You know something is seriously askew when Hollywood suddenly starts worrying about its image. Sunday night, the Golden Globe Awards will be broadcast, and I’ve read that some in the L.A. community are worried that an ostentatious display of couture dresses, expensive jewelry and elaborate hairstyles will turn off Americans who are under severe financial duress.

Don’t fret, Hollywood. People still want to see glamour , to be transported to a place less stressful, and more upbeat, than our current world. Obviously, they want entertainment; that was one lesson of the Great Depression (how that term sorta stings, now, eh? Great?), when movies and radio provided a popular escape from the dire reality outside. And certainly, one important form of entertainment in our culture is celebrity worship.

On one end of the spectrum you’ve got Bernie Madoff, the Ponzi scheme scumbucket; if that man appears in public showing so much as a tie pin, he’ll be reviled—how dare he after what he’s done!? At the other end of the spectrum you’ve got Julia Roberts or George Clooney, who are beloved. If she flashes a rock the size of an asteroid or he climbs into a gold-plated Ferrari Enzo, we’ll smile and sigh and think, cool.  

Gauging the public’s mindset and giving them what they want, especially during a time like we are now facing, is a formidable task for the media. It includes determining what tone, and what content, our readers would like to see in these dreary times.  At one end,  there’s the kind of escapism and entertainment  mentioned above (and for Wine Enthusiast, that includes coverage of  four-star restaurants, luxury vacations, collectors with cellars full of first-growth Bordeaux), and at the other, a more practical and modest approach (simple recipes, home entertaining, value-priced wines).  

Now, some magazines serve one end of the spectrum or the other all the time, but most actually try to do both, a balancing act.  Today’s readers want practical information and direction, but they also want escapism, the stuff of dreams —the term for this in our ink-stained world is aspirational. We all have a choice when, say, reading about a glam couple who have a cellar full of white Burgundies and reds of the northern Rhône in their palazzo on the Amalfi Coast: we can smile wistfully and hope, enjoying the vicarious experience of reading about it, or we can gnash our teeth and hate those damn people. The general tendency, I’d like to think, is to enjoy the stories of success, assuming that it’s not gratuitous and taunting in approach.

Dreams and aspirations are important, as is a positive, forward-looking attitude, and I hope to supply my readers with that ethereal stuff in the coming year.

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