Sample Student Research Project 2016: Essay
LITR
4328 American Renaissance / Model Assignments
Sample Student Research Project 2016:
Essay
Burgundy Anderson
New Romantics: A Study of Taylor Swift’s Writings, Aesthetic, and Style
“Please leave me stranded; it’s so Romantic,”
Taylor Swift has, for the past decade, been writing and singing songs we
all know. She has been refining her craft and creating a brand for herself.
Swift knows who she is, what she stands for, and what she wants to symbolize.
Everyone knows she loves romance, but not everyone knows she is a Romantic.
However, she has written her songs in such a way that she can be categorized
alongside the Romantic poets we know and love.
Swift has songs that deal with childhood innocence, nostalgia, and the hero that
resides in us all. She has songs which feature loss and longing, the gothic, and
even the sublime. Swift is also very well known for her intensity and excess in
addition to using desire as motivation and her prioritization of feelings and
emotions over fact and logic. Swift has achieved her Romantic status not only
through her songs, but also in her music videos.
Songs
Swift’s songs are the most immediate and unique way in which she has established
herself as a Romantic writer. Her lyrics use many themes found throughout the
Romantic genre. In some cases, these themes are even elevated to extremes and
combined with other themes in the same song. Her lyrical style is somewhere
between free verse and formal verse; sometimes she leans more towards one than
the other. She relies heavily on the emotion within her voice to bring her words
to life, as can be expected with any singer.
Swift has a number of songs which deal with the innocence of childhood. As a
young woman, she moved out of her parents’ house and into a place of her own.
During her first night alone, she wrote the song, Never Grow Up, which
reads as a letter to her younger self. Swift is able to use implicit imagery in
her lyrics, such as “little hands wrapped around my finger” that bring to mind
the view of a child, perhaps even an infant. She also describes tucking this
child in and turning on a night-light, something only children ever ask for help
with. The lines “to you everything’s funny/you’ve got nothing to regret” suggest
that children are innocent and pure, with no dark past. The song goes on to
describe the child being dropped off at the movie theatre by her mother. This
situation seems so mundane and normal, something to which everyone can generally
relate. In this description, however, Swift talks about how the mother has
contributions and emotional investment in the child. In the bridge she says,
“Memorize what it sounded like when your dad gets home.” The song ties together
the dependence of a child and the many efforts that combine to create this
child.
This particular song reminds me of Walt Whitman’s “There Was a Child Went
Forth.” Not only does this poem feature the same use of free verse as does
Swift’s song, it also gives the same significance to the mother and father. In
the poem, Whitman writes,
“His own parents, he that had father'd him and she that had conceiv'd him in her
womb and birth'd him,
They gave this child more of themselves than that,
They gave him afterward every day, they became part of him.” (19-21)
The significance of the parents cannot be overlooked, and in the case of both
“There Was a Child Went Forth” and Never Grow Up the domestic nature of
American life is both emphasized and praised. While this emphasis is certainly
not normal for Whitman, it is an idea that was typical of the Romantic period.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to use the word Sentiment here. Both Whitman
and Swift are looking back with a strong sentimentality for the domestic
realities of American life.
Nature as beauty and truth can be seen in the lyrics to Starlight. The
song is about a joyous young couple (Ethel and Bobby Kennedy, to be exact) as
they fall in love. Swift says they “were dancing, dancing like they were made of
starlight.” The use of starlight here exemplifies the purity and truth found in
that love. The ecstatic and wonderful love can only be described with the only
non-corrupt piece of nature-stars and the bright dancing light they emit. The
use of nature as a symbol and the way the couple is described in such infinite
and everlasting terms can be likened to the subjects of Emily Dickinson’s
poetry. Dickinson herself actually used stars and their light in a number of her
own works. Her poem, “Lightly Stepped a Yellow Star” personifies a pure
celestial being, which, to Dickinson, is worth being observed to heaven.” The
incorporation of Nature as a higher element is a common theme of both
Dickinson’s and Swift’s works.
Swift claims to have a lot of experience with being excluded by society.
Particularly in her early albums, these experiences made their way into
different songs. The Outside is a song on her first album which addresses
this idea exactly. She seems to have been locked out by her social group. She
says “nobody ever lets me in/ I can still see you, this ain't the best view/ on
the outside looking in.” This song conveys very clearly the hurt and confusion
of being a social outcast. The significance of the individual on the outside and
fringes of society is a staple of Romantic literature which is uniquely elevated
by Swift. Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I A Woman” deals with the outsider, too.
Truth knows that she has been excluded in the discussion of women’s rights. In
her eyes, no one is thinking to let her in, and she is explaining to the women
at the convention that it is not a good idea for them to forget about her or
women of her race. While Swift’s exclusion from a peer group is not quite so
political, the feelings expressed are similar to those of Truth’s speech.
