On a recent episode of their podcast Scriptnotes, screenwriters John August and Craig Mazin unpacked the phenomenon known as “main character energy.”
Mazin, whose works range from the third and fourth entries in the Scary Movie franchise to HBO’s Chernobyl, was unfamiliar with the online sensation, flabbergasted with the hold it seems to have over the global youth. August, a frequent Tim Burton collaborator, was more generous and forgiving in his response to “main character energy,” perhaps due to his prior familiarity with the idea.
For the uninitiated like Mazin, here’s the gist…
Like most things these days, it all began with a TikTok. Back in May of 2020, one user posted a video encouraging others to imagine themselves as the main characters of their own lives, to seize every moment as if you are the protagonist of a story. It’s a reasonably kind bit of advice, more or less in line with my generation’s obsession with the acronym YOLO, which recently celebrated its tenth birthday (if you attribute it to Drake’s “The Motto,” that is). After that initial TikTok went viral, several others followed suit. “Main character energy” quickly became a guiding light for the online crowd, particularly young women who were intrigued by a life as a social media influencer. Indeed, acting as the main character of your life can take on many different forms, but the trend’s specific impact seemed to be a proliferation of young people who decided they could leverage their online presence into something bigger. Of course, this implies a rather literal interpretation of “main character energy.” Acting as the main character of your life doesn’t mean more deeply considering the weight of your decisions, or even approaching your life with a kind of humility that acknowledges its status as a narrative construction (there’s a whole existential line of thinking that “main character energy” could bring us down, but we’ll table that discussion for now). Rather, “main character energy” refers to an active attempt to render your life a narrative construction, to repackage it into a kind of “show” for others to follow. As TikTok user Ashley Ward suggests, “you have to start romanticizing your life.” The phenomenon therefore isn’t much of a phenomenon at all. In fact, it’s entirely in line with what millions of users have been doing across TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for nearly two decades now.
On Scriptnotes, August characterized “main character energy” not as a broadened awareness of storytelling and the ways in which narrative structure might bleed into and reflect our everyday lives, but as an “aesthetic series of choices about how you are going to present yourself.” As a podcast about screenwriting, Scriptnotes centered its conversation around how “main character energy” has invaded scripted storytelling, just as it was once influenced by it. August and Mazin reference Emily in Paris as just one example of a show that follows a character who is aware of her own status as a character. That’s not to say Emily in Paris possesses a self-reflexivity that interrogates the notion of “main character energy,” but rather that it allows its protagonist to embellish her own struggles (or lack thereof) so as to assert, celebrate even, the dramatic/romantic nature of her life. August’s emphasis on aesthetics feels significant here, as the “main character” phenomenon is appropriated in a show like Euphoria as well.
I’ve lambasted Euphoria creator Sam Levinson enough for one lifetime, and as tempting as it might be to do it all over again, I’ll try to keep things brief. After all, the show is only a symptom of the larger problem that the Scriptnotes co-hosts observed. Although considering the show’s immense popularity, it may even be emblematic of the problem. My most generous interpretation of Euphoria is that it’s a show about how deceptively dramatic adolescence might feel. More accurately, however, Euphoria is a show dedicated to “main character energy.” It indulges not just in its creator’s own obnoxious sensibilities, but in a kind of narrative emptiness that is ultimately obscured by its over-the-top aesthetics. Euphoria’s characters operate as if they are a part of a high-stakes TV show. And to their credit, they are! In S2E7, the overdramatized nature of the show’s character work is writ large, as Lexi (Maude Apatow) produces a play based on the events of the show. Never mind the fact that the episode is poorly written and bewilderingly redundant; it is also an exercise in “main character energy.” It allows one of the show’s secondary characters to imagine herself as the main character for a change, and the result is just as cringeworthy and unfocused as you might imagine. By transferring the events of Euphoria to the stage, Levinson might be acknowledging the artifice of what he has thus far created, but he is also falsely permitting a fusion of reality and fiction. His show has already drawn criticism for its potential glorification of drug use and the like amongst high-schoolers and pre-teens, and no matter where you stand on that debate (I’ll leave this one to the experts), it’s clear the show is comfortable with the idea of romanticizing one’s life, of escaping one’s reality into the realm of fiction.
Unfortunately, such an escape is not actually possible. There is fiction and there is reality, and never the two shall meet. No doubt, the two tend to mirror each other from time to time, but by and large, reality remains a separate entity. And no matter what TikTok may tell you, that’s a very good thing! On Scriptnotes, Mazin hilariously points out that if you met a character like, say, Fleabag in real life, you’d be mortified. She is a fictive creation, and perhaps a rare example of “main character energy” being appropriated precisely for the purposes of interrogating and refuting the very same idea.
Since their inception, drama and fiction have always carried an intentional degree of separateness. The invention of the stage, for example, was meant to imply that which happens upon it is a fabrication, far removed from the events of everyday life. That is not to say stories should serve as pure entertainment (anyone who knows me knows that couldn’t be further from my stance), but rather that they shouldn’t be incorporated into our sense of self.
