When Kanye West, at the recent MTV Video Music Awards, grabbed Taylor Swift’s microphone during her acceptance speech for Best Video of the Year by a Female Artist, and pronounced the now infamous words – “Yo Taylor, I’m real happy for you and I’mma let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time, OF ALL TIME!!” – there was immediate shock and astonishment, from both initial viewers and those who caught the outburst later on entertainment news and as it went viral on the internet. This shock was of course fed by the entertainment media, always so desperate to invest the bland narcissism of celebrity culture with the veneer of drama that they must have received this shockingly genuine moment of tension and excitement as a godsend. At the same time, the controversy (dubbed, inevitably, “Kanyegate”) inspired an outrageously popular internet meme, playing upon the absurd logic of West’s outburst by placing it in ever more ridiculous contexts.

Between the hypocritical outrage of the entertainment media and the withering irony of amateur satirists; between terror and pathos – this of course is the position Kanye West has for years occupied in the popular consciousness, a position further reinforced by the Kanyegate episode. For West is not so much a tragic figure as he is a pathetic imitation of one: calling upon a whole Hollywood mythology of unhappy, uncomfortable stars, who shine both because and in spite of this supposed, persistently iterated gap between the conformist demands of celebrity and their own complex, stubborn, irrepressible individuality – from Garbo to Monty Clift to Kurt Cobain – he nonetheless fails to achieve their grandeur. Perversely, this failure occurs not so much because of any lack of tragedy in West’s personal history or in any impression that he is a ‘fake’; rather, West occupies this farcical position within popular culture precisely because he is ‘too real’, because he is foolish enough to take his position and the celebrity culture within which he exists seriously. His outburst at the VMAs was both preposterous and shocking not because of its disruption to the normal proceedings (such dramatic disruptions and spectacles are of course often a carefully constructed element of celebrity events these days, from Britney Spears and Madonna’s kiss at the 2003 VMAs to Janet Jackson’s superbowl ‘wardrobe malfunction’), but because he was simple-minded enough to take the award and the entire event seriously, to think that the aesthetic worth and massive popularity of Beyonce’s ‘Single Ladies’ meant that it ‘deserved’ the VMA, as if such categories meant anything at all, and as if it were worth getting angry and upset about.

Contrary to the conventional understanding of celebrity culture’s inwardness and narcissism, what the Kanyegate episode revealed was not the exaggerated feeling of self-worth amongst celebrities and their hangers-on, the conviction that who they are and what they do is important to the world; instead it revealed just how content this celebrity world is to be the focus of world attention, the recipient of disgusting amounts of money, etc., while knowing that it is all a joke, that it amounts to nothing, helps no one and is an entirely narcissistic exercise. Fool enough to somehow not be in on the joke, Kanye West offered a momentary revelation with his outburst, even as, perhaps inadvertently, he also reinforced his own celebrity-function as the marginal, disturbed, uncomfortable star, the nouveau Garbo or Cobain – a function that is ultimately conservative and repressive, serving as it does to aid the idea that celebrities are ‘real people,’ and that the alternatives to cultural hegemony can be found within the mainstream, as if this realm encapsulates all varieties of human life, even those that oppose the establishment (in this sense the rhetoric of celebrity culture can be seen as a microcosm of capitalist-democratic rhetoric as a whole, which similarly uses this alibi of ‘diversity’ to disclaim its hegemonic power). It is the curse of these Kanye-like figures that with every act of self-affirmation and ‘individuality’ they, despite their intentions, serve to reinforce this mainstream hegemony by delineating and coding the ‘alternative space’ within the mainstream, pushing genuinely alternative voices further and further out of earshot.

