Taylor Swift: Winning the Celebrity Game
Taylor Swift’s new album, “Speak Now,” sold a million copies this weekend — the first million-plus opening weekend since 2008. She’s being hailed as the savior of the music industry (old news; they said the same when “Fearless” has sold over 6 million copies since its 2008 release. Swift herself is the music industry’s best case scenario: she’s young, beautiful (in a uniquely feline sort of way), confident, unaffiliated with Disney, and without scandal (of her own incitement). Put it this way: she’s not Demi Lovato, nor is she Miley. And she’s certainly not Britney. There are no reports of substance abuse, body issues, or fights with over-bearing and/or exploitative parents. More than Lovato, Cyrus, or Spears, Taylor is business savvy. Her Twitter feed is a publicist’s dream, equal parts cute, confessional, and gracious. For your perusal, a smattering of recent Tweets:
This post is not a lengthy break-down of Taylor Swift’s image — a task that needs to be done. I’d advise you to check out Feminist Music Geek’s take, read Lainey’s coverage of any one of the million cute/nice/endearing things she does (here, here, here), or talk to anyone you know about their feelings about her — she’s seriously the most palatable American media product since, oh, Friends. Which is not to diminish her talent: unlike Feminist Music Geek, I actually like her songs, especially “Fifteen,” and find her pretty charming. The fact that she writes her songs is also heartening, especially in light of the male-producer-female-monsters of late — Ke$ha, I’m talking to you.
The anti-Swifty
She’s still friends with her best friend from high school (who also gets a de-virginization call-out in “Fifteen”) and has sleepovers with celebrity BFF Selena Gomez. She likes sparkly things and doesn’t dress up as a giant bird in her grotesquely sexualized videos. This is a teen music idol I can get behind. (And no, it’s not that I don’t think teenagers and sexuality are mutually exclusive, but the way that Miley or Britney does it — neither one of those are the messages I’m hoping for young girls or, to be honest, for myself).
Celebrity BFFs, iChatting and Twit-Pic-ing the evidence!
And here’s the thing: she seems authentically smart and self-possessed. Again, this is part of her image — she actually has talent! she has good parents! buy her records and endorse America! — but you can’t hide the fact that Swift, herself, is playing the guitar on-stage, which is in itself a stark departure from most teen (female) idols. She’s good at rhyming, at conjuring turns of phrase (I particularly like “You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter), and she invoked my high school favorite Tim McGraw in one of her first singles. More than any contemporary artist, Swift writes about the way that I personally felt as a teenage girl.
Obviously I looked like this every day of high school. Just add in a few more unfortunate button-ups from the Gap and you're set.
[Okay, admitted digression: Obviously I was the type to be super into Fiona Apple and early Sarah McLachlan in high school, but "Shadowboxer" and "Sleep to Dream" spoke to my most angry, tragic feelings -- not the ones that most closely resembled my quotidian existence. Therein lies Swift's palatability: her inoffensive comes off as authenticity as opposed to blandness. Now, I want every girl to experience a bit of angst and rage in their media diet, whether in the form of Go Ask Alice (do teenagers still read this?), Billie Holiday, Neko Case, or Harry Potter. But it's also nice for the middle-ground to be an image that's not hyper-sexualized and obviously collapsing under the weight of our scrutiny.]
Girl may be “on the bleachers,” as she admits in “You Were Made For Me,” but she plays the game, and she plays it well. Thus the crux of my argument: Swift is able to play the game so well because she has so thoroughly intertwined her “product” and her image. Granted, her image is just as much as a product of any other — and we buy it when we consume information about her. But the reason she’s been able to actually MAKE MONEY isn’t simply because she has a sweet voice and writes catchy lyrics, which she obviously does. Listening to a Taylor Swift song is like listening to gossip; following Taylor Swift’s life is basically mapping the future of her next album. And while many musicians write autobiographically, Swift has turned the twinning of song and life into a sport for gossips, media analysts, other celebrities, and music fans to observe.