We can all likely recall a time when we’ve plugged our headphones into our ears, listened to a song, and imagined it as the soundtrack to the movie that is our life. And guess what? That’s still OK! There is a certain benefit in thinking about the conventions of modern storytelling, and how those conventions may relate to our everyday lives. But they aren’t our lives. And what I find so bizarre is that we know this, as do the corporate parents behind shows like Euphoria or Emily in Paris. As we begin to model our lives more and more off of the entertainment in our lives, that same entertainment seems less and less interested in entertaining at all. This isn’t a judgment of quality (although it very well could be) but rather an observation as to how media is being created, packaged, and sold to the general public. Our increasing obsession with aesthetics has actually deemphasized the role of the character, and instead placed greater emphasis on extratextual elements, namely the actors and actresses behind said characters. I suppose the question is…if we are all aware that we are characters, are we really characters at all?
Again we find ourselves in a sort of existential dance, and that may be in part what excites us about characters, and indeed storytelling at large. There does seem to be a fascination with this relationship between fiction and reality in contemporary culture. One of the definitive moments in 2021 cinema came from the Oscar-nominated The Worst Person in the World, wherein protagonist Julie (Renate Reinsve) pushes back on her status as such, admitting that she feels “like a spectator in [her] own life, like [she is] playing a supporting role in [her] own life.” The line really resonated with me, as I’m sure it did many others. But it also speaks to this broader referendum on what a character is, and what that has to do with all of us in the ostensibly “real” world.
Mazin considers the possibility that movies have grown too smart for their own good, and perhaps viewers have too. We have grown increasingly aware of the conventions of storytelling, permitting characters like Julie to allude to these conventions, or characters like Lexi to exploit them entirely. These two examples only differ so much in quality as a result of their respective creators’ talent levels, but they do both acknowledge a kind of “character energy,” be it main, supporting, or otherwise. And it is this awareness of what a character is that allows so many of us to live our lives under the guise of fiction, never mind the fact that true “main character energy” would likely call for a complete surrendering of free will.
It all just feels so…backwards. As we grow increasingly aware of the constructed nature of the entertainment before us, we expect less and less from it, and more and more from ourselves. If the stories we all love are simply fabrications (they are, and that’s OK), then what’s so empowering about appropriating those stories for our own daily narratives? I suppose it’s not a particularly scary question for those comfortable with the increasingly digital nature of our reality, but I find it quite terrifying, particularly as the world’s most powerful purveyors of pop culture adopt and encourage these same inverted expectations for “characters” both onscreen and off.
In the company’s recent Super Bowl commercial, Netflix highlighted several of its major film releases in 2022. The ad focused less on the content of the various projects, and more on who is in them. Promoting films on the basis of the celebrities attached to them is nothing new, but this particular promo still strikes me as quite odd. In it, short scenes from the respective films play out per usual, until they are interrupted by a “character” breaking the fourth wall and addressing viewers directly.
“In here, the party never stops,” says Mark Wahlberg.
“In here, you can make your escape,” suggests Ryan Gosling, interrupting a highway shootout of sorts.
Jamie Foxx makes an appearance, as do Kerry Washington, Jason Momoa, Adam Sandler, and several others. The star power is in no short supply, and Netflix seems content to leave it at that. While each of these films will surely get a more traditional trailer closer to its release date, Netflix has still decided to introduce us to these worlds not as fictions into which their performers may disappear, but as canvases upon which their celebrity may be projected. These actors and actresses would be hard-pressed to merge with their latest characters, for Netflix insists that they break that immersion for the sake of marketing. I’m not doubting the efficacy of the ad — some, although certainly not all, of the films do seem to have some promise — but rather observing how Netflix views its own library. In the streaming age, stories aren’t meant to illuminate or reflect aspects of our lives. In fact, stories aren’t meant to be much of stories at all. For Netflix and its contemporaries, stories are tiles on a homepage, screengrabs in a Tweet. These stories only exist insofar as they further promote their parental streaming service, and will be exploited in line with that all-too-narrow aim.
“Main character energy” therefore becomes a vital tool in this reduction of storytelling. It lowers our expectations of these stories, and instead orients us towards the sort of aesthetic superficiality that August refers to on Scriptnotes. The phenomenon may seem similarly superficial — references to “main character energy” are often tongue-in-cheek and sarcastic in nature — but it still speaks to our newly inverted expectations for the various kinds of characters in our life. Streamers like Netflix can appeal to our latest fantasies, and rest assured that surface-level aesthetics are enough to satisfy such cravings.
The intention here isn’t necessarily evil, just profit-driven. More and more, however, I start to wonder whether there’s a difference. Perhaps in a world where we’ve all been converted into neatly packed, tightly written characters, a corporation like Netflix can get similar treatment. Shadowy corporations like InGen and Cyberdyne are commonplace in pop culture, yet even as more and more of our own corporate overlords show their bloodied hands, we seem hesitant to label them with that same brand of villainy. If the rise of “main character energy” coincides with a broader romanticization of culture, perhaps a kind of deglorification is the logical next step.
But where might such a process even take place? I hate to admit it, but cinema is no longer the theater of this particular war. Rather, it’s the ammunition. Worse, film is the cannon fodder which we might send into battle on TikTok and YouTube, its energy drained, its potential capped, its fate predetermined by a few men in a boardroom, and an acquiescent influencer-to-be.
As always, thanks for reading! If you haven’t already, be sure to vote in the First Annual Speccies before I unveil the results in the next edition of Cory’s Reads. Whether you’ve seen several movies you loved in 2021, or just one, let your voice be heard!