There's oh so much self-consciously postmodern meta-comical hipsterism on display in this video promoting The New Yorker's new iPhone app. Given the self-consciously postmodern hipster bent of the product and its audience, the approach feels just about right. Auteur du jour Lena Dunham created the promo, and she appears in it as an auteur-ish guest on a late-night talk show hosted by smarmy/clueless host Jon Hamm. He screens a clip featuring Dunham and her Girls co-star Alex Karpovsky in which Dunham explains, among other things, that the app automatically downloads fresh content on Monday mornings for those who "subscribe." She makes the quote-marks gesture with her fingers, a move so ironically unhip-hip, it makes me want to move to Park Slope and stop shaving. Hamm is perfectly cast, and the inclusion of a media personality famous for playing a fictional adman—shown here portraying a fake media personality in an actual ad—borders on the metagasmic, for want of a real word. When Hamm says he's never heard of The New Yorker, Dunham describes the high-end, taste-maker content, and Hamm responds: "So, it's like Rolling Stone." "Yeah," she replies, "but they'd never put Britney Spears humping a guitar on the cover." Hamm concludes: "So, it's like a horrible version of Rolling Stone." That's easily the best bit, appealing to the wink-wink sensibilities of those who do "subscribe," and snarkily satisfying those of us who've lost the faith, perhaps because we've collected so many Shouts and Murmurs rejections through the years.
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