#than anything else in the LNT music video

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Have you had a chance to watch the LNT mv? Would be so interested to hear your thoughts if you have!

So this is obviously very old, but I've decided to go on a music video answering spree and so talk about Late Night Talking.

The Late Night Talking music video is a much less successful version of the Watermelon Sugar music video - and how much worse that concept can be done. As someone who hated the Watermelon Sugar video I sort of resent that I now have to acknowledge its strengths.

I think the first problem is that it's just unnecessarily complicated. There are a range of set ups all involving beds. The idea is obviously supposed to be dream like, but it's not weird enough (and Harry's performance doesn't evoke any dream like qualities). So instead it's just 'here's a thing/here's another thing/here's another thing'. These seem that if they were evoking mood (which they largely fail to do) they would evoke quite different moods. While there were quite a few different set ups in the Watermelon Sugar video, they all shared a sense of place, a mood, and a purpose. Those were all quite basic and straightforward, but that was OK, because they worked together.

Harry's performance is terrible - straight up ham, but not connecting with anyone or anything around him. He's not helped here by the filmmaking (it literally looks like they use a different filter on him than on the other people in bed in the first scene with other people in it). He's not present in any of it - he's always just hamming it up for the camera - and that hammy charm isn't being used for anything. The only thing it does is distant him from the situation.

But I think the biggest thing it shows about Watermelon Sugar is the importance of the very first shot - where Harry walks up to the table. That tells us, right up top that this is a situation that Harry (the music video character) is choosing to be in and it helps us understand how he feels about it (he's having fun). In Late Night Talking, Harry has no agency and we've no idea how he feels about anything that's happening. The no agency is intentional, it's supposed to be dreamlike and things are supposed to be happening to him, but that requires a lot of precision from Harry about how he feels about these random things, and that's something he's not able to provide as a performer.

What is most interesting - is that this is absolutely his Achilles heel in music videos. Over and over again he's made videos where he has no agency and we've no idea how he feels about things that are happening about him. It's what Falling and Sign of the Times have in common. In Sign of the Times, it's particularly egregious, because it's not even clear whether he's flying intentionally or accidentally. Harry and the filmmakers aren't even able to convey if he has agency. Then you have Late Night Talking and Lights Up - both of which are trying for the randomness of dreams (which is a common music video technique) - Lights Up broadly works because it's better edited and Harry's performance is more grounded. I even think there's an element of it in TPWK - where it looks like Harry is just doing the dance - it's not clear why he's doing anything he's doing (it doesn't help that Phoebe Waller Bridge is so good at conveying intentionality).

The videos that do display some sort of agency from Harry previous to Late Night Talking (As it Was, Golden, Watermelon Sugar, Kiwi, and Adore You) vary, but it's interesting to me that one of the things that they have in common is that Harry is seen moving under his own volition to somewhere. And I think it says something about his limitations as a performer that you need that literal movement from Harry in order to be clear whether he's somewhere because he wants to be, or because he's compelled to be.

I have two more thoughts - one is that it's very interesting to read this all in terms of Harry's life. It's maybe not surprising that someone who was a popstar since he was 16 is drawn to or finds it easy to tell stories where strange things happen to him and he just sort of sits there. It's also perhaps not surprising that conveying his reaction to strange things happening to him is not his forte. I do think it eventually becomes interesting how much he's portraying himself as having no agency.

My final thought is how novel Music for a Sushi Restaurant is in this context. Here things are happening to Harry, and there's no short cuts of showing him walking to somewhere to tell us that he wants to be there. Instead it's a situation he's trapped in, and yet we still know how he feels and see his agency. I think Music for a Sushi Restaurant is an excellent video anyway, but thinking about Harry and agency and reaction shows how much of a development it is on previous music videos. It makes me really interested in what comes next.

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I think people who think the general public or anyone in the fandom who doesn't already view Harry as queer will take a split second scene in a music video where he is showing up in random beds to be a big statement about his sexuality are wrong tbh. I don't think the video gives the impression that Harry chose to go on a date with a man or chose to end up any of the places he does. If anything, his facial expressions and acting throughout make it silly and over the top. I haven't seen it change any minds. People who think he's queer think the music video is meaningful about his queerness. People who don't think it's a fun concept. It didn't move the needle at all.

I agree anon - I don't think it will have changed anyone's minds. I do think it is a step more explicit in the way Harry is depicted than previously. But one step more explicit isn't going to change how people view Harry.

I think you make really good points about the video and Harry's performance. The video is structured like a dream where Harry is moved from place to place without any sort of explanation or choice. In the world of the music video, Harry didn't intentionally sit down next to the man to share his spaghetti - he anticipated the spaghetti, it appeared, and then suddenly he's in a new place with a new person next to him. Within the video Harry isn't making intentional choices, which changes how the images affect people's idea of who Harry Styles the actual person is.

I also think you've raised a really interesting point when it comes to Harry's performance. It is extremely hammy and that makes it feel very unreal. I think Harry's hammy register can work very well in music videos (see early 1D videos, Adore You or Watermelon Sugar). But I think here there's too much going on and there's some intentional incongruity (with the public and private elements of the bed) and therefore the Harry's hammy performance is something else that just doesn't fit. We can't get pulled into the heightened world, because there's too much going on.

In addition, it also reminds me of the oddest feature of Harry's music videos - 'lots of things happen to Harry and you've no idea how he feels'. It is what means that neither SOTT or Falling actually work (he's flying and he's covering in water and we have no idea how he feels). In both those cases, he's generic serious for the entire video, whereas for LNT he's generic ham, but in neither case do we get a sense of what's going on for him as he's experiencing those things.

It makes me wonder a lot about Harry the performer and Harry the person (and also the directors, but that's another point). It almost makes me wonder if 'lots of unbelieveable things happen to him and he doesn't react' is some sort of meta comment on his life.