I was in middle school when Taylor Swift began whispering fairy tales in my ear.
“Fearless,” her second album, dropped when I was 11 — filled with stories of unrequited crushes and Shakespearean romance and knights in shining armor. On “Speak Now,” when I was 13, there were sweeping kisses in the rain, dragons to fight, kingdoms to save.
Swift peddled escapism, and I was an eager customer. Why deal with the mundane reality of adolescence when, with the click of an iPod Nano, I could be in a world where the girl gets the guy? It was catnip to an adolescent.
It’s that girl I was then, the one still sold on summer love under the Georgia stars, who wanted to see “Miss Americana,” which premiered on Friday. Lana Wilson’s Netflix documentary follows Swift through the past couple of years, from the “Reputation” era — Swift’s pop dark horse of a sixth album — to the creation of “Lover,” her latest (and much fluffier) work, released in August 2019.
I never used to care much about what she was like offstage. I was wrapped up in her lyrics, more concerned about the stories than who was telling them.
But over the years, doubts about Swift — her authenticity, her motivations — had crept in. The songs and the singer are one and the same, something I didn’t give much thought to until I was older — and I wasn’t sure if I could still appreciate one without fully understanding the other.
I wanted to look behind the curtain, to get some clarity on whether a public figure I’d grown up supporting was as questionable and “calculated” as the tabloids had made her out to be. I just wasn’t sure if I’d like what I saw.
My concerns were the ones you’ve undoubtedly heard elsewhere: How genuine was Swift’s newfound interest in political commentary? Or her sudden foray into vocal L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy via a colorful, over-the-top music video? What kept her from speaking up before?
Were the whirlwind fantasies I’d bought into — in the lyrics, and in the story of a hopeless small-town romantic who’d worked her way up the Billboard charts — all a facade? (Listen, when you’ve dated a Jonas Brother and a Kennedy, as Swift has, you’ve leveled up from hopeless romantic territory. I don’t make the rules.)
Part of this shift, of course, is just that I grew up. The fairy tales gave way to more tangible fears: navigating high school, getting into college, finding a job. Somewhere along the way, daydreaming about boys throwing rocks at my window didn’t seem like such a sustainable priority anymore.
I also outgrew the blind loyalty that many of Swift’s fans adopted early. Ten years ago, I didn’t care that much about Taylor Swift’s so-called deafening silence, as the meme had it, on every issue under the sun. But as I grew closer to voting age, I started thinking more critically: What are the implications of someone having a massive platform and not making use of it?
I started watching “Miss Americana” certain of what I would see: some songwriting behind the scenes, Swift clapping back over negative media coverage, a few shots of Meredith and Olivia and Benjamin, Swift’s cats. (The film definitely delivered on the feline front. But no mention, thankfully, of “Cats.”)
All of those boxes were checked, including a particularly cringe-worthy scene of Swift enthusiastically writing “Me!,” the first single from “Lover” and objectively — as in, my completely subjective opinion, but one that everyone should share — the album’s worst track.
But for every moment I knew was coming, there was another that took me by surprise. The one thing I didn’t expect was how genuine the film would feel, the sympathy it would dredge up for me. It rekindled a connection to Swift as a person, beyond my nostalgia for her early albums, that I haven’t felt in a long time.
I say this fully aware that I was watching a one-sided argument: The documentary solely focuses on how Swift sees herself, which primarily seems to be as a victim. But even with my guard up, there’s an unavoidable honesty about “Miss Americana” that broke through my skepticism.
Behind the curtain were raw admissions that left me mourning for the easy, girl-next-door life Swift used to sing about but can never return to. There were conversations about trying to keep an eating disorder at bay, about sexual assault and searching for justice from a place of privilege, about a man breaking into her apartment and sleeping in her bed.
My questions about her abrupt shift into politics and advocacy were answered, too, with Swift’s heartfelt pleas to her team that she be on the “right side of history” by publicly backing two Tennessee Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections. Before, Swift had avoided topics that could alienate members of her fan base — a lingering fear, she points out in the film, from the backlash the Dixie Chicks faced after criticizing President George W. Bush.
I’ve long tried to reconcile my sentimentality for my childhood soundtrack with my reluctance to embrace the woman who created it. With this film, with these scenes, I’m starting to fill in some of those blanks that were causing my internal disconnect.
I’ve seen Swift perform live once, in 2011 on the Atlanta stop of her “Speak Now” tour. There was a moment during “Love Story,” one of her earliest hits, when a soaring balcony lifted her high above the arena. For a few minutes, she was floating on a different plane than the rest of us mere mortals. She was untouchable.
“Miss Americana” makes one thing clear: Swift certainly isn’t untouchable. And now, for a rare moment, she’s understandable. For a faraway fan starting to come back into the fold, that’s worth much more.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
