Review: Maclean's, Hello, Harper's

May I just please take a moment, without fear of mockery, admit my deep love of all things British, especially the fantastical narratives surrounding the royal weddings?  Yes, I understand that these narratives are ridiculous and, especially in Diana Spencer's case, brutal, because they hide the truth of the human condition, of social interaction, of real people making real connections to one another, but for some reason, I can't get enough of them.  They make me believe, at the expense of other people, that there are two human individuals created exactly for one another with the wealth and resources to make an impossibly beautiful event possible.  It's a pipe dream, I know, but for those few, blissful seconds that I pick up a copy of Hello! magazine, I can pretend, the same way I pretend when I read a Jane Austen novel or watch the latest romantic comedy, that the world is nothing but a collection of archetypes, that there's an ongoing narrative to protect me from falling into harm's way or being alone for the rest of my life, and everyone gets exactly what they deserve.

Of course, I eventually have to close the magazine.  My incredulity can only take so much in a single day, and Hello! magazine pushes the limits of my disbelief's suspension.  Hello! is Canada's answer to People and Us Weekly from the United States.  It's nothing but columns of celebrity gossip, particularly surrounding the royal family and Celine Dion.  Half of it's reported in the same bold font, capital letters, and tiny quotables; the other half is barely confirmed hear say that's meant to inspire the dreamy feelings I recount in the first paragraph.  In the classroom, there's virtually no benefit to introduce Hello! magazine unless it's as a cultural artifact.  Reading it in conjunction with other magazines like MacLean's or textbooks would elucidate the sheer fantastical quality of Hello! magazine.  You could use it in a study about reporting, about contemporary politics and interests.  Or your students could examine it privately for the sake of pure enjoyment.  There's nothing like a good story.

MacLean's and Harper's have considerably more critical clout.  The former is perhaps the most accessible for students: it takes Hello!'s inflammatory language, its clipped, decontextualized comments and blends them with some actual reporting to create an interesting article that actually has some historical relevance.  This isn't to say MacLean's is the best source, only the most accessible one.  There's still an element of the dramatic to MacLean's that I don't appreciate.  In one of the first articles we read in class, a reporter discussed where Nelson Mandela was going to be buried...before Mandela had even died.  Speculative fiction should enter a history classroom undisguised.

Harper's is bar far the most objective, but without the dramatic quality provided by Hello! and MacLean's, along with its relentless pretentiousness, it would be difficult to introduce Harper's to anything less than a postsecondary setting.  There's always something to be said about feeling when fostering engagement in students, even if those feelings are inspired by pure artifice.  There's a time and a place for Harper's, and that's not high school.