Swift’s off-key Grammy’s duet with Stevie Nicks soured my affection somewhat, as did her presence in the ABOMINABLE Valentine’s Day — she wasn’t that bad, but her agreement to appear in that movie, even if as a slight spoof on her alter “popular” ego, was ridiculous. My disdain for that movie knows no bounds. It’s like Paris “Ebola” Hilton — touch it and you’re infected, Jessica Biel/Alba/every other bland star.
But this new album — this new album is filled with juice. And here’s where Swift’s skill as game player becomes clear. Because her art is in inherently confessional, each song is a mini gossip column, and will provide weeks, months, YEARS of fodder. This makes the above Tweet about the identity behind Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” all the more compelling — Swift is basically making a dozen of her own “You’re So Vains” for each album. With previous albums, the identities of those involved in the songs were more obscure — a Jonas brother, sure, and some high school dufuses. But now that she’s famous and dates famous people and finds herself in famous-people frays, her songs call out exes and foes Taylor Lautner, John Mayer, and Kanye West.
Here’s Pop Eater on the specifics identities behind her songs:
‘Dear John,’ a song almost certainly about her brief relationship with Mayer. “Don’t you think I was too young to be messed with … Don’t you think nineteen’s too young to be played,” Swift sings on the track, which is accented with, per the Times, “pealing guitar licks, a hilarious and pointed reminder of Mr. Mayer, who’s a master of the style.”
She’s kinder to Lautner, the presumed subject of ‘Back to December.’ Of the track, Swift has said, “Whether it be good or bad or an apology, the person I wrote this song about deserves this. This is about a person who was incredible to me, just perfect to me in a relationship, and I was really careless with him. So, this is a song full of words that I would say to him that he deserves to hear.”
The problem, of course, and the difference between Swift’s “Dear John” and an iconic song like “You’re So Vain” is the amount of discretion. Swift has and will continue to receive a tremendous flurry of coverage not only for admitting to a fling with Mayer, but calling his self-obsessed ass OUT in song. Simon, on the other hand, has riden the supposed obscurity of the reference for DECADES. Warren Beatty? Mick Jagger? David Geffen? She even sold the knowledge of the true identity of its subjects of hundreds of thousands of dollars at an auction. That, readers, is how classic, enduring celebrity is done.
But that sort of esotericism does not work in contemporary media culture. Swift can’t be obscure in her references because people are too lazy, or their attention spans are too short, to actual cogitate on such things. Audiences want to believe they’re in on a secret, but that secret can’t be all that difficult to figure out — see the faux-secret/philosophy of Inception as a prime example, or the frustration with Lost when it got just *too* crazy. Swift’s thinly veiled references are just above a blind item — they titillate, but they, like her Twitter musings, also make her seem honest, transparent, pure, and open: the exact qualities we think we want in a celebrity. Take those qualities too far and you’ve got a reality celebrity; refuse to show them and you’ve got an Angelina Jolie, maligned by many as stuck-up and full of herself. (Where Kanye West lies in this continuum, I’ll leave to you?) For a celebrity to succeed, he/she must cultivate this fine balance of disclosure. Disclose too much? Tom Cruise, circa 2005. Disclose too little, or nothing at all? You’re an actor, not a star.
Swift has found this fine balance — mostly in song, but also in her “real” life, in which she is apparently “hanging out” with Jake Gyllenhaal. Dude’s nine year older than her, which I know isn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but that’d be like me dating one of my sophomore students. [When I queried Twitter as to what the two of them could possibly have to talk about, the best reply came from the hilarious @FaybelleineW: "I just see tumbleweeds, or a lot of 'i'm so not gay' necking."] No matter — he’s hanging out backstage while she does SNL; they’re making googily eyes at each other in Big Sur. No making out, no illicit drug use, no breaking up previous relationships. Just good, clean, American fun, which can be gossiped about both now and when she writes the song about it in a year’s time.
This week, she’s on the cover of People, which promises “the untold story” — which, if my swift perusal at the dentist office this morning is to be believed, are actually just her admitting that the songs on her album are about past loves. BIG EXCLUSIVE, PEOPLE. Nevertheless, People speaks to the minivan majority, and her presence on its cover (and the broadcast of “disclosure”) only strengthens her position. More than any movie star, Swift has taken up the mantle of “America’s Sweetheart,” and she’s done it by carefully knitting her products to her personal life, allowing disclosures in one to stand in for confessions in the other. While Ellen does tease her about Jakey G, most of the time, the only thing people want to talk about are these confessional songs — she needs very little extraneous gossip or extra-textual material (no need for scandal!) save to provide future fodder for songs.
