Vanity Fair needs extra hand with editing
Images from Vanity Fair’s upcoming Hollywood Issue are out and, based on the early reviews, it should be called the Mutant Issue.
We already know magazines manipulate celebrity images. Faces are airbrushed. Torsos are contoured like Rodin sculptures. Voluminous hair is made to violate the rules of natural sheen and gravity. Abdomens ripple with fake shadows and muscles. Eyes become reflecting pools. Teeth as straight as two-by-fours glow in the blinding hue of radioactive white.
But what Vanity Fair accomplished this week after teasing the issue that’s due out next month is different.
Instead of adding by subtracting — the first rule of digital enhancement — they went nuts on the adding. And soon after a preview of the Mutant Issue arrived on Thursday, readers flocked to social media, baffled by the extra leg on Reese Witherspoon’s body and, scarier still, Oprah’s three hands.
Responding to the corporeal mystery, Witherspoon tweeted: “Well . . . I guess everybody knows now . . . I have 3 legs. I hope you can still accept me for who I am.”
To which Ms. Winfrey, with possibly too much time on her three hands now that she’s demurred on calls for a presidential run, replied: “I accept your 3d leg. As I know you accept my 3d hand.”
Vanity Fair quickly tried to correct the record and disabuse conspiracy theorists of any notion Witherspoon is a tripod fish. That’s not a superfluous appendage, they insisted. Witherspoon can’t ride a bike and kick a ball at the same time.
The official explanation was optical illusion.
“It’s just the lining of her dress,” tweeted Vanity Fair, about as convincingly as when Bill Clinton said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
Even after 20 minutes of intense scrutiny with a magnifying glass, and with this gown theory in mind, I found it impossible to unsee Witherspoon’s third leg. If a captor held a pistol to my head and threatened to kill me unless I counted aloud the number of extremities on the star of Big Little Lies, I would not hesitate before shouting, “ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR . . . FIVE!”
The problem with the flimsy dresslining excuse is that, moments later, Vanity Fair could offer no explanation for why it decided to accelerate evolution and give Oprah three opposable thumbs. They admitted this image, one of several to run inside the magazine as part of Annie Leibovitz’s portfolio of “12 Extraordinary Stars,” was extraordinarily doctored.
So they re-altered the altered photo that shows Tom Hanks saying something so hilarious that Witherspoon is laughing too hard to realize the fingers clasped around her waist like a phantom claw couldn’t possibly belong to a seated Oprah who already has two hands in plain view.
Now I’m reluctant to scrutinize the rest of the Mutant Issue in case I notice Gal Gadot is missing an elbow or wonder why Michael B. Jordan’s mustache is catching a ride on the side of Jessica Chastain’s heel.
And if you were expecting to see James Franco on the new cover, as was the plan, please note Vanity Fair made more weird photo news on Friday when it was reported the actor was digitally removed due to allegations of sexual misconduct.
What the camera giveth, scandal and software taketh away.
At this point, someone should open a Museum of Photoshop Fails. Yes, the exhibit “Oprah’s Three Hands” would be like the Mona Lisa.
But in addition to this star attraction, there could be multiple galleries curated from the dozens of gaffes magazines have made in recent years while retouching reality in pursuit of celebrity perfection: Sarah Jessica Parker looking like an angry racehorse on the cover of Vogue China; the ghastly forearm amputation performed on Kristen Stewart before a Glamour cover; the time Men’s Fitness tried to make it look like Andy Roddick had stolen The Rock’s biceps; the radical balding of Solange by the Evening Standard, long after she had left the studio.
Forget all the handwringing about fake news. We need to get serious about fake photos.
If magazines can still afford to pay fact checkers, they should add a few “anatomy checkers” — you know, people with no experience and average eyesight who can glance at proofs to make sure a wrecking ball did not assault Zendaya’s hips. Or point out when Kerry Washington appears to be a victim of an alien body snatcher. Or flag the face vandalism that has left Jennifer Lawrence’s cheekbones with steeper inclines than Niagara Falls. Or let someone know Priyanka Chopra’s armpit has vanished.
Vanity Fair’s Hollywood Issue is an annual paean to the power and reach of celebrity.
But this year, it was a reminder that to be reckless in the editing suite is to bite the three hands that feed you.