Film
Ben Stiller’s satire on the fashion industry, Zoolander, is more a satire about media and celebrity generally – about people deeply in love with themselves – and it is a key text on modern narcissism. Stiller plays the “ridiculously good-looking” model Derek Zoolander, an empty-headed idiot, neurotically obsessed with being toppled from his status as the world’s No 1 runway model by an up-and-comer, Hansel, played by Owen Wilson. Derek has plans for an educational legacy project, a Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good. But Derek’s masterpiece is his Blue Steel, the specific face he puts on for the cameras, a kind of intense, magnetic pouting stare. Blue Steel preceded social media by years but it is the great ancestor of the selfie craze that dominates Instagram and everything else. When we gaze lovingly into our own faces, framed by our smartphone screens, it is Derek Zoolander looking back at us. Peter Bradshaw