It was fitting that the victim of Kanye’s terror on that fateful night should have been Taylor Swift, the teenage country-pop star whose video for “You Belong With Me” won the award in question. Fitting, not only because the obvious contrast between her fresh-faced, innocent demeanour and Kanye’s sudden emotional ferocity encouraged us to interpret the event as a kind of savage, violent attack upon the defenceless Swift (this reading, largely implicit in mainstream media reports, offered its most explicit manifestation in the hundreds of sensationally racist Twitter postings by individuals fearing that the incident revealed how, in the Obama age, black men no longer ‘know their place’ in American society); but fitting also because Swift occupies a celebrity-function that is weirdly similar to West’s, despite their obvious differences. Like West, Swift is a celebrity whose image of genuineness and individuality has been central to her success: we are constantly reminded of the fact that she writes her own songs, that they always start off with just her and her guitar, that she is only a teenager, that she emerged from small-town America, etc. Whereas West offers an innocuous, pathetic version of human darkness, tragedy and complexity, Swift presents us with the goodness and sweetness of American life, and the old story – so obviously fallacious that it is almost touching to see it revitalized today, as if anyone could possibly still believe in it – that talent and good-natured perseverance will lead to success. Like West, Swift occupies a celebrity image that would seem to be becoming increasingly outdated, and yet her popularity seems to have soared precisely because of this anachronicity.

But how is this image managed? What kind of effects does the incredibly powerful – and tightly controlled – impression of realness and simplicity have on Swift’s (typically very young) fans? How does this image co-exist with the obvious presence of pop cultural archetypes and the reaffirmation of dominant ideological forces in Swift’s songs and videos? It is not enough to simply be cynical, to say knowingly that what Swift offers is simply illusory, a lie that must be pierced so that we can move on to having real experiences with other, alternative cultural voices – as if any art-object could possibly exist independent of ideology. Rather, we ought to take a lesson from Kanye West, and learn that the most radical position to take is to take the celebrity image-repertoire seriously, to measure its functionings and its effects as if it really mattered, and to care about how people live their lives in negotiation with these images, these fantasies.

On cynicism, Slavoj Zizek has written:

The position of the cynic is that he alone holds some piece of terrible, unvarnished wisdom. The paradigmatic cynic tells you privately, in a confidential low-key voice: “But don’t you get it that it is all really about (money/power/sex), that all high principles and values are just empty phrases which count for nothing?” What the cynics don’t see is their own naivety, the naivety of their cynical wisdom that ignores the power of illusions.

In the conversation that follows, we offer reflections – ‘serious’ and ‘playful’ – on Taylor Swift’s music videos, from her debut “Tim McGraw” to the now famous “You Belong With Me” to the brand-new “Fifteen.” In so doing, we attempt to take seriously the “power of illusions” of which Zizek writes, and to offer an important alternative to the dead-end of paradigmatic cynicism in the analysis of popular culture. Taking lessons both from the Roland Barthes of Mythologies and the Barthes of Camera Lucida (as well as from Kanye West), we seek both to investigate the ideological workings of Swift’s videos and to see from inside the illusion, to experience the identification it asks of us. It is only from here that true analysis can occur, and only from an experience of the power of illusions that we can hold out the hope of harnessing their potential for progressive ends.

- Conall Cash

TIM MCGRAW

Conall Cash: Taylor’s first video was for “Tim McGraw.” The song is a peculiar play on the ‘remembering lost love’ ballad form, so that instead of there being two temporal planes (the present plane of remembering, and the past space of that prior happiness) here there are three – there’s Taylor in the present, then there’s the remembered shared history, and then there’s a projected future, Taylor’s wish that the boy will come to think of their past relationship in the way she wants him to. There’s this weird willing of the boy to metonymize and even fetishize, to have pieces of Taylor’s clothing stand in for the history of their relationship; the song is motivated by an idea of the ‘responsibility of forms,’ a need to define and delimit the meaning of things, these contingencies like the little black dress and the Chevy truck.

The music video form is of course ideally suited to this kind of work, and it’s used cleverly here – we have the three temporal planes, with Taylor in the present, lying on the grass with a tape recorder (we are left to wonder if this machine is playing her favourite Tim McGraw song to her, or if it is recording her voice while she sings, as it were, to the boy); the desired future of the boy, driving along the road alone, hearing a song on the radio, and having the appropriate reaction to it; and, at certain special moments usually occurring around the chorus, that privileged space of past romantic fulfillment comes up, with Taylor and the boy running around the fields, being-in-love.

