#hi taylor swift side of tumblr this is my single contribution

[laiostoudenn]

taylor swift - loml

[stargirlswiftie]

Dear Taylor,

hiiiiiii i’m lateisha (aka teesh!) 

and i’m from AUSTRALIA. 💚💛💚💛💚💛

You’ve been apart of my life for 10 years now. Crazy right?!??! 

I looked like this

when i first started supporting you. 

and now 

i look like this!

IT’S BEEN 120 months, 3650 days since our journey begun!!!!

I was in year two when i came across you and now i’m half way through my 2nd last year of high school before i graduate. You’ve been by my side for every step of the way and i’d like to thank you for that. When i got bullied, when my parents got divorced and when i lost my pops, you were always my source of happiness and comfort. 

It’s been such an honor to see you grow and flourish into this inspiring, glowing, independent and strong woman over the past 10 years. You’ve come so far and i’m so proud of you. Seeing that smile on your face at every concert makes me so happy because you deserve every little sprinkle of happiness the world has to offer. 

✴✴✴✴✴✴

I was here when you were rapidly rising and my cringe younger self took pictures like this ?!?!?!?, 

i was here when you fell and when you disappeared 

and i’m here now when you’re doing better than you ever were. 

Everyone in my life knows how much i adore you. I mean who knew that the amount of times i’ve screamed in the car when your songs come on the radio, the amount of school books that has your lyrics ALL OVER, the amount of times i ramble on about you and the amount of posters of you implies that i’m such a fan of you ?!?!?!?!??! 

In 2015 you decided to follow my craazyyyyyy blog and i’m still so eternally grateful for that. To even think about you possibly knowing who i am truly makes me cry so damn much. I remember no one in my family believing it was actually you and that your “management runs the account” so i don’t really let them in on much of my tumblr life at all because they just don’t understand you know? This is the place i come to when i’m having a bad day, it’s the place where i can connect with people who do understand. 

In 2015 my parents split up and it’s been a roller coaster.  My mum doesn’t contribute any money to help my dad out with my brother and i so things have been tough. But my dad tries his best to do everything for us, to have food on the table and to make sure we’re living a happy life. He’s taken me to every single taylor swift concert in Brisbane since speak now and he’s coming to the reputation tour this year too!

He bought me this for Christmas in 2016 and i do think he’s secretly such a big fan of you like me i mean he knows every word to shake it off, the song no one knows hey ;) hahahah !!!!!!!!!!

Thank you for constantly making me less lonely and thank you for guiding me over the past 10 years. I will never forget the lessons you’ve taught me and still are teaching me. You’ve been in my life for such a long time that i don’t remember not having you around. You’re like my big sister that’s gone off for uni chasing your dream and i’m here being proud as ever. Reputation is such a goddess of an album and i’m truly so happy that you’ve found such happiness in your life. I’ve probably listened to this album every day since it’s release!!!!!!

I remember blasting speak now in my room every night as i jumped on my bed thrashing my head to the story of us, i remember sitting down in my garage with the door open laying on the floor listening to i almost do on repeat over and over again as cars went past as my 10 year old self cried over relationships i was never in. I remember when 1989 came out and my new friends in high school and i ran up to each other screaming because of how amazing the album was.

 I remember not hearing from you in a while but understanding that sometimes we all need a break. I remember when people tried to tear you down and how horrible it made me feel. I spent every single second defending you and feeling so angry that people were treating another human like this. I continued loving you and supporting you and reporting those mean tweets and comments. 

I remember when you deleted all your posts and started posting weird snake clips. i was like wow this is it taylor is finally working at australia zoo! Every time you posted something at 3am i would wake up, scream, post on tumblr then fall back asleep. This was a constant cycle then when reputation came out,  i ran into Jb-hi-fi trying to find the album and finally ended up on my lounge room floor annoying my whole family as i blasted it through the speakers while  i sat reading the lyric book listening to every word, every beat and feeling so proud of you.

Sorry this post is such a mess, i kept remembering things and i mean there’s so much to tell because you’re such an important part of my life. Sometimes it hits me how real you are and how lucky i am to be existing in the same era you are. you are so so important to me and i’m so grateful that my 6 year old self starting looking up to you 10 years ago. You’ve shaped me into the person i am today and i’m hoping that one day we can make this picture real

and i can tell you all of this and more in person. 

Our journey is sill going and I can’t wait to be blown away at the Brisbane reputation concert in November. The production honestly looks so amazing and im sooooooo excitedddddd. I’ll be up the back dancing my heart out with you in SEC 37 Row J Seats 363-364 !!!!!!!

UNTIL THEN I SEND ALL MY LOVE TO YOU 💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗

LOVE FROM,

TEESH XXX

@taylorswift

[lucyreviewcy]

An Ode to Taylor Swift’s Approach to Self-Branding

In his book Stars, Richard Dyer discusses the way that movie stars’ personas are built and developed both within and outside of their films. Dyer suggests that the kind of characters that stars play feed into the overall narrative of their career. Taylor Swift isn’t a film star, unless you count a few brief cameos, but her persona is unique in that her personal presentation (Instagram, interviews and anywhere where she is pretending to be herself) and her performance persona (in photoshoots, music videos, live performances and arguably her music) are so nakedly constructed.

While she once may have claimed to have something in common with the girl she plays in the videos for Picture to Burn or Tim McGraw, these days, Swift is no stranger to drawing attention to how her image is created. If you don’t believe me, just look at the video for …Ready for It. She’s literally making a new Taylor.

