Lore and Order – Huck’s October Newsletter

There’s a moment in the director’s cut of Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe’s semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal sto­ry of a teenage rock jour­nal­ist, that reveals the music industry’s true cur­ren­cy. When the 15-year-old William Miller files a no-holds-barred cov­er sto­ry to Rolling Stone about his time on the road with Still­wa­ter (a fic­tion­al com­pos­ite of 70s bands), mak­ing them come off like ​“buf­foons” (which of course they are), their new­ly acquired man­ag­er Den­nis Hope deliv­ers a les­son in mys­tique. Hope, a cor­po­rate prat played by Jim­my Fal­lon in one of his more con­vinc­ing for­ays into act­ing, extends both his hands: the left open with a Zip­po sit­ting in his palm, the right closed in a tight fist. ​“As long as you can’t see what’s in this hand, you’ll always want it more,” he says, unfurl­ing his fist to reveal that it’s empty. 

Ergo, the less you know about some­one, the more pow­er­ful (and lucra­tive) the fan­ta­sy becomes, even if it’s a front for noth­ing. Egos bruised, Still­wa­ter deny 90% of William’s sto­ry to Rolling Stone​’s fact check­er to pro­tect their image – at least at first. For all the debauch­ery and excess­es embraced by rock ​‘n’ roll stars, it’s the prospect of reveal­ing them­selves that proves too rebel­lious for them. Real­i­ty is nuanced, messy, divi­sive. The fan­ta­sy remains alive for as long as you hold back.

This les­son in mys­tique reared its head again at the end of the 2010s in response to the explo­sion of social media. After a chaot­ic decade of reac­tiv­i­ty and over­shar­ing that gave us Britney’s ​“Does any­one think glob­al warm­ing is a good thing? I love Lady Gaga” tweet, Lind­say Lohan’s beef with Ket­ter­ing, and Dan­ny DeVito’s foot, there was a cal­cu­lat­ed return to silence as a mar­ket­ing tac­tic. It’s why we have no idea what Beyoncé’s up to unless she’s per­form­ing, why the small­est peep out of Frank Ocean sends every adult man with an ear­ring into a fren­zy, and why Bur­ial has released like two pho­tos of him­self since 2006. It’s the bedrock of Har­ry Styles’ solo career.

“Bey­on­cé reminds me of Rachel, the pret­ti­est girl in my high school,” one New York Times read­er offered in a 2015 debate over the artist’s silence. ​“Rachel nev­er spoke up in his­to­ry class (the only class we had togeth­er). She had a seat at the ​“cool table,” but con­ver­sa­tions would unfold basi­cal­ly on top of her as peo­ple talked around her and through her.” In 2016, cul­ture writer Daisy Jones posed a sim­i­lar ques­tion in VICE about the famous­ly eva­sive Har­ry Styles: ​“It is very pos­si­ble that Har­ry Styles does­n’t say any­thing because, well, he has noth­ing inter­est­ing to say,” she writes. ​“Per­haps if he opened his mouth and shared his inner­most thoughts and feel­ings with the mass­es, we might dis­cov­er that he’s just as basic as the rest of us.”

What’s dif­fer­ent about tac­ti­cal mys­tique in the 21^st cen­tu­ry is that it’s accom­pa­nied by greater con­sumer aware­ness of mar­ket­ing, and the sus­pi­cion that, much like Jim­my Fallon’s right hand in Almost Famous, it’s smoke and mir­rors. A façade, once a suc­cess­ful mar­ket­ing tool, now feels like a wrench in the machine of fame, which has evolved into an exchange of sta­tus for acces­si­bil­i­ty. We expect celebri­ties to be ​‘real’ and ​‘relat­able’ and ​‘messy,’ more like us, even though we crit­i­cise these qual­i­ties when they’re actu­al­ly on dis­play. This, I think, is where the more con­tem­po­rary con­cept of ​‘lore’ comes in.

