Everything Is Content - The Met Gala, Dua Lipa and The Idea Of You

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

So, it was the Met Gala this week - we reckon our invites must have got lost in the post… send them special delivery next time, Anna! Join Beth, Ruchira and Oenone to discuss our favourite looks from the green carpet. We also take a look at some of the reviews of Dua Lipa’s new album Radical Optimism - are we witnessing the death of critical journalism? And then last but not least - we take a trip to rom-com town to discuss The Idea of You. —DISNEY PLUS: The Walking Dead APPLE PODCASTS: If Books Could KillSPOTIFY: If Books Could Kill PRIME VIDEO: Fallout VOGUE: “We Don’t Borrow – We Buy”: Law RoachTHE LINE OF BEST FIT: Absence dominates Dua Lipa’s dull and weightless Radical OptimismBBC SOUNDS: Miss Me? - Dear Elton...NEW STATESMAN: Everyone hates the criticPASTE: Taylor Swift Strikes Out Looking on The Tortured Poets DepartmentPRIME VIDEO: The Idea Of YouMONICA HEISEY: Really Good, Actually TIME: Reducing The Idea of You to Fan Fiction Is Another Example of Dismissing Women’s ArtTHE CUT: Anne Hathaway is too hot for The Idea Of YouCURTIS SITTENFIELD: Romantic Comedy—Follow us on Instagram:@everythingiscontentpod @beth_mccoll @ruchira_sharma@oenone ---Everything Is Content is produced by Faye Lawrence for We Are GrapeExec Producer: James Norman-FyfeMusic: James RichardsonPhotography: Rebecca Need-Meenar Artwork: Joe Gardner  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I mean you would expect sorry there's a um that's the ice cream truck outside my house god I love Mr Whip I'm Beth I'm Richera and I'm Anoni this is the pop culture podcast you've been dreaming about it's everything is content we're three friends who love all things pop culture and we love to discuss all of the chat we've seen online and throw our hot takes into the ring. We are the slice of orange in your content apparel spirits. Make sure you're subscribed and follow us on Instagram and TikTok at everythingiscontentpod. Today on the podcast we're discussing the MILF movie, Dua Lipa's dua lipa's vengeance seekers and of course the event of the fashion year the met galah so what have you girls been loving this week well i i'm

sorry but i'm just still knee deep in watching the walking dead i literally can't stop there's something about zombie apocalypse shows which are really comforting. Comforting. The only problem is I have got really far because I've binged it so much that like so much of the cast is dying. They keep having to find like new survivors. But there's always this promise

that they're going to find this like safe haven. It's the push and pull of like, oh my God, we're safe. We finally found someone to be safe. I think about the words. But it is making me want to be like a survivalist and have if i ever could afford to have a home to build a sort of like metal line tin in my home with lots of like beans and stuff just in case oh my god you're a prepper oh my god yes that's kind of

what i'm aspiring to right now do you know what i think about the walking dead is they're all so like stressed and dirty and they all want to shag all the time and i'm trying to put myself in their shoes would you be shagging it's so funny said that because yes i was thinking the opposite i was i would have been shagging way more than they are because like if you're gonna die but also the other thing i have to say is they're all supposedly like haven't had a shower they got so excited but all the women's hair is amazing they've all got like perfect skin mascara on like they look fab but yes you would stink but yes I think you would want to shag what have you been loving this week guys so I've been loving a podcast it's called if books could kill and it's hosted by

Michael Hobbs who also also does Maintenance Phase, which is another amazing podcast. And Peter Shamshiri. I think it's like a fairly popular, I think actually very popular podcast, but I'd seen it on my Spotify recommendations, but never really went for it. And then I just suddenly binged it this week.

And it essentially is, this is the quote that they use, the airport bestsellers that captured our hearts and ruined our minds. And they basically like debunk loads of like pseudoscience and relationship advice from like the last few decades that are like ubiquitous. So stuff like love languages, you know, the book, men are from Mars, women are from Venusus the game it's like stuff that we've all kind of grown up with absorbing from the zeitgeist and culture but i guess maybe we were a bit too young to have read them ourselves so it's like a really thorough guide to those books and essentially just like completely ripping them apart from like a science perspective so it's really interesting i mean you say that we've not read them i i think i've read all of the ones you have you oh my gosh I don't know whether it was because I was like a really anxious dater so like anything that was like here's an insight I did read it when I was a teenager oh fair but this sounds

did you say it was new no so it's been around for a while the first one I started with was lean in by Sheryl Sandberg and they did such a good skewering of that book it was so good see again that's one that's naughty that I haven't read it because I love to kind of like use it as a means to like be rude to people yeah you know like insult them by calling them a lean-in feminist or like a charles sandberg I've never read the book but I just know I'm anti it me too it's like a punchline right but I'd never actually read it myself I was the exact same I'm gonna listen to that what was it called again if books could kill what a title what a great title I know I'm so angry that they have such a good pun I love it what have you been loving Beth so I had to leave a little gap there between the nonis one because mine is also tv surprise