Sam Kaplan: I’m not sure, but I think this is the only Taylor Swift video where we see her “really in love”—unlike the “Love Story” video, in which the love is a “fantasy” that ends, returning Taylor to her “real life”; or various other songs, where love is alluded to, hoped for, remembered, but never explicitly depicted within the diegesis of the video, like it is here. Combined with the bonus interview from the deluxe edition of her first album, where she explains that she wrote “Tim McGraw” during her freshman year in high school, about a real relationship, with a real boy, this produces a strong reality effect: we, the privileged viewers, get to see Taylor Swift in love. Somehow, paradoxically, the video’s slick camerawork, slow motion, oversaturated color just make this effect stronger: I know very well that what I’m watching is an expensively produced music video, but I nonetheless can’t stop myself from feeling that I’m seeing the “real Taylor” here. The feeling I get from the scenes with her and the boy is almost too powerful to bear.

“Tim McGraw” shares a curious quality with another Taylor Swift song, “Our Song,” which is the way it breaks the fourth wall—the way the song, despite at first seeming “real,” becomes, within its own plot, exactly what it is: a text. “You said the way my blue eyes shined put those Georgia stars to shame that night, I said that’s a lie”—this could be the first line of any song. But as “Tim McGraw” progresses, we learn that its lyrics aren’t just the musings of a lovelorn teenager but, within the song’s admittedly fictional world, the words of a letter that the “Tim McGraw” Taylor is writing to the “Tim McGraw” boy she dated all summer. This is a tough balancing act for a songwriter to pull off, to ensure that the fictional letter within the song overlaps with the song’s lyrics without the whole thing seeming clunky, and here I think Taylor pulls it off.

OUR SONG

Kathleen Richards: Ahhhh…I wanted to talk about that similarity that you bring up between “Our Song” and “Tim McGraw” where the lyrics of the song are actually imagined lines from notes or letters. “Our Song” takes it one step further by making the lyrics not only the text of the note but the text of itself (at the end of “Our Song”, Taylor writes the song she has just sung).

This is possibly my favorite Taylor Swift video. She looks so pretty in all the scenes but I like the contrast between the Taylor on stage and Taylor sitting on the porch…it’s like she was deliberately easing her audience into coming to terms with the fact that she was becoming more of a pop artist than a country. I guess the way she looks in the opening phone part is a little more questionable. Someone on the youtube comments noted that she “looks prettyer with straight hair,” but the first time I showed this video to chris he said that she looked too sexy and it was kind of gross.

I think the first time I saw this video might have been at Sam’s house…

CC: I’ve never really understood “Our Song”, it’s always been the Taylor Swift song people talk about, but for some reason I’ve never liked it that much. The video sort of bothers me too, she’s so excessively dolled up (‘pornstar-ish’ I think was Sam’s word when we watched it once), and there’s more emphasis on her constantly changing wardrobe than anything else. I do like those bits where she’s in the red dress on the bed of flowers. The self-reflexive shift at the end that you guys mention, where she begins writing the song we’ve just heard, is quite clever, but unlike “Tim McGraw” the video doesn’t do anything to represent this.

TEARDROPS ON MY GUITAR

CC: “Teardrops” can kind of be seen as a precursor to what has become Taylor’s most famous video, “You Belong With Me” – the same concept (the unrequited high school crush), the same use of short scenes to conjure the high school movie genre, the back-and-forth between the illustrative quality of these scenes (often quite literally acting out the lyrics) and the present space of Taylor on the bed, singing to the camera. The titular teardrops are obviously meant to have a kind of rhetorical force as emanations of tender human emotion in the terrifyingly plastic world of the video, but this is weirdly disappointing – when Taylor finally lets a tear fall near the end of the video, it’s barely discernible as separate from her make-up, as anything other than a part of her ensemble. The song’s a little boring too.

