#multayverse

Or the social media comments about Shane and Rose that are a literal copy/paste of Swifties gushing about Tayvis?

Reminding myself that Taylor Swift does not own disco balls or the word “ME” in capital letters… but talk to the wall, Harry Styles’ album announcement is the most New Romantics thing ever. 🪩

And the color of her ME! outfit matches the background in Olivia’s photo - and also the color of the outfit that Taylor wore to the iHeartRadio awards.

Very interesting considering the show was first announced using the Eras Tour transition from Don’t Blame Me to Look What You Made Me Do….

The most obvious parallel was having each room dedicated to a different color - a bright red library and staircase, light blue drawing room, gray dining room, Edgar’s green velvet bedroom, Isabella’s purple pleated bedroom, and Catherine’s pink bedroom made out of her own skin. The use of red is particularly prominent, which is interesting since that color can symbolize elite power structures and selling your soul.

The dining room features a dollhouse, which is an exact replica of the main house. Isabella even made a voodoo doll of Catherine to live inside it, using hair that she collected from Catherine’s hairbrush. Isabella showed an obsession with Catherine (which didn’t exist in the book) that makes me think of the way she’s often played with to sell a fairytale. All the elaborate gowns added to that feeling, like swapping outfits on a paper doll. Casting Margot Robbie as the lead adds an extra layer since she also played Barbie. It shows the darker side of Barbie’s dreamhouse and Taylor Swift in the Lover house (or the Ivy house, hiding an affair from her husband).

The gardens are also intriguing. In some places they’re very manicured with twisting hedges and outdoor tea parties, evoking Alice in Wonderland. While in other scenes they’re a bit more overgrown with ivy and tree swings like in the Secret Garden. The stairs up to the drawing room (i.e., the light blue room) even had a fishbowl on each side like the 1989 room.

The production designer (Suzie Davies) and Margot Robbie both said that it was designed so that “anything living is caged in something.” There are high walls and hedges encircling the property, and all the creatures are trapped in some way (in fishbowls, a birdcage, a lamb inside a display case, a fish suspended in jelly).

As for the Wuthering Heights house, everything is brutalist and cold, but there was some evocative imagery there too, like a giant crack through the house and the chessboard mastermind floor. (There was also an elaborate chessboard in the drawing room at Thrushcross Grange).

[Spoiler]

Anyone familiar with the story knows that Catherine dies halfway through the book after going mad from having to choose between Edgar (high society, comfort) and Heathcliff (wild, untamed, raw emotion). The movie made this scene much more macabre than it was in the book, as she’s literally closed inside walls made out of her own skin. It was Barbie dying in her dream house. It was Taylor trapped inside her own skin, dying behind the facade of the showgirl.

Uh oh, looks like the Rep snake has gotten loose inside Tumblr. 🐍