surprise and it's also like apocalyptic I started fallout on amazon prime have we mentioned that before no I've heard amazing things though yeah I'm liking it so far so I have just started this so no spoilers but it is a and I didn't know this it's a adaptation of a game yeah so is Walking Dead and The Last of Us so maybe I want to get into your what talk to me talk to me what are we doing I'm in the market for this it's only symbols um so first episode I've watched a couple of episodes first one I think it's like 2070s and there's this guy at a kind of children's birthday party and there's like vague allusions to like the fact that there's like impending nuclear disaster and like the nice family don't want to talk about it and then it hits the thing that everyone's kind of been waiting for apocalyptic

war breaks out and then they flash forward like 250 years and it's like in this bunker and one woman from one vault one young woman is getting married to someone from another vault because she hasn't found like a love match in her vault and everyone that she's had sex with is her cousin and then through a series of actions no spoilers um her dad basically gets kidnapped by her dad played by what's his name carl mcclaughlin who is awesome from i mean he's so many things he's awesome from desperate housewives and he's also just all over instagram getting in the girlie's business just like he loves lord yeah he does he's a baby girl he's a baby girl he's a baby girl he is actually my baby girl and i love him so much and he plays her dad and he gets kidnapped by raiders who are like people who have kind of lived, I guess, descendants of survivors of the nuclear wasteland.

So she has to go up and kind of like try and find him. So I'm not very far in, but I'm like, this is so up my street because I also find a weird comfort in post-apocalypse. I don't know why, because I'm terrified of it. It's this idea that like survival seems more attractive than this really complicated life we're living. And I wonder if there's something in this idea that like, right, take everything away. All you've got to do is like keep you

and the people around you alive. Nothing else matters. And just stay safe, even though that's obviously way worse. Like objectively a zombie apocalypse is definitely worse than me recording a podcast at 7pm on my bed. But some part of me is like, sounds relaxing let's do that and you can watch fallout on amazon prime

so it was the first monday of may which means one thing and one thing only obviously it was the first Monday of May, which means one thing and one thing only. Obviously, it was the Met Gala this week. But before we start this section, on Monday, Israel's military began to order Palestinians to leave eastern Rafah, which is where more than a million displaced Palestinians are sheltering ahead of airstrikes on the city. And we as a podcast just really want to acknowledge that before we go any further into this conversation that it feels a little bit like we are living in the Hunger Games in the minute because a lot of people were logged in online to look at what celebrities were wearing on a catwalk at the same time as millions of people were displaced and

lives were lost and just general atrocities were being committed there's been quite a lot of like hunger games references online especially because the costumeness of the met gala kind of looks like the capital does in the hunger games that's kind of i guess the lens we're going to be looking at it through and also when did the Met Gala become this huge event that is so prestigious, so costumey, so avant-garde and over the top? And I was looking into this because I didn't actually know where it had started or where it had come from. The Met Gala, for those who don't know, is an annual charity event. And it was first held in 1948 as a fundraiser for the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, otherwise known as the Met, in New York.

And at that point in time, they charged people $50 for a ticket. And by 2023, the tickets now cost $50,000 each and a table is $300,000. And it has kind of become this caricature of society it is like the the guild and the glitz and as much as I look forward to every year it feels grotesque for reasons I've just said as much as I love the fashion and the history it's such a strange thing that we do all enjoy watching and it seems to have got like bigger and bigger. When did you guys start tuning in or when did the Met Gala become what it is today to you?

God, I'm kind of racking my brains and I do feel like I started watching on Twitter within the last five years. Before that, I probably did not know, maybe even four years, I probably didn't know what it was. I would log on the morning after, as I do with the Oscars to see what everyone had worn I'm similar except I was just thinking about this the other day and did either of you ever watch Fashion Police on E!

it was hosted by Joan Rivers and featured yes RIP and it also featured Kelly Osbourne, Julianna Rancic and George Kostiopoulos to me at the time I think I was probably like 14 or 15 it was like my entryway into just being like a bit of a snide bitch about celeb fashion and The Met was like obviously one of the biggest biggest points of reference on that show so I feel like that was probably the first ever time I felt like little old me could be a fashion critic and just like critique people who were dressed in clothes worth more than my entire life I feel like maybe the time it really took on a massive significance for me was when there was all the news around how Kim Kardashian was finally

