“On the Right Side of History”: Taylor Swift’s Miss Americana and the Gauntlet of Cultural Liberalism

“I need you to forgive me for doing this… I need to be on the right side of history.”

–– Taylor Swift, Miss Americana

Published on the online art criticism journal Cæsura on May 11, 2020.

The culture industry is running on a marathon of apologies. In the post-reality-TV world of celebrity confessionals, specials by Aziz Ansari, Kevin Hart and, most recently, Pete Davidson, all build on the singular message: “I made mistakes but now I know better.” Miss Americana, the Taylor Swift biopic on Netflix, is a prime example of pop-culture apologia bound up in a coming-of-age tale. The film follows Swift as she leaves behind her small-town girl naivete to become today’s progressive archetype of the “independent woman,” a stand-in for the good conscience of cultural liberals.

As with all pop hits, Swift’s music holds the promise of wish fulfillment for the listener. Swift is a prolific songstress and among the only record-breaking pop stars of the last decade listed as the sole writer of her music. From her early country ballads to her current synth-pop hits, her lyrics feature the perils of young romance, life after failed relationships, and a flurry of teenage daydreams. Her songs tell us that Swift’s listener — a young woman, between the ages of 18 and 24 — fears heartbreak but still wishes to be reckless and free in order to experience the world anew. Her music videos showcase aesthetic references from classic pop stars and TV personalities, including Françoise Hardy and Lucille Ball, to modern cultural icons, like Missy Elliot and Black Swan’s Natalie Portman. Distinct from lyrical and aesthetic considerations, Swift’s public persona — her “brand” — is of an internally conflicted but outwardly courageous young woman. While this brand makes Swift’s music marketable, it is ultimately a concession to the common mass delusion about self-empowerment in a declining society. As long as Swift embodies the post-#MeToo female icon, vulnerability in her lyrics is accepted as a normal part of growing up, rather than rejected as an expression of personal failure or pathos. Thanks to this social persona, the romantic insecurities and youthful hopes of women around the globe can be taken out for a spin in the safety of a pop song. In this respect, Swift's public persona is largely auxiliary to her primary job as a musician. It is this persona — and not Swift’s music — which is the subject of Miss Americana. 

The Netflix biopic is part of Swift’s brand overhaul, her final transition from a quiet family girl from small-town America into an international pop sensation as the world’s top-earning entertainer. The film suggests that in post-Trump America, this rise to superstardom requires winning over the “woke” urban elite. The coming-of-age story unfolds through a series of challenges to male figures in Swift’s life: Kanye West, the former DJ and radio personality David Mueller and, finally, Swift’s father, the head of her management team. Each confrontation with male authority in the film prompts her to reassess her values until she completes her realignment alongside the liberal establishment. 

First, Swift wants to set the record straight after the latest run-in with the infamous and MAGA-loving Kanye West. This is the second West-related incident of her career, after the 2009 MTV Awards, when he rushed the stage in the middle of Swift’s acceptance speech to declare Beyoncé the more deserving winner. Seven years later, West recalled the event in his track Famous, from his seventh studio album The Life of Pablo (2016), and took credit for Swift’s rise to fame:

… For all my Southside niggas that know me best

I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex

Why? I made that bitch famous…  

I made that bitch famous…

Swift appealed to her fanbase on Twitter against the slander. But contrary to her public accusations that West used her name without permission, a video released by Kim Kardashian-West showed Swift giving her consent in an amiable phone call. [1] The video caused a ruthless blowback against Swift. A disgruntled blogosphere targeted the young singer for playing the victim. In the divisive months leading to Trump’s election, Swift became a scapegoat for the liberal public, who blamed entitled, white American women for Trump’s rise to the presidency. Swift’s silence around the presidential campaign did not help, nor did 4chan’s praise for the “Aryan princess” — even Camille Paglia called her an “obnoxious Nazi Barbie.” Anti-Swift sentiment spread like wildfire. The public called her a snake (🐍) and declared the end of her career. #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty became the top trending hashtag on Twitter, “Do you know how many people have to [tweet] that they hate you for that to happen?” she asks in the film. The episode led to a one-year hiatus and a mediocre angry record, which Pitchfork rightly dismissed as a “half-assed airing of grievances” and New York Magazine described as “the worst music of her career.”

