My favorite thing about Harry Styles is he feels like Harry Styles (and the loss of meaning in our society)
Harry Styles once said about his most recent film, “My favorite thing about the movie is it feels like a movie. It feels like a real, you know, go to the theater film-movie that, you know, kind of the reason you go to watch something on the big screen.”
If you’re on Twitter, you’ve probably seen the video: zoomed in on Chris Pine’s face with Harry Styles’s disembodied voice coming from beside him, saying these very words. Like everything else in the world, the internet has turned this into a meme, whether it be because of the monotone nature in which the lines were delivered or their somewhat nonsensical meaning or a bit of both is immaterial. Essentially, Twitter has taken this singular clip and — I hesitate to say made fun of because that feels inadequate in relation to what the internet does — but the internet has made it into a big deal.
Somehow, if you are completely obliviously to what any of this means, Harry Styles and Chris Pine star in a new film, Don’t Worry Darling (dir. Olivia Wilde), which has been at the center of quite a lot of internet drama. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival on September 5, 2022, where Styles and Pine were interviewed together, which is where this statement about the film was made by Styles. This article means to actually consider Styles’s comment and its meaning beyond its viral nature on social media and, arguably, what the Don’t Worry Darling actor was probably trying to say. (My credentials for writing this are I am unfortunately on stan Twitter and I have a degree in film.)
I did find this video on Twitter, in the form of a close up on Chris Pine disassociating as Harry Styles makes a comment about a movie being a movie. I did laugh because it’s presentation on Twitter, regardless of what tweet you find the video attached to, will have some comment about Styles saying absolutely nothing in so many words or Pine trying not to laugh, what have you. And the tweets are funny. That is undeniable. Despite this, people and corporations have become so focused on making a snarky comment with the video or manipulating the wording of the phrase for the sake of tens of thousands of retweets (which was actually successful) that no one is actually talking about what Styles says.
Styles isn’t necessarily saying with a straight face, “Oh, the movie is a movie. That’s why it’s great.” Rather, his words can be interpreted, despite the limited nature and lack of context for the response, as a reflection on the changing nature of the way we as a society receive visual media. In film history, there has been a great evolution in the manner in which audiences actively partake in watching something, because it is an active experience despite just watching an image. At first, people could only see films at theaters, then there was television, now we have streaming and social media. The variety of modes in which we can engage with media has greatly changed and does in fact affect the way we relate to said media.
When Styles says his favorite thing about the movie is it’s a movie like a “go to the theater film-movie” he is perhaps reflecting on the way engagement with film has changed and the influences these different mediums can have on the viewing experience. Don’t Worry Darling is described as an art film, meant to be watched in the theater with an audience in a darkened room on a big screen. All of these factors contribute to the viewing experience and will create a different response to the film as opposed to sitting in bed at home and watching it on your laptop. This is not just a movie, it’s a movie, a film, like those from times past that you had to see in the theater to experience it in that very particular way. The way that strips a person of all senses, returning us to an almost fetal state, and projects an image that becomes, for all intents and purposes, reality for the duration of the film, until the lights come back on.
There is an awesome analogy made between Plato’s cave and film that I might have brought up in every essay I wrote in college. Essentially, Plato supposes that humanity is chained together and imprisoned in a cave. Behind the prisoners, there is a fire and between the fire and the prisoners are objects. The shadow of these objects is what humanity watches on the walls of the cave, much in the way people watch a film on a screen. This is, in effect, reality or an interpretation of reality that is taken as truth, when really it is a shadow of reality. On the other hand, the objects creating the shadows are not even real objects, but signs made to look like object. People are not even watching the shadow of objects but the shadow of a copy of an object. A copy of a copy, an image of an image, so detached from reality but taken as such. The projected images act in the same way a film seen in the theater does. They are not the real objects they are representing but are interpreted as truth. If Plato’s allegory is to be taken literally, reality itself is a copy of a copy, making films a copy of a copy of a copy, so entirely removed from reality that their manufactured nature is almost laughable.