being invited because she was with Kanye that was like such and I think maybe at that point in time I was still watching keeping up with the Kardashians and so like that felt very current to me but even in that short span of like my knowledge of it it has changed and it's become such a spectacle so many more people are tuning in that aren't necessarily like fashion lovers like everyone knows what it is and then also there's like a new group of people being invited so there's like influencers like Emma Chamberlain famously does like the carpets or is there the people attending has become it's not only more elite but also like it's not just models and superstars there is like a different echelon of people now being invited along who is your favorite look from this year if you had to pick

oh I really liked Elle Fanning and who was it that predicted we would I thought she'd be beautiful in this sort of like glass looking dress obviously I don't know who made it it just it just itched my brain I agree my two faves were Emma Chamberlain she wore this gorgeous like brown lace number and she looked kind of I don't know if it's gothy but she was like very dark eyeshadow like scraped back hair I did look up it was Jean Paul Gaultier and then my second favorite was Tyler who we've spoken about and only because I think she was one of your tops and she was in Balmain and was in a sand dress and it just was stunning yeah I think Tyler was my favorite just on like a gut reaction in terms of it felt like what I expect from the Met which is part costume like I like there to be an element

of like this isn't a functional piece of outfit piece of ass but also but then it is beautiful and like the fact it was sculpted her body I love the messaging behind the idea that like the dress could only be worn once when she's sleeping or dead because otherwise it would like fall apart because they cut her out of it didn't they yeah they cut it inside i mean i one thing i will say is fashion like they can't it's i know it shouldn't be like it doesn't need to be ergonomic but like they were all shuffling and being like carried up the carpet it was almost like the fashion was quite hostile like obviously there was kim kardashian which we can talk about like squeezed into a pringle tube like i think she was on heel-less um pleasers the kind of stripper

pole dancing shoes the whole idea of like grace has gone out the window and i think that's a good thing but it's just so interesting that it is like avant-garde wearable art versus when it began where they'd be like well they just look really chic and lovely the thing that really confuses me every year is the theme so I thought the theme as I think the majority of the internet seemed to think it was sleeping beauties but it was actually garden of time they always do this like double-handed thing where yeah it's like I think the exhibition that they were celebrating was the sleeping beauties reawakening fashion and then the dress code teamed with that was you're right the garden of time which i don't really understand that why not just have it because i was getting so excited about sleeping

beauty's reawakening fashion i was hoping someone was going to come almost dressed like a chrysalis but it looked like i don't know some kind of interesting material and then they'd open up and it'd be like a butterfly because it's like a sleeping beauty reawakening thank you um iris law's dress was my second favorite and she actually did look the most butterfly-esque um she's she's not really papped anywhere i just saw it on her instagram when you said that i thought you were gonna say rebecca ferguson because she had this whole like reveal where she had like you know the cape and then she like opened it out and i thought that was quite theatrical and i thought it was quite quite cool actually but also there was so much black on the

red carpet the green carpet well there's the black ties of the men as usual. It's so hard to be a man and dress at the Met. I will say that's probably like one of the key gender dynamics which are flipped where I think men just like fail constantly. I think Jeff Goldblum was the only guy that was like, okay, nailed the assignment. I thought Lil, was it Lil Nas X he had the amazing sort of he looked like a flower but the point with that is I guess he always looks amazing like his dress sense is avant-garde he's always wearing interesting things I kind of like the way that the men are like a good suit good tailoring is kind of like quite hard to come by and I just love how the women are all being like extra gorgeous and if the men want to be then they

can be but I do think there's something to be said for like just letting vanilla man be plain because sometimes like Josh O'Connor had these little boots on bless him he's so sweet but they would I love him it's like he's wearing his slippers one of the only men that I was disappointed in was Chris Hemsworth because he was the chair or one of the chairs of the Met Gala and he was wearing like a very beige open collared shirt suit this is a man that wears a costume for a living like he is a marvel superhero he could have done something Garden of Time I'm thinking like Adam and Eve he could have had a little like plant skirt on with full like all the women were naked we did not get one topless man that that's kind of inequality in my mind did you see the i

saw this on twitter um but it was from that like menswear account so i thought it i think it's probably real it was i think it was tom ford quote and he said about them at gala he said that it used to be very chic people wearing very beautiful clothes going to an exhibition about the 18th century you didn't have to look like the 18th century you didn't have to dress like a hamburger so he's quite kind of like critical of where we're at now. Whereas what we love about it as people at home is that people are pushing the limits of fashion. And sometimes they're hamburgers, a la Katy Perry and whatever year that was. And sometimes they look 18th century like Barry Keoghan.

