Devin Glenn - Supplemental Reponse #4

            Let me begin by acknowledging that while it is true that I have loved Taylor Swift’s music for well over a decade, I do not believe my feelings for Swift limit my ability to objectively analyze her career in an academic setting. The same cannot be said, it would seem, about Myles McNutt. It becomes clear early on in his piece what he thinks about Swift. This is evidenced by his dismissive language, biased sources, and glaring oversights. Although I agree with his reading of the “Voice Memos” Swift includes on the deluxe edition of 1989 as examples of post-feminist paratexts, McNutt then attempts to reflect his analysis of this one component of Swift’s oeuvre onto her entire career and star image.

As is commonly acknowledged in popular discourse, Taylor Swift is what some have coined a “capitalist queen.” She has recently been criticized for producing and marketing an exorbitant amount of vinyl variants for new albums including Midnights, 1989 (TV), and The Tortured Poets Department. This is, beyond a doubt, a moneymaking scheme. However, Swift’s capitalistic proclivities in this regard do not automatically signify an unaltered engagement with postfeminism. Such a reading lacks nuance and glosses over instances in which Swift has sought to enact quantifiable change when it comes to gendered hierarchies in the music industry.

The first thing I find suspect about McNutt’s article is the fact that he chooses to write about a cultural object that emerged six years prior to his publication, but pays little attention to more contemporary events that might contradict his overarching claim. Only once does he bring up Swift’s fight to reclaim her master recordings from Scooter Braun, and even then, his choice of words is disparaging—classifying this effort as a “public frustration” that merely “echo[es]” Swift’s “ability to negotiate her resistance” (86). One sentence is as far as McNutt acknowledges this pivotal shift in Swift’s career. Additionally, McNutt neglects to recognize that within her initial statement on the matter, Swift concludes by writing, “Hopefully, young artists or kids with musical dreams will read this and learn about how to better protect themselves in a negotiation. You deserve to own the art you make.” In ending her post in this manner, Swift pushes past the personal to encourage up-and-coming artists to contest the patriarchal structures in the music industry (especially present within initial contracts) which young musicians might otherwise be willing to overlook in order to get their big break. How is this public admonishment motivated by postfeminist or even neoliberal values? How does it “[fail] to…extend to larger systemic changes outside that artist’s place within the industry” (76)? Artists such as Olivia Rodrigo have reported fighting for more equitable contracts as a direct result of Swift’s words. This is just one example of Swift’s voice igniting change beyond the boundaries of her own career.

While I appreciate how McNutt describes Swift’s authority as an musician and its ties to her status as a singer-songwriter in the country genre, which was then solidified in the first formative years of her career, I was surprised that he didn’t dive deeper into the “performative intimacy” (75) and accessibility Swift and her team have incorporated into her star image through social media shoutouts via Taylor Nation (Swift’s official fanbase account), personal invites to Secret Sessions and/or tour meet-and-greets, Swiftmas, and comments/reposts by Taylor herself (at least ostensibly) on TikTok, to name a few. Furthermore, I was disappointed by McNutt’s disproportional utilization of negative responses to Swift throughout his paper. Drawing from an odd assortment of biased music critics, tabloid writers, and Twitter users, McNutt cherry-picks (much like he does when focusing on certain events in Swift’s career while glossing over others) overtly negative public sentiments about Swift in an effort to validate his claims instead of painting an entire picture. For instance, when McNutt quotes Affuso when she criticizes Swift for supporting the January 2017 women’s march from afar but not attending the event itself, both authors neglect to account for a host of factors that might have gone into this decision including security concerns and Swift potentially not wanting to pull media attention away from the main cause. Moreover, both Genie Lauren’s tweet as well as McNutt’s decision to feature it in his article felt completely out of place. Lauren emphatically writes, “…the only time [Swift] bothered to break her silence is when shit happened to her,” (McNutt 87) but isn’t that precisely what the #MeToo movement was meant to do—to allow women the chance to voice their personal experiences with sexual assault? It’s difficult to identify what Lauren’s and McNutt’s criticism is here.

Although it is certainly true that Taylor Swift’s star image is constructed as an omniscient Mastermind who personally oversees every aspect of her artistry—from writing her own music, to directing her own music videos (planting potential Easter Eggs all along the way)—, when in reality she has a massive team helping to make everything she does possible, is this not also the case with countless other artists? My question would be, why single Swift out? Academics and critics alike are well-aware of the auteur model and its limitations. Why act as if Swift is doing something cheap by playing into that Long-Lived organizational system of artistic production and marketing when film directors, fashion designers, and visual artists do it regularly? While I understand that criticality is a major component of serious analysis, I also believe an author has a responsibility to their readers to remain as objective as possible while exploring their topic of choice. Not only did McNutt come across as subjective in his article, but I felt he either lacked or consciously withheld critical understanding of Swift’s career as well as an in-depth mode of engagement that could effectively separate Taylor Swift the person from Taylor Swift the brand. Had McNutt focused solely on the 1989 “Voice Memos,” as his introduction led me as a reader to believe he would, and expounded upon it in its specific cultural moment instead of attempting to project it into the future, the scope of his article could have included a more honed in level of organization and nuance. While some may criticize “acafans” for being too positively invested in their central objects, one thing is for certain: It is undeniable that such authors bring with them a wealth of insider information and understanding that those on The Outside either do not have access to or do not want to have access to.