kontextmaschine:

the-grey-tribe:

kontextmaschine:

the-grey-tribe:

Free Britney

I have been filtering every tumblr post that says “Taylor Swift”, but I am stopping this for a bit in case somebody replies something interesting.

I have notices that people on tumblr and twitter really don’t like to separate art from the artist, for example the artist Adele, or Taylor Swift. Everything has to be about the person Taylor Swift, and the kabbalistic implications of pieces of the lyrics. It’s not enough for people to like or not like her music. It’s all about Taylor Swift existing in the public eye, criticism is criticism of her person, her life.

When Adele lost weight, the twitter meltdowns were at least fun to point and laugh at.

With Taylor Swift, even the posts that criticise the way the media exploit or paint Taylor Swift feel painfully parasocial. Taylor Swift is this persona, this media product, and somehow every time a new song or album comes out, her fans defend Taylor Swift, the misunderstood all-American girl, the brave lesbian, or whatever she is now. Her songs are so catchy, everybody just reads the lyrics on genius.com and posts them to tumblr for deep exegesis. Why don’t you just upload mp3s or embed YouTube videos like a normal person?

The whole “Free Britney” movement creeped me the hell out, too. There was a group of people that followed Britney Spears and her fight to get out of the public eye again. Like, didn’t you guys see the irony? Did you feel conflicted? Did you say yes, it is with a heavy heart, yada yada…

Or did you think you were one fo the good ones?

So anyway: I didn’t watch Blonde. I am not going to. It’s on Netflix. But what turned me off were all the rave reviews. It’s a biopic, not a documentary, but everybody is playing fast and loose with historicity. It’s fictionalised. It’s heightened reality. Fuck you!

You can’t have it both ways! You can’t make a movie about how Marilyn Monroe was exploited and had no privacy, and then make a fictionalised movie about Marilyn Monroe that re-enacts those moments. Own your voyeurism, or don’t. I don’t need a movie to show Marilyn Monroe sucking JFK’s dick, and I definitely don’t need a film review telling me how stunning and brave this director is for including that. Or maybe the dick sucking was implied. I didn’t watch Blonde.

I don’t need a movie about the personal life of some superstar, but I definitely don’t need dishonest fans, promoters, late night hosts, and film reviewers to tell me I am empowering, you are exploiting, he is The Male Gaze.

I’d rather watch Some Like It Hot again. It’s good.

Taylor Swift is

• A lyricist
• A maestro
• A celebrity
• A singer

In approximately that order. She isn’t really an instrumentalist – does she even still play guitar? – and was never an instrumental arranger, but coming back to that “maestro” bit her introduction to the media world was through a Nashville tradition that never really bought into a rockist valorization of completely self-made music, but one where all the same the buck ultimately stopped with the star’s team. Which doesn’t always mean the star themselves – this was effectively what the Colonel was to Elvis – but all indications are that she herself serves this role in ultimately being the one to decide on her co-writers, collaborators, media relations people, stylists, etc.

Taylor Swift the actual human is very much the author of Taylor Swift the celebrity. Judging by her lyrics she indeed has some issues arising from all this, but all indications are in her capacity as a maestro she arranges things to make this manageable in her capacity as a celebrity/singer, learning from mentors and the experience of forerunners – she takes morale breaks in the course of tours to relax and touch base with the network of allies and peers she’s cultivated, etc.

@flakmaniak

Are you proud of yourself? He dodged the question. No mention of the music. Just more of the same exact shit I was describing there.

Well if that’s too meta and not object-level enough for you I’ve sure talked plenty about the lyricism in it’s own right, if between those it’s not… what question do you even want answered here? Why I don’t upload the videos? No one needs me to introduce Taylor Swift’s current singles to them.

This is interesting to me. As an Old, and able to recognize precisely one of Taylor Swift’s songs, I tend to put these conversations into the same context about other celebrities, whether that’s Marilyn Monroe, Mel Gibson or Martha Stewart, to name three vastly different examples.

Celebrities at that level of fame become an income-generating business for many many people, for good or bad, and it appears to be very difficult to hang on to one’s own personality and personal space in that situation. The cult of worshippers is a part of the deal, and what keeps that bizarre machine running.

Stewart set about creating her persona deliberately, building a corporate image and corporation that is frankly still working well for her. Gibson, despite his attempts to sabotage his own career, looks like he’s being propped up and rehabilitated by the vast amount of people with a financial stake in making sure he can’t.

Monroe of course predates even these two ancients (and the past is indeed a foreign country) but in some ways could parallel Spears in that she likely had less say in her own role in her career, with opportunists and hangers-on using her for their own benefit. Which is why I followed her case and was happy to see her win it, even though I don’t know much about her.

My point is that it seems celebrity itself is something of a Faustian bargain. Those who attain it give up something of themselves to be larger than life, willingly or not. Almost every celebrity’s image is something of a major business in itself, with dependents, employees and contracts galore, and managing a business based on (and revolving around) one’s personality and daily actions sounds like a fucking nightmare, no matter how good someone is, or is at it.