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royalisticdreams · 7 years

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A Summary of ‘Styles’, the book given to Harry during Le Quotidien’s interview

As promised, this post is my summary/partial translation of ‘Styles’, the book Harry was given during the French interview he did with Le Quotidien back in early May 2017.

DISCLAIMER: this book is a work of fiction ; Côme, the author, is not the main character. The meeting with Harry is fictional and made-up. This book was written by Côme Martin-Karl, a French - Parisian- sociology student (which if I may remind you, sociology is a discipline Harry wanted to study back in his X Factor audition).

So, I will proceed with the summary and will tell you about the things that truly concern the memoir, Harry and the meeting. The book itself is about the life of the narrator around the time he was writing his memoir. It’s very interesting but not what I will focus on here. On this post, I will go through a few passages chronologically.

Definition: A memoir is like a long dissertation about a chosen subject related to the class/degree you are taking. It is supposed to offer your own analysis of something never analysed before or in a way never done before. It’s about offering a proper new perspective on a subject through the discipline (Harry through sociology here). It’s something French students usually have to do at the end of their Master’s degree (5+ year). They get graded for it and their diploma depends on it.

Reminder: I will not be giving an opinion on this. This is merely a rough translation and summary of the things I think Harries could find interesting. This is based on the work of Côme Martin-Karl, sometimes a translation of his words. Please remember English is not my mother tongue. I am trying my best here. Sociology is also not my discipline of heart, so the concepts are sometimes foreign to me. I hope this helps and is understandable.

Here we go.

Côme reminds us that “sociology is exciting in the sense that all objects on Earth are likely to be analyzed. It pretends to a certain universality, which makes it a vague discipline diluting itself in the world it is supposed to explain. Initially, his memoir was called “Image of self, images for the self: the iconographic circulation in teen culture: the case of Harry Styles”. Côme says he has fallen in love with Harry: “an immature love based on beliefs, images and press-filtered information”. He explains that loving a celebrity is a securing feeling. An “impossible eroticism”. It’s basically allowing you to feel emotions in a raw way without actually facing the reality. He also compares it to religion, the combination of being inaccessible but being always there at the same time. Like God, Harry is not someone you can approach every day but yet, on a daily basis (practically) there are pictures of him and information about his being exchanged constantly.

Côme has done 2 interviews with 2 different fans. He initially wanted to use pictures, drawings (fanart) etc. He wanted to use them and ask himself “Is Harry a solitary icon or is he in another marginal place of social space, can he be replaced, will his status change?”. The 1st interview was with a 10-yo girl. Only note he took from this was “I prefer Harry because he is super sexy.” The 2nd interview was a 29-yo woman who went to 18 concerts and whose two thirds of the 5k pictures she took were of Harry. She claims he was probably posing for her after seeing her there so many times. Paranoid woman who wasn’t any help in his research. Côme then stopped with the interviews. While collecting pictures, he however noticed that the longer the online pseudonym of a fan, the more likely the fan may focus on something like Harry’s eyes. Whereas a shorter pseudonym would lead him to a fan that was more “brutal in her desire” and that would be collecting pictures of his crotch rather than a more innocent feature. He mentions fanfictions whose “novelistic trail often paints a lot of unrealistic situations but in which the sex scenes can be gripping”. He even tried to write one himself one night and posted it. Got called a “crazy bitch”; he took it off. He chats online with a fan “leader of concert projects”. She mentions how nice Harry is and how no one hates him. That he will still have fans in 10 years.

Côme meets a guy called Julien, with whom he will have a short relationship during the course of the book, but eventually will get him to meet Harry, thanks to his dad who is a lawyer and somehow got in contact with some of Harry’s people. Julien also wanted to do his thesis on Harry. He has a signed poster in his living room. Côme is surprised with Harry’s mature signature for someone who left school as early as Harry did. Julian’s thesis (which is did NOT pursue by the end of the book) was about: “a biological construction, a marketing construction, judicial construction and a libidinal construction”. I personally didn’t get everything he meant but he was apparently focusing on the judicial-libidinal link. He was interested in terms of copyright, private life issues etc.

