choose love

Can u explain your tags under Harry's pic sea? I'm curious. Thank you

My tags were for this post, pertaining to this photo:

The photo always gave me conflicting feelings because of all the ambiguities and juxtapositions I see.

On the one hand, it’s a commercial image, meant to sell a concept of Harry. He’s wet, so of course he’s sexy, with his famous body tattoos behind a damp veil, wearing a velvet, high-waisted, tightly adherent suit (made for a woman) that defines his body. So whereas his body is masculine, the suit confers a soft femininity, as does the setting: yielding water, soft flowers, randomly effluent plant matter, a dark background and pastel colors. Contrast these elements, again, with the hard, shiny, sharp surface he’s resting against. The image shows softness pushed up against hardness, masculinity disturbed by femininity, intention mixed with dreamy chaos, darkness against light.

Harry plays at the boundary between aesthetics and symbolism, between beauty for its own sake (because the images are so skillfully composed) and as symbolism. Remember his answer to this question about candles, “Single wick or multiple wick? Do multiple ones count as one candle? Let’s go per wick… about 10. Maybe 20. I don’t like to go too far, it gets less romantic and more sacrificial if you have too many.” Beauty and comfort become ritualistic and sacrificial when they cross a line. The success of a provocative ad is to be right at that line.

What always struck me about the post is Harry’s expression— a blank expression with no meaning, as if he’s a blank slate for his audience to fill in whatever they want to see. His ad cover was that he was “available always.” 

It’s a sexual come-on that initially sounds flirtatious, but eventually some have criticized this motto to be ultimately meaningless, trying too hard to be all things to all people. To me, his facial expression is neither happy nor sad, but more resigned— it is what it is. Like a lamb led to slaughter.

Then there’s the pose of the body. Suddenly, on seeing the photo for the hundredth time, I realized it was in the shape of the cross. For me, something clicked.

Harry seems, in his way, a young lamb led to slaughter, a Christ figure on whom strangers project their hopes and dreams, someone whose fame precedes him everywhere, and from whom Perfection has been promised and expected. Furthermore, people use him for their own gain— his fame, his connections, his promise of worshippers and money. His expression and pose reminded me of some medieval paintings of Christ. I’m not literally comparing him to Christ, only the evocations behind this image. Harry’s pose and expression seem to show that he feels the weight of his fame, simultaneously wanting it and dreading it, afraid of the repercussions, feeling marked, being The One, yet wanting success, real achievement, and adulation so much. 

His tour announcement photo, perhaps unconsciously, shows him almost as a human being laid out for sacrifice, the symbol of water washing our sins away, appeasing the gods, the ominous red sky in the background (I realize the shot is for the aesthetics of his profile too). 

Granted, there are other photos in the series where the symbology isn’t as obvious.

I’m not saying that there is any overt or purposeful allusion to Christianity here, only that symbols are evoked to achieve a overall coherent subtext. Even though Harry has said he was more spiritual than religious, he has been observed consistently to use symbols of Christ. He prays to the cross:

He has a famous tattoo on his hand, that is used in Harley Weir’s images:

Thinking about these symbols made me go back to Harry’s first single, Sign of the Times. This title is taken from the New Testament, from the book of Matthew. Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees and Sadducees who demand that he show a sign to prove he is a prophet.

Matthew 16:2-3 English Standard Version (ESV)2 He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ 3 And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.

Throughout the launch of HS1, Harry has used symbols from the Bible. He announced his solo career with this television ad, a video of him coming out of darkness into light, dripping in baptismal waters, being reborn.

Harley Weir also shot a photo of Harry as a lit figure in the darkness.

The Sign of the Times video has lyrics alluding to the New Testament book of Revelations, particularly to Judgment Day, where some will ascend to heaven and some will be left behind. This metaphor is made explicit in the official music video. Again, I believe that the comparison is metaphorical, not literal — in that sometimes in life, some are unfairly left behind while others ascend, and the only thing they can do is to reassure those left behind that they will meet again someday.

It can be interpreted as a dying mother separating from her child (could this hint from Harry be any clearer?) or as two lovers being forcibly separated. I wrote here about the parallels between Just Hold On and SOTT.

The music underscores this religious theme by using a gospel choir and buildup to the final moments of the song. The gospel sound connects several songs, and musical motifs run through them in an ingenious way. Finally, death, grief, personal hell, angels/ devils, and the seven deadly sins (gluttony, lust, greed, pride, sorrow, anger, vainglory, sloth) are writ large on the album, in one way or another.

Going back to the Harley Weir photo, and contrasting the darkness and symbology there with Harry’s cover art:

These are images of rest, stasis, beauty. The necklace charm is a lotus blossom, not a cross. Lilies, oranges, and chrysanthemums promise calm.

It’s possible that the lotus flower (and lilies and mums) may represent an Eastern spiritual allusion, of higher consciousness and inner peace. One understands why Harry has tried to understand life by looking into spirituality, especially in the face of the losses he has suffered.