SK: Taylor looks a little weird, really airburshed or something or else she has a ton of makeup on. The lip gloss really hammers home the high school-ness of this video for me. Seriously, who wears lip gloss above the age of like 16? I agree with Conall about the teardrops. Taylor’s face at the beginning when that guy tells her about that other girl reminds me of when Kanye took her mic.

KR: There is an outside chance that someone above the age of 16 would wear lip gloss, but there is no way that anyone above the age of 12 would wear rhinestones on their face. What’s up with that? Also, why does she have to have the guitar in bed with her. If they’re going to be that literal why doesn’t the tear drop actually land on the guitar? This video’s just too over the top and I don’t think Taylor is an over the top person.

PICTURE TO BURN

CC: This is a classic Taylor video, taking a detail from the song lyrics and literalizing it in a played-out scene, constructing a light narrative out of it that we move in and out of throughout the video. The final reveal is particularly notable – after a whole video in which Taylor lets loose her pyromaniac fantasies, burning up everything associated with this lousy ex-boyfriend, we return to the opening scene of Taylor and her friend in the car, and learn that it has all been a daydream; Taylor says “you know what… I’m over it,” and they drive off. We know she’s not really over it though, just putting on a brave face, and as if to remind us of that, Taylor drops the burning picture of her and the boy onto the ground as she drives away – this small inflammation is seen as a more socially acceptable form of vengeful aggression than the fantasies played out earlier in the video, yet lingering here is the acknowledgement that it’s all fire, that fire can spread, and that there is never an entirely settled separation between full-blown fantasy and its manifestation in ‘acceptable’ acts of social deviancy.

KR: the end where the boyfriend comes home and the house is all messed up is just like the since u been gone video. it’s cool because taylor’s blonde so the new girlfriend is a brunette but kelly clarkson is a brunette so the new girlfriend in her video is blonde. the blonde vs. brunette logic also applies to that kelly pickler video with taylor in it.

taylor’s a pretty bad actress. the intro/exit scenes are pretty awkward.

CC: wait what kelly pickler video??

KR: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd7l7_D0y-k

CC: Actually the You Belong With Me video uses the blonde/brunette dichotomy in a similar way… the brunette is hyper-sexualized and jealous and domineering, the blonde is cute and kind and “really knows/understands” the boy. Though I guess in the kelly pickler the brunette is less sexualized, more maternal actually.

KR: oh yeah the blonde brunette thing in you belong with me is even better because they’re both taylor!

SHOULD’VE SAID NO

CC: it’s not a music video per se, just a live performance that became the official video clip for the song, but it’s pretty interesting anyway.

SK: man i love when taylor dresses like this. she’s such a convincing rock star. don’t think i like the brief male dance part though, or that she’s wearing a dress now

KR: haha this video is funny. One time I made chris watch all the taylor swift videos on my on demand with me and this was one of them. We cracked up so hard when they ripped her clothes off…we watched it like ten times in slow motion.

CC: yeah that happened at the concert when i saw her, except she had a shiny gold dress on underneath instead of black

KR: 

SK: wow that cover is nuts

KR: i like that cover because she’s watching it on on demand too…i feel like digital cable made this particular live video popular.

CC: That cover is pretty interesting, and also the comments on it – the recurrent cry of, ‘you don’t have a boyfriend, you’re ugly/buck-toothed/etc’. It illustrates something about when a female expression of anger is permissible (in Taylor’s performance) and when it is not (in this girl’s cover version). Taylor is obviously more attractive and a better singer and has an expensively choreographed performance to support her; but more specifically there’s something off-putting about this girl’s position, alone in what is presumably her bedroom, imitating a popstar’s performance of the cheated girlfriend. There’s a real spectre of ‘boyfriendlessness’ about this girl, she’s so young and awkward and whatever, and the idea that this kind of female expression could occur without the conventional narrative of the boyfriend and the other girl (a narrative Taylor performs in her songs and her videos so often), that this girl has a certain being that she clumsily tries to call into existence through this identification with Taylor’s performance, is somehow shocking.