Oh my God. Yeah. Oi, Mr. Yumi Espresso. He looked like Willy Wonka. He did. Or like Oliver. Yeah yeah do you know what this is also where I realized that my my fashion credentials are actually quite shallow because I do want them almost be wearing like Halloween costume levels of outfits and the super fashionable

people are like no you don't understand so for instance Zendaya's first outfit once I read into it more and realized it was like um sort of like harking back to some other archival piece I was like oh that's amazing when I first saw it I was like oh this is quite boring she looks like a bar humbug suite kind of thing like wrapped up and and also because Laure Roach said before her dress isn't even made yet or her dress isn't ready and so everyone was like oh my god she's gonna be wearing fresh flowers or something and then so I think my taste buds for like the level of craziness that to expect the Met Gala of like that they're like numb now I've eaten too many fizzy sweets and giving me like

fresh fruit it's not gonna pass the litmus test I think it does you've got you've gouged on fashion one thing I find really interesting is how it's almost a competition to show your fashion prowess now at the met and the way they're doing that is by going through the archives and finding the most obscure archival fashion to show off that like they have the depths of like access to all of the like i don't know like 20 haute couture items from like i don't know like 20 hot couture items from like I don't know decades ago that no one else unless you've got star access could get so like Zendaya's outfit that felt like a massive just like BDE moment that she got that right I watched an interview with Law and he um the interviewer

says oh did you find the dress up and the name someplace which I imagine is probably some huge like archival place and then he says and did you loan it and law says no we buy Zendaya buys it and this became this huge moment online about how it's really good for the sellers and it means that they're investing this like archival history because often these dresses just get loaned out I love those two and I I really believe that like they do have this sense of love and reverence and respect for fashion but then when the host of call her daddy got married alex cooper she also like pulled loads of like archival pieces but loads of people were like wow alex cooper i didn't know your game you're wearing this you're wearing

that and actually a lot of the rebuttal which i personally agree with is like it's not actually that impressive finding i don't know like some 1999 Galeano Ghana whatever it is when you're worth millions I don't think that necessarily means you're fashionable style is like an innate quality which you can have with very little money just because you've suddenly become very rich and you can now access old archives to me doesn't make you fashionable but it seems to be like you said Ruchira this new thing where the more archival stuff you can pull the more people are like oh, oh, wow, she's so fashionable. It's like, no, she's just rich.

Yeah, yeah. One thing I think about is, and it is like some people are genuinely interested in this stuff. And it's a joy and it's a pleasure. But we expect all famous people to be able and also willing to like really show their fashion chops. And like it is not just like you have the best of the best. You've got like the Zendayas. You also have, I guess, someone like Kim Kardashian who's like really show their fashion chops and like it is not just like you have the best of the best you've got like the zendayas you also have i guess someone like kim kardashian who's like really into it i don't think she can you know she doesn't have the same reverence but that's a part of her job someone whose job is to go to work and be an actor it can be forgiven but aren't forgiven for kind of

showing up to the red carpet a little bit goofy not you know it just feels like a whole new requirement for our famous people that they have to be really stylish yeah it's a funny one isn't it like these people who have nothing to do with fashion necessarily are commended or accepted into the world of fashion and like told that that has to be a part of who they are now these young stars are being dressed by like incredible designers so I guess they're just like taking the opportunities yeah like Tyler was really one that like shone and it was her first time going was like Ayo Adabiri I felt a bit bad for her I felt like the dress didn't do her like that many favors and it wasn't

that special but maybe she didn't mind I want to wear Rita Ora's ancient beads I was dead please please I can't bear it I have the tweet here Rita Ora says she's wearing beads that, open quotes, age back to the first and second century BC, end quotes. She then notes that this means those beads are older, I think, than anyone on this planet, end quotes, which does seem likely. And then the beads just look like ones you'd get from a curtain hanging in a corner shop like what so that's vulture reported that she yes that's vulture it's such a claim and it kind of sounds

like she's done a homework really late and she's had to come up with like a really crazy story and was like no no these aren't just any beads they're beads from the first century um it just really made me laugh it's like she got tangled in them on the way out the door and went that'll do can we talk about the fact that she thinks that there are people alive older than first and second bc i know well that's what's a bit sad because that's why the vault to like common is so sneaky because they're like yeah i think that's right we tore it message us on instagram at everything is content pod if there's any gala looks you'd wish to discuss positive or negative and um yeah look up the coverage of all the pics online because it really is something to do with your time it's something

to behold I think you're gonna say something to behold so last week jua lipa released her third studio album radical optimism which follows on from her single sudini training season and illusion the general tone of the critical response to this album has been that it's kind of catchy dance pop but that it isn't anything groundbreaking Dua Lipa fans stands sorry have been loud this week in defense of their fave for example the line of best fit posted their review which was a three out of ten with a lot of quite scathing comments and Jua Stans replied to the writer and the tweet about the piece with really horrible comments about the writer's appearance they dredged up old tweets saying that she was biased because she said something mildly negative about Jua Lipa back in 2017 and it was just really nasty stuff so I guess I just want to discuss yeah this album and this response because I think it's

