Liam, an educated male, and Alex, an educated female, knew very little about this little indie band called ‘One Direction’. Being the bold researchers that they are, they attended the Red Carpet premiere to the documentary One Direction: This is Us 3D in order to learn more about these elusive artists. Allowing themselves a day to let the experience fully soak in, they met once more to present their findings…
Liam: Still riding the 1D buzz?
Alex: I haven’t stopped thinking about it. I accidentally downloaded a few songs.
Did you trip and fall on your iTunes?
It’s just a virus I think.
Speaking of viral infections, do you still smell like “One Moment”?
First of all, it’s called “Our Moment”
Don’t bring me into this.
You were there, albeit far away and quite embarrassed.
#truth
But to answer your question: yes, I do. The promo girl managed to get some on my skin, bag and clothing whilst she was yelling at me about the special offer. It’s become a really long, really nauseating moment with 1D’s fragrance.
You smelled like joy wrapped in candy and marinated in dreams that will never be realised. I did get giddy about the bubble machine at the entrance.
Really sparse, sad bubbles I thought.
Before you got there, I was standing by a giant crowd of girls on the red carpet who were just screaming. Just standing in a line screaming.
About the bubbles? Like that fish in ‘Finding Nemo’? Because I may have been one of those girls.
They were literally screaming at the audio from the trailer that was playing in the foyer…
Meanwhile, I’m just trying to figure out how to get to the bathroom without having my picture taken with a cardboard cut-out on the red carpet.
I was standing by myself waiting for you, trying to figure out how to look inconspicuous. There was no way, I found out. No way.
You were probably one of the only males there, I would say. There was some classic Dad who looked like the Mitre 10 Mega guy who was definitely not living the dream on the red carpet.
I felt appropriately inappropriate being there. Fortunately, we were able to see them from our sweet seats in the very back corner of the cinema.
Yeah, really great seats. Full house. Popcorn going. Glasses ON.
This documentary taught me a few things, the first one being…
Fact #1
Simon Cowell lives in a perfectly symmetrical world.
The room they interview him in is a modern abyss of right-angles, contemporary décor and flawless symmetry.
According to his talking heads, he lives at the front desk reception of my local orthodontist. And other times he appears to exist in just straight up heaven. Which doesn’t surprise me. He is, essentially, the God character of this film. A very bronzed, Frankenstein, raisin toast-looking God.
He’d rather be a dick than a swallower.
I have learned several things too. Whilst we aren’t talking about the band itself yet, let’s go with…
Fact #2
Morgan Spurlock = Judas
Morgan Spurlock is a bloody sell-out – unless he was being a genius and was simultaneously making a documentary about making the documentary and all the sordid things that Simon Cowell made everyone do.
Who does Spurlock betray?
He betrays his people. Me. Huge Super Size Me fan over here. I would love to have seen him make a hard-hitting exposé, going in some sort of prosthetic mask to a talent show and unearthing all the horrible judgements and ruthless culling and whatnot. That’s what the old Spurlock would have done.
Instead he made a 90 minute commercial for The X Factor.
That’s not true. The new fan cut adds 4 new songs and 20 minutes of additional footage, making it a two-hour ‘The X Factor’ commercial.
Simon Cowell is a bloody tanned evil genius.
He strikes the riches and the bitches.
Fact #3
One Direction do not swear, fight, drink, smoke, do drugs, have sex and are definitely not gay.
…even though statistically one of them has got to be somewhere on the spectrum (Louis in my personal opinion).
Louis is a total fan of the man, but his lord and saviour Simon Cowell prayed the gay away. It seemed like the lad was forced to mention that part about “impressing the ladies.”
In Toys R Us.
Yeah. He says that he used to flirt by playing the tiny toy piano. That’s just how Liberace got started in my opinion.
Did you notice though there were mega inconsistencies in how they talked about their music? Like you get Harry saying “I want to do this forever, like Keith Richards” and then you get him hunched over a bonfire going “Think about it boys, this will all be over in 2-3 years. And we can all go back home and get jobs and wives”.
And Louis nods and says “Yes. Wives. Female wives.”
Fact #4
One Direction fan hysteria can be explained through very real neuroscience.
The neuroscientist who features has a theory that is “something something dopamine, something something tap the plastic brain”
I believe it was “when the aural stimulus hits the hippocampus, it triggers dopamine which cause euphoric hysteria throughout the plastic brain.”
And then he looks at the camera and says: “These girls are not hysterical, they are just EXCITED.”
But I feel it’s a lot more dangerous than just excitement.
The fandom is built on this very weird imaginary, one-sided relationship. I have a conspiracy theory that stems from the fact that young girls have to put up with the global mainstream media making them feel constantly inadequate/average/ugly. Even all their female role models make them feel inadequate/average/ugly. Remedy this by getting five incredibly thin, non-threatening, unisex mannequin-looking things to sing easy pop hits about them constantly being beautiful and perfect, just the way they are. Their brains explode and money pours out. Ka-ching.
But don’t get too big-headed ladies, because we all know that the second you start thinking that you are beautiful- you stop being beautiful. That’s just some more of that 1D neuroscience for you there.
They sing of basic ideals that are easy to digest, inviting their fans to board an illusion train on track to enter the proverbial tunnels of their fantasies (mind the Freud). I think a lot of these girls indulge in the fantasy of that imaginary serenade-soaked relationship while fully aware of its false reality. That’s safe geeking.