Côme then gets a new director for his memoir, Mr Costat. This man puts his initial draft work to shame and asks him to think differently about Harry. Mr Costat reminds him that sociology is the language of the social, and not the science of the social like a lot of people think. He wants him to focus on Harry as a subject not as an object (a few fans could do the same ;)). He wants Côme to use Harry as a language: “what does his figure tell? To whom? Can we hear it? If yes, who does? What are the conditions of his emergence as a language? Who appropriates it to themselves and why? What are the possible turning points to this?” I will be honest here, I have no idea what this man is talking about. So, if someone understands it, you’re welcome to enlighten the world! Côme rethinks his introduction. The first sentence is the following “While interrogating the relations between the Beautiful and the Crowd, Harry Styles urges us to make a sociology of art as well as to practice the art of sociology.” At night, he thinks that “Harry’s beauty resides in the fact that he was “born” in front of millions. He is in full ascension. We’re excited by beginnings, but we only fall in love with a transformation, with the idea of what the person is going to become and everything that is going to happen next.”

Julien and Côme have gone to Holmes Chapel for a few days. It didn’t help Côme in any way. However, he manages to rewrite his introduction fully a while after. He refers to Schelling. He says “my guess is that as an image, Harry is a being of bones and flesh submitted to the laws of nature, gravitation and the process of aging but he is also fixed in a transcendent way. Only through the circulation of his images there is the opposition of being and non-being through Hegel. This circulation is a social fact. In other terms, the appropriation of Harry’s pictures by the [fans] inject in them a true veracity of which only Schelling’s sociology can explain.”

Côme adjusts his work again. He finally calls it “The stylistic of Styles”; mentions Harry through different point of views: philosophy of nature, transcendent philosophy and dialectic point of view. - Here again, I do not have the knowledge to explain any of that to you…-. Côme uses fanfictions and shows the naturalist motivation (?) behind some of them, in which we can sometimes detect a punctilious attention to the details of Harry’s actual life, from alleged conquests to new clothes or recent real estate acquisitions.

The meeting: Côme and Julien meet Harry in a hotel in Paris a few months ago from today (End of May 2017!). They have 30 minutes to ask him questions. Côme tells how Harry enters the bar of the hotel in the middle of a group of people. Everyone around him is blur, he says, one can only see him. He is tall and wears a big smile on his face. He is “magnificent. As if he was the only one on which light fell upon.” Côme mentions how this moment is the one where he understands “the whole point of tales of marital apparitions that makes the entirety of the second half of the nineteenth century swarm.” He is hardly said hello to by members of press and management but only a woman that disinterests herself from the conversation quickly stays with Harry and them. Harry looks at him in the eye while their introduction. He “smiles at me so much I could almost believe he is actually happy to see me”. He asks how Côme is doing and mentions how it’s the first time he will be answering to researchers. Makes a joke Côme doesn’t understand quite well but to which Côme laughs anyway. With joint hands, sitting a little towards them with his shirt open until they can see the infamous butterfly tattoo, he listens. Julien explains briefly the two theses. Harry laughs at the joke concerning him not having to lie down on the sofa to answer. “Fantastic” is the reply he gives after the presentation.

Julien asks Harry about “his intimate relationship with contracts, from his way to sign them to the color of the pen he uses to do so; at what age he chose his signature, if it resembles more his mother’s or his father’s. Julien pursues with Harry’s relationship with his parents and stepfather, and the discussions he had with them about contracts while he was a minor”. Very unfortunately (in my opinion), the answers of Harry to those questions are not transcribed in the book but according to Côme, Harry gives “polite yet well thought out answers”. He seems to have his heart set on being precise and useful to the discipline. Julien writes “oedipian narration” down. The only question at which Harry doesn’t answer (when the woman next to him intervenes) is when Julien asks (weirdly, I think) whether Harry remembers any difference in his masturbatory practices before and after signing the contracts that made him who he is today.

It’s Côme turn to ask questions. He barely has a few minutes. He asks one question: what would be Harry’s ideal fanfiction according to him. He “smiles while rolling his eyes a bit, then thinks.” “Harry used to read a few fanfictions at the very beginning of One Direction, when his famousness didn’t go further than the United Kingdom. As his perusals went, he recognized himself less and less until he didn’t recognize himself at all in them anymore, until his name totally escaped from his hands to lose itself in a hurricane of feverish imaginaries and became a completely foreign homonym present in hundreds and hundreds of pages written in any language. He cites a couple of fictional plans that stuck with him but underlines how the constructions of those seem stereotyped to him. He has {mark the words here} “in vain looked for a story that would have veritably interested him. He notes how everything very quickly becomes pornographic, and that pornography usually calls for the dissolution of script writing exigence. While he has skimmed through a lot of erotic novel-like writing pieces, he also fell upon galactic tales or texts in universes that would make him the main character of well-known Disney films. Harry thinks that if he had the power to command/order (?) an oeuvre of which he would be the main character, he would like this oeuvre to be an offbeat adventure novel, a story swarming with an overflow of sudden and unforeseen developments. He would have liked to be the hero of a picaresque novel.” Côme notes that Harry has used a word with the same suffix -esque before, “picturesque”, in his little interview while waiting in line for his X Factor audition in 2010, when describing his village.

