EPISODE 831: NIGHTMARES DRESSED LIKE DAYDREAMS ARE MAYBE STILL DAYDREAMS?
Also, your mother shakes it off in Hell.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Hi and welcome to Pop Culture Spirit Wow, the newsletter that, like everything else in the world, cannot help but stop from time to time to stare at the apparently never-ending wonder that is Taylor Swift (as you’ll see).
This is kind of a big week. On Wednesday the Catholic Church is beginning its “Synod on Synodality,” a very confusing name for an incredibly important international gathering of priests and lay people to advise the Pope and one another on the issues that are of deepest significance to the church around the world. I’ve written a little something on that which I’m going to post either Tuesday or Wednesday, a sort of precis with my own little spin on things.
Also, last week I discovered the Netflix TV show Sex Education, about a high school student in the UK who becomes a sort of sex and relationships counselor for his peers. Watching it has been an unexpectedly great learning experience, which I’m also hoping to write about this week.
So you can definitely expect to get your money’s worth!
(Speaking of which, if you’d like to support this newsletter so that I can continue to write about Taylor Swift, the Catholic Church and sex education all in the course of a single week, my Paypal and Venmo information is at the end of this newsletter. Thanks to everyone who has contributed in one way or another. I’m really grateful.)
So anyway, let’s get into it!
THE WOWND UP (TAYLOR’S VERSION)
As I write this, Taylor Swift is in New York attending a Jets/Chiefs game, feeding the growing rumors that she and Kansas City Chiefs tight Travis Kelce are dating, a rumor that has already seen the price of his jersey rise 400% in one week, after she attended a game at the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium. Her presence tonight at MetLife Stadium also saw the cost of tickets increase by as much as 40%.
The greatest story to emerge out of this comes from Time, which reports that as a result of Swift’s sudden appearance at football games, The Swifties are trying to understand football. “Okay, so what is a down?” one T-Swift fan asked online. Wrote another, “Do you throw the ball or run with it?”
Also in Taylor Swift news, her new concert film The Eras Tour debuts in theaters on October 13th. “We’re about to go on a little adventure together, and that adventure is going to span 17 years in pop music,” she says in the previews, like 17 years is a long time.
The Exorcist: Believer was also meant to come out on October 13th. As this is the first Exorcist film since the original to star Ellen Burstyn, and it’s the 50th anniversary of the original, this was meant to be a really big deal. Producer Jason Blum tried to do a Barbenheimer with “#Exorswift” (it’s good, right?). But when he saw no traction, he decided to move his film up a week. Wrote my good friends the genius headliners at Popverse, “Taylor Swift scared the new Exorcist movie so much it moved release dates.” (The subhead is even better.)
And finally, next month will see pop legend Barry Manilow return to Broadway as composer of the new musical Harmony. Harmony tells the true story of a popular pre-WW II German singing group that was forced to disband as a result of Adolf Hitler’s persecution of the Jews.
This weekend at the Broadway Flea Market’s Silent Auction people were invited to bid on two tickets to Harmony’s opening night and admission into the opening night party. In the end the tickets went for $7000, way more than the final bids on similar packages for the far higher profile Daniel Radcliffe/Jonathan Groff/Lindsey Mendez show Merrily We Roll Along; composer Stephen Sondheim’s final show Here We Go; and Gutenberg, starring Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells in their first show together since their massive success in Book of Mormon. In fact, the Manilow tickets raised more than those other three shows put together.
This leads to Today’s Big Theory of Reality: Swifties are Millennial Fanilows.
Here me out: Both are driven to see their hero many times over (into the 100s); they’re so excited when they see their icon on stage they scream or cry, and sing along to everything; they will pay pretty much anything for their seats; and they are obsessed with their singer’s personal life.
Also, sometimes Swifties are actually also Fanilows!
Swifties are Millennial Fanilows.
There, I said it.
Bay May vs. Tay Tay
The main big difference between “Mandy” and a Taylor Swift song is that Manilow is singing about having screwed things up, whereas Taylor’s dating songs are always about the guys who screwed things up with her. Even when she’s being truly insane, as in “Blank Space,” somehow she’s still the one you’re rooting for.
You know why we root for her? She’s the active one. The guy in this video is very pretty, but he just stands around. That makes him a very hard character to root for, even though it seems very possible that he hasn’t done anything wrong. (The turning point of the story is that she catches him texting some other woman and freaks out; but she also says she’s someone who gets drunk on jealousy, and that “boys only want love if it’s torture.” Suffice to say, she’s at the least a slightly unreliable narrator.)
In screenwriting, one of the fundamental rules is that we root for characters who make choices, and more than that who make big, bold, risky choices. In “Blank Space,” that’s entirely T-Swizzle. And as a result we root for her.
ENJOYING THE RIDE
I’ve written about Taylor a bit before. Her work tends to be about self-empowerment, falling in love or betrayal. Those last two have themselves made for a great self-sustaining career, as one album’s set of love songs become the next album’s set of brutal takedowns of the guy she had been with. (And baby, Tay Tay does not play.)
Sometimes Taylor positions herself as a big star—she’s the rich girl (as in “Blank Space”); a movie actress; an action hero; or herself.
But she tends to prefer the girl next door tropes. Sometimes quite literally:
She’s the college student who just got to campus, the little girl with a crush, the teenager who just can’t do what is expected of her because she just wants to fool around (and of course, everything is better as a result).
It’s preposterous for Swift to present herself in this way, given her epic levels of success. And it’s the exact opposite approach of that taken by fellow pop icon Beyoncé. No matter what Beyoncé is singing, she is always a queen.
And yet, the girl next door vibe still sits pretty well on Swift. Even this ongoing whatever it is with Travis Kelce actually totally fits with that fairy tale. Last week when he scored a touchdown, the camera immediately cut to Taylor.
(If you click below on “Watch on YouTube” you can see this for yourself.)
Why would you cut to Swift like that? Because it’s classic small town high school football tropes, that’s why. They’re the school’s power couple. Of course when he scores everyone’s going to look to her.
And you look in that booth—on one side she’s got other “kids” going crazy right along with her, and on the other sits Kelce’s mom. Again that’s some classic small town football archetypal imagery going on there.
I’d love to say that’s all pre-packaged at this point. Swift has made relationship drama a big part of her overall brand, and so of course she’s going to end up with someone like Kelce for a time, and use it to reinforce her more folksy persona.
But I wonder if part of the attraction of Swift at this point is precisely the fact that there’s no piercing the veil of what you see to discover who Taylor Swift truly is. In a way I’m reminded of Disneyland, where every single aspect of every ride has been thought out and designed to create an overall feeling of entrance into another world and with it, escapist comfort. When you ride the Haunted Mansion, you’re not thinking about your day job or your car or even your mortality, despite the fact that the ride is all about the dead. Rather, all the little details of the environment and story put together invite you to just let go and enjoy.
There are things about Taylor Swift that don’t exactly feel right, particularly the taste she seems to have for publicly humiliating her exes. I’m not saying any of them are not worthy of her contempt (or ours), but when that’s your go-to move again and again, and you have a platform like almost no one else in the world, I don’t know….
Still, any time I play a Taylor Swift video, those questions fade immediately, and I find myself content to just accept the world and vision of herself that she’s singing into life. I don’t know who Taylor Swift really is, or what to think about her, but who cares? Her music makes you feel good.
THE FISHBOWL
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See you Wednesday with The Synod on Understanding the Synod on Understanding Synods.
Why would anyone date Taylor Swift when all you are doing is setting yourself up to be eviscerated on her next album?