a grammar

re: another overview of recent Taylor Swift debate

I’m snipping this from a longer post —

I guess I’d like to see people talk about her less as a person with agency and more as an experience for the people who listen to and watch her. That’s the opposite of what Nitsuh and folks want, I know.

— just to clarify that I’m pretty sure I don’t want much at all! Except maybe for more of the people arguing about Swift to acknowledge that they’re having a blindfolds-and-elephants conversation about very different things. And not because that would “end” or “solve” the argument, but because I’m pretty sure it would allow the discussion to work better and turn out more satisfying for everyone involved. I would also accept a pony and a Rickenbacker.

I’m also pretty sure the distinction set up here — between Swift “as a person with agency” and “as an experience” — doesn’t necessarily map onto the debate very easily. It seems like one of the points pop fans keep struggling to inject into this conversation is that lots of people’s experience of Swift — especially that of the young fans we’re talking about when we invoke terms like “role model” — involves close attention and emotional attachment to the details of what Swift is doing and saying. Swift sells a lot of records, and a lot of those records are surely embraced and pored over and thought hard about by the people who bought them. That’s part of the “experience” category, not the “agency” one; it’s in the “experience” bracket every bit as much as it’s part of the “experience” category for culture critics to talk about what Swift represents in the world.

My main thought sort of hops off from what Lex said. I already get the feeling that Swift’s “defenders” have a clear picture of the complaints against her — how they work and the validity of what they’re after. What would be SUPER-interesting to me personally, right now, would be to see someone who’s virulently anti-Swift actually try out the experience of deep engagement — as in, like, giving close listens to the material, imagining a way into its mindset and the mindset of its audience, maybe even interacting with that audience — and report back. To ask what it would be like to be a Swift fan, or to embrace Swift as a role model, and what that experience would mean. Not for argument-deciding purposes, but just because that would be really fascinating to me. So I guess there’s something I’d want: I would find it super-cool if, say, Sady found someone to do that for Tiger Beatdown.

Which is in some ways the opposite of how you read me, and you think the opposite of that, which I’m pretty sure means we agree? This whole thing is confusing.