quite an interesting one I didn't know Dua Lipa had stands like this but also like why is this what happens when an album is poorly reviewed which I think reasonably speaking we can imagine every album that comes out ever will get at least one negative review why is it so such commonly accepted practice within these stand communities that it's going to get vile and ugly and personal and threatening in some cases like what what is going on in the stand community I feel like we've seen for a while that bad reviews or criticism has suddenly online been equated to hate. So it just completely flattens anything that is constructive

or anything that is, you know, engaging discourse or opening up a conversation about a piece of art, which FYI is the point of art to start discussions, open discourse, challenge you. Suddenly Stans will just equate all of that unless it's a glowing you know puff piece to just being like

hating on someone and it's so reductive and it's and it's kind of just making the art itself pointless because if everything just is meant to equal incredible glowing review what is what is the point of having art in the first place? I completely agree with both of you. I also was shocked to find out that Dua Lipa had stands of this level of angst. Because I've seen it with almost every other pop star, but to me Dua Lipa is quite like a chill. Everyone likes her. Everyone's like happy for her. She's always on holiday. She's always making bops. They all do sound the same, but I I love them but something's definitely happening online and I don't want to be a boomer but I do wonder if it's like maybe younger generations not having been introduced to this idea of critique because slowly but surely it is being eroded by mega fans and so people won't necessarily touch

Taylor Swift people won't necessarily touch you know someone if they know that their work is just going to be received badly as people that put out work into the mainstream it's always hard to accept criticism but it's also really it's actually a really good thing like once you have a bit of time and space away you'll often read like authors or musicians being like do you know what this massive critique I had in this really highly profiled publication really made me become a better artist or made me do something differently there used to be that level of like yeah reverence between not always because sometimes it can be personal and scathing but criticism is for the

love of the art that's the whole point isn't it it's like to make it better and to make it expansive and yeah like place it in the context that it was created and And I think that's the problem. It's that fans have no context for what criticism is and was and what it can be. They just understand it as beef. They understand it as either you love this and you're one of us

or you hate this and you're another one of us. You're a hater, in other words. And to boil down what a great critic does and can do and what great criticism can do in kind of driving art forward, exactly as you said,

is just the most brainworming thinking um and it's quite dangerous the kind of and we've probably talked about this a lot but like you know the way that the arts are going um you know lack of funding lack of like appreciation for them like this is it feels symptomatic of that and i know that's maybe big words to talk about you know a pop album but it does feel like this happens to every single artist out there and like it has to be a symptom of something bigger one thing I was going to say and it's definitely something I remember from Sarah Manavis's piece in the new statesman last year called everyone hates the critic she said and I've been thinking this just even more and more and more every time we see this kind of example pop off online is just I don't know to me being a fan is enjoying the work from like a surround sound system way where you delve into it you feel it you breathe it and part of that

is being critical part of that is really looking at it and being like oh compared to you know this album that was my entry point for loving x person this one doesn't stand up so much I feel like my favorite artist can do better because she's I don't know in my eyes like the best artist there is out there and it's just being like really honest with yourself and just like really looking at the piece of work rather than just like blanket absorbing it and just being like this is the best thing ever this is the best thing ever I feel like that's so it's almost condescending to the person that you potentially idolize because you're just you're not even like properly engaging with it the problem that it's all coming down to social media the famous person

is way more readily available the parasocial relationship between the fan and the famous person is huge the famous person has a team around them that doesn't let them do that many personal interviews so all of their like public image in media is completely controlled and then you have this kind of like lack of criticism online because like none of us would ever really tweet I'd be too scared to tweet something negative about any person as an individual and then so there's like a dearth of kind of real conversation outside of the fans perception of that person and what that person's kind of putting out can I mention a thing that I heard but I'm going to throw a load of alleged leaks out there somebody I spoke to ages ago from the music industry said that there is a relationship between labels and these fan accounts so I feel like what we're potentially seeing online is just

like a relationship or a dynamic with fan accounts that we don't even know the extent of the outlines of I can't remember I read or was listening to something the other day maybe a podcast and it was just about oh actually no it was on miss me with Lily Allen and Makita Oliver and they were just saying about how funny this concept of like followers and influences because basically the minute someone has followers you just accept that they are some sort of like authority and people will blindly kind of go okay well there's loads of other people here so they must be safe so I'll just accept they're doing something right you kind of blindly follow okay, well, there's loads of other people here, so they must be safe. So I'll just accept they're doing something right and you kind of blindly follow along.