Specifically I guess I should add that this is particularly notable in the context of a song that is really all about love/relationships as a kind of exchange of goods – by committing an error (the double negative of not saying “no”), the boy commits a kind of violation of this exchange, and so loses his share of the profit – “You should’ve said no, and you might still have me.” This girl’s cover, in the way she (in her looks, her voice, her demeanour) fails to resemble a ‘winning,’ questions the entire ethos underpinning the song’s attitude towards sex/love/relationships.

BEAUTIFUL EYES

SK: It seems like there are two threads running through Taylor’s videos, the thread of “fantasy”—”Love Story,” “Tim McGraw,” etc.—where she enacts or at least describes the narratives from her songs, and the thread of “reality,” where the videos are presented “documentary”-style—”I’m Only Me When I’m with You,” “The Best Day, “etc. “Beautiful Eyes” is another “documentary” video (it seems like they only do them for the songs that aren’t huge hits, which makes sense I guess), seemingly comprising actual documentation of her 18th birthday.

In the beginning, we hear Taylor talking to someone on the phone as her make up is being done—the “documentary” here revealing the production of the “fantasy.” The background noise is really great, and the “behind-the-scenes” feel of the shot gives it a pretty powerful sense of authenticity.

Most of the video takes place at Taylor’s birthday party. Overall, it creates a strange paradox of sorts. On the one hand, this video is literally “documentary,” documenting the party, its attendees, the goings-on. On the other hand, there are plenty of shots of Taylor getting ready for the party, putting on make-up, getting her hair done, etc. Thus, while the video presents an actual scene from Taylor’s life, a slice of reality, presumably without the “fantasy” of her “normal” music videos, we also are forced to acknowledge how the party itself is “produced” as an event for the camera. Other shots of guests’ cameras heighten this effect, as do the editors’ decision to include shots that reveal boom mics, camerapeople, etc.

Finally, the video seems to apply this critique to Taylor’s entire life—or, at least, her “life” as constructed as a narrative for her career. We see footage of a slide show that seems to be occurring at the party, and from these shots there are often cuts to Taylor’s eyes (typically synced with the song’s lyrics). I found this cut particularly compelling. What is Taylor thinking as she watches this photomontage of her life in front of hundreds of guests celebrating her 18th birthday, her successes, her newfound riches (she gets a pink pickup truck as a present)? What does she make of the harnessing of her personal narrative to further her fame?

This video, while acknowledging the reality effect of documentary-style camerawork and editing, powerfully critiques that technique and makes it difficult for us to accept such filmmaking in her other similar videos as evidence that we are really being given a window into Taylor’s personal life.

CC: This is another of those behind-the-scenes clips showing us ‘the real Taylor,’ like The Best Day and I’m Only Me When I’m With You. I don’t really like this as much as those others, I feel like I’m being pushed a little too hard into the ‘lustral bath of innocence‘ or whatever. It’s particularly bizarre how a song about the ‘beautiful eyes’ of Taylor’s love-object has a video where the titular eyes become Taylor’s own, with all the emphasis we have on her visage… It recalls the repeated line in Tim McGraw – “You said the way my blue eyes shined put those Georgia stars to shame that night, I said ‘That’s a lie,’” – where Taylor indirectly alludes to her own beauty, claiming not to be referring to herself in so narcissistic a way when she in fact is.

SK: wow conall we had really different reactions to this one

CC: hmm well yeah i like your interpretation. somehow i felt though that making us aware of the presence of the camera, of how manufactured the party was, etc., only pushed the veneer of innocence all the more intently upon me.

LOVE STORY

CC: To begin: Joyce famously ended Ulysses with Molly’s declaration, “yes” – which Joyce described as “the female word” that he said indicated “acquiescence and the end of all resistance.” In Love Story the “yes” is used in a similar way, as a willing-to-acquiescence – an acquiescence both to the conventions of love, the love story, gender normativity, etc., but also more broadly to narrative itself – it is through the “yes” that the story itself becomes possible, that all stories become possible. The video is constructed around representing these same concerns.