Swift brings this intensity to everything. Nobody does anything “normal” in her
eyes, everything is idealized and provides her with desire or motivation.
Fearless is a song that captures these moments several times. She describes
walking to the car with a boy “And you know I want to ask you to dance right
there/ In the middle of the parking lot.” No one really dances in the middle of
a parking lot, but the feeling is that she is so swept away that she cannot help
herself. She later says “you're just so cool/ run your hands through your hair/
absent mindedly making me want you.” This implication that such a tiny move has
such a profound impact on Swift is so typically Romantic. The little things
become so grandiose while the big things are diminished.
The significance of the individual as a hero echoes the sentiments of Harriet
Beecher Stowe in her characterizations. When Stowe describes Sojourner Truth’s
encounter with Frederick Douglas at a meeting in Faneuil Hall, she describes
Truth’s few words, “Frederick, is God dead?” as having such an extreme and
profound effect on the crowd that “not another word she said or needed to say;
it was enough.” The small amount of words of an individual, or the tiny acts,
are enough to make them idealized in many people’s eyes and imaginations.
Music Videos
Taylor Swift uses her music videos to further her own image as a Romantic. Many
of her music videos use Romantic images and elements to heighten and solidify
her place in the genre. Some videos have specific storylines while others serve
only to provide a visual accompaniment to the song. Almost all of her videos
provide some level of higher thinking and alternative story line to the song it
is made for.
One music video, Out of the Woods, relies heavily on the gothic, sublime,
and on nature to illustrate complex psychology. The video features a dark
lady/fair lady dichotomy, a doppelganger, and a forest in the night as a
nightmare landscape and the power of nature over man. It opens on Swift standing
barefoot on a beach in a light blue dress. Behind her a forest rises and she
walks into it. Very quickly she is dirty and her dress is torn and she is being
chased by wolves in the dark of the night. In this moment, Swift is the dark
lady, who has been corrupted in some way, and nature, which is an extended
metaphor for her mind, is threatening to overpower her. As the video continues,
we see her on the edge of a cliff, in a barren, frozen wasteland, and even
thrown face down into a puddle of mud. As the intensity of the music heightens,
Swift finds herself immobilized as a tree twists and grows around, holding her
in place. She also finds herself frozen in ice in the wasteland, and jumping off
of the cliff and landing in a large body of water in which she begins to drown.
The song begs the questions “are we out of the woods yet? … Are we in the clear
yet?” There are various images of Swift falling fast and hard and then of her
standing upright and picking herself up off of the ground. The images of nature
around her no longer hold her captive. The ice melts, she is swimming in water,
and the forest simultaneously burns and recedes in growth. As the video ends we
see this dirty, matted up, dark Swift walk out of the forest onto a beach,
toward the bright Swift we saw at the beginning of the video. The dark lady
reaches out her right hand and grabs the light lady and as she turns her face
around the video cuts to black with the words, “She lost him… But she found
herself… and somehow that was everything.”
There is clearly a specific message we are supposed to take from this video.
This song was written to herself, and it is about her own relationship with her
mind. It was paramount in her own life that Swift be able to save herself. In
the images of nature we see the sublime. In the darkness and destruction we see
the gothic. In the story itself we see the heroic qualities and importance of
the ordinary individual. The story also conveys desire and loss. Swift states
that she lost “him” and in doing so had a deep desire to find something to
replace that “him.” The suffering and suffocating experiences she has are also
significant. The music video brings the intense, highly aesthetic experience of
a beautiful woman undergoing a tragedy to life.
This is a clear and heavy echo of the type of Gothic imagery and symbolism used
by Edgar Allan Poe. In Darlene Harbour Unrue’s “Edgar Allan Poe: The Romantic as
Classicist,” Poe’s works are discussed as Romantic, gothic, transcendentalist,
and as classics. According to Unrue, Poe “uses Gothic machinery in his tales to
symbolize states of mind in characters tormented by intimations of death,
insanity and other forms of annihilation and chaos that lead to no rational
reconciliation” (114). This assessment of Poe’s use of the Gothic is accurate
and ties together nicely with Swift’s use of the Gothic in Out of the Woods,
the only real difference being that Swift, in the end, has a rational ending
that makes everything else make sense.
Another very Romantic, highly effective music video is Blank Space. The
video follows Swift and a love interest through the rise and fall of their
relationship. It is extravagant, bright, and extremely over-the-top. Swift is
seen in beautiful, poufy dresses and her love interest is always dressed very
well. The setting is a large well-kept mansion and perfectly manicured grounds.
In one image of Swift’s room, we see two white horses on either side of the bed.
