USA TODAY International Edition
Swift’s latest isn’t smart, just petty
‘Look What You Made Me Do’ video falls flat
Taylor Swift has never been more exhausting.
Her Look What You Made Me Do video premiered at the VMAs last Sunday night — stealing the spotlight from host Katy Perry, whose history with Swift continues to be exhausting. The macabre clip plays out a meta revenge fantasy that casts Swift as an evil overlord, gazing down as a writhing mass of her former personas claws to her pedestal.
The video is full of hidden messages that critics feverishly unpacked. Most notably, it ends with a line of former Taylors, wearing hyper-specific outfits from her past performances, lobbing increasingly on-the-nose insults at one another, as one Taylor sneers, “There she goes, playing the victim again.”
Trouble is, while those past Taylor Swifts she symbolically kills off in the video weren’t perfect, at least they were centered around more than just a lust for revenge.
Not seen was a representation of the Taylor Swift who advocated for sexual assault victims in court this summer, which many fans hoped would signal a new direction for the star. It’s hard not to wonder whether that version also was purged to make way for this new Taylor, whose only discernible qualities are a drawer full of receipts and a penchant for Blackout-era Britney Spears.
The Look What You Made Me Do video is Swift’s attempt at selfawareness, full of Easter eggs intended to prove to the viewer that Swift hasn’t forgotten all the nasty things people have said about her over the years. Unfortunately for Swift, simply commenting on her soured reputation does not a cultural critique make.
Yes, there’s some enjoyment for Swift fans in watching the singer skewer the many media narratives that dominated her past few years. But watching Swift equate her “squad” of friends to mannequins and spoof poor Tom Hiddleston with a line of dancers wearing a play on his infamous “I heart T-Swift” shirt, viewers have to wonder whether these figures would’ve preferred to be excluded from the narrative.
While Swift may change her adversarial tone in her forthcoming singles before Reputation’s release Nov. 10, she’s certainly signaling with the Look video that she’s not quite finished lashing out at her enemies.
Swift took a much-needed year away from the spotlight last year after a series of wildly dumb tabloid dramas.
Fast-forward to this week, when Swift is being accused of mocking Kim Kardashian’s Paris robbery with a scene in the Look video where she pantomimes shooting a gun while buried in jewels in a bathtub. Considering Kardashian was bound at gunpoint in a bathtub while being robbed of her diamonds, the video’s allusion is clueless at best and merciless at worst, a microcosm of Swift’s Reputation era thus far.