SK: ok yeah that’s good, i agree

KR: i’m kinda sad that you ruined the ending of ulysses for me

CC: sorry

CC: what if we talk about the costumes?

KR: ohh in the making of video, a big bug gets on taylors dress and she FREAKS OUT

SK: i really want to see that

CC: that sounds funny

KR: it’s pretty funny. she makes that guy kill it for her

WHITE HORSE

CC: ok wait let’s move on to the next song. what’s next? the best day?

SK: white horse

SK: i hate white horse

KR: yeahhh

KR: whtie horse sucks!!!

CC: alright we can just skip to you belong with me

CC: yeah white horse sux

SK: ok yeah let’s do you belogn w me

YOU BELONG WITH ME

SK: i love this t-shirt she’s wearing at the beginning, with all the signatures on it

SK: and the glasses, of course

KR: i bet that’s a t shirt she really had from high school

SK: yeahhhh!!! wow it’s the real taylor

KR: i like that moment when she sings into the hairbrush

SK: wait what did it say on the t-shirt? junior something?

KR: junior class

CC: so, this became Taylor’s most famous video because of the VMAs and Kanye-gate. it’s also kind of her most representative video, the high school setting, the blonde/brunette dichotomy, the unrequited love triangle thing

SK: wouldn’t she have had to write that note backwards for him to be able to read it? or am i confused?

KR: you are confused

KR: that’s with mirrors

CC: I love how she’s able to perform all these different roles, yet the reality effect of the scenes where she’s sad and shy and demure is still so strong

CC: yeah that doesn’t make sense about writing backwards

KR: there’s a good part in the making of video where they try to film that guy catching a football. but he sucks at football so he can’t catch it, and it takes a really long time

SK: god i tried to make it hd and now it’s like freezing

KR: wait so when she is in front of the mirror: she is like a hippy girl and then a goth girl… but the third and fourth ones, what is that supposed to be? she just looks bad

CC: yeah i don’t know, i think she’s just meant to be a “misfit” or whatever in those two. It’s like she’s just inhabiting a sequence of defined “outcast” types, it doesn’t even matter which as long as the point is made that she’s “not like” the cheerleader girl, which is to say she’s deep, complex, human, etc.

SK: ok my internet has ground to a halt

KR: oh wait did you guys see what kanye said about this video in his apology?

SK: no what’d he say?

KR: I’M SOOOOO SORRY TO TAYLOR SWIFT AND HER FANS AND HER MOM. I SPOKE TO HER MOTHER RIGHT AFTER AND SHE SAID THE SAME THING MY MOTHER WOULD’VE SAID. SHE IS VERY TALENTED! I LIKE THE LYRICS ABOUT BEING A CHEERLEADER AND SHE’S IN THE BLEACHERS! …………………… I’M IN THE WRONG FOR GOING ON STAGE AND TAKING AWAY FROM HER MOMENT!…………….. BEYONCE’S VIDEO WAS THE BEST OF THIS DECADE!!! I’M SORRY TO MY FANS IF I LET YOU GUYS DOWN!!!!! I’M SORRY TO MY FRIENDS AT MTV. I WILL APOLOGIZE TO TAYLOR 2MRW. WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD!!!! EVERYBODY WANNA BOOOOO ME BUT I’M A FAN OF REAL POP CULTURE!!! NO DISRESPECT BUT WE WATCHIN’ THE SHOW AT THE CRIB RIGHT NOW CAUSE…. WELL YOU KNOW!!!! I’M STILL HAPPY FOR TAYLOR!!!! BOOOYAAWWW!!!! YOU ARE VERY TALENTED!!!!! I GAVE MY AWARDS TO OUTKAST WHEN THEY DESERVED IT OVER ME… THAT’S WHAT IT IS!!!! I’M NOT CRAZY YALL, I’M JUST REAL. SORRY FOR THAT!!! I REALLY FEEL BAD FOR TAYLOR AND I’M SINCERELY SORRY!!! MUCH RESPECT!!!!!