But it becomes troubling when the fantasy blurs with the reality – a refusal to get off that train. Having 1D’s presence constantly jammed down the throat of consumers (don’t slip on the Sigmund) can only create more of this blurring, and I think the film is at its most guilty of this when it attempts to fabricate the band’s supposed ‘heart-to-heart’ moments with the dialogue splurges you mentioned about ‘settling down’ and ‘being able to find a nice woman wife’.
It also becomes troubling to me seeing a group of girls seemingly crushed under some sort of skip outside a concert holding a sign that says “I didn’t get tickets, but I’m here for you Harry”. There were tonnes of those really flippant soundbites where girls revealed really heavy things like “They are perfect, they say the things to me that nobody else will say”/“they saved my life”/”I love them and I know they love me”.
I know that it’s nothing new. It happened with the Beatles. It happened with me and, unfortunately, Fall Out Boy. It’s just worse now because so many more people can instantly be mobilised through the internet and social media. Thousands of girls will stand on a street all day dressed in orange because Niall tweeted and told them to that same morning. Go home girls… go home and write down your goals and aspirations. Or at least try and stop Kony or some shit.
But also don’t listen to me, there were times in the film where my mind wandered and suddenly I had built an imaginary life with Harry Styles.
So lock me into a crypt and throw away the goddamn key.
I had to snort at that news clip they showed with the anchor saying “Not even the Beatles achieved this sort of global recognition this fast” without ever bringing up the internet age as a major factor.
Exactly. That anchor could have said the very same thing about “dog dances to shake that ass for me” or “slow loris loves being tickled”.
Do you think that, given this impulsive attention-deficit, TL;DR generation, One Direction’s shelf life will be shorter than all those other fads before it?
Yes. They openly acknowledge it in the film several times. One of the boring ones around the campfire goes “Hey lads, we are a bit like Benjamin Button innit – live this mad successful part now when we are young then we get to go and be normal innit”. Heaps of those little bleak asides that acknowledge the transience of the whole thing. Can’t wait to see them at the VMAs in 2030 and they are all fat and funny.
Actually, who am I kidding? They will all be judging X Factor World, probably hosted in some sort of space station.
Except Zayn, who will become the next Banksy, given that…
Fact #6
Zayn wants to be left the f%#k alone.
The one time they delve into anything about Zayn, he mentions two things:
1) He loves creating art.
2) He loves creating art when being left alone (as he glares a massive hint to the camera crew).
All Zayn wants to do is grafitti every room of his house, smoke a bloody cigarette and be a Muslim. But they never tell you that in the film. Nor do we ever meet his Pakistani father. The lads keep referring to him as “the mysterious one”, as if that excuses the blatant/perhaps tactical move by the filmmakers to ignore the background of most interesting member of the band. Plus, he’s getting married soon. Living that Benjamin Button life (I still don’t understand the analogy fully).
He seems like the type of dude who just doesn’t want to bring his own personal matters to the forefront. At least, that’s what I hope caused the omission in his character traits. Or maybe Morgan is working on another slanted doco about chain-smoking Talibans.
I reckon that “omission” came during an early board meeting where Spurlock concernedly tapped a whiteboard with the word ‘Muslim’ written on it. Cowell simply got up and went…
Then returned to his perfectly symmetrical desk, smiling smugly.
Your hypothesis feels sound.
Talking of character traits, another one of my facts, let’s say fact #13 by now, is…
Fact #13
One Direction all came from “working class backgrounds” and by God are we going to hear about it.
They even have a scene where they fish, like a “mundane” would.
Notice in that scene where Harry and whoeverthef%#k were chatting about missing the regular life (convo #8 on the same topic), that conversation was going nowhere fast. So what do they do? Cut to a scene of them giggling and running away from a fish! Adorbs!
They couldn’t possibly know what to do if they were to actually catch a fish, or know how to pitch a tent (when they inexplicably go camping for convo #9 about regular life). It would be way too macho for them.
That’s another thing about their “working class” backgrounds- they were pretty cushy. Working in bakeries and toy shops and the like. They could never have been these burly blokes who worked on building sites and oil rigs etc. Actually they could, but then they would be The Village People.
God help them if they were to grow a strand of facial hair. And by God, I do mean Simon Cowell.
This is a totally imperfect segue to my final discovery…
Fact #39
Chris Rock supposedly likes One Direction.
Why am I ending on such an off-topic fact? Because I didn’t learn a Cowell-damn thing else about One Direction; this documentary feels so sparse.
As sparse as those God-damn bubbles. Like those kids care who Chris Rock is and what he’s got to say about 1D?! And then Marty Scorsese just bombs on into their dressing room and kisses their feet.
I would not even have blinked at that point if they wheeled out Nelson Mandela.
He’s on the Extended Fans’ Cut.
Talking about Mandela, that’s a shoddy segue to my final fact…
Fact #76
One Direction saved Africa, somehow.
Apparently, they travelled to Ghana and lip-synced Blondie lyrics to some starving Africa kids.
That’s right. They delivered health care packages full of hair product and mediocre music.
To be fair though, they did donate a crap-tonne of money while they were there. Though that term ‘crap-tonne’ may be relative.
I missed that detail because I was weeping for the poor kids trying to sway in time to the music. The African kids I mean, not 1D.