And you can almost create your own hysteria. You can create your own mythology and that feels too orchestrated and really freaky and wrong. But it's, I guess it's quite smart. But then you have the critics who actually are kind of, sort of, not all of them,

but kind of standing up to this, kind of standing up to this dominant narrative and saying no this famous person is not untouchable no this is you know and kind of offering like a bit of sometimes sanity and just saying like people aren't untouchable I don't like this and like you know sort of like Joan of Arc-ing it whereas everyone else is just kind of playing us. In your journalism retreat have you ever written about anything where you've had like a fan base come after you? Luckily, no. The only example I can think of immediately was when I started writing about COVID conspiracy theorists. And I wrote about what was that horse drug that everyone was taking? Ivermectin.

And then I just had a load of like American 30 year olds saying that I look like a child and like I shouldn't be a reporter. So I just logged off for the day. Because they were because they were anti-vax yeah they were anti-vax and I basically like debunked this like insane horse drug that they were taking saying it would like beat covid I mean look Dua Lipa has stand yeah everyone's got a stand EIC stand stand up stand up I think the fear is that we'd get to a point which we're already seeing where critics don't want to be named we saw it with taylor swift and paste magazine where the writers didn't want to be or had a previous history of having their byline and and it garnering so much hate from the fans so that's the fit that we would get to that point where we lose what is like a really vital through line for art.

And it just, you know, it sounds silly when we say it's like accounts on the Internet, but it does add up to something a lot more. Just, you know, these kind of bullish, devoted fans and these fandoms, these group of people who would want like a critic to live in fear just because they don't like their fave. And critics shouldn't be above reproach and shouldn't be above criticism themselves. And I think what it can be if we do away with this like crazy infighting and this stan culture is a conversation. We can talk to the the people we can kind of trade on ideas and it's just a much healthier model and I just you know I think we do just need to put down our stan accounts and be normal so arguably we've saved the best for last i want to talk about the idea of you which is a film starring anne hathaway it's on amazon prime and it's about a 40 year old single mom who begins an unexpected romance with a 24 year old boy band singer who may or may not resemble somebody

in the public eye from a boy band that we speak about all the time allegedly barry smiles i'm guessing we've all seen it if you haven't leave the chat now jokes stay stick around we're gonna we're gonna talk about it and we want you to stay please don't leave no spoilers will occur what did you both make of the film? I really liked it. I went in thinking, oh, yeah. And then I went, oh, my God, a wooga. It was great. I'm so happy you said that, Beth, because I felt like really dumb because I messaged Richie being like, I can't believe someone said this is bad.

And Richie was like, it's awful. And I was like, oh, well, I've only just started it. So I guess it might get worse. I was crying by the end. I loved it. I literally loved it. And I went in kind of thinking it might be shit. And when I saw it was two hours worse I was crying by the end I loved it I literally loved it and I went in kind of thinking it might be shit and when I saw it was two hours I was a bit like oh god let's hear from you because I really want to know like what just didn't work for you

I'm not a hater I'm a stan I'm a stan well let's engage with some criticism girls no I'm just um no I went really hard in that message after I really wanted to disclaimer the shit out of it but then I thought I'll save it for now I I just didn't love it I didn't hate it by any stretch I just didn't love it one one confusion I had around the storyline was I just didn't really understand what was keeping these two connected I feel like the conversations never went super deep I get that they're like insanely attractive so there was obviously like the sexual connection that they both had they just both fancied the shit of each other but I was just like Anne Hathaway is this like art curator director I don't know this like woman with a

capital W and there's this like hot guy fun you know sexual relationship they can have but why was it kind of being presented as a these people are so in love with each other I just wasn't feeling that I thought it was their like vulnerability with each other because they have these scenes even before there's like quite a lot of sexy times in it but even for that they're like really trading on each other's vulnerability I just think they really got along on just really like nice to each other and I think they both god I'm so into this film they both had had quite a difficult back their backstory is quite difficult um etc etc so I think they met each other and were just able to be very good to one another and also the sexy sexy time probably didn't hurt i think they resolved something in the other so

for instance his character is like super famous and he said at some point i got into this band when i was 18 or whatever and he's not had a sense of normalcy he's probably only ever come across girls that immediately like throwing their knickers at him she comes in she doesn't really know who he is she doesn't recognize him that's like refreshing to him she's older she's got this like level of maturity around her she's also just been jilted by an ex-husband who's cheated on her that's probably left her feeling very vulnerable and so I think they connect in this way that it's like to me it's such a classic like they're filling like other ends but the other reason I accepted it was because knowing it's a fan fiction I've never written a fan fiction on a blog but I spend my

life having these little daydreams where like you know the bit in Really Good Actually when she like bumps into her boyfriend she happens to be going out with Harry Styles the book the Monica Heisey book love that bit when she he's like I've been fingering your bird yeah anyway there was just times at school when I would just like think about I don't know I'm trying to think about something I fancied Usher and then you'd come up with the scenario of how you meet them and then it just carries on from there and that's how I watched it I was like this is a fantasy and it's come true that's why I couldn't love it because much like the title the idea of you I was just like I don't get who he is apart from being the very classic story of like somebody