Despite this, films create this particular kind of environment where this false reality becomes truth for a set amount of time. That is the intention of the theater and possibly what Styles is referring to when he says his favorite thing about Don’t Worry Darling is that it’s a movie. It is a movie in the purest sense that film was intended to be watched and engaged with, which is what makes this special. There is a distinct difference between something meant to be watched in the theater and a film that is watched purely for streaming purposes. There might not appear to be a difference but the way an audience receives a film informs the way they interpret it and art built upon audience interpretation.
This is not to say that art films are superior to commercial films or those released in theaters are inherently better than those released through a streaming service. Nor can I attribute any of this to Don’t Worry Darling as a film because I have not seen it, so I cannot speak it it’s success or failure. I am merely pointing out the difference between the way these two experiences impact an audience’s engagement with the media that can be cataloged and studied. Styles’s commentary is related to film history and film theory and can be seen as an incredibly astute observation related to the film industry and its current state in 2022.
Not only is this commentary on the film industry, but I think also says a lot about society and how we relate to art. Styles says something about the film and what it means to him, but no one is really talking about the film at all. Additionally, no one attempts to understand what his statement means for him as an actor and artist participating in this particular venture. Everyone is talking about the drama surrounding the people who worked on the film or trying to come up with the next viral tweet about movies being movies.
Admittedly, I could not say much about the film’s actual premise as the story garnering attention is not the one written for screen but what has gone on behind the scenes. It is an unfortunate place we are in as if audiences no longer care about the content of film or art in general. As an aspiring filmmaker, this is disheartening. I think Styles’s comment on the changing nature of visual media applies to the reaction to Don’t Worry Darling that isn’t so much a reaction to the film but a reaction to everything but the film. Media has become short, bright, electrifying bursts of content to satisfy our shortening attention spans and inability to appreciate design or execution. The film doesn’t matter but the flashy headlines coming out every day very much do.
Florence Pugh, who also stars in the film, made a comment about people talking about the film for the sake of the most famous man in the world having a sex scene rather than the content of the film and the intention of the filmmakers. This statement relates to the degradation of people’s interpretive skills and appreciation for analysis but also the intense loss of true meaning in society. The film does not mean anything more on social media than the drama and memes it produces, likewise, the film is meaningless despite its careful design as an art form by a large group of people.
I am not trying to stand on some soapbox and criticize people for the way they receive and engage with information or media because I’m guilty of this as well. The title of this article will most likely play on the words that inspired the entire piece for the sake of attention on the internet. (Am I the problem?) Additionally, I was not watching the livestream of the interviews or paying attention to the Venice Film Festival, despite wanting to get into the film industry. Instead, I went to Twitter to get a quick recap of what went on, only to find the drama because that is what has become important rather than the art, the very reason this festival and these people were gathered together to begin with.
What I mean to say is Styles’s comment reveals more about audiences and their relationship to visual media than it reveals anything about him. The response to it reconfirms his expression that the best part of the movie is it being a movie and that being an honest, truthful assessment of what makes the film stand out. Indirectly, he opens up a conversation relating to the changing film industry and the way audiences engage with films. The comment works twofold as one that acknowledges the different ways people watch film and what this means for viewership as well as audiences’ relationship to film as an industry as of 2022, which ultimately unearths an uncomfortable truth about society’s relationship to art as a whole. Perhaps people have stopped caring if something has meaning just as the internet did not care if Styles meant something in this infamous answer to whatever question he was asked.
People can say that Harry Styles’s comment is not that deep and criticize this particular analysis of it but that doesn’t mean the comment is as simple as the internet has made it out to be. By claiming it is not that deep, proves my point that people fail to analyze and understand what they see and hear. Perhaps he meant nothing by the comment, but no one considered that a fifteen second video of an out of context comment could be anything more than something to laugh at on the internet. This phenomenon does not just extend to comments made by celebrities but to everything else that requires any kind of active, critical thought. That is the dangerous, disappointing reality for art and its future. Humanity has learned to not only misinterpret things but rather to not even try to understand them at all.