Whenever T Swizzle releases new music, her fans are chided for combing through the lyrics and accompanying images with a fine toothed comb to find hidden clues or references to other parts of the Swift Mythos. Swift’s music videos are rife with call-backs, her lyrics shot through with veiled (and sometimes…not veiled at all) references to events in her personal life or previous work. As she proved with the Look What You Made Me Do video, you don’t need a cast of thousands of Hollywood stars and decades of comic books to create an extended universe; she did it with one name, one persona, reinvented over and over.

YouTube film academic Lindsay Ellis has pointed out that any text or product exclusively targeted at teenage girls (Ellis refers to the Twilight franchise of books and films) is received by audiences as being universally poor quality and worthy of spades of parodies and mean-spirited hot takes. A lot of media that is cherished by and targeted at young girls is considered extremely low art, and Taylor Swift, despite being a prolific songwriter and a consummate performer, is often dropped into this bucket with a loud, gangly thud. Regularly commenting on how much she loves Tumblr (a site often associated with the obsessive, single-minded fandom (you can read my Timeless reviews on this very blog btw)) as a way of connecting with her fans, Swift makes a big point of trying to connect on a personal level with the hordes of young women who connect with her music.

EM Forster wrote: “Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.”  Swift seeks to connect with her fans who connect with her art. She’s attempting to turn a one-sided exchange into a kind of contribution triangle, whereby she’s inspired by her fans who are inspired by her work, and both contribute in the resulting music. By creating this pseudo-give-and-take, Taylor’s music and images become something more than a disparate set of marketing images and tunes, but one mythology – “fragments no longer.”

I think it’s admirable for any star to try and do this. As I mentioned at the start of this article, Swift’s persona is fully constructed. Her desire to connect with fans is extremely marketable and played up in interviews and even the way that she speaks to the literal thousands of audience members at her concerts. However, Swift’s detailed, complex mythos, full of symbolism and self-referential intertextuality is the net result of all that connection. It is a mad and brilliant scheme that ultimately acts as a cultural studies training level for her fans.

It starts when Taylor’s hidden a clue to her album title in her latest music video. Her fans interrogate the text, which is a CGI ridden 4 minutes that is so unreal in its aesthetic that every element has been consciously constructed. They dissect, they discuss, they write about their findings. You know, just like when a big controversial movie comes out. That’s right, I’m saying ME! is the Roma of the Taylor Swift world.

I’m a fan of Swift’s music (eye-roll all you want, she writes good tunes, bite me), but I recognised literally none of the symbolism that fans and super-fans and beleaguered entertainment correspondents across the globe are writing adrenaline-fuelled blog posts about. I’m 25, I work in media and I’m doing a masters in film – did I notice that the seven suitcases represented T Swizzle’s albums or that the whole damn video takes place inside a cocoon? No. I did not.

While the details that fans are going nuts about might not be ground-breaking or important in the oeuvre of film and cultural studies, it is so important that these fans are being encouraged to explore and interrogate these texts. They’re sharpening their teeth for tougher meat. Not every Taylor Swift fan will grow up into a film studies academic (although I would read a sci-fi short story where this bizarre phenomenon happens and somehow brings down society) – but the fans that engage on this level are learning how to explore media as constructed work in the context of its creator. THANK YOU TAYLOR! She’s not the hero that media studies wants, but she’s the hero it deserves…

We live in a media dominated age. Our politicians fight in snarky twitter battles, news breaking across the world is available to us pretty much as it happens, and our sexy looking lunches are tiny headlines broadcast from our social media accounts. Interrogating media is a really important skill in this age. Young women and men reading “too much” (don’t get me started) into Taylor Swift videos are learning three things:

1)      Sometimes there is more to a media text than meets the eye, subliminal messaging is a thing.

2)      Taylor’s persona is constructed and she’s consciously creating each new incarnation.

3)      You can question the media that’s put in front of you, even if it is put there by someone that you like.

The way that people often dump on media studies and related fields as “reading too much into things” and “all bullsh*t” is frustrating. Not only is this argument kind of rude, it suggests that there really isn’t much more to a text than meets the eye. There is! Films, movies and music influence us every moment of every day, having the curiosity to ask how they’re doing that is not a bad thing. You’re not “making it all up” if you say that the way that Harry Potter valorises unrequited love is actually quite dangerous, or if you point out that the 2017 Baywatch manages to gently reinforce all the bad gender politics of the 1980s original (WOAH SHOCK) or if you want to write a gosh-darned 7,000 word essay on the bit where the snake bursts into a cloud of butterflies. That curiosity is empowering and exciting and exploring texts this way is fun.

There are caveats to this. Not everyone likes reading texts this way, and it is important to maintain your love for the movies, music videos and other texts that you explore even while you hit them with some cold hard theory. So here is my message to any Taylor Swift fan and budding media genius, stepping out into this wild world of media. Keep these things in mind:

Not everyone will share your passion, but that doesn’t mean your passion is bad - it just means that you might need to have other topics of conversation up your sleeve for when people just aren’t interested. 

Be sensitive to your friends and don’t dump on all their favourite movies and musicians.

Be aware that a lot of people might not share your opinions.

Be quiet in the cinema because shouting “Dutch angle” every time there’s a Dutch angle will make people really mad.

But don’t ever be embarrassed to read into a text and ask questions about how and why it was made.  T Swizzle has felt the brunt of a media age that says what it wants and airs your dirty laundry. She writes songs about how it feels to have a reputation you have no control over. Then she says to her fans “Hey, I’ve reinvented myself, come see if you can figure out what I’ve done! Dissect every frame of my video and every lyric of my song, and every damn pixel of my Instagram.” She sets up the media world as a puzzle which can be pieced together, and if not solved, then thoroughly explored.

Taylor Swift actually wants her fans to do this, and so do I.