Throughout the documentary, “This Is Us,” the band One Direction—Harry, Liam, Niall, Louis and Zayn (for those not in the mid-pubescent know)—discusses being normal.
“We’re just like normal teenage boys,” Harry Styles says. “We’re not like robots.”
This is too true. And as I sat watching “This Is Us” in an abandoned movie theater at noon on a Wednesday, I pondered Harry’s wise words. What was normal? Why did he—and we—want to be it? And were we better for it?
Celebrities’ search for normalcy (make believe or otherwise) is something we’re all familiar with. Gwyneth Paltrow is constantly pissing people off (a characteristic I partially attribute to her finding God’s rock in the desert and becoming His nutrition disciple and whatnot). And “Scandal’s” Olivia Pope tells us that the American people “put George W. in office because he and Laura seem like a fun couple to have a beer with.” They were, to paraphrase, normal dudes.
It appears as if One Direction—or Simon Cowell as puppet master—understood this when scripting “This Is Us.” The film is chock full of pranks, fishing trips and fire building struggles (ones to make Jack London proud). However, it seems as if these, the film’s ‘deeper’ scenes—filled with Harry, Liam, Niall, Louis, and Zayn discussing what normal lads they really are—required significantly more acting than when the boys were crooning before 60,000 fans in Mexico City.
After tearing up during “Little Things,” I realized that what One Direction’s members wrestle with—a desire to project a normalized image while leading an exceptional life—is a struggle for us all. One Direction’s members are not the first European boys to have wrestled with normality. Harry, Liam, Niall, Louis and Zayn seem to have taken lessons from hundreds of years of colonial championing. They have built themselves on their reputation for retaining a run-of-the-mill perspective. Even in the metaphoric womb (post-X-Factor, pre-hyper-fame), One Direction discussed their everyman roots. In fact, if One Direction were a “Game of Thrones” family, their motto would be “We are normal; hear our cry.” This is scientific.
The popular media has recognized One Direction’s burning desire for the banal. Leah Collins, in the National Post, notes that, “for the most part… the group presents themselves as typical, goofy and uncensored teenage boys—posting jokey YouTube videos, for instance, or boozing at awards shows.” In this sense, the One Direction boys could be any one of us. By day, we take first years on orientation trips, and by night, we find ourselves still in party clothes, sneaking out of Winthrop with bruises on our necks and Trojan wrappers in our pockets. (Let us compare it to Harry leaving Taylor Swift’s hotel room many a late night).
Why, you might ask, are you reading a column exploring One Direction, the Lannisters and Bowdoin College? You, reader, are all of the above. You are Niall. You are Harry. Ultimately, you are also Cersei. This is a cross we all must bear.
Don’t get me wrong—Bowdoin students are grand. We strive—it’s part of our charm. We took our passion for sports and GPAs and Cambodian children and channeled that oomph into four blocks of the pseudo-developed Maine wild—though Brunswick does have the widest Main Street in New England, not to brag. Regardless, we moved to the woods. It’s quaint. But we are not.
Why, then, do we pretend to be normal? We watch the Bronco-Ravens game, and between discussing fantasy drafts, compare Flacco’s career trajectory to the aridity of the Sri Lankan land we happened to farm this summer (granted, it’s a failed simile). We say Manning’s inability to get started is akin to the North’s early failings in the Civil War. We don’t bother discussing “Blurred Lines” because obviously it’s misogynistic.
But at what point does pretending we don’t care really mean we don’t? If we pretend too long, will we start to believe the pretend and end up cheering for the Broncos without also pondering sustainable investment and whether a delayed start to an NFL game sends a poor message to the Syrian Ba’ath Party? And if this did happen, would it really be bad?
Rationally, we know we can’t all be celebrity Gods. We want to pants our band mates on stage. But we also want to be taken seriously. The question is: can we pants ourselves, metaphorically speaking, if we have yet to accomplish enough to deserve the respect we crave?