The head of Swift’s record company has claimed “The facts say she is the undisputed best communicator that we’ve got. When she says something, when she sings something, when she feels something, it affects more people than anybody else.” I don’t know about that. But I do know that she’s managed to make it seem like when she sings something, it’s communicating something real and authentic about her life — something that can be interchanged freely with an interview, a paparazzi photo, whatever. Her songs are taken as an authentic disclosure and record of her life, and they manage to keep her balanced in fine equilibrium between satisfying and annoying levels of confession and accessibility. She’s may be the savior of the music industry, but she’s also an example of how the celebrity game can be played today — and to tremendous profit. It remains to be seen, however, how long she’ll be able to keep the equilibrium in tact. At what point does songwriting become overindulgent? Will men no longer agree to date her lest they are shunned, scorned, or pitied in her songs? Or is there no greater contemporary celebrity honor than to be such a subject? Swift is the closest we have to a “successful” celebrity today — by which I mean someone who is likable, actually makes money, and even gets good reviews. But again…..can it last? Do 25-year-olds kiss and tell? For her to survive the game, she’ll need to find a new strategy, lest her strategy becomes too transparently manipulative for us to stomach.
New Antenna Post!
If you don’t follow me on Twitter (and I mean seriously, if you like blogs, why not the Twitters?) you might have missed notification of my most recent Antenna post, “Sheesh, What’s It Take to Make a Teenage Heartthrob These Days?” It’s got RPattz, Taylor “Teen Tom Cruise” Lautner, Marlon Brando, and the phrase “allergic to vaginas.” Go for it.
How to Make a Valentine's Day Movie in 10 Steps or Less
1.) Say you’re Warner Bros. You’re trying to revamp your New Line ‘brand.’ You witness international success of your Valentine’s Day movie from last year, He’s Just Not That Into You, which grossed $93.9 million domestic and $84 million international. You realize that the film simply involved a vaguely pre-sold premise (a popular advice book) coupled with a large handful of male and female stars, all in supporting roles and thus (relatively) cheap. Also realize that the quasi-British quasi-prequel to He’s Just Not That Into You from Universal, entitled Love Actually, grossed $246 million internationally on a $40 million budget.
2.) Ah! So maybe New Line should have He’s Just Not That Into You and Love Actually mate! Only this time around, let’s ADD EVEN MORE STARS! Like an exponential amount of stars!
3.) How many stars? Would ten be too many? No? Okay, let’s try NINETEEN BIG NAME STARS.
4.) Get the woman who wrote The Prince and Me (and The Prince and Me 2: The Royal Wedding) and many episodes of Lifetime’s Army Wives to write the script, because that is exactly the filmic tradition that this movie should continue. Also get Pretty Woman director Garry Marshall, who, after a string of big flops (Georgia Rule, Raising Helen) is available for cheap. But you can still put “Director of Pretty Woman” next to his name on all of the promotional materials. SCORE.
5.) Make sure that that script involves each and every one of the nineteen stars (plus some otherwise cute little kids or hot also-rans) either falling in love with each other, proposing to one another, or falling in love with themselves for who they are (they might also start “dancing like no one is watching.”) Each plot line should be heteronormative and affirm our generalized understanding of love as the universal language.
6.) Ensure that each of your 19 stars hits a crucial demo. Get the teen audience with Taylor Swift, Taylor Lautner, and Emma Roberts (featured very, very prominently in the preview); get the 20/30 somethings with Jessica Biel, Jessica Alba, Ashton Kutcher, Topher Grace, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Garner, and Bradley Cooper. Get the amorphous middle-aged set with Julia Roberts and McSteamy AND McDreamy. Make sure you spread your appeal beyond the just-white audience (a point on which He’s Just Not Into You failed) through the inclusion of Jamie Foxx, Hector Elizondo, and Queen Latifah. Oh, and put Shirley MacLaine in there too! You need to make this movie simultaneously seem like a girls-sympathy movie (e.g. the type of movie that girls go see when they’re without a “valentine”) AND a date movie (for teens as much as for married couples). In other words, make sure it’s not too female-centric — or something that a guy would feel embarrassed walking out of.
