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'The Super Models,' in their own words

Thrillers, reality shows, and 'Sex Education'

View this email online by Linda Holmes Welcome! It was the week when there would be less dancing. It was the week when Taylor Swift wanted you to vote. And it was the week when authors challenged A.I. (Lots more at the news quiz.) Let's get to it. Opening Argument The Apple TV+ docuseries The Super Models will, for some, be an introduction to the very idea of supermodels, who don't exist in the same way they once did. In the '80s and '90s, they were not influencers, they did not have Instagram, and many of them were seen often and heard rarely. Even to people who didn't follow fashion, they were celebrities, but rarely were they fully in charge of their own images. There were more than four of them, but certainly the series focuses on four of the very most famous: Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista and Naomi Campbell. They knew each other, back in the day, and they've stayed connected for many years. They speak of themselves as members of the same "class," models who emerged at the same moment, competed in some respects, and often walked in the same shows. They headlined ad campaigns, they made TV commercials, and they wrote books. How big were these four women in their field? Along with Tatjana Patitz, who died in January of this year, they were the featured lip-sync performers in George Michael's iconic "Freedom '90" video. If the idea of your video was "supermodels," this was who you would get. The four models are also executive producers of the series, which primarily tells their stories through interviews with them and people who know them, meaning they largely control the narrative. Such self-produced or self-directed projects, which some have reasonably suggested should really be called memoirs, have become ubiquitous, with plenty of other celebrities producing their own stories including Taylor Swift, Michael Jordan, Naomi Osaka and Beyoncé. Apple TV+ A documentary produced by its subject can be blank and dull if it comes off like too much of a hagiography, like it's too committed to establishing greatness or sanding down every edge. But The Super Models feels more like a corrective produced by women who were rarely given the opportunity to be seen as complete human beings, and whose images -- as they recount in harrowing detail -- were managed and leveraged by others from the time they were teenagers. Now and then, some element of their personal lives would circulate, as when Crawford married Richard Gere, when Campbell was accused of being "difficult," or when Evangelista made a remark about not getting out of bed for less than $10,000 a day that dogged her for years (and that she talks about here). But for people who followed their rise in the media, they are more pictures than voices, and what we know of what they had to say was often grabbed in bits and remixed. The Super Models seems committed less to arguing that its subjects are heroes or role models than to taking a step back, decades later, and talking about what it was like to be in this extraordinary position in which they were idealized and villainized, told when and how they would cut their hair or travel, and, in some cases, subjected to abuse. Evangelista has a particularly painful story to tell about the agent she married when she was very young, who she says was abusive to her and who was later the subject of sexual abuse and assault allegations from other women. But this is also an interesting document about the long friendships among these women and the relationships they've had with their favorite designers and photographers -- who were as close as the models would come to finding true mentors and protectors. If you came of age in the '80s and '90s, the power that supermodels seemed to have was enormous. If you listen to their stories now, it was more complicated than that. And with so much of their careers devoted to images of them being created, edited, bought and sold by others, it's hard to begrudge them this effort to create a version of their histories that they can shape with their own visions of themselves in mind. Newsletter continues after sponsor message We Recommend At 4:30 in the morning, my dog woke me up (it's a long story), and I started to watch the new Hulu thriller No One Will Save You, starring Kaitlyn Dever as a young woman alone in a house when creepy things begin to happen. But I got about 10 minutes into it and I thought, "Do I really want to watch a horror movie at 5:00 in the morning that is already giving me the creeps?" This is my way of saying that it unsettled me effectively enough that I'm going to check it out this weekend when I've had more sleep. Is it an unconventional recommendation structure? It is. But we do what we must. I have many quibbles -- many! quibbles! -- with this Slate list of the 40 best standalone TV episodes. For one thing, I'm not sure singling out a particular episode of Cheers as a standalone episode when sitcoms are mostly episodic makes a lot of sense. However, it got me thinking about which episodes of ER I would have chosen (instead of the one they chose), and for that reason, I am here to remind you that you can still find on streaming both "Hell and High Water" (season 2, episode 7, a/k/a George Clooney rescues a kid from a drain while wearing a tuxedo) and "Exodus" (season 4, episode 15, a/k/a Carter manages an emergency benzene spill evacuation), both of which are outstanding episodes I would classify as "standalone." Coming Wednesday, a move that certainly seems related to the content pipeline drying up during the current strikes: Both Survivor and The Amazing Race, CBS competition reality shows that both have 20-plus-year histories, are expanding to 90 minutes for all their episodes so that they fill a full three-hour block. I have no idea what this will bring for these shows, both of which I have watched some but not all of, but I'm going to tune in just to see whether Survivor resorts to a lot more footage of people picking their teeth and staring into the fire in a futile search for meaning. Eric Deggans reviewed the new series Young Love, and says: "It's a pleasure to sink into a series that is smart, culturally on point and optimistic about the power of family to overcome all obstacles." Listen to the Podcast Sponsor-Free Support your favorite pop culture junkies AND listen without sponsor interruptions with a subscription to Pop Culture Happy Hour+! Learn more and sign up at plus.npr.org/happy. Learn More What We Did This Week Samuel Taylor/Netflix I talked to marvelous PCHH regulars Soraya Nadia McDonald and Brittany Luse about Hulu's adaptation of The Other Black Girl. I gave Stephen an earful about three of my favorite '90s thrillers, from the prestigious to the joyfully trashy. Glen talked about the new game Starfield with Juana Summers and Swapna Krishna. And Aisha talked to Cate Young, Priya Krishna and Jeffrey Masters about Netflix's Sex Education. Aisha and I, along with Bob Mondello and Bilal Qureshi, worked on NPR's look at the films of this fall. Elsewhere, I had a marvelous time talking to Jamelle Bouie and John Ganz for their podcast Unclear and Present Danger, where I got to chat about the vision of Washington and the Sorkin-y vibes of The American President, a movie I ... guess I still love? What's Making Us Happy Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: Cate Young: Little Fires Everywhere, streaming on Hulu Jeffrey Masters: The People Who Report More Stress, by Alejandro Varela Priya Krishna: For the Culture, by Klancy Miller Aisha Harris: Dreaming Whilst Black, on Showtime Stream your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to find your local station stream. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+. Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free episodes. What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: pchh@npr.org Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here. Looking for more great content? Check out all of our newsletter offerings — including Music, Books, Daily News and more! You received this message because you're subscribed to Pop Culture Happy Hour emails. 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