who got famous can't trust the right people and it felt like she only connected with him from a place of like she'd been rejected and had this like horrible backstory and then somebody was giving her attention but also it's Anne Hathaway she looks insanely gorgeous she's like literally model-esque in her like matching two-piece suits all the time in this gorgeous house it just it didn't really fit the pieces didn't fit for me I was like she's obviously getting attention constantly look at her also we need to talk about the fan fiction point that you made Anoni have you seen that the writer of the book on which this Amazon Prime film is based has been very forward recently about saying that it is not a fan fiction and she finds that term derogatory

and also super sexist about stories written by women. Fan fiction, I believe, has to kind of begin or originate in these spaces, like Wattpad or AO3. Is that right? That was the case with Fifty Shades of Grey, that it literally was from a forum, right? It was birthed from a forum. I know that now, like in hindsight, it's based on Twilight, but people don't call that fan fiction, or do they? I've understood it to be fan fiction, yes.

So is it sex it i just didn't think it was an offensive thing to say because i think it's quite a respected medium now it's well it's so well read yeah i i guess i do kind of understand what she's saying in terms of like yeah she got book deal versus someone like i could write a fan fiction tomorrow what is all literature if not fan fiction like or like it's it's like we're a fan of something, you know, like, and you're writing fiction about it. I mean, everything's based in truth. The New Testament, just fan fiction on the Old Testament.

I do get it to a degree because I'm struggling to think of a male director, producer, writer that has been labelled as writing fan fiction that's in the public eye, whereas all I know is female fan fiction writers that have like managed to get their books or like stories into film. So I guess I don't know, in that way is kind of like at least landed publicly more towards women. I mean, there is a slight judgment, like when I first read the headlines as this is a Harry Styles fan fiction I didn't think this was

going to be an Oscar film so there is there is a slight level of like oh this is you know a light film this is like a fun film it's not a serious film so there is that I guess I know he was weeping I think if this had got open in the cinemas I think it would have done amazingly well I think that was another element because it went straight to streamers I have a lower expectation yeah I just didn't I wasn't expecting it to be that good I thought the chemistry was amazing I think Anne Hathaway is just so beautiful I think she like carried the whole film she's so good I thought that the sexiness of it was so sexy I thought it was like there's fingering in it which is important yeah it really tickled me and also

it made me want a teenage daughter I was actually doing the maths because she's 40 in the film and then her daughter's so cool and it's like I was like oh well it's too late

for that to happen for me because by the time I'm 40 my kid will be at least well minimum maximum they'll be 10 I can't have a teenage I'd have to

I'd have to go back in time anyway so that was upsetting it's an interesting time to bring out a film with an age gap between an older woman and a younger man. Because this book came out in 2017, where I think people were maybe slightly more chill about age gaps. But it's a very spicy time to bring out, you know,

this kind of Sam, we've talked about this in our episode, which obviously everyone should go and listen to, about age gaps. But people are very particular about older women, younger men men the kind of predator label gets applied to it so i imagine that was a consideration when they made this film because she is coded as like they're very careful not to drop her into any like milf or cougar pre-formed tropes the problem is that anne hathaway literally looks 20 so like maybe if it was a character that looked visibly old i just didn't even read her as being like significantly older even though we know she is and also nicholas gallat sign the guy who plays um hayes camp hayes camp august moon yes

in august moon so the lead he in real life believe is 29, but he's playing 24. She is playing 40. But you know, he's got the elixir of youth. So I think, visibly, it doesn't look super mismatched. To me, it kind of just looked like they were like, in similar age brackets, maybe like 10 years most, when really, it's meant to be what, like 20 20 years like 16 years so i think there's that and also i think we're kind of having a bit of a reclaiming or like rediscussion about age gaps anyway and i think older women younger men in like what was the film may december is super different because of the power imbalance whereas in this film they make it really clear that he's the one pursuing her really doggedly but in a very respectful way I think they like go to great pains to be like he's really

invested he's the one pushing it she's really reluctant because she's worried about the age gap but he's the one that wants it also yeah I think because there is that power dynamic of him being very rich very successful can get any woman that he wants in verticals and they've met at an age when he's you know a fully grown adult as opposed to some of the other times when we've had issues been one like the older person has met the younger person at a much younger age maybe it is the issue

of the fact that I didn't think they looked too dissimilar in age that I was just getting swept up in the romance of it and maybe the age gap thing wasn't necessarily that pertinent for me did you see though I just remember speaking about the stands have you seen the angry Harry Styles fans who've been like clipping bits from the film and putting them side by side to clips of Harry and being like oh my god is Harry gonna

