In Conversation with Haaniyah Awale Angus: On Cultural Criticism and Trusting Your Taste

It is rare to meet someone who offers such an incredible and rich amount of insight without ever wasting a word, making every idea one that you want to hang onto. Blending an extremely candid sense of vulnerability with astute cultural criticism, Haaniyah Awale Angus’ writing offers readers a way into film and culture that feels refreshingly earnest and personal. Speaking over coffee in North London, Angus lets us into her approach to writing and her philosophy of trusting your own taste that shapes her perspective towards cultural criticism.

Image credit: Haaniyah Awale Angus

You've carved out a really distinctive voice in cultural criticism, how have you approached crafting your own space within this field, and how did you develop your voice as a cultural writer?

This is quite apt as I talked about this whilst doing a panel with the BFI, particularly in the sense that I feel  like a lot of people, due to our ideas about cultural capital, don’t trust their own personal tastes. There’s this belief that ‘I wasn’t raised with certain films, so I’m just never going to be able to get into it’, beliefs which are, of course, mixed in with racial and class barriers. For me, neither of my parents are particularly into ‘film’,  my dad is into action and comedies and my mum was into Bollywood dramas. I was 18 when I first saw The  Godfather, and I discovered a lot on my own because I developed this curiosity. I watched video essays on  YouTube, read film theory, and asked: what are my favorite director's favorite films? What inspired them? I  often feel I’m always 10 steps behind because of the education I had, as it wasn’t until University doing Film and Communications, where I really started discovering things.

This has shaped the way I approach my writing, in that I write for me and about what interests me. That doesn't mean I'm not curious, and it doesn't mean that I'm not going to expand my palette, but I never force myself to enjoy something for the sake of it. I had a great conversation with film critic Angelica Jade Bastien. She said,  ‘I view the word cinephile as a slur’, wherein a lot of people like the identity of film and wear it as cachet, but they don't actually have an adoration for the art form. That really opened my eyes, because I think that's  something that I had realised in my own terminology, and it brought me back to how much of my work is  rooted in trusting my own gut.

You've written about Queen Latifah and various cultural figures who've inspired you. What are the cultural touchstones you hold close and return to? How do these influences shape your work and perspective on culture? Is there a particular motif or figure you consistently return to, or is your approach more about discovering something new in each piece you write?

I grew up watching a lot of Black comedy films and Bollywood dramas. Bollywood dramas in particular cemented my love of the romantic comedy because of just how extravagant these films were, they were both funny and heartbreaking and also really dramatic. It's something that I return back to quite often.

In terms of specific cultural touchstones, I think it's changed the older I've gotten. When I was a teenager, what got me into doing a film degree was Greta Gerwig, I loved Lady Bird and wanted to do screenwriting. Then I  got older and really loved Jacques Demy and Barry Jenkins. But as a writer, I think I now lean more towards  Nora Ephron. She is a really huge influence on my style of writing, very diaristic, honest, and forthright. If I’m not being these things in my writing, it feels like I’m not writing truthfully and like I’m not being myself. In  some ways, this can lock you in because a lot of journalism nowadays is as if you’re writing as a brand or in a  brand’s voice – but I don’t find that very fulfilling.

Image credit: Haaniyah Awale Angus

Your personal essays and film criticism are extremely honest and forthright, and they really put your emotional self completely on the page. How do you prepare yourself for some of the vulnerability that  comes with publishing these pieces publicly, and what’s your process like for deciding what you want to  share about yourself?

I think sometimes our culture has an aversion to earnestness. I do the opposite because care is so central to my personal politics and I think we need to care about people more than we do. If my way of doing that is writing  and allowing people to know more about me, then I think it's worth it. I never used to do personal essays until  the summer of 2022, when I went through a bad breakup and needed to get something out that I couldn't express  any other way. Therapy wasn’t helping, and neither was going out and partying. Writing was the only way that  I could mediate those parts of me and figure out what was going on.

I think I was quite shocked by the reaction to the first one I wrote because I just didn't think people would care.  At that point, I had done pop culture stuff and films, perhaps not even that much film, but certainly a lot of pop culture journalism. Seeing people be like, ‘I saw myself in that’, kind of made me realise, oh, there is something worth being honest about.

I had a really amazing experience where I was in Mile End when a woman on the train stopped me. She was like, ‘I just want you to know that my mum also died two years ago, like your mum did. A lot of your writing  has really helped me process my grief, because a lot of what you're going through is what I'm going through,  and it's good to see that someone is able to be honest about it.’ I had an aha moment as I'd sometimes wondered if I was just badgering on about this thing that happened to me, but hearing someone say it really helped them process their own grief shifted my perspective and I realised ‘oh, this is important’.

So much of your work explores really complex facets of identity: grief, body image, womanhood. When you sit down to write, are you attempting to capture your ‘whole self’ or does each piece represent a particular kind of facet you want to explore in that moment? How do you decide which aspect of your identity to prioritise in a given piece?

I think it changes. I wrote a piece about grief and dating, which were two parts of my life that I previously thought of as very separate, and then they came together unintentionally in this piece.

