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Meet Haaniyah Angus, One Of My Favorite Gen Z Creators
"There seem to be less rules in regards to what you can create and what format it’s in."
Welcome to Extra Garbage Day! Every other week, I’ll be dropping a bonus Thursday issue just for paying subscribers. To start, these will be Q&As with interesting people I’ve been dying to interview. Let me know what you think.
The core Twitter experience for me is a paradox. The fact that it is essentially a firehose of content from random people is both infinitely exciting and also incredibly taxing. I’d love to say that, at some point, in the past, Twitter was more interesting than it was exhausting, but I have felt this way since I was first forced to make an account for a digital journalism course in college. Quick aside: My original Twitter handle for the class was @ryanpornstar because I hated the professor. He said that that was an inappropriate username and made me change it. So I changed it to @ryanhatesthis. And a personal brand was born!
As tiring as daily life inside of the bird site from hell can be, I can’t deny that it has also introduced me to some really great people and exposed me to some writers and creators that I think are really exciting. The subject of today’s Extra Garbage Day is one of those people.
Haaniyah Angus is a 22-year-old filmmaker and writer from the UK who also has one of my favorite Twitter accounts. When I think about all the exciting ways Gen Z is using the internet to critically pull apart the world around us, I think of her.
I started following Angus a few years ago. She’s part of a Twitter sub-universe that calls itself Film Twitter, where users battle each other over movies with the same intensity of stan armies fighting over their favorite pop stars. Angus went viral two years ago after inadvertently starting an online campaign against the film Where Hands Touch, which depicts a young black woman falling in love with a Nazi solider. Angus’s snarky and exasperated livetweeting of the movie’s awfulness turned it into a week-long trending topic.
Her livetweeting is really good. Yesterday she was livetweeting Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.
Over on her Medium account, Angus’s writing is an (seemingly) effortless mix of relatable essays about being in your 20s, critical fandom thinkpieces, and really sharp takes on the current state of our global streaming nightmare. And most recently, Angus’s own short films were written about on RogerEbert.com!
Basically, I’m a big fan.
In our interview today, I got the chance to ask her some questions I’ve been dying to hear her thoughts on. Like me, Angus was a close follower of the blog that, in many ways, I think, invented the modern era of pop culture — Your Fave Is Problematic. So we talked a bit about that, as well. She was also nice enough to explain what the heck Letterboxd is.
The following has been edited slightly for pacing and clarity.
First up, I saw a few of your films were recently written up by RogerEbert.com. That's super cool! Do you feel like your Twitter/general online work informs your filmmaking at all? Or are they two different concentrations?
Thank you so much! I definitely think my online work informs my filmmaking and screenwriting in regards to what themes I want to tackle. I’m always really inspired by the discourse I see online and by the work of others.
I think I first came across your account 3-4 years ago. I sort of think of you as like my main source inside of Film Twitter haha. How would you describe Film Twitter?
So I’d describe Film Twitter as like the intersection of online culture and pretentious film nerds. As much as I’d want to pretend I’m not part of that, it would be kinda dumb because I’m sure I’m also perceived as pretentious by some. What’s really cool though is, like you said, it’s mainly Gen Z film lovers who are able to discuss movies through our lens.
You and I have talked in the past a bit about the legacy of blogs like Your Fave Is Problematic. How do you see the post-YFIP landscape of criticism?
YFIP had absolutely changed the way in which we interact with celebrity, for better or worse. There’s no doubt that celebrities are now rated and ranked based on their problematic-ness, as well as perceived talent. Although, I don’t know if we’re seeing the full extent of that impacting critics because even though it seems like many people care about celebrities being held accountable, you also have a huge chunk of stans who don’t want that at all.
It might sound a little silly to ask this, but how do you think apps, first, like Vine, and now, TikTok, have changed the way people talk about and make film? It feels like video is so much more flexible of a communication medium than it was even five years ago.
Vine and TikTok are game-changers tbh. They’ve been able to democratize editing processes and filmmaking by giving younger people a platform to create content. There seem to be less rules in regards to what you can create and what format it’s in.
You're one of my favorite critical voices writing about the intersection of race and culture and politics of pop culture. Do you feel like platforms like Twitter are successfully bringing in more voices to pop culture criticism? And if so, any hopeful signs that things are getting better?
Thank you! Yes and no. As I mentioned earlier, stan Twitter has become a bigger part of online culture at the same time. So whilst we may have more critical pop culture voices, there are also people willing to harass them for those same takes we may love. I fear that it might get worse at some point but hopefully I’m wrong.
I try to include some fun stuff in Garbage Day from the social film review platform, Letterboxd, but I really am not on the site at all. I see most stuff via Tumblr. How would you describe the community there?
Uhhh, Letterboxd is weird to me because my friends and I usually use it to shitpost with the occasional serious review. But there’s an odd culture of people getting mad at that because “it’s not a serous review,” as if that matters? I think it allows filmmakers and film lovers to keep easier track on their favorite films of the year and films they haven’t seen. That’s the best part for me.
And last question. What's the best thing you've watched this year?
The best thing I’ve seen in 2020 is 100% Jacques Demy’s 1967 musical The Young Girls Of Rochefort.
Thank you for reading and supporting Garbage Day! If you’ve been forwarded this email, welcome! Definitely make sure you check out previous Extra Garbage Days:
And finally, here’s my favorite Letterboxd review of all time, I think.
***Typos in this email aren’t on purpose, but sometimes they happen***
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