This idealized setting is common element found within the Romantic genre; for
example, in Ligeia, Poe describes the setting as “some large, old, decaying city
near the Rhine.” This is not an actually plausible setting, but it serves well
for the feeling of Poe’s story. The video opens on a handsome young man driving
through the gate. Swift and he go through many high, exciting, ridiculous
experiences together. They ride bikes through her living room, have a dreamy
picnic, dance in an entirely empty room, she paints a portrait of him, and they
even carve their names into a tree. The whole time, though, it is obvious that
Swift is in charge and he is just a prop for her entertainment. She does not
seem to need this man to enjoy her day, but does find convenience in having him
around.
She suddenly notices this love interest texting and every aspect of the video
changes. Where they were riding bikes she is screaming and flailing at him, even
throwing a vase at his face, only missing narrowly. She is seen with mascara
running down her face, and then smiling while dropping his phone into a
fountain, and even slashing the painting of him with a knife. She cuts and burns
his clothes and then tosses them out the window. She finally vandalizes his car
with a golf club, shoves a knife into a heart shaped cake, and hacks their names
off the tree with an axe.
There is another very interesting scene in the midst of this sequence. Swift is
holding an apple and playing with it. She rolls it around and squeezes it. As
she does this, the love interest mimics the apple; he rolls his head and
squeezes his hands together. And then he takes a bite of this apple but
immediately spits it out. The analogy, with the apple, is that Swift is playing
with love so much that she ruins it. He is also seen walking down a hallway
where he discovers more portraits that have been vandalized; chopped, spray
painted, drawn on. After this, he drives away as another bachelor pulls up to
start the cycle again. This elevation of Swift makes her such a significant
individual that it quite literally casts aside the importance of any other
individuals and their relationships. In Ligeia, Poe’s narrator is not searching
for a relationship with someone, but rather for someone to replace the wife he
had originally. In the same way, Swift is not looking for a relationship; she is
looking for someone to fill in for the idealized man.
This video, and song, are typical of the extreme nature of emotions found in the
Romantic genre. The happy times are overjoyed while the sad times are violently
destructive. The setting is idealized and picturesque, not a place anyone
actually would live. The intensity and extremity of every moment is another
unique stylistic element of the Romantic genre exemplified in the Blank Space
video. This song and video are clear examples of the idea that the best thing is
anything but the here and now, nothing about Blank Space is at all
realistic and therefore it is absolutely Romantic.
Both of these videos solidify Taylor Swift’s Romantic aesthetic. She has
cleverly used this visual medium to bring Romantic styles into the spotlight and
heighten similar feelings about her own songs. Taylor Swift not only typifies a
modern Romantic, she understands the genre, uses it, and makes it her own. She
knows how and when to be overt, where to appropriately use elements like nature,
and the power of a well-placed extended metaphor.
Conclusion
Taylor Swift has worked tirelessly to cultivate and create her personal image.
She is a woman who has come into her own style. She is an artist who has found
and perfected her own aesthetic. More than anything, though, she is a writer. A
writer who uses, understands, and exemplifies the Romantic genre. Swift claims
that “We’re the New Romantics,” and I believe she is right. The society we live
in today is led by emotions, we seek out a new and deeper connection with
nature, and we recognize the beauty and significance of every individual we
encounter. This generation does this even to a point that the experience of an
individual and their emotions has a much higher value than facts and education.
All my generation wants to be fearless and dance like we’re made of starlight.
Taylor Swift offers us the courage and opportunity to feel the heights and
depths of our own emotions. This generation tends to despise order and
organization in favor of chaos; any chaos will do, good or bad, and from there
we will rebuild our own preferred order. As Swift says, “I could build a castle,
out of all the bricks you threw at me. Every day is like a battle, but every
night with us is like a dream.”
Works Cited
http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/AmClassics/poems/EDpoems/EDstylesheet.htm
http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/AmClassics/poems/PoWhEDComp.htm
http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/AmClassics/poems/PoePoems/PoeStyle.htm
http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/AmClassics/poems/Whitmanpoems/WWChild.htm
http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/AmClassics/poems/Whitmanpoems/WWstyle.htm
http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/terms/R/Romanticism.htm
Fluck, Winfried. “‘The American Romance’ and the Changing Functions of the
Imaginary.” New Literary History, vol. 27, no. 3, 1996, pp. 415–457.
www.jstor.org/stable/20057364.
LeRoy, Gaylord C. “American Innocence Reconsidered.” The Massachusetts Review,
vol. 4, no. 4, 1963, pp. 623–646. www.jstor.org/stable/25087004.
Taylor Swift. Fearless, Big Machine, 2008.
Taylor Swift. Red, Big Machine, 2012.
Taylor Swift. Speak Now, Big Machine, 2010.
Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift, Big Machine, 2006.
Taylor Swift. 1989, Big Machine, 2014.
Unrue, Darlene Harbour. “Edgar Allan Poe: The Romantic as Classicist.”
International Journal of the Classical Tradition, vol. 1, no. 4, 1995, pp.
112–119. www.jstor.org/stable/30221867.
"Great Star" flag of pre-Civil War USA