‘The idea of ​​having you’: no ​​one even remembers the movie they are watching anymore | Opinion

More than 80,000 people have liked this tweet: “My roommate and I are watching Anne Hathaway’s One Direction movie, we can’t remember what it’s called and we refuse to check it.” The publication includes a list of possible titles for that tape: It had to be You, All for you, Falling for You, It has been you, It’s always been you, All eyes on you…and so on until 18 names are complete. Nobody gets it right: the film is titled The idea of ​​having you (The Idea of ​​You, in the original English). It is the adaptation of a novel by Robin Lee that premiered on May 2 on Prime Video in which Hathaway plays a cannon divorcee who hooks up with a twenty-year-old man, a copy of Harry Styles, as attractive as he is bland. How funny, I thought when I saw that viral tweet. Everything is so forgettable in that mediocre romantic comedy that those who see it no longer even remember what it’s called.

A few weeks ago, something similar happened to me after trying to see Anyone but you, Sydney Sweeney’s blockbuster in a bikini, which I abandoned halfway through the film, angry at how bad and predictable it is. When I alerted a friend so that she wouldn’t fall into the trap and put it on herself, I wasn’t able to name her: “Everyone except you? Should it be you?“, I think I said, lost amnesiac. Now I’m relieved to know that I’m not the only one who is forgetful about this.

If anyone is looking for culprits for this invasion of content as forgettable as its titles, they should rewind to March 2020. That was the date on which Lee’s novel became the phenomenon of confinement in the United States, when millions of women locked in their homes joined the binge-reading or binge reading erotic romances. A phenomenon that, four years later, continues to rise with more female readers eager for hot romances who, like those who swallow a series in one go to anesthetize themselves and forget it instantly, devour this escapist genre to escape their routine. Of those dusts, these sludge of premieres that we are unable to retain in memory.

In recent months, I have tried without success to summarize many of those movies or series that I have binged on those silly afternoons when you don’t want to eat your head. When someone mentions them, I always respond: “Oh, yes yes yes, I’ve seen it too, but I don’t remember now. How do you say it ended?” I know that mine is not because of lazy neurons. I learned this a few months ago, when I read Dream of Antonoffication (“The Antonoffication Dream”), an insightful report by Mitch Therieau on why all of producer Jack Antonoff’s songs are as addictive as they are unmemorable. This text about music, but which could be applied to the rest of the culture we consume, hits the nail on the head as to why if you ask a 16-year-old girl who, without being a fatal fan, names the artists behind the songs she heard last week all you get is a shrug.

Therieu affirms that the era of streaming It is characterized by “digital objects optimized for frictionless circulation.” They are products that can be used for everything: as a soundtrack for viral videos, for algorithmically selected playlists or to be played discreetly in the public space of contemporary life. We live in the era of content capital: creations made to circulate and be shared at a certain moment compulsively. And the more they are shared, the more they work. But his fury passes quickly. Hence all those songs, series or movies are less distinguishable and have become a generic and undifferentiated mass, practically interchangeable. So much so that you become unable to remember the title of the fashionable film you are watching at that precise moment.