But that was 2016 and this is 2020, an election year and a prime opportunity for reinvention. Now Swift presents herself as the anti-Kanye West: an outspoken supporter for the Democratic agenda and a champion for the queer community. In the four-year interim, Swift positioned herself as an LGBTQ+ ally. She made generous donations to New York’s historic Stonewall Inn and the Tennessee Equality Project, and performed with Hayley Kiyoko at the Ally Coalition concert in 2018. Last year, Swift solidified her pop-activist credentials by dropping in for a surprise performance at the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. Despite warnings by her managing team, captured in Miss Americana, an emboldened Swift is shown taking back control of her public image. Swift used social media to denounce Tennessee Republican senators Marsha Blackburn and Lamar Alexander, leading to over 65,000 new registered voters in one day. Her conviction, we are told, is based on an innate feeling of knowing that being a Christian means to afford equal opportunity to all people, regardless of gender and sexual orientation. The film highlights her departure from the figures of authority in her immediate managing circle, including her father. At a critical point, we see a teary-eyed Swift facing the paternal authority and delivering a staggering piece of propaganda for the cameras: “I need you to forgive me for doing this… I need to be on the right side of history.” Progress, viewers are told, is in the hands of Democratic advocates.

Miss Americana comes at the end of Swift’s brand transformation and was produced to settle the question, once and for all, regarding her moral authenticity. In confessional mode, she apologizes for her silence during the 2016 elections, when she refused to publicly support a candidate (read: Hillary Clinton). The skeptics of her reinvented persona argued that her move into the anti-Trump, liberal urban circles — aided by none other than Brooklyn’s Democratic darling Lena Dunham — was nothing but dishonest opportunism. This vocal minority accused Swift of “queer baiting,” that is, turning queer politics into “fashion” in order to gain supporters who identify with the “rainbow wave.” In response to these accusations, Swift’s biopic shows that her heartfelt political commitment is rooted in her personal experience. In this appeal to emotion, political sensibilities are authenticated through their connection to one’s own trauma. By this logic, a dedication to human rights is “authentic” only if anchored in the aesthetics of individual suffering. 

The final confrontation with male authority is Swift’s civil case against former DJ David Mueller, who groped Swift at a radio guest appearance in 2013. Miss Americana highlights this experience as the true catalyst behind Swift’s new-found activism and places her as part of the emerging #MeToo movement. In 2017, Mueller was convicted for sexual assault and Swift told thousands of fans that her aim had been to “help those whose voices should also be heard.” But Ms. Swift knows well that “voices” won’t be heard without risky career moves, lawyers, and hefty legal fees, which is why she gave $250,000 to the singer Kesha to help her finance the sexual-assault suit against her former producer. Of course, many women who fear losing their jobs, defaulting on their mortgages, and being unable to feed their families are not so lucky.

Rebranding herself as a pop-activist has paid off for Swift. The film captures how establishment queers have embraced Swift, showing us a behind-the-scenes exchange between her and Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness, where he counsels her to promote the Equality Act. “Anything you need,” Swift responds. Her instantly-viral You Need to Calm Down (2019) music video featured Laverne Cox, Ellen Degenres, Ru Paul, and Billy Porter — a veritable who’s-who of the queer liberal establishment. Veteran Ru Girls flanked Swift, including her drag doppelganger, Jade Jolie, whom an aging John Travolta confused for Swift at the MTV awards, where she won Video of the Year as well as the relatively new “Video for Good” award, legitimating her status as an LGBTQ+ ally and anti-Trump pop-activist. In her acceptance speech, Swift reminded viewers to sign her online petition in support of the Equality Act, repeating her call to action at the end of her video. Miss Americana tells the viewer that Swift is good because she is an activist, not because she is a singer. She is a good person because she is not like the Trump supporters in her video.

“As long as Swift embodies the post-#MeToo female icon, vulnerability in her lyrics is accepted as a normal part of growing up, rather than rejected as an expression of personal failure or pathos. Thanks to this social persona, the romantic insecurities and youthful hopes of women around the globe can be taken out for a spin in the safety of a pop song.”

