It's not that kind of support, exactly. I'll explain.
I must have been feeling a little annoyed by all the hype surrounding Taylor Swift's arrival in Australia, which occurred a few days ago, because on Thursday I made my third post on Facebook about it in the space of a couple weeks. Two were about advertised impacts on train travel within the city due to the concert, and one wondered whether she timed the trip to avoid the Super Bowl on the off chance she'd be dating someone who'd be playing in it. (Little did I know that the trip was not timed so fortuitously, as she had already been in Japan and had to fly back to be at the game.)
Here's the one I posted on Thursday, just to get a sense of the tone that was neither nasty toward Swift nor, you will agree, supportive:
"So today riding home there were actual announcements on the train about the big concerts (Taylor Swift) this weekend and about the resulting effects on train service. However, the Melbourne Cricket Grounds, where she is playing, are frequently at capacity for sporting events and other concerts, without such announcements. Just because she's TAYLOR SWIFT, does that mean that the logistics of getting to and from the venue are any different than for other capacity events at the MCG? Does it being TAYLOR SWIFT cause a single person to become more than one person? In actual fact, many of these people will be smaller than your average cricket fan."
First of all, the premise of the post was actually wrong. I later learned that in addition to all the ticket-holding fans -- a record 96,000 and change -- there was expected to be crowds congregating outside who didn't hold tickets but who just wanted to bask in the proximal glow. Hey, you never know when you might catch a glimpse of her.
But the thing that gave me pause was a long response from one of my female Facebook friends, which I will not include in total but rather excerpts. It didn't call me out per se, like I was the root of the problem, but it wouldn't have run on for several hundred words if I were not meant to take something away from it. Which I did.
Anyway, here are some choice parts of the response:
"I feel like there’s this negativity towards how much girls and women are excited about and enjoying going to see her in concert and my take is that it comes from how - under patriarchy - we are told to not take up space or require men to make accommodations for us the way we accommodate and give space to men."
"To me, if a man really wants equality and for women to be able to take up space and express who they are then they should be flexible and not complain because it not so subtly sends a message to the women in their lives to be less and be smaller."
"How many women in the world don’t care at all about sports but every weekend get their homes ready, plan, shop, buy, cook food for “the game,” don the jersey, etc. all in service of their husband and his friends and their sons interest in a sports team?"
Amen to all that.
I immediately credited her with the excellence of her points and tried to explain that the post was intended as humor about infrastructure more than any judgment against Taylor Swift, which I do think is true, though I understand how it may have come off differently.
I proceeded to tell this woman that I regularly try to convince my wife that Swift has good songs and her music is valuable. I know, I know, it's like being called a racist and then naming all the Black friends you have. But it is true that in our house, it's the man who feels a bit sheepish about this inclination to give Taylor Swift space and the woman who dislikes her and other "divas" who came before her (such as Madonna) on principle. (Hey, she was raised on punk rock, what do you want from her.)
I also told this respondent that I had considered watching Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour this weekend but was worried my wife would frown on it.
Well, Saturday night I made good on my word, so that any little bean counter who happened to see my $19.89 rental fee would know that I, too, want to give Taylor and her fans space.
In truth, I had considered watching this in time for my 2023 rankings, but I couldn't quite stomach the premium rental fee, adjusted cleverly to mirror the year of Swift's birth as well as the name of one of her albums. As you can see from the previous paragraph, that price has not yet come down. However, I also thought, "If not now, when Taylor Swift is actually in Melbourne, and actually physically in the process of giving this performance within 15 kilometers of my house, then when?"
And, as I said, it's a mea culpa for contributing some small amount to marginalizing this nearly unprecedented worldwide phenomenon. (The precedents my friend listed were Elvis and the Beatles. That tells you something. But in those cases, heterosexual hormones were a big factor as well. Here, not so much, making this display of undying affection potentially unprecedented, full stop.)