SK: i love kanye

CC: oh yeah i had read that before. i love how even when he’s apologising he still says “Beyonce’s video was the best of this decade!”

CC: So there’s obviously plenty that could be said about the role of the notes they write to communicate with each other. They allow for a certain kind of communication that can’t be achieved in speech, clearly enough – Taylor feels like she can “really talk to him” in a way she can’t within the socially coded world of the school. But then at the end they come to have a significance that’s more than communicative, they become performative, with the exchange of “I love you’s”. It reminds me a little of Stendhal and the Chartreuse de Parme, the letters being slowly, painstakingly exchanged between Fabrice in his cell and the girl living across from the prison.

CC: so do you guys think this video is better than single ladies?

SK: i mean it’s obviously better than single ladies, come on

KR: i feel like when music videos use narrative this heavily they limit their ability to age well

SK: but this is going to be a classic forever!

KR: hmmm will it?

CC: i guess the whole idea of videos with narratives is something one associates with the 80s a lot, or i do anyway. i don’t think this’ll be a classic forever – i think kanye’s right in indicating that this isn’t a “classic” video in the way single ladies is. Taylor doesn’t have that classic, timeless, classy quality, but in a way that makes her all the more of-the-moment, because everything about her is so tied to her youth and the idea of her innocence and whatever

KR: yeah i guess they’re just not very comparable

SK: i don’t know i don’t see how this could age badly

THE BEST DAY

SK: this 30-second beginning is amazing, with no music – how can you doubt anything about the next four minutes after seeing this?

CC: exactly

SK: it’s weird to hear the adult taylor singing and see pictures of baby taylor

CC: god i love this song so much

KR: yeah this is the besssst song

SK: it’s weird, i’m trying to imagine how taylor wrote these lyrics to somehow embody things she might have been feeling as a kid

SK: it’s funny, i have the option of watching this in hd, but that seems so inappropriate

CC: yeah true you definitely want to maintain the lofi aesthetic

SK: that part at like 1:25 where the screen goes black for a second… why would they keep that in? i mean i know why – but it’s still pretty great

KR: awww the part where she runs to her dad

KR: ok well i’m going

SK: ok bye

KR: it was nice talking to you guys! good luck with the rest

SK: the one part that seems false is where taylor is playing the guitar – as if they’re trying to actually line up the image with the song

CC: i don’t mind that part, it’s obviously “fake” because it’s a video of her performing, probably for like a talent contest or something, but i think the fakeness is apparent enough that it doesn’t seem problematic to me

SK: wow i totally forgot about this part with the video

CC: yeah that part’s great

SK: It’s amazing, it’s like hearing the song for the first time, you think that there’s no way that video could actually exist, like it must be some kind of “winter garden” video, that you could never actually see. And then to actually see it, in the middle of the video, right where you would most expect it, is almost too much. Although in a way it seems like maybe it’s not the video she’s talking about, or she describes it wrong or something. I mean at first I just assumed it would have to be that video… but where’s her dad?

CC: yeah there’s definitely a weird disconnect between the video we see and what’s described in the song

SK: but the fact that there’s a video that even remotely matches what she’s saying makes it basically undoubtable

CC: and there is the paintset

SK: i mean yeah… it doesn’t look like she’s in the kitchen though. The paintset itself is just supposed to completely support the video, but i don’t know if it does.

SK: ok what’s the next one?

