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Give up these noises 

Silence my mind 

We all have choices 

Where can I find My happy place 

Fuck me up 

ON A SPIRITUAL LEVEL

It’s the very last show of The Eras tour.

Style comes on. But something is afoot.

When Taylor reaches for the dancer’s hand he steps back.

From under the floor pops out Karlie Kloss.

They walk hand in hand together and Taylor gushes Style to her.

The crowd is a mix of excited and confused and Karlie leaves stage and the show continues. As if nothing happened.

The very last song comes on. Taylor sings, “Karlie is the girl of my dreams coming straight home to me” and Karlie joins Taylor again on stage.

They kiss and Taylor gives everyone the middle finger as they run off stage holding hands.

They are never seen again.

In her videos, Taylor has continually played with the idea of herself as a person versus as a brand. These portrayals have almost been adversarial in nature. Think about the relationship between the two life sized Anti-Hero Taylors. The hooded robot Taylor who got to exist in the world while her bare counterpart was trapped in glass. Etc.

The Fortnight video introduces similar characters but flips the script because there isn’t a me versus her dynamic anymore. Instead, there is a story about coming together.

A scene by scene breakdown:

Taylor Swift™️ is chained to a bed in a white gown with a spicy slit and garter. A faceless nurse enters walking upside down on the ceiling (a continued theme suggestive of PR games). The nurse presents “Forget Him” pills, arguably reminiscent of a dark time where the world thought they could “cure” homosexuality. After Taylor Swift™️ begrudgingly takes her dose, the nurse unchains her.

We then see Taylor Swift™️ approach a two way mirror and wipe the mask off her face, revealing face tattoos we know to be Post Malone’s in real life. This reveal is setting the scene that within this video Post Malone represents Taylor’s inner self, her true soul behind the veil of celebrity. I’ll call him True Taylor.

Next, the mask is back and we see Taylor Swift™️ walk out of the observation room and into the workspace. She goes from wearing a leggy white gown with garter to a fully covered black poet-esque dress. She isn’t dressed for voyeuristic eyes anymore, she’s dressed to work on her art. I love this light to dark transition because black can be seen as the absence of light. Fitting for a tortured poet who can’t live her truth in public with her sunny muse by her side.

Note that we don’t get to see black dress Taylor Swift™️ through the two way mirror. She exists behind the bright lights of fame, making art in a room hidden from our view. Maybe the pills numb her enough to twist the art for an audience who likes to her to be chained to a bed while they watch her suffer.

But wait Taylor Swift™️ and True Taylor are collaborating. They start work separately but their art eventually drifts out of their typewriters, combining into a white light that bursts into a rainbow. Remember how I said black light is the absence of light? Well white light is comprised of all hues on the visible light spectrum.

We know there are layers to Taylor’s music: the surface layers chock full with to red herrings for the grocery line Swifties and the deeper layers of Taylor’s truth. They both exist in the art, swirled together.

But here is where things start to feel different. We cut to True Taylor and Taylor Swift™️ away from all those faceless people - they are alone in the middle of a road. That in itself is ridiculously symbolic of being on the way to somewhere (maybe brighter days). But there’s more because they are dressed identically, laying inside Taylor’s head that is made up of their art. This scene is like bonking us on the head that these two people are one and the same.

Note: The silhouette here is from the Style video which also portrays Taylor’s inner self as a man.

Taylor Swift™️ runs to True Taylor and they embrace in the middle of the road as pages of their art float around them. In the chaos, Taylor Swift™️ reaches out to True Taylor.

Maybe this scene is suggesting the public version of Taylor is ready to embrace her real self.

Then we see Taylor Swift™️ strapped to a table, wild hair from dropping the hairpins we saw in the opening scene. The drugs aren’t working, it must be time to escalate to shock therapy. The men around her gather and there is literally a sign in the background that says “Master Control”.

But one of the men in the room making decisions for the brand is actually True Taylor, who has been there all this time.

Enough is enough when True Taylor can’t take the pain and pulls the plug on the procedure, freeing public persona Taylor from torture.

Next we see True Taylor, familiarly encased behind glass, on a phone call. Perhaps making plans while safe from the rain. Taylor Swift™️ is elevated on a pedestal, out in the storm, in her best dress FEARLESS! Credit to @rep-princess-witch who put the fearless connection together in another post.

I’ll say it again, that is the huge difference in this video compared to others. Here, Taylor Swift™️ is not an antagonist, she is ready to brave the storm.

So what does she do? She’s back in the workspace burning all the files. It’s not without emotion but it’s necessary. We then see a stoic Taylor Swift™️ with no regrets.

After burning the files she’s back in the observation room. It’s time to fight back against the voyeurs and she does so my smashing the glass between her and them. She regains her agency by squashing their ability to hide. Shes deserting her past life.

Note: We don’t see True Taylor back inside. This fight is specifically for Taylor’s public persona.

In the closing seen, we see True Taylor leave shelter, step outside into the storm, and reach for Taylor Swift™️. The person and the public persona are weathering the storm hand in hand.

'Bet I could still melt your world, argumentative, antithetical dream girl' she is directly addressing her dream girl here. She's saying she could melt the dream girl's world. Literally what else could that possibly mean?

'I used to switch out these Kens' for what? It could be she's referring to men as Kens because she plays with them like dolls, but specifically 'switch out' rather than 'play with' implies she's switched them out for something else, like another Barbie - something I've found to be a common experience among girls who like girls.

Also 'asshole outlaw' reminds me of her country roots, and country music is generally very homophobic and sexist. She used to comply by these standards and mindsets but not anymore. Now, 'don't need another metaphor, its simple enough' she doesn't need to disguise it as friendship, instead she's writing song explicitly about this dream girl who she's in love with and skipping the metaphors for other more direct references:

Like references to other songs too, like mentions of summer because of Cruel Summer with 'freedom felt like summer ... now the sun burns'. 'I snuck in through the garden gate every night that summer just to seal my fate' when the only garden gate Taylor's been seen around is Karlie's. The matching lyric: 'I'm drunk in the back of the car and I cried like a baby coming home from the bar' matches with 'I never don't cry at the bar ... I slur your name 'til someone puts me in a car' she's drunk and says 'Karlie' or 'Kar' which is mistaken for 'car'.

A New Romantics reference too, which is such a gay anthem I could write a whole other post about it. 'Like waiting for a bus that never comes' is to me a weirdly out of place lyric just like 'we wait for trains that just aren't coming'.

I'd even argue 'I heard your key turn in the door down the hallways/Is it okay? Is it you?/Or have they come to take me away?' is asking if interacting with Karlie at all is okay to do at all, if she can focus on the public drama about them actually being about her and Karlie, when all she can think about is being found out and taken away from her fame and reputation.

Then of course 'each bar plays our song nothing has ever felt so wrong' meaning 'their song' must be a popular and mainstream song to be played at bars so often, or more broadly could mean mainstream love songs in general which are mostly straight and don't feel right to her for some reason. Her friends tell her that's okay because 'love is a lie' but she knows they're only saying it to make her feel better, when that's not the real reason why 'moving on was always easy'.

Despite all the men she never really liked and the love that never felt right to her, this one person 'hits different'. You as the listener have a choice, either hear she's with her dream girl and it feels right, or that she 'just needed to meet the right guy', as straight people tell lesbians their entire lives.

via @wizard_bisan1

21 January 2024

“A variety of wild animals visiting a water fountain”