I'll tell you something, though: It's sort of hard to watch a concert when you are only familiar with about a third of the songs, and two-thirds of those don't come until hour three of the movie. (I think it was about 2:40 when released to theaters, but there were four extra song performances added here at the end, kicking it up to an even three hours in total.)
While finding myself extremely impressed with the feats of staging and costume changing that The Eras Tour required, I think you need the ability to sing along with and love the songs to really be transported by a concert experience -- and perhaps that is even more true on film. In the arena, the absolute intensity of the vibe can take you places you won't go at home, but on your couch, you are inevitably distracted by your phone and by the fact that there isn't a plot to sink you teeth into.
On this particular Saturday night, when I'd been out for most of the day on a day trip, I viewed the lack of a plot to be a bonus, especially with the three-hour running time. But I also wasn't in a position to fully disengage, because then I'd fall asleep and miss five songs and not really know if there was something in one of those songs that would unlock the experience for me on the whole.
It's kind of hard to rate this sort of experience. I ended up going with 3.5 stars on Letterboxd, a recognition mostly of the difficulty of the feat they were trying to pull off, Swift's inexhaustible energy and devotion to her fans, and the fact that I do, indeed, quite like about eight songs I ended up hearing. Incidentally, this usually prominent rating for any movie represents a comically small percentage of the star ratings on Letterboxd for The Eras Tour. Just four percent of us (5,621) gave it 3.5 stars. You might not be surprised to learn that 68% (108,018) gave it five stars, with the next two healthiest percentages being 4.5 and 4 stars. I guess Swifties use Letterboxd too.
As a movie itself, of course there isn't usually anything all that special to an experience structured as just filming songs that occurred consecutively on one night (or a small number of nights). I'd say something like Stop Making Sense is the exception to this rule, but most concert movies exist in service of just giving the songs their best showcase. (I remember people also had good things to say about that other Jonathan Demme concert movie involving Justin Timberlake, so maybe I should watch that at some point.)
The movie was filmed over a number of nights on the final stop of the tour, at LA's Sofi Stadium, and it does have a bit more structure than some concert movies might, as the songs she performed were grouped according to albums. Those album titles would flash up on the screen, so fans got a sense of the era of Swift music they were about to hear before they began hearing it. At first I thought these were actual song names, because both of the first two albums also feature a song by the same name as the album -- or at least a song that says the album name among the lyrics. As it went I got what they were doing, though.
Look, I've always found Swift's songs catchy, but few of the ones I'd never heard did anything for me. This is not something unique to Taylor Swift, of course. For one, big radio hits are big radio hits precisely because they have something propulsive and toe-tapping about them that distinguishes them from the album's filler tracks. But big radio hits have also been played to us so many times that we know them back to front, and that is one of the things you are looking for in a concert. Do I enjoy tapping my toe to "Shake It Off" because it is an inherently good song or because I've probably heard it a hundred times? I reckon a little of both.
I couldn't help, though, thinking that there isn't anything so uniquely charismatic about Swift as a personality or exceptional about her as a songwriter that would elevate her above others in her position who have topped out at a half or less of the fan support that Swift enjoys. It seems to me that reaching her height in a period of maximum social media saturation has something to do with it, as does the fact that she seems more accessible to your average fan than forbears who have been more intentionally confrontational with their choices, such as Madonna and Lady Gaga. I'm not sure there is ever a perfect formula for determining why two artists who offer about the same thing can have wildly different career trajectories.
Oh, and as for my wife's feelings on all this? She just teased me a bit. My younger son brought his device back into the room to put it on charge while I was watching, and my wife joked to him "Don't worry, he's still Daddy, even if he is watching Taylor Swift."
I wouldn't have given Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour 3.5 stars if I weren't glad I watched it. And a lot of the songs were in my head last night as I slept, as the concert definitely infiltrated my dreams in a way that feels scrambled and difficult to remember in the morning.
More than my experience of the film itself, though, I'm glad I contributed some small amount to proving I'm not an obstacle to the amount of space women and girls deserve to take up in the world.
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