7.) Create aesthetically pleasing interactive functions on the website that invite you to share your experience with love, as evidenced below. Co-mingle user-generated ‘love’ content with star-generated ‘love’ content, available via each star’s authenticated Twitter account.
(Oh look, mypersonalized make-out spot in Walla Walla! Just enter your zip code!)
Note the incorporation of the film’s stars’ Tweet “concerning love”
8.) Solicit incredible tie-up/product placement/endorsement deals with so many companies so as to thoroughly subsidize our own budget — not to mention ingratiate yourself with fans through association with the likes of “Warriors in Pink,” which manages to promote the film, Ford, the stars involved with the promotion, and, well, breast cancer awareness. (Ads for this are also all over the gossip weeklies).
Also make sure that all endorsement and tie-up deals are with companies that specifically target an audience of white middle-class women ages 20-50.
9.) CROSS-PLUG. Make sure one of your stars just happens to be the hottest universally-palatable music artist of the moment, Taylor Swift. Then make sure she records a song — to do with love — and pre-sell it on iTunes to build hype for the film and soundtrack. Then have that star sing that song on the Grammy’s (two weeks before the film’s release) and celebrate the fact that the single was the fastest-selling female single iTunes history.
10.) And if you haven’t made a perfect Valentine’s Day movie yet, why don’t you NAME YOUR MOVIE VALENTINE’S DAY.
(And you can watch the trailer here).
Now that you, too, can create your own Valentine’s Day Movie, I will addthat as transparent and potentially brilliant as this strategy might seem, it’s certainly been done before, most notably by Universal in the early 1970s with ‘star-fests’ The Towering Inferno, Earthquake, Airport, and Airport 1975, all of which were overflowing with old and new stars. However, those movies required the actors to interact with each other — making it necessary for them to be on set simultaneously. Genre revision and what Charles Ramirez-Berg has termed “the Tarantino effect” have made the splintered galaxy-style narrative format at home in both Love Actually and Valentine’s Day (not to mention Babel and Crash) not just popular, but conventional. And it’s cost effective: each star can come in for two or three days and shoot what will end up to be three or four vignettes for total screen time between 10-15 minutes.
Crucially, star value was under threat during the 1970s, just as it is today. As I’ve argued elsewhere on the blog (and has been reported by several other outlets) the studios are not only tightening their belts in general, but especially in the realm of star salaries, especially following the very public failures of star-studded film from last Spring and Summer. (Duplicity, State of Play, Year One, The Taking of Pelham 123) Even someone like Denzel is taking a pay cut in exchange for points off the film’s net, a common practice that can give a star a huge paycheck….but only if the movie is a hit. Which isn’t to say that stars aren’t still important — obviously, celebrity gossip is as successful as ever, and star faces ensure much larger international grosses — but that the studios have figured out, once again, that they don’t assure a hit movie. So they’re cutting salaries — and arranging things like Valentine’s Day, which uses stars, but only in very small doses.
I’ve been unable to find any budget info on the film (if you have it, let me know) but my guess would be that the top level stars were each paid anywhere from $200,000 - $500,000, and the second tier stars a little less. Remember: 15 minutes of screen time, people. 19 stars x approx. 250,000 = 4.75 million. That’s less than one big star. While it remains to be seen how the film will compete with Nicholas Sparks weepie Dear John (released the week before), my guess is that no matter how fractured or cliched the story, it will succeed. But what’s next year’s Valentine’s Day movie going to do, now that the only good name is taken?
What $258.8 Million Could Mean
What a $258.8 million dollar audience looks like
$258.8 million. That’s the worldwide 5-day gross for New Moon.
That’s $140.7 million domestic. The film also broke the All-Time Single Day and Friday Opening records, not to mention the Biggest 2-Day total.
