that very room. It is a condemnation of dismissing things we don’t understand and a reminder that just because something isn’t important to you, doesn’t mean it’s not important.
More so than its applicability to fashion and our own lives, the speech highlights this idea of unseen work, effort, passion, and money in the every day things we encounter. Getting that cerulean sweater to Andy was a multimillion dollar endeavor that represents the blood, sweat, and tears of real people who believe in and care about what they’re doing.
This idea is applicable to almost every industry and easily translates to the behind the scenes of ATEEZ’s music and brand, even for people who are already fans of ATEEZ’s music. Decisions are made for hundreds of reasons that we can’t understand because we aren’t in the room making those decisions. And millions of tiny decisions are made every single day that we, even as fans, may not notice or consider important.
But that’s not the only moment in the movie where we’re told the importance of fashion and these small decisions. Nigel, the wise mentor character in the movie, calls Andy out on her dismissal of the people who work at Runway. He specifically says the designers are artists—some of the greatest of their day—and tells Andy how much those artists have meant to him all of his life, and how much they mean to others.
Because Art in all its many and varied forms is important. It can and does save people. It makes us feel, and it’s what brings beauty and warmth into a world that can feel awfully cold sometimes.
This is why it’s so surprising to read reviews of The Devil Wears Prada that calls it a satire of the fashion industry. Multiple times over, the movie makes clear that it’s not fashion that is the problem; it’s corrupt ambition and power. The movie seems to believe in the idea that you do need people who are passionate and passionately care about what they’re doing, and it doesn’t mind at all if their passion is for fashion.
In fact, Miranda (the arguable villain of the story, though foil is a more accurate description) is never really shown to love fashion as much as some of the other characters do. Towards the end of the movie, when she tells Andy that she sees some of herself in her, she says, “Everybody wants this. Everybody wants to be us.” And that’s because for her, while it might have been about passion once, it’s now about the power and prestige she has as the head of Runway.
While I said the Andy of the beginning is insufferable, what I appreciate is that by the end, even though she leaves Runway and the fashion industry to follow her actual dream, she develops an appreciation for what they’re doing and why. She gets it now, and you get the sense that she has changed her opinion on an industry she didn’t understand. Is Miranda a good person? Probably no. But is there value in fashion? Probably yes. Both can be true. She doesn’t have to personally like and follow fashion to respect the artistry involved in it.
And I’ve said this before, but it remains the truest thing I believe: to know ATEEZ is to love them. If you watch how hard they work, see the passion they pour into what they’re doing, you can’t help but admire them. Even if their music is not for you (a wild choice in my opinion but to each their own), their artistry stands on its own.
So if you’re feeling like the world doesn’t get it, whatever it may be for you, give The Devil Wears Prada a watch to remind yourself how easy it is for the world to dismiss the things it doesn’t understand and that there is value in contemplating even the shiniest and seemingly superficial things deeply. Perhaps you will find that they’re really not superficial at all.
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