Lore is the oppo­site of mys­tique. It’s sim­i­lar to mys­tique in that it’s the sto­ries and myths sur­round­ing a par­tic­u­lar per­son or band. But where mys­tique is acquired through being with­hold­ing and eva­sive, lore is the result of say­ing too much, with your own mouth, on the inter­net over a pro­longed peri­od of time. Mat­ty Healy has lore. Doja Cat has lore. Prince has mys­tique. Lana Del Rey is a rare hybrid; her lore some­how col­lud­ing with her mys­tique so that we have scraps of hyper-spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion about her (pass­ing through Flo­rence, Alaba­ma, for instance, she served a Waf­fle House reg­u­lar a coke with no ice and an extra cup for chew­ing tobac­co) but not enough to stop her from being who­ev­er we want her to be. Julia Fox has lore, Azealia Banks has lore, Grimes has lore. Hell, even Elon Musk has lore. Jen­nifer Coolidge has mys­tique. The Week­nd had mys­tique in spades before he start­ed ​‘clap­ping back’ in defence of The Idol on Twit­ter, now he has nei­ther mys­tique nor lore. See what I mean?

You have to won­der whether mys­tique is incom­pat­i­ble with the nature of fame in the 21^st cen­tu­ry. In a post-Kar­dashi­ans pop cul­tur­al land­scape, any glimpse of it tends to boil down to being with­hold­ing in a way that seems more to do with avoid­ing con­flict. Mys­tique, at its most intox­i­cat­ing, is a gen­uine art form com­bin­ing the charis­ma that leads to star­dom in the first place with a desire to keep a part of one­self for one­self (it’s no sur­prise that celebri­ties with the most mys­tique have his­tor­i­cal­ly tend­ed to be sex sym­bols, like Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe and the afore­men­tioned Prince), but after years of icon after icon turn­ing out to be some sort of dis­ap­point­ment, we’ve devel­oped a ten­den­cy to want peo­ple to show their cards up front. This is where we’re at now; sus­pi­cious of the unknown and resigned to the fact that con­tent equals atten­tion equals rep­u­ta­tion. More is more is more.

Ear­li­er this year the Evening Stan­dard won­dered if we were enter­ing the era of the celebri­ty over­share. Three months lat­er, Glam­our declared 2023 ​“the gold­en age of over­shar­ing.” Sim­i­lar opin­ions have come from Huff­in­g­ton Post, The Bub­blegum Club, GUAP. All of them ref­er­ence dis­clo­sures of a sex­u­al nature, and many are par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned with the rise of celebri­ty PDA – be it Emi­ly Rata­jkows­ki and Eric André hang­ing out naked in a pho­to that could not have screamed ​“we’re hav­ing loads of sex!!!” any loud­er, or Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kel­ly prov­ing their love by drink­ing each other’s blood (per­son­al­ly I wel­come this revival of ride-or-die romance, but each to their own). Most acknowl­edge the wide­spread belief that want­i­ng to be per­ceived, or draw­ing atten­tion to one­self, is shame­ful; some­thing to be con­demned, even though it’s some­thing we’re all guilty of.

The way we talk about over­shar­ing lays bare its trap­pings, which are no dif­fer­ent to those of mys­tique. Paris Hilton puts up a smoke­screen (inter­est­ing­ly, one she’s spent the last decade dis­man­tling), and she’s pre­sumed to be a dumb blonde play­ing shop with daddy’s mon­ey; Cil­lian Mur­phy is active­ly dis­in­ter­est­ed in most inter­views and he’s read as a brood­ing and mys­te­ri­ous artiste. The risks of over­shar­ing are sim­i­lar­ly weight­ed. It’s typ­i­cal­ly con­sid­ered brave for men to share their pri­vate thoughts and humil­i­a­tions, but embar­rass­ing for women. It’s risky for actors to over­share because their dis­ci­pline requires them to be a void inhab­it­ed by the char­ac­ters we asso­ciate with them, but less so for music artists whose bread and but­ter is phys­i­cal con­tact with an audience.

