#The original author literally said that the misogyny melts away when you don't think of the songs as being about women

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

oh my god do start the discourse about how much you hate the mythic interpretation, I’ve been SALIVATING

 Hi anon,

Thanks so much for this ask - I would probably would have written something this weekend anyway, but it’s great to have an excuse.

I didn’t find any of it very convincing, but that’s OK.  Other people’s song interpretations seldom are.  But there were four things about this particular post that made me go beyond ‘I guess that’s possible, but I’m not convinced’ (which is my usual response to song interpretations).  The first two are about the way the interpretation was made - the grand claims about the status of their interpretation and the treatment of Ever Since New York.  The second two are about the interpretation itself.

‘The’ Literary angle

The introduction makes pretty bold claims - including that the angle this post is coming from is ‘the literary angle’ as well as talking about ‘the mythic foundation’.  As far as I can tell - when they talk about literary traditions they are only talking about using women as symbolic figures and when they talk about ‘mythic’ they mean a ring structure (which as they acknowledge the album that exists does not follow - but more on that later).

Despite this hype - I think it’s a really badly done literary interpretation. Nothing about the interpretation was convincing to me - there was no effort to demonstrate that the claims were true - just statements that this is what the author thinks.  When talking about SoTT they say: ‘But I do believe this [1D’s early success] was at least the initial inspiration for this song. This is the interpretation that works in context of the album/story as a whole.’  That’s circular reasoning - they’re using assumptions they’ve already made to support their interpretation. 

There’s also some really sloppy arguing, which suggest a very limited worldview and lack of understanding of possibilities.  When talking about Carolina they dimiss the idea that the song could be about Townes: ‘If he’d liked her that much, he would have seen her again’.  As if it’s unthinkable that a one night stand (by a touring musician no less!) can include great sex and real connection.  When discussing Medicine, they make a weird detour to the possibility that Harry and Louis met at the Script concert (which I didn’t know that anyone actually believed) - because once they were living together ‘they wouldn’t have had to go out to hook up’.  As if the idea of a couple going out to a club together to enjoy each other in public doesn’t make any sense.

The post about ‘Only Angel’ suggests in passing that the song is a story of an abusive relationship and that the narrator is the one being abused.  Which is wrong and upsetting. 

None of this matters that much (except the Only Angel nonsense - that matters), and I’m not going to go into all the arguments and interpretations that I disagree with or I think are unfounded.  But the combination of the grand claims ‘the literary angle’/’the mythic foundation’ and the inept arguing does really get to me. 

The Treatment of Ever Since New York

The most ridculous part of the whole work is the declaration that Ever Since New York and Woman were in the wrong order, because the order they were in didn’t fit the interpretation this person was trying to make. It’s quite a vivid demonstration of exactly how bad of a literary analysis these posts are.  

But that’s not actually what bothers me most with the way Ever Since New York was discussed.  Because Harry has talked about some of the inspiration for this song and he’s talked about being in a pool with no water when he got bad news about a family member’s health.  Now I don’t think people have to include this statement from Harry in their interpretation of the song, but I think it shows how limiting (and dehumanising) the author’s view of Harry is.  According to these posts the only people and experiences that Harry could have any desire to express himself about in his first album are his experience in the band and his bandmates.  The exact things that the author is most interested in. 

I find it arrogant in general to assume that the only things Harry would want to express in song are parts of his life and feeling that we can access from watching him.  But I think it’s worse, because we do have a sense of some of the pain, loss and fear that Harry was dealing with in the year before the relase of his album.  This post left no possibility that experiences like Robin’s diagnosis or Matt’s death had any impact on Harry’s songwriting.  

The Western literary tradition of not writing about women as people

The Introduction claims “To understand the deeper meaning of this album, the most important thing to recognize is that not one of these songs is about a woman. Literary tradition has a long history of using female stand-ins and pronouns to represent a wide variety of life’s experiences”.

I am agnostic on the question of whether and in what sense Harry intended any of the songs on his album to be about a woman. And it is true that Western literary tradition long history of using female stand-ins and pronouns to represent a wide variety of life’s experiences. But that tradition is wildly misogynist and based in a fundamental denial of women’s humanity.

Ever since ‘Harry Styles’ was released fans have been arguing that the misogyny doesn’t count, because Harry was talking about cocaine, or fame, or his time in 1D rather than women.  That the virgin/whore dynamic of ‘good girl/feels so good’ and the angel who is a devil in the sheets or the nasty controlling elements of ‘Woman’ don’t count, because Harry wasn’t really talking about women.

These defences never spell out why it’s OK to use misogynist tropes about women if you don’t actually talk about women.  I would argue the opposite - the fact that it’s woman, and not men, who get used as a literary stand in for whatever the author actually wants to talk about, is in itself misogynist and denying women’s humanity.  I also think that it’s worse to perpetuate misogynist tropes as a way of communicating your true feelings about fame than just in a song about an actual or imagined woman.  There’s a second level of misogyny, because it means there’s no space in literarture for women to exist as people.

Or on a more fundamental level - does the impact that these songs have on the world suddenly change, because Harry didn’t mean them like that? Woman still normalises controlling behaviour by men for the vast majority of people who listen to it.  Women and girls are still hearing that they have to be both good and feel good.

What does this interpretation add to the work?

Finally, I disagree with the most fundamental of the author’s assertions - that the Harry Styles album as they imagine it is interesting. 

There’s a lot of claims, throughout the post, that this interpretation reveals what a great work of art ‘Harry Styles’: “Viewed through the right lens, it is actually quite an extraordinary piece of art—one that draws from ancient mythic and literary tradition to tell an emotionally rich and cohesive story.”

I disagree - I think the version of ‘Harry Styles’ that this person thinks exists is boring and basic.