The interview is finished. Harry hugs them and tells Côme he found his question interesting. He “smells good”, Côme adds in his book, but doesn’t say what exactly it is that Harry smells like.

Côme finally gets to present his work in front of a jury including Mr Costat who blames him for not having made a universal reasoning. Otherwise, Côme’s work is appreciated. He gets the “Mention Très Bien” which is the highest distinction a French student can get. It usually means the student got a grade above 16 out of 20.

There you go for this resume of ‘Styles’! It’s still 4 pages long in Word for me right now, but that’s the best I could do to sum it up and share with you the most interesting points for fans of Harry. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, hopefully some of you can enlighten us on the sociology concepts because I personally did not understand them, lol. I will try to get my hands on Côme’s memoir to try and understand it better. Last thing I want to say: I knew Harry was smart, but if he really did answer the way Côme says he did during the little interview… Man, that man is even brighter than I thought he was. {Me: falls even more in love}. Fanfiction writers… you know what to do!!!

PS: Please don’t copy this or share it without mentioning the source. I repeat that this is from the work of Côme. I have tried to translate some parts, and have purposefully used quotation marks.

#Styles #MyStuff

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tylerpspeaks · 7 years

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Divided We Stand

"It's a shame we are so divided as a country."

"The reason we are so divided as a country is because we are focusing on race too much!"

"It's not as bad as it once was, right?"

"Let's focus on what unifies us!"

"I don't see why they are protesting."

These are all statements I’ve heard often, but increasingly lately. Many people, on all sides, are just tired of discussing matters of racism and injustice. However, it is one of the main unavoidable issues of our present day. Interestingly enough, some view this dialogue as unfruitful; even counterproductive. Many Christians desire to “just focus on The Gospel.” Then, our president tweets or another verdict leaves people of color feeling more deflated and dejected. Unforturanetly, a video surfaces of an unarmed black man killed seemingly every few months. Last week, we witnessed the senseless murder of Patrick Harmon in Utah. (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/05/patrick-harmon-utah-police-shooting) On and on and on... Lives being taken unjustly.

Recently, NFL players were met with vitriol during a scathing tirade from the President of the United States. He condemned players who protested by kneeling during the National Anthem and declared they should be fired on the spot, even referring to them as, "S.O.B’s.”

And then, right on schedule, this weekend's incident happened. Vice President Pence abruptly left an NFL game in Indianapolis due to player protests, further fanning flames of discord between the current administration and athletes. By the way, there was yet another white supremacist march in Charlottesville, VA if you didn't know (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/10/08/white-supremacists-say-rally-charlottesville-model-more-protests-across-south/744087001/) Another white supremacist rally took place on Saturday. Yes, in the year 2017!

Some Americans are tired of the protesting. They are tired of the rhetoric. While others are tired of feeling marginalized and ignored. They are tired of acts of covert and overt racism being ignored in this country. Some people are tired of the dialogue and believe it is worsening matters. Many Christians are tired of fellow followers of Christ seemingly choosing their allegiance to America over their allegiance with minority Christians.

We are divided. Terribly. Even those who claim to be a spiritual brotherhood in Jesus Christ are split on many fronts.

I would like to debunk the theory, however, that talking about race and protesting further divides us racially doesn't promote unity. Let's be honest. Have we ever had true unity in America? Has there ever been an equal distribution of rights for everyone? Has there ever been a time when the majority class was not far above minorities? I believe the main ingredient to unity is equality. However, the unfortunate reality is equality has never been pervasive on American soil.

I believe many subconsciously believe "unity" boils down to minorities silently suffering and the majority thriving, thus ignoring the minority's plight. Some, more overtly, suggest the people born in this country just “stop complaining” and "leave if they don't like it here.” Shockingly, this rhetoric was even declared in some churches across America in the wake of the NFL/National Anthem controversy.

