The film follows Cassie-a medicine school dropout, as we are repeatedly reminded-as she enacts revenge for the rape of her best friend. Tolentino’s approach to political issues, she argues, is characterised both by the tone of melodrama and ‘the elegant avoidance of stating her conservative opinions directly’.ĭescribed by Variety as the ‘perfect talker for the #MeToo era’, Emerald Fennell’s celebrated film Promising Young Woman encapsulates the cruel optimism of moral obviousness, where our desire for moral simplicity in fact obstructs us in some way. Her essay problematises our attachment to a literary iteration of Main Character Energy, where political commentary folds neatly into personal narrative, prompting us to question what edges and ambiguities have been smoothed over in the process.įor Oyler, ‘the moral obviousness of most contemporary fiction-and of most movies, art, music, television, politics and internet culture’ has been made popular by writers ‘who tend to find simple things complicated and complicated things simple’. Writing on Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror, a collection of essays on contemporary feminism, critic Lauren Oyler laments the profusion of contemporary writers who ‘make any observation about the world lead back to their own lives and feelings, though it should be the other way round’. However, Main Character Energy as a storytelling device is more pervasive in contemporary culture than by what’s implied through a hashtag. This all might sound a bit dramatic, especially given that many use the trend as self-satire. By dwelling in the algorithmic impasse of TikTok’s affect-laden snippets of anticipatory good life fantasies-sipping wine at a brasserie in Paris, or joking about romanticising our train journey, listening to Lana Del Ray-we might ignore for just a little while longer the absurdity of prioritising our own narratives in a cultural moment that is defined, at least in part, by a crisis of individualism. Like the belief that an entrepreneurial spirit is all we need to prosper under capitalism or that it’s possible to individually consume our way out of climate change, Main Character Energy is cruel in its optimism. Driven by a fantasy of ‘the good life’ that is unlikely to eventuate, these attachments aren’t necessarily logical, but they’re always affective-underlined by feelings transmitting our ‘body’s response to the world’. In their 2011 book Cruel Optimism, they describe a form of attachment where what we desire is actually an obstacle to our flourishing. The late literary scholar and cultural theorist Lauren Berlant argued that affect and emotion, rather than rationality, determine our ways of belonging in the world. Like the belief that an entrepreneurial spirit is all we need to prosper under capitalism, Main Character Energy is cruel in its optimism. With Main Character Energy, the vague anticipation of an exciting narrative arc becomes the aesthetic, the #mood, we seek to cultivate. However, the trend’s popularity stems less from a literal interpretation and more from the hopeful sensibility-energy-it evokes. And in the midst of a crisis with no clear resolution in sight, it’s surely comforting to adopt, even just for a moment, the archetypal trope of the hero’s journey in which the main character is destined to overcome all odds. Writing for Electric Literature, Amy Zimmerman suggests that the plotlessness of the pandemic has prompted people to reimagine their lives within a definitive narrative arc. While some use the trend to poke fun at self-obsession, others echo Ward’s earnestness, with even a new wellness-focused iteration emerging recently. ‘Main Character Energy’, a trend where users perform their lives online as if they’re the main character in a film, has propagated all corners of the internet, from the sincere to the satirical, since 2020. The intro to ‘A Moment Apart’ by Odesza, a fixture on Spotify’s algorithmic ‘good vibes’ playlists, underlays Ward’s voiceover: ‘You have to start thinking of yourself as the main character because if you don’t, life will continue to pass you by.’ The video has over 534K likes. Friends surround her, but as she gazes upwards-the scene is shot from a camera drone-hers is the only visible face. Tiktok star Ashley Ward is lying on a multi-coloured beach towel wearing activewear.
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