Last week was a roller coaster of a week in my household. It started with seeing One Battle After Another, which was completely overshadowed by listening to other people talk about One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson’s loose adaptation of Pynchon’s alternative history of post-60s America. Hot off this totally unique and meaningful experience, TMZ announced that Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban were separating. After 20 years, it is obvious Keith is tired of feeling like an old guy and is probably dating one of the young country singers he’s on tour with—this makes me profoundly sad. Then, here comes Taylor Swift telling me she pledges allegiance to “vibes”... we’re back on track! We’ve never been higher!
I smiled all day Friday, listening to The Life of the Showgirl on loop within the quiet of my own brain. As a middling Taylor Swift scholar, my initial reaction was that it was exactly what I had anticipated—what a critic friend with advanced listening described as a combination of “Paper Rings” and “Vigilante Shit”—but a little meaner. It’s mellow, not very loud, but it’s purposefully dumb and funny, and choruses on “The Fate of Ophelia” and “Opalite” are undeniably infectious demonstrations of Swift’s authority as a pop corporatist: she’s a fucking machine. I learned the words to “Ophelia” before lunch on Friday. Then, I went on my phone.
Last year, I wrote about Sean Baker and Anora by means of a cultural problem of hysteria: “Every new release is ‘shattering,’ ‘towering,’ ‘lifeless,’” imbuing every new release “with a power to save or condemn the medium, flattening every movie to an even playing field of heroism or atrocity.” My argument was simply that Sean Baker is less interested in “making cinema” than in “going on location and creating situations,” which is completely fine. Cinema doesn’t need to formally, historically, or ideologically mean anything to be valuable or interesting, but make no mistake that Anora is by design vapid across these vertices.
One Battle After Another does not mean anything. Double dipping in the 70s nostalgia and off-the-shelf LA reverence Anderson whipped up in his last feature, OBAA is “about” a few things: 1) Sean Penn is hilarious, 2) movies from the 70s are dope ASF if you’re a guy from the generation known as “X,” 3) women are hot. It’s not “about” the revolution or people of color—apart from Paul Thomas Anderson feeling a little weird about having biracial children. It’s a cute movie of which Sean Penn is the star, narratively, experientially, and in terms of screen time. As I wrote on Letterboxd, I was never an ugly teenage boy, so I have already forgotten it.
The Life of a Showgirl doesn’t mean anything, purposefully or extratextually. It is an average to catchy pop music album made by a pop music singer. It isn’t any dumber or spectacular or conservative or feminist than any music Taylor Swift has ever made before. It isn’t any meaner, either; in 2010, which was fifteen years ago, Taylor Swift released a very popular song calling someone way less famous than her a whore for no reason. A few years ago, she made a ten-minute version of a song about how mean Jake Gyllenhaal was to her, also fifteen years ago. When “Look What You Made Me Do” came out, everyone made fun of her for being immature. Last year, another pop singer named Charli xcx released a song about Dasha Nekrasova with the lyrics, “All coquettish in the pictures with the flash on / Worships Lana Del Rey in her AirPods.”
We’re not doing this. You can’t make stuff up. You can’t rewrite history. “Taylor Swift is friends with MAGA”—Madonna was friends with Michael Jackson and loves Israel. Paul Thomas Anderson wants to have fun and look cool. Taylor Swift wants to laugh and make money. These are not complex ideas. Charli xcx wouldn’t like you: she wants to be a famous pop star and is friends with people who seem kind of mean. That’s fine, but that’s your north star of coolness? This person? Paul Thomas Anderson isn’t hot—plenty of guys can do that, and he’s short. The “r” word is played for a big fucking laugh in his new movie: I’m not offended but I’m not laughing, either. What has happened in the last week is not what culture writing is going to be. I’m not going to let this happen.
A few months ago, Ana De Armas—Oscar nominee and the reported and sexual girlfriend to Tom Cruise—was caught liking this mean Instagram post about Cruise’s ex Nicole Kidman:
Here are the things that could have happened:
Ana De Armas is either actually dating or friends with Tom Cruise, who has told her disparaging things about Nicole Kidman, leading her to like this post, either knowing people would see it or not.
Ana De Armas was initially interested in hanging out with Tom Cruise because she already did not care for Nicole Kidman due to some event or dynamic we are not privy to. This would cause her to like such a post, as well.
Ana De Armas did not like this post, or understand how Instagram works, and someone told her to do this, for any number of reasons. Maybe Tom and Nicole don’t actually hate each other and had lunch, and they were afraid it would leak and make Nicole look bad. Maybe Nicole’s people asked Tom for this favor to make Nicole look sympathetic ahead of her separation from Urban.
People were incredulously tweeting about and reporting on this: not me. I don’t think any of these things are impossible. I don’t remember my ex from two years ago, but I know plenty of people who cannot forget their exes from a decade ago. Nicole might not even remember what made Tom Cruise so awful, or they might simply have a more complicated arrangement than we understand. It would not be hard to convince me that Tom Cruise has sex with women, either, or that he at least likes to hang out with them in what he deems to be a romantic fashion. People—with and without money and fame—are strange, and there are endless variations of how someone can live their life, how they can spend money, and the kinds of PR consulting they can contract.