It’s now the third biggest opening of all time — following only Spiderman 3 and The Dark Knight.
And it did all of this in NOVEMBER, when kids still have to go to school and the masses aren’t seeking the theater for heat relief. Crucially, the budget for New Moon = Just under $50 million. Add in $25 million for promotion, and you’ve already got a film (and franchise) firmly in the black.
The rhetoric flooding the film blogosphere is filled with words like “jaw-dropping,” “huge surprise,” and “phenomenal.” Nikki Finke and Variety both point out that not even the film’s distributor, Summit Entertainment, thought the film would open this big — estimates were for between $100-$110 million domestic, no small number itself. Why? Because it’s what is known as a “two quadrant” film (the four audience ‘quadrants’ = men under 25, men over 25, women under 25, women over 25. Most blockbusters are films that appeal to all four quadrants — see Spiderman, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Dark Knight, Titanic, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, etc.).
The audience is not only ‘two quadrant’ (apparently 80% female) but young. 50% of attendees were under 21. Variety sums it up best: “the female-fueled New Moon explodes the myth that you need an all-audience film to do that level of biz, or that fanboys hold all the power.”
So does that answer my question? Is that what $258.8 million could mean? That girls can power movies — especially when there’s a romance (and abstinence porn) involved?
Sorta. Because it could also mean much, much more.
*It could legitimize the female market.
After big openings for Sex and the City, The Proposal, and Julie and Julia, risk-adverse studios may begin to invest more earnestly (and consistently) in properties that cater specifically (and unabashedly) to the female market. Of course, the studios have long counterprogrammed with ‘girly’ fare, but the key word is counterprogram — they try to pick up the ‘dregs’ who aren’t flocking to the supposedly four-quadrant blockbuster released the same weekend. This weekend is actually a fascinating example of counterprogramming, as The Blind Side, starring Sandra Bullock, did surprisingly well — presumably picking up the anti-Twilight female audience and scattered males who had been convinced by the football-time ad campaign that sold the film as a football-oriented triumph-of-the-will.
*It could (and already has) opened the female market to misogynist and ageist critique.
This is the ugly underbelly to what might otherwise be viewed as a ‘girl power’ triumph. For as anyone familiar with the franchise knows, the text is not immune to criticism. The original text has been criticized for its conservative, anti-feminist views; the second film in particular has been subject to scathing reviews from most popular critics. I’ve seen denigrating, clearly misogynist critiques of the film, from both men and women, on a diverse set of blogs and Twitter feeds — many of which interpret the success of the film as the failure of America, reason to hate themselves, their family, their loved ones, the end of the world, etc. I realize that some of this quips are in jest, but they also interpret a mass movement of females — seeking out a specific type of pleasure — as nigh-apocalyptic. As if the success of Twilight somehow ushers in the end of good taste.
Such a critique is misogynistic not only because it demonstrates a clear case of cultural amnesia — if any success indicated the end of good taste, it was that of horror porn and boy-oriented Transformers — but also because it explicitly and unabashedly constructs female consumers as rabid, mindless, brainwashed schmucks. Whatever one thinks of Twilight (and I’m not saying that the text should be exempt from critique), we still need to recognize the fact that the audience is not monolithic, nor is it mindless. By reproducing those beliefs, we (as scholars, as film critics, as film bloggers and cultural critics more generally) extend the general subjugation of women’s pleasures, tastes, desires, etc. Indeed, such beliefs contribute to the ghettoization of female-oriented art and artistry in a broad sense — whether female-directed film (if you need a reminder that it’s tough for women in Hollywood, just check out A.O. Scott’s recollection of the most important films of the last decade. Not a female director to be found.)
I heed the argument that the success of Twilight might contribute to the marginalization of less hegemonic products (with less traditional interpretations). But I also want to underline the fact that many women — and not just feminist women like the ones with whom I attended the premiere — are engaging in negotiated readings of this text. Some are reading it as satire, some are rewriting the ending using fanfic. But as is the case with almost any text, audiences make the text meet them where they are — a 13-year-old girl might love the romance, another might identify with the plainness of Bella, others might crave the family dynamic of the Cullens, older women may crave the thrill of first romance, and others may just relish the chance to escape — either in the books or the films — and become absorbed by a text.