sue this is literally just like copying him and like so there's like an interview of him when he's on Graham Norton's like a bit when he's singing and the fans have like put them side by side and it's like I'm sure Harry's not gonna care that an actor is like basing that acting performance off a boy band member on him he didn't sue about the kind of larry stylings and stuff back in the day like he's not gonna mind about a quite flattering portrayal of like who he is like this paints the kind of lead as kind of quite a tender empathetic like growing person um do they really care i mean i did see one tweet that was like talking about the met gala saying that what's nicholas gonna wear he has the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever i think that means like dress up as harry styles and wear that shirt yeah

but people have been quite i mean maybe not the harry styles camp but people have been quite chilled about the film and like they've liked it they've gotten on with it they have like it's just we've got a hunger for rom-coms it really slots in nicely there was that one cut piece though which we we should talk about where the criticism was which is kind of what we said that Anne Hathaway is it that she looks too hot or too young too hot for the idea of you yeah so this writer Kat Zhang is saying that yeah it just didn't work so she says um Celine is supposed to be an ordinary caretaker and hathaway is a movie star with unlimited access to the best skincare products and estheticians in the country it's just not believable like that's kind of her

thesis there that's that's not like too dissimilar to what i was saying i guess like we've i feel like we've all read um romantic comedy by curtis sit- Sittenfield right and part of the essential nature of the main character in that a woman who is kind of bitter to the fact that you know the male comedy writers at her SNL adjacent parody workplace always get the super hot women is that she's meant to be like the normal woman so when she falls in love with this you know megastar the point is it's meant to feel like she's just a normal woman this is insane it's happening to her and I feel like that's the same template here supposedly it's meant to be so magical because it's meant to be like a normal woman who has had all this shit in relationships and this horrid you know marriage breakdown

is like getting the most amazing thing happen. But I was just like, yeah, of course he fancies her. Look at her. Everyone would fancy her. I think that works because in romantic comedy, the difference is they have this intellectual great meeting of minds

where he's in meetings with her and he has all this time and the setup is very different. Whereas in this film, it's like the only way he's going to be interested in her is because she's so gorgeous because she literally ends up in his trailer.

Do you know what I mean? I don't think that it to me it made sense and it made it easier in my mind when i had these fantasies about celebrities especially when i was a teenager i had them all the time i would literally work out the metrics of like what is the most possible scenario where the celebrity could i could actually get them to like me and sometimes that would involve having to fancy like the least hot member of a band or like oh my god you have to change the parameters to make like have you never done it was no i wasn't doing like fancying maths or like algebra maybe that's why you don't like this because i was so into that i was so into i'd be like maybe okay so if i walk past on the street and then i managed to get to

the house and then they saw like how i could like really good at cleaning shoes that i would be so i would really be figuring out my strengths so when he sees her it's like you would have to be that beautiful to get his attention and the fact that she's older is also like a benefit in this story because again she has you know intellect she's not fawning over him it's like to me the maths works yeah in a way that allowed me to enjoy it more and also allowed me to fantasize and be like when I'm 40 I'm gonna go out with a 24 year old you know what it is I feel like all of my favorite rom-coms or my favorite romantic tv shows they start with like prickly like haters to lovers arc it's all about like the meeting of the minds and like almost like prickly like flirty banter so I think

I just I can't relate or like can't like love the ones that start with just sexual oh i just fancy the shit out of you because something in my brain just doesn't click with it you haven't earned it do you know i watched the weekend pride and prejudice the 2005 joe right which i think is the perfect it's the enemies to to lovers og um and you're right actually this was an easy watch because it doesn't have it's more circumstantial but it's like well they won't they versus like god they fucking hate each other and it's really hot oh i love it i love that this is why it reminded me of like old school rom-coms when i was younger because nothing like you don't have to think there's something really amazing and

i think they've lost the art of doing this in films now where so so much of it is so inconsequential that you can watch it 80 times i think that's the real power of a rom-com is when there's like there's not too much plot there's not too much like detail and it's more just like vibes so that when you watch it again you're like oh yeah whereas sometimes what they do more recently with boob is it's like there's so much in there that you never will watch it again because it's too heavy there was too much to take away does that make sense a real rom-com to me is like actually slipping through your fingers so we spoke about age gaps before if you want to listen back to our deep dive on that go to episode 18 of the podcast and the idea of you is available now on

prime video thanks so much for listening to us this week if you haven't subscribed why please do it we need you to otherwise naughty step um please do tell your friends to do the same and send us a message on instagram if you agree disagree or want to add anything to the discussion we always love hearing from you that's at everything is content pot we'll see you next week bye everything is content is a great original podcast and we are part of the acast creator network this podcast was created devised and presented by us beth mccall richira shama and anoni the producer is faye lawrence and the executive producer is james norman fife