When it was announced Nicole and Keith were splitting, Nicole’s team seemingly, hurriedly, sloppily got in front of it, I think reflecting how blindsided she was by Keith’s reported abandonment. People were posting about this, too, as if it’s complicated: no. Keith Urban probably started to feel old and/or irrelevant, so he probably sought affirmation of his youth and importance in young women, drugs, etc. Keith Urban, like you and Nicole Kidman, and Madonna and Taylor Swift, and me and Dasha Nekrasova, is a human being. He’s also, however, a rich guy who wants to feel dope, and Nicole is an old lady. They made a movie about this! It’s incredibly sad that even the most long-term couples cannot withstand the fact of a woman growing old. Oh, well.
I bring this up because everyone reading this, everyone with a phone, needs to learn the ways of the world, and learn to laugh: at Oscar nominee Ana De Armas, at Sean Penn, and at Taylor Swift.
Not unexpectedly, the internet’s brightest bulbs took great umbrage with three main things on Showgirl: 1) the juvenile lyrics, 2) the ideology of “CANCELED!”, and 2) that Swift is too mean to Charli xcx on “Actually Romantic.” I would describe the lyrics on Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend as juvenile, in their basic vulgarity and alien-esque pastiche. I would describe Swift’s new lyrics that cite her boyfriend’s podcast by proper noun (“New Heights of manhood / I ain’t gotta knock on wood”) or claim she’s “not a bad bitch and this isn’t savage” with two different words: Swiftian and millennial. I need you to consider that “Paper Rings” and “London Boy” came out six years ago, then that “Stay Stay Stay” (2012) and “Speak Now” (2010) are two of the worst songs ever recorded. The fake laughing and rapping on Reputation and “I come back stronger than a 90s trend” are awesome to you, but you’re drawing the line at her saying Charli xcx talking about her behind her back is “making [her] wet?” Not in my world.
Swift’s lyrics are frequently stupid, sometimes more purposefully (“best believe I’m still bejeweled”) than others (“shade never made anybody less gay”). But you cannot claim that, just because they’re more serious because she was dating a more serious guy and felt insecure and sad, that folklore and evermore are, at their cores, any less stupid than anything that came before or after.
That’s rewriting history. I’ve seen a lot of critics, upon being met with this rebuttal, claim that the lyrics are actually only a problem because Taylor Swift is 35—that, because of this fact, she shouldn’t be writing diss tracks or singing fake words like “legitly.” It was only okay because she was young. But, please, I’m begging you to be serious with yourself: the diss track in question is neither mean or the first stone. All Swift is claiming is that someone wrote a song about her—which is something that Charli xcx did, probably—that wasn’t nice, and all she’s implying is that Charli talks about Taylor behind her back to people they both know. In terms of the juvenile question: I didn’t know corniness was a federal crime. Here are some Lana Del Rey lyrics:
“Kanye West is blond and gone / ‘Life on Mars’ ain’t just a song”
“And if is this the end, I want a boyfriend / Someone to eat ice cream with, and watch television”
“There’s a name for it in Japanese, it’s called ‘Kintsugi’”
I haven’t seen anyone complain about the Ariana Grande lyrics “I’ve been drinkin’ coffee / I’ve been eating healthy,” or any Sabrina Carpenter lyric that’s ever been sung: you people loved “That’s that me, Espresso” if I recall. But saying Travis Kelce dickmatized you is out of line?
Taylor Swift is good at her job, which is to be a pop music star. But she doesn’t need to do much to manipulate the general public to like her. They, I, just like her: she’s likable. She’s done a few things wrong, ideologically and career-wise, but not very much that would reflect badly on her profession as a pop music singer. There are things about her persona that are phony or part of a larger narratives, and then there are songs where she says she’s dreaming about a “Ba$ketball hoop.”
What if there were a dork, who grew up playing with 8 mm film and came of age reading Pynchon—kind of short and unremarkable looking—who was able to become so monoculturally dope, he got Fiona Apple to date him? What if he were actually talented, too, so his aspirational persona wasn’t embarrassing to idolize? Could this happen to you? Could you become a generation-defining filmmaker vis-a-vis a sheer love of film? If you could, would Quentin Tarantino do drugs with you? Would Fiona Apple date you?
This all started because Charli xcx wrote a song about how she is jealous of Taylor Swift. I can’t relate to this, because being famous sounds absolutely awful. But it certainly sounds like a lot of you can.
once again clare appears and synthesizes everything i feel about something…i’ve been trying to explain to people that i think the album is fun and taylor is a Better Celebrity when she is dumb and a little cringe and embarrassing!!! and then everyone is like “why won’t she speak on Palestine.” please why do u expect that from her. why. i am baffled. do you not see the same taylor i do.
people being mad she talked about investing in beads on graham norton is pushing me into a rage I didn't know I was capable of