Main character energy

It was eight years ago when I began dating my first 'proper' boyfriend. He was three years older and was working when I was in college. This should have ideally meant that he was much less over-the-top than a 19 year-old me but I don’t think it worked that way.

Turns out that he was a pretty strange guy. Every time we would watch a movie together, I'd see him almost transform into the lead character.

The music he listened to would be the film’s soundtrack. He would be angry at the things that enraged the protagonist. He would sometimes even change the way he walked. He would often laugh like a 'hero’. There would be dramatic 'hmphs' with smug smiles, Rajini type open laughs and even fist-banging anger. This would go on for days.

I remember watching The Grand Budapest Hotel in 2014 at Escape Cinemas with him and seeing him exaggerate his quirks like all Wes Anderson characters. He became inspirational in his speeches, altruistic almost, when he watched Interstellar the same year. He completely broke down in a theatre while watching Margarita With A Straw and became hopeful as we watched one of the Hobbit movies.

His values would change based on the film. He thought of himself as Joker from Batman, Batman from Batman, Tyler Durden and the other guy from Fight Club and even Walter Mitty from Secret Life of Water Mitty. He would champion women’s rights after watching a woman-centric film or become depressed after watching a movie about mental health.

I absolutely could not understand this. What part of his personality was real and what was filmy? How could he so easily shape shift? Why did he so desperately want to be the protagonist all the time? Why did he say often that he wanted to be the emperor of the world? Was it not difficult?

These thoughts recently resurfaced as I watched reels upon reels talking about people’s 'Main Character Energy' on Instagram. A New York Times article said, "Main character moments are composed with an audience in mind; they’re vicarious spectacles". It added, "Post-covid, we want to reclaim control of our stories, exert ourselves upon the world, take our places as protagonists once more—and then post about it".

I thought that the entire concept was strange because I had lived with this main character and found it incredibly difficult to adapt to the changing persona, tastes and feelings.

I was clearly older than 19 when the reels trend happened and empathised with the need to have big moments in order to feel like I was the centre of everyone else’s life. But seriously, what the fuck. Who does that?

I sit down to write this today because I am full of guilt, shit and hypocrisy.

I ended up watching The Lost Daughter last evening and felt absolutely broken. I heard the OST and absolutely was thrilled to walk in the streets of Abhirampuram to the soundtrack titled Leda- the name of the main character. I even purchased two oranges today because they were a key motif- a personality trait almost in the film.

I found myself thinking about how I can and possibly never will have children because I’d be that kind of mother. I thought back to how selfish I was in my relationships and quickly tried doing the math on how much it would cost to travel by myself and go for a seaside holiday. I wondered about a career in teaching and asked if all marriages failed. Would I look good in large hats? Should I begin reading Yeats now? Is Greece really all that? Can one really be badly bruised after being attacked by a pine cone?

I came back home and found this need to catch myself before I fell deep down this rabbit hole. I had to physically transfer all these thoughts of abstract concepts like parenthood, affairs, time and memory onto paper so as to not carry it around in my head. I had to have a conversation with Vasanth to distance myself from the person I became since 6 p.m.

All these years I asked, "What the fuck, who does that?"

Looks like it's me. I too does that.

(Photo from Netflix ⬇️)