Why Do We Care About Taylor Swift?
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2016-03-11T23:49:15-08:00
When my friend Aaron’s picture with Taylor Swift was posted on Facebook, I was beyond shocked. After asking Aaron about it, I learned that he had attended a secret fan party at Swift's house in Los Angeles. To hang out and take a proper photo with a global music icon at her own house is virtually unfathomable before Taylor Swift. Even today, Swift remains one of the very few artists, if not the only one, who takes the initiative to plan something like this. This makes me realize how a star could construct an image as her fans' true friend, and how this impacts her public image. In fact, Swift seems to have a natural way of rendering herself as especially relatable and akin to her fans. Her image communicates a sense of 'ordinariness.' Besides being her fans' best friend, Swift is the queen of pop (and country) music, having won numerous Grammy’s and sold millions of records. Her many relationships with celebrities, romantic or friendship-based, reflects her own celebrity status, which contradicts her ordinariness. Her ability and audacity to stand up to corporations like Apple and Spotify confirms her star and business power; her role as a feminist role model solidifies her unique status in the music community.
Whether we like it or not, Swift is perhaps today’s biggest pop star globally and one of the most powerful forces in the music industry. But then again, she’s also your best friend.
Richard Dyer’s concept of stars continually managing contradictions in their images can be used as a framework to analyze the Taylor Swift phenomenon. In Stars, Dyer claims, "star images function crucially in relation to contradiction within and between ideologies, which they seek various to 'manage' and resolve" (Dyer 34). The way that a particular star handles contradictions within his or her own persona has implications in contradictions of ideologies in a culture.
In order to exercise her power and expand her fandom, Swift consistently manages to remain relatable and ordinary as the fan’s true friend as well as stand up and carry herself confidently as the diva of the music world. It is important to distinguish this contradiction from Dyer's discussion on the contradiction between "concerning the star-as-ordinary and star-as-special," which mainly explores the effect of consumption and success on a star's lifestyles (Dyer 43). My argument focuses on the contradictions as facilitated by Swift's delicate relationship with social media, which have more to do with her personality than lifestyle.