2009 MTV Video Music Awards, when Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift's award acceptance speech.

Taylor Swift making a surprise appearance at Jack Antonoff’s annual Ally Coalition benefit concert, where she joined Hayley Kiyoko, 6 December 2018.

Trump supporters pictured in Swift’s You Need to Calm Down (2019) music video.

We are experiencing the final retreat of liberal politics into aesthetic content — what Walter Benjamin called the aestheticization of politics. Taylor Swift’s career trajectory is case in point. Swift’s move from country singer to international pop star in post-Trump America has led her through the gauntlet of cultural liberalism. Her rise to superstardom forced her to realign her priorities, away from the dreams of small-town America and toward the political values of cynical city-dwellers, for whom legal justice outweighs the universal desire for freedom. Far from marginal, the queer establishment that has now embraced Swift is a part of the status quo. As the current American presidential campaign shows, the “queer vote” is courted by both capitalist parties. Indeed, social progress for gay Americans over the last half-century has taken us from the Lavender Scare to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, that is, from systematic attacks against queer politicians to an openly-gay Democratic candidate vying for the White House. Unfortunately, because this social progress was made under the leadership of capitalist politicians, it has also led to the integration of queer culture into the administered society.

Some may read this article and feel nostalgic for the Madonna years, when the poster child for cultural transgression gave us some of the most iconic pop music of the twentieth century. But even this history is mobilized to justify the status quo today. Most recently, in an episode of Ru Paul’s Drag Race, contestants gave homage to the queen of pop and learned about her advocacy for gay rights during the AIDS crisis, alongside groups like ACT UP. What becomes of this history as queer Americans are integrated into the political establishment? A clue may be found in last week’s guest judge appearance by Democratic Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who proudly claimed “True Blue” as her favorite Madonna song — get it? Was she voicing a song preference or giving instruction to viewers heading to the voting booths? The episode aired in the same week Bernie Sanders stepped down from the presidential race and announced his support for Joe Biden. Surely, those 65,000 voters that Swift helped register in one day will get no apologies from the culture industry for AOC’s acquiescence to defeat.

Throughout the culture wars of the 1980s and 90s, Madonna broke social taboos through artistic provocations by quoting from queer life and the avant-garde, freely borrowing from ballroom culture and Robert Mapplethorpe’s erotica. She was not the first to take inspiration from gay subcultures. Despite their marginalized role in society, throughout history, queer people have had an enormous impact on American culture as a whole. Today, their political marginalization is undergoing a transformation, with both Republican and Democratic parties offering a seat at the table for those lucky queer “representatives” who are aligned with the parties’ interests. This shift has created confusion in both politics and culture. Political bodies like the Democratic LGBTQ Caucus has given a portion of queer Americans a legitimate claim over the nation’s resources. This model of neoliberal integration pins a part of the American population against another through a celebration of “particularity” and offers “communities” a piece of the pie by adopting token spokespeople into political office. [2] But today’s cultural “liberalism” sacrifices even more than political independence from the ruling elite. What Miss Americana shows is that all facets of culture are in danger of being liquidated into establishment propaganda. Pop icons are to be judged on the basis of their ethnic and moral “authenticity”: “Is Kanye black enough?” “Is Swift a true queer ally?” This political posturing is a cover-up for a lack of aesthetic judgment and the sad state of cultural experience. Unfortunately, in these barbaric times, even Madonna is not safe.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on the far left, as guest judge on Ru Paul’s Drag Race, episode 7, “Madonna: The Unauthorized Rusical,” which aired on April 10, 2020, just two days after Bernie dropped out of the presidential race.

Photograph from Madonna’s The Sex Book, released on on Oct. 21, 1992, one day after its companion album “Erotica.” Photographs by Steven Meisel Studio and Fabien Baron, published by Warner Books, Maverick and Callaway.

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[1] An unedited version of the recording has clamored attention in last month showing that Mrs. West’s recording was in fact a selective cut of the original, and that Swift did not agree to being called a “bitch” on Kanye’s song.

[2] For a similar phenomenon in the case of black politics, see Adolph Reed Jr’s “Black particularity reconsidered” (1979).