In other words, the females who attended New Moon got to be ‘fan-girls.’ Is there something threatening and wrong with that?
*It will lower the bar for the sequels.
This is a crucial and disheartening point. New Moon very clearly had higher production values than Twilight — the stunts are far less cheesy, there are CGI wolves, and they hired Dakota Fanning and Michael Sheen to play the baddie vampires. They shot in Rome; they had all sorts of sweet helicopter and trick shots. The lighting was more even; the Native Americans’ wigs were less visible. Why, then, would the bar be lowered? Because Twilight is a superior film. There. I said it. I’m curious to know if I’m in the minority here, but I felt far less magic in the second film — no matter of CGI wolves could make up for the absence of Catherine Hardwicke, who helmed the first film. Hardwicke, who also directed the superb Thirteen, has a certain way with teen situations. The way she directed the scenes at the high school — and the deviations from the book, including the classic line “This dress makes my boobs look totally awesome” — absolutely made the film for me. I could gloss over the clunky vampire jumping from tree to tree — so long as I had the intimate moments between Bella and her dad, Bella and her awkward teenage friends.
Now that New Moon, with its streamlined narrative, has garnered such a substantially higher gross than the original, it’s only natural that the forthcoming films will heed its lessons. I’d love for the series to take a Harry Potter bent, exploring various color palettes, alterations in tone, and senses of burgeoning humor with each director. This seems unlikely. As Transformers 2, Spiderman 3, and Pirates of the Caribbean 3 have proven, a sequel, however bloated, however much it pales in comparison to the original, will do even better business. So why concern yourself with quality?
Stars in the making? I'm not so sure.
*It won’t necessarily make stars out of Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner.
This might seem counter-intuitive. They attract huge crowds! People put their faces on their t-shirts! But these actors have become so incredibly wed to their characters, it’ll take critical and financial success in non-Twilight roles to break away from their picture personalities as Bella, Edward, and Jacob, respectively.
My bet for non-Twilight success is firmly on K-Stew, whose forthcoming turn as Joan Jett in The Runaways seems poised to do at least moderately well. She’s already wrapped Welcome to the Rileys, a small production that should continue to bolster her cred as an actual actress. (She has to sigh and look scared a lot in the Twilight saga, but I do think the girl can act.)
RPattz might be doomed to Edward-style brooding, as exemplified by his role in Remember Me.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8Vg3fqIWGs&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
It stars Chris Cooper, Pierce Brosnen, and that girl from Lost, but is it a hit? Middling? Fueled by Twilight fans? (They tried to make that work with RPattz as Salvador Dali this summer in Little Ashes, but I couldn’t even watch the preview (complete with Pattinson in Dali moustache) without laughing. Pattinson is scheduled for two additional films, Unbound Captives and Bel Ami, in pre-production — both with big names, if not big directors, attached. His future outside of Twilight will depend wholly upon the success of such non-vampiric roles.
As for Taylor Lautner, he’s already filmed a small part in the Love Actually-esque Valentine’s Day (opposite his supposed love Taylor Swift, no less). But other than Eclipse, he’s got nothing. Not even in pre-production. He’s the most wooden of the three, and he’ll have to secure another romantic turn — presumably in a teen-geared comedy/drama of some sort — in order to sustain his fan base. He’ll also have to sustain gossip, either through authenticating his relationship with the other Taylor, re-dating Disney star Selena Gomez, or creating new teen hand-holding buzz. Odds of success = slim. He may have great shoulder muscles, but so does Matthew McConaughey.
So what does $258.8 million mean? It means we have an opportunity to reconsider the way the industry works. Everytime a movie hits big — and especially when it outperforms expectations — we reach a similar landmark. A chance for people like me to challenge the idea that the way that Hollywood works is ‘natural,’ inevitable, or necessary. As director Kevin Smith tweeted following the release of the Friday numbers, “Tween girls can get shit DONE, man.” Indeed they can — and so can 30 and 40 something moms with their daughters, and 20-something women prefunking with white wine and flasks. And it’s a lesson we — and Hollywood — is still learning.