But there are parts of me I don't want to talk about. My friend who's also a writer, always says there are certain things she doesn't want to write about because she doesn't want people to ask her about them. I operate in that same way. Everything I write about is because I have no issue with you talking to me about it. But there are things that have happened in my life or I'm going through that I don't want to go on the internet because I just don't want a stranger commenting on it. I think that allows me to have some sort of barrier. Particularly in writing, I’m largely capped at 3,000 words which means if I can’t give full context to something, then I don’t write about it.

There's sometimes an interesting tension in cultural criticism between attachment and distance. You clearly love the films and culture you write about, but you're also incisive in your critiques. How do you navigate staying connected to the "thing" you're analysing while maintaining a critical perspective?

I think people do their favorite films and filmmakers a disservice by pretending they can't hold greater weight than they want. I don't think you're a bad fan of something if there are elements you don't like or think could  be better or don't work.

I’ve found this happening to me quite often, where I analyse something and people interpret it as criticism. I'll talk about something and people will be like, ‘Well, isn't that the point?’ and I'm like, yeah, that's exactly why  I'm talking about it. A lot of people view analysis as solely a negative thing but I think analysis can hold almost a neutral weight to it, in just being about explaining something deeper. I think I’ve found this to be something  that happens when I’m having conversations with men about film, where they’re like, ‘Oh, I don't think it was  that.’ All the while, I’m thinking that it really doesn't make a difference if I have this opinion and you don't.

I ultimately love having conversations with friends about things we disagree with because there's so much  curiosity involved in figuring out why somebody sees something differently. There are critics I love who I read their pieces and I'm like, I did not come to the same conclusion, but I'm fascinated by their mental map and their working out.

Image credit: Haaniyah Awale Angus

In your broader creative work, you also DJ. I’m wondering if that kind of creative side is ever being integrated into, or informing your writing? Do you find that they ever speak to each other, and does sound allow you to express something which writing can’t?

It's interesting because I don't write about music. There's something about the terminology that maybe frightens me a bit? I'm so familiar with film terminology, but with music, I don't want to say the wrong thing. I have,  however, always been obsessed with making mixes and playlists, spending hours curating them. I started learning to DJ and eventually playing at friends' parties and events. I wanted something different from writing and to find an outlet I don’t feel pressure over.

With DJing, I view it like math, in that it makes sense in my head and that it’s about putting things together and really seeing the fun of making something work. I love seeing how it resonates with people's bodies, seeing someone's face when you're playing something they recognise.

I also DJ a lot of Black genres like house, ghettotech, jersey club, and bounce and I spend a lot of time watching documentaries about the history of dance music. In the UK particularly, sounds which came originally from Jamaica,  transpired into DNB, Jungle, Garage, and Drill. I find seeing how stories and migration lead to what you listen to on a weekend so fascinating, and yet, it's something that people take for granted, just being what they hear and listen to casually.

Looking at the landscape of cultural journalism and film criticism right now, how are you feeling about its future, are you hopeful?

A lot of the people I know are doing things on their own, carving their own spaces in journalism, through  platforms like Substack, YouTube, or TikTok. My mutual Hannah Phifer  started writing on her own blog, no subscription, nothing. She wanted people to focus on her writing rather than over-curated engagement and I  really admired that.

We live in a time where people have such short attention spans. People don't sit with art, with film. That's why sometimes we get really bad criticism as people just aren't watching things multiple times and seeing how they feel about it. They watch something once and write a really in-depth review. I like writing from different perspectives and understanding why somebody enjoys something, even if that enjoyment isn't the same way I  feel about it.

Doomerism is very much a Gen Z, millennial thing, I understand it, but I can't hold onto it personally because it makes me feel awful. I want to hope and be optimistic.

What would you want to see more of in film criticism and cultural journalism? And what would you love to see disappear?

Nuke Rotten Tomatoes, I hate it. I really think it's done so much damage along with ‘Box Office discourse’.  That language permeating into the wider conversation around film, where people care about how much money a film made as a reflection of its value as a piece of art similarly needs to go.

Day-to-day, I don’t want to be in a conversation with someone and they’re talking about how a film making a  lot of money means it’s good. I think these feelings stem from Marvel and DC movies, where people felt embarrassed that others didn’t take them seriously so they defended them by saying ‘Well it made money’.  People should ultimately just feel more confident in their tastes, if you like something other people perceive as bad, it doesn’t make the thing itself, or you bad by any means.

Finally, what excites you about the future of film? And is there anything from past filmmaking that  you'd like to see return?

Bring back screwball comedies, we are in a dire lack of screwballs. The issue with modern rom-coms is the chemistry issue, so much of it is just fan casting instead of figuring out who actually works together. Also, not everyone in a rom-com needs to be inherently attractive.

Modern rom-coms just aren't funny. The absurdism of a rom-com, the reason you're like, ‘This is an insane story and I would never let my friend do this, but it's so romantic because it's humorous’ you don't really get  that anymore. A lot of it is way too focused on the internet, I don't want to hear anything about situationships or modern romantic terminology.

I’m also really interested to see how films reflect our current political climate. A lot were backlogged due to the strike and pandemic and I'm wondering if we're gonna get a good film about the current political situation,  because we have so many that have tried and I feel they're just still ultimately way too close to the political climate they’re trying to capture.

Image credit: Haaniyah Awale Angus