We All Have “Main-Character Energy” Now
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Highlights
- The term can be used appreciatively, acknowledging a form of self-care—putting yourself first—or as an accusation, a calling out of narcissism: a person dressing too extravagantly for a casual event, for example, is trying to be the main character. Main-character moments are those in which you feel ineffably in charge, as if the world were there for your personal satisfaction. As a TikToker put it recently, “Why does only buying the groceries I need for 2-3 days make me feel like the main character in an Italian summer memoir[?]” In the video, a woman carries a tote bag full of basil down a sunlit sidewalk, to a soundtrack from the lambent Italian-summer film “Call Me By Your Name.” “TikTok and social media has made it more attainable for you to write your own story,” Yasmine Sahid, a twenty-four-year-old actor and TikTok creator who began making her own main-character videos last August, told me. “You can kind of cast yourself in these mini-movies.”
- Main-character moments are composed with an audience in mind; they’re vicarious spectacles. Thorpe offered examples like “listening to music and just dancing and not caring what people think” and “running down the street in the city and everyone’s looking at you,” a little bit like the protagonist in “Frances Ha.” (If not everyone is looking, then how can you be the main character?) But Thorpe insists that making oneself the center of the scene doesn’t mean discounting the experiences of everyone else. “You can coexist with other people who are also having their main-character moments,” she said. Newly thrown back together in public, we can assist one another as mutual supporting characters in our fantasies of being the leads.
We All Have “Main-Character Energy” Now
Metadata
Highlights
- The term can be used appreciatively, acknowledging a form of self-care—putting yourself first—or as an accusation, a calling out of narcissism: a person dressing too extravagantly for a casual event, for example, is trying to be the main character. Main-character moments are those in which you feel ineffably in charge, as if the world were there for your personal satisfaction. As a TikToker put it recently, “Why does only buying the groceries I need for 2-3 days make me feel like the main character in an Italian summer memoir[?]” In the video, a woman carries a tote bag full of basil down a sunlit sidewalk, to a soundtrack from the lambent Italian-summer film “Call Me By Your Name.” “TikTok and social media has made it more attainable for you to write your own story,” Yasmine Sahid, a twenty-four-year-old actor and TikTok creator who began making her own main-character videos last August, told me. “You can kind of cast yourself in these mini-movies.”
- Main-character moments are composed with an audience in mind; they’re vicarious spectacles. Thorpe offered examples like “listening to music and just dancing and not caring what people think” and “running down the street in the city and everyone’s looking at you,” a little bit like the protagonist in “Frances Ha.” (If not everyone is looking, then how can you be the main character?) But Thorpe insists that making oneself the center of the scene doesn’t mean discounting the experiences of everyone else. “You can coexist with other people who are also having their main-character moments,” she said. Newly thrown back together in public, we can assist one another as mutual supporting characters in our fantasies of being the leads.