Mys­tique cre­ates more space for fan­ta­sy, but so does lore. Send­ing out a con­stant stream of infor­ma­tion can be as much an act of deflec­tion as shar­ing details very spar­ing­ly: both gen­er­ate a swirl of con­ver­sa­tion that leaves peo­ple scram­bling to piece the puz­zle togeth­er. We have a lot of inti­mate details about Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kel­ly, for exam­ple, but do we know who they are? The 1975’s Mat­ty Healy is one of the most dis­cussed peo­ple of 2023, owing entire­ly to the con­tro­ver­sial things he has pub­licly said and done. But ask a room full of peo­ple what they think of him and it will pro­duce rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent opin­ions. A lot of us cov­et the kind of mag­net­ic sex­u­al­i­ty that was pro­ject­ed onto Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, but nobody wants to be Mat­ty Healy. 

Mys­tique and lore, with­hold­ing or over­shar­ing – it’s all illu­sion at the end of the day. Per­haps lore just feels more authen­tic because the abil­i­ty to dis­sem­i­nate so much infor­ma­tion to so many peo­ple direct­ly is still new. Mys­tique has been wrapped up in busi­ness for too long now. It feels cal­cu­lat­ed, spu­ri­ous. That’s the point of Jim­my Fallon’s les­son in Almost Famous: what you don’t say, you’re always in con­trol of. Remove mon­ey from the equa­tion, though, and mys­tique recov­ers its orig­i­nal mean­ing – not as a strat­e­gy, but as an innate human quality. 

It might be some­thing Still­wa­ter is attempt­ing to cul­ti­vate, but the per­son with the most mys­tique in Almost Famous is the one who stands to gain the least: ​‘band-aid’ Pen­ny Lane, the effer­ves­cent muse and beat­ing heart of the sto­ry, whose real-life inspi­ra­tion Pamela Des Bar­res pro­duced eas­i­ly the most inter­est­ing mem­oir in rock ​‘n’ roll his­to­ry. While the film and the Rolling Stone sto­ry with­in it osten­si­bly revolve around the band, they play sec­ond fid­dle to her through­out. A sim­i­lar thing came up when I recent­ly inter­viewed pho­tog­ra­ph­er Rebec­ca Thomas about her por­traits of the indie sleaze era: fes­ti­val line-ups and NME cov­ers boast­ed infi­nite ​‘the’ bands ft. five iden­tik­it lads in win­klepick­ers, total­ly obscur­ing the fact that the style and spir­it of the decade was dri­ven by cre­ative young women.

In spend­ing so much time decod­ing what can’t be pinned down, we often miss what’s right under our noses. I, for one, try to remind myself of this when­ev­er I get sucked into a Deux­Moi worm­hole try­ing to decode some gos­sip about the Olsen twins.

See you next time,

Emma

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Emma

Cur­rent obses­sion: Doja Cat’s VMA per­for­mance – I can’t remem­ber the last time the VMAs have been good, or even news­wor­thy, but this year’s cer­e­mo­ny cel­e­brat­ing 50 years of hip hop went some way to reclaim­ing its title of ​‘music’s biggest night.’ Car­di B and Megan Thee Stal­lion came out like yas­si­fied WWE cham­pi­ons, Tay­lor Swift was white girl wast­ed dur­ing Lil Wayne’s ​“A Mil­li,” and Doja Cat made a state­ment that will go down in his­to­ry. Bring­ing a hard­core punk ener­gy (Death Grips and Beast­ie Boys are cit­ed as influ­ences on her new album), a con­cept with teeth and a con­fronta­tion­al ener­gy that seemed to gen­uine­ly unset­tle some audi­ence mem­bers, it’s a mid­dle fin­ger to any­one who had her pigeon­holed as anoth­er pop girly du jour. Here she stands toe-to-toe with Lady Gaga, Kendrick Lamar, ear­ly Eminem. An elec­tric per­for­mance from an artist with noth­ing to prove but every­thing to say.

