Miss Americana
Dec. 12th, 2020 08:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerContinuing with my general Taylor Swift theme this week, I watched Lana Wilson’s Miss Americana, which I’ve been meaning to see since it came out… gosh, only last January? What a long, long, long year this has been.
Anyway, this is a documentary that is a retrospective about Swift’s career to date and her growth as a person. She comments that her desire to please people was a driving force in her early career (the intoxicating experience of applause, etc), and this is a quality that’s really present in the interview clips that she shows - what’s interesting is that it’s not visible in her songs, like those served as vents for unacceptable feelings of rage, pain, jealousy, etc. Anything a girl is not supposed to express because it’s not “nice.”
Swift mentions working to “deprogram the misogyny in my brain” - “there is no such thing as a bitch, there is no such thing as a slut,” women are not one-dimensional cutouts but complicated, messy people. “We don’t want to be condemned for being multifaceted.”
And it strikes me that one way to read her body of work is that it starts with an exploration of her own multifaceted nature, and there’s been a process since then of working to extend that understanding that same emotional messiness in other people. (This documentary is pre-folklore, but I think this is really visible in folklore, which is far less autobiographical than many of Swift’s other albums - there are still songs that feel autobiographical, but also songs about exploring other people’s lives and perspectives.)
Another thing that the documentary led me to reflect on, particularly because Swift started her career so young - she was only sixteen when she hit the big time - is that when tabloids scream about female celebrities being OUT OF CONTROL!!!!, often the celebrities in question are performing totally age-appropriate figuring-themselves-out behavior.
There seems to be a cultural expectation, which hasn’t changed all that since Jane Austen was condemning teenage Lydia for being too flighty, that women should be totally grown up more or less the moment they hit sexual maturity. In fact, I think in some ways the emphasis on strong women has actually exacerbated it, because “I don’t know who I am or what I want because I am sixteen/nineteen/twenty-two” is not a particularly strong look. I realize that there’s been some attempt to redefine strong to mean real! three-dimensional! messy! But, let’s be real, if you have to actually explain that when you say strong you don’t actually MEAN strong… maybe you should just say “real, three-dimensional, messy” instead.
I also realized as I was watching this that I somehow missed Swift’s 2019 album Lover. How??? But then I realized that it came out in August 2019 when I was in the thick of writing Honeytrap and more or less living in the winter of 1959-1960, so that explains it.
Anyway, this is a documentary that is a retrospective about Swift’s career to date and her growth as a person. She comments that her desire to please people was a driving force in her early career (the intoxicating experience of applause, etc), and this is a quality that’s really present in the interview clips that she shows - what’s interesting is that it’s not visible in her songs, like those served as vents for unacceptable feelings of rage, pain, jealousy, etc. Anything a girl is not supposed to express because it’s not “nice.”
Swift mentions working to “deprogram the misogyny in my brain” - “there is no such thing as a bitch, there is no such thing as a slut,” women are not one-dimensional cutouts but complicated, messy people. “We don’t want to be condemned for being multifaceted.”
And it strikes me that one way to read her body of work is that it starts with an exploration of her own multifaceted nature, and there’s been a process since then of working to extend that understanding that same emotional messiness in other people. (This documentary is pre-folklore, but I think this is really visible in folklore, which is far less autobiographical than many of Swift’s other albums - there are still songs that feel autobiographical, but also songs about exploring other people’s lives and perspectives.)
Another thing that the documentary led me to reflect on, particularly because Swift started her career so young - she was only sixteen when she hit the big time - is that when tabloids scream about female celebrities being OUT OF CONTROL!!!!, often the celebrities in question are performing totally age-appropriate figuring-themselves-out behavior.
There seems to be a cultural expectation, which hasn’t changed all that since Jane Austen was condemning teenage Lydia for being too flighty, that women should be totally grown up more or less the moment they hit sexual maturity. In fact, I think in some ways the emphasis on strong women has actually exacerbated it, because “I don’t know who I am or what I want because I am sixteen/nineteen/twenty-two” is not a particularly strong look. I realize that there’s been some attempt to redefine strong to mean real! three-dimensional! messy! But, let’s be real, if you have to actually explain that when you say strong you don’t actually MEAN strong… maybe you should just say “real, three-dimensional, messy” instead.
I also realized as I was watching this that I somehow missed Swift’s 2019 album Lover. How??? But then I realized that it came out in August 2019 when I was in the thick of writing Honeytrap and more or less living in the winter of 1959-1960, so that explains it.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-13 12:13 pm (UTC)Considering how the tabloids treated Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears, yep...there's no way you can win as a teenage female popstar, and even if you behave perfectly the tabloids end up waiting for you to put a foot out of line. Because tabloids love success but they love someone successful failing even harder.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-13 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-14 06:45 pm (UTC)Like, if one of the Jonas Brothers had gone on a coke-and-alcohol bender at the height of their teeniebopper fame, I think there would've been some shock and outrage from the tabloids.
(Of course, when male popstars who started with the clean nice boy image then grow up and rebel against it, there's also a good chance that other magazines will approve, because they'd finally be behaving like A Proper Man.)