More subtly, it is possible to jump to the conclusion that solidarity has been reached just because the voiceless have been momentarily quieted or have become too defeated to even cry out anymore. Perhaps, on the other hand, some have assumed unity achieved simply because those in power have a fleeting moment of clarity and guilt. Some people point to the end of legalized segregation and prejudice, and the ascent of other ethnicities, socially and economically, to support this claim. I’ve even heard many Christians highlight the recent multi-cultural church movement as a major stride and proof that unity has been accomplished. (They neglect to mention most of those in leadership of these churches and denominations are still primarily middle-aged white men)

Do you remember the early to mid-1990's? Millennials do your Googles. The beating of Rodney King by four LA police officers was caught on tape and resulted in a shocking not guilty verdict. The result of this was nation-wide rioting, primarily in Los Angles. In 1992, my own city of Detroit had a similar scenario, where Malice Green (another unarmed black man) was beaten to death by two Detroit policemen. Green was struck in the head approximately 14 times with metal flashlights. Furthermore, rap groups NWA and Body Count, cause a national frenzy with their respective songs "F*** Tha Police" and "Cop Killer" protesting police brutality and harassment. Do I even need to mention O.J. Simpson? I hope you get my point. So the current events of 2017 are far from uncharted territory for America. The conversation of racism and the reality of the unjust treatment of non-whites in America is as old as The American Flag many cherish so dearly.

Where do we go from here? Let me ask it this way: Can you properly cure a disease without an accurate diagnosis? What would happen if cancer went undiagnosed in a person's body? Death is the only plausible scenario.

So often we treat racism and injustice like a common cold; not like the cancer it actually is. Like cancer, racism and division must be: (1) accurately diagnosed (2) radically treated and (3) constantly monitored.

An Accurate Diagnosis

Unfortunately, I've had several family and friends suffer from cancer. When the disease was diagnosed, they weren't given a vague, cryptic prognosis. On the contrary, the prognosis was meticulous and measured. There was an urgency to the matter, not apathy. It was detailed and direct. The prognosis was grounded in rationality, not ambiguity.

To cure discord and foster unity, we must precisely diagnose the issues and not merely skim the surface. So often to preserve our comforts and the comfort of others we discuss matters vaguely purposely. We need to ask direct, hard questions and process critically if we desire to resolve the many issues preventing unity among all Americans. We have to stop just nodding our heads and calling racism a heart issue, but GO MUCH deeper.

Why do so many churches and denominations have so few or no minorities at all in leadership?

Why are black people five times more likely to be incarcerated than white people despite being roughly only 13% of the population? (Please read: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/18/mass-incarceration-black-americans-higher-rates-disparities-report and https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/26/america-has-locked-up-so-many-black-people-it-has-warped-our-sense-of-reality/?utm_term=.4a388981845e)

Why is the economic and education gap so wide between the schools in the inner city and suburbs?

Why is white most always the standard of beauty in America (see Dove’s latest advertising fail)? (http://time.com/4974075/dove-apology-racist-ad/)

Why were so many white Christians more outraged by NFL players protesting than the white supremacist march in Charlottesville a few weeks ago?

Radical Treatment

As soon as cancer is detected and diagnosed, treatment begins expediently to prevent further cell multiplication or "spreading." Sadly, I think many have become so accustomed to our country's “pseudo-unity” and subliminal/low latent racism, they have excepted that as sufficient. “Hey, I go to a have black friends.” “I support adoption and I’m pro-life because most of those babies are black.” “I’ve read The New Jim Crow!”

What lengths are you willing to go to in order to see inequality end and unity begin?

Are you willing to get involved in the criminal justice system to see reform, or assist someone in the legal system's black hole?

Are you willing to leverage your resources, relationships, and reputation for someone who doesn’t share those privileges?

Are you willing to submit to minority leadership or learn from a minority as a white person?

Are you willing to connect with a church that is diverse ethnically and socioeconomically?

How can you tangibly be a means of blessing to schools in the inner city that are experiencing scarcity on all fronts?

Again, what personal steps can you take to close the gap and promote unity? (Especially in The Church of Jesus Christ)

Constant Monitoring

One of the difficult things about cancer is it has a tendency to return. Often, it returns more fierce and formidable than before. This is why once a person's cancer goes into remission, they still periodically get checked and health reviewed to make sure the cancer has not returned.

It is my firm belief that our ability to achieve unity across racial lines, must come by constantly revisiting and reviewing what we desire to avoid. I’m honestly confused by Christians who say, we “talk about race too much,” yet they align their worldview and political allegiance; and allocate much energy to the issue of abortion. We will not mend the division in The Church of Christ by quietly pressing minorities to assimilate; that is colonization; not authentic community. We constantly confront the uncomfortable issues of racism, hueism, sexism, and classism so we may garner true unity.

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