Best new dis­cov­ery: The Woman in the Wall – A ghost sto­ry made from the finest ingre­di­ents: mur­der mys­tery, a pro­tag­o­nist los­ing grip on real­i­ty, and trau­ma root­ed in society’s very real hor­rors – in this case, the abus­es of the Catholic Church in Ire­land. The sub­ject mat­ter can make it an exhaust­ing watch, as well it should, but it’s a grip­ping BBC dra­ma that pairs well with the time of year when you start bail­ing on all your plans to sit on the couch and eat din­ners that go in a bowl.

Most look­ing for­ward to: Sofia Coppola’s Priscil­la – Talk about mys­tique! There is no 20^th cen­tu­ry fig­ure more mys­te­ri­ous or more maligned than Priscil­la Pres­ley, except for Elvis Pres­ley, and no one bet­ter to ren­der her sto­ry than the mas­ter of drama­tis­ing fem­i­nine pain.

Alex (Senior Edi­tor): Fol­low­ing his recent appear­ance in our Dad­dy Issues col­umn, I final­ly man­aged to get stuck into writer Gabriel Krauze’s sear­ing debut Who They Was. It’s a bru­tal­ly vivid account of grow­ing up in a side of Lon­don rarely depict­ed in lit­er­a­ture – except by out­siders, who know noth­ing of the lives led by Gabriel and count­less oth­er young men like him.

Isaac (Social Edi­tor & Pho­tog­ra­phy Writer): The Mar­tin Parr Foun­da­tion in Bris­tol is always worth a vis­it if you’re in the area and strange­ly reveal­ing pic­tures of the UK are your thing. Its lat­est exhi­bi­tion, Aban­doned, is a joint ven­ture between Adri­an Tyler – whose ​‘Dust to Dust’ project explores in strik­ing detail the emp­ty homes in the Out­er Hebrides and Orkney, as well as the degrad­ing Bibles found in them – and Jill Quigley. In her ​‘Cot­tages of Quigley’s Point’ series, she takes a dif­fer­ent angle – splash­ing the dilap­i­dat­ed homes near Done­gal in Ire­land with paint and sculp­tures, giv­ing them vibrant new life in the process. It runs until Decem­ber 22.

Also ​‘Post­cards from Italia’, the new EP from Myk­ki Blan­co, is absolute­ly worth a lis­ten. Mov­ing away from their usu­al avant-garde take on hip hop, the six-track­er is gui­tar-laced, melan­cholic, and nos­tal­gic – per­fect for any reflec­tive autum­nal vibes.

Josh (Print Edi­tor): I was going to write I’ve been watch­ing some­thing high­brow here but that would be a lie. This is a low­brow era for my TV con­sump­tion. If you haven’t seen, and you prob­a­bly have, then give the meme-spawn­ing BECK­HAM doc­u­men­tary on Net­flix a go. I was expect­ing it to be a total puff piece buffed with Beck­ham beeswax but it was sur­pris­ing­ly raw in places and showed just how mer­ci­less and awful foot­ball fans are, even against one of their own. If there’s any takes from it, the world’s best foot­ballers can be sur­pris­ing­ly devot­ed to one anoth­er and the guy real­ly, real­ly loves hav­ing an ordered wardrobe and play­ing football.

I’m most look­ing for­ward to The Freaks Came Out To Write — an oral his­to­ry of the ground­break­ing pub­li­ca­tion The Vil­lage Voice. Boast­ing an insane alum­ni of peo­ple like Nor­man Mail­er, R.Crumb, Matt Groen­ing, Lor­raine Hans­ber­ry, Allen Gins­berg, Ezra Pound and Lester Bangs (to name just a few), for­mer staff writer Tri­cia Romano has done over 200 inter­views with past staff to tell the sto­ry of the pio­neer­ing work the paper and its writ­ers cov­ered. Also it’s got the best name for a book I’ve heard of for a long time.

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