CC: um, we can do i’m only me when i’m with you next. That’s wrong chronologically, but whatever

SK: ok hold on i’m trying to make this facebook album of taylor swift rephotographs

I’M ONLY ME WHEN I’M WITH YOU

CC: This video’s an interesting complement to The Best Day. Again it’s one of those “real”/documentary videos where attention is brought to the fact that we’re watching home videos, but here we have both Taylor the fun, nice girl, and Taylor the professional – the most significant work the video seems to be doing is to make these two personae one. The shots of her in concert, for instance, really emphasize the business-like quality of the performance, there’s a kind of toughness and confidence to Taylor that’s different from what we get elsewhere. But through the kinetic editing of the clip this stage persona is also swept up in all the other stuff, the fun holidaying with friends stuff – like we’re getting “the whole person”.

SK: this video is weird because it really tries to show you what it’s like to be a touring musician

CC: yeah, it’s like “The Load-Out”

SK: which definitely undermines the taylor swift aura – seeing all her concerts blend together into one film clip…

CC: it’s funny how there are some of the same clips that are in the best day

SK: yeah i don’t know what else to say about it – it’s like it’s not made for us

CC: so, not as intensely ‘fascinating’ a video as The Best Day, but perhaps that’s fitting for the song, it’s really great but it’s also a more conventional rock song in its writing and production than her others, and that’s sort of what we get in the video, the whirlwind life of a budding rock star (who’s still a little girl at heart).

FIFTEEN

CC: This video’s really interesting, I like it in many ways but it’s also a sign of the rise to prominence of certain aspects of Taylor’s persona that I don’t like as much. There’s the whole “role model” thing, and the whole manner of presenting Taylor in these beautified close-ups can be a little much at times. But I like the concept, high school as a memory, a ghostly place that Taylor walks through in her mind. She’s grown up and understands things better now, but still, she’ll always be that 15 year-old girl on her first day at high school.

SK: it reminds me of our song in terms of the fantastical nature of the mise en scene

CC: i guess i really love those close-ups actually

SK: it seems too fake, like she’s overacting

CC: yeah i agree. hmm the ending really sucks

SK: like the way she shifts her eyes when she says “and then you’re on your very first date”

CC: yeah, and not only shifts her eyes, but kind of swoons

SK: overall, despite a lot of visual complexity, i think the narrative and the concept is almost too simple. it’s really superficial.

CC: the whole thing’s too “educational”

SK: i mean and that’s a problem with this song, not just with the video. it’s like white horse.

CC: yeah true, but somehow it doesn’t bother me when i just listen to the song

SK: and the way the background changes to match the mood, it’s way too melodramatic

SK: whoa i did not see this part at the end coming. i actually like this part the most and i like the very beginning, with the photograph

CC: I don’t like the way it presents Taylor as the matriarch, like she’s learnt all this stuff and can advise others, while at the same time acknowledging that “all girls have to go through the same thing,” that these romances and meeting boys and becoming best friends are just “what happens,” and Taylor has the wisdom to see the eternality of it all.

SK: i agree

CC: but i mean i’m saying that specifically about the ending

SK: oh, well i think that can describe the whole video/song

CC: yeah but the ending explicitly adds that whole dimension of the cyclical and the eternal, which is what bothers me mostly

SK: yeah i mean it should have started with that part, and just been another high school video and not had all the fantasy parts. But then it would have just been the same as her other videos i guess

CC: i don’t know, i like how there’s that shift, that it’s not just another high school video – and it’s not entirely fantasy, it’s also a kind of lived-in memory, she re-enacts these past events in her mind. But yeah overall i’m ambivalent.

SK: yeah. you gonna edit all this into something reasonably coherent?

CC: i’ll try. it’s so long, and a lot of it is not really relevant

SK: yeah well the tough part is figuring out just how much irrelevant stuff to include

CC: yeah exactly. maybe i’ll include this

CC: lol

SK: definitely. this should be the ending

CC: yeah. i had the best day with you today.

SK: yeah you too

CC: the end

CC: this guy next to me is skyping i think

SK: eve is skyping me again

Taylor Swift is touring Melbourne in February 2010.

[Kathleen Richards has a bachelors in English from Southern Illinois University. She is currently a graduate student in Comparative Literature at University of Georgia.]

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[Sam Kaplan studies film and art history at Haverford College.]

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