My Night Among The Swifties

by Mitchel Green - October 15, 2023

| mitchelgreen34@gmail.com source: The Movie Database

It’s nice for movies to be back at the center of culture — if only briefly and heavily revolving around a star from a completely different medium. But if there’s anything that’s defined Taylor Swift’s artistic career, it’s crossover. From country, to pop, to folk, and back to pop, Swift has been gobbling up new audiences for almost two decades. As she gears up to embark on a filmmaking career with her upcoming debut feature, it’s time to prime her fanbase to see movies in theaters by turning movies into events again. In a lull in the movie release schedule, Swift has taken advantage of her position as one of the most recognizable brands in media to assert her dominance over the film industry with “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour.”

Swift as an artist is not the main draw for me, however. I’m interested in her insofar as I’m interested in any major pop star of the last decade. The music is generally good — in rare instances, great — but the image is wholly outside my element. The celebrity of Taylor Swift is boring — highly processed to the point that even messy gossip becomes grossly banal. Her persona is the Big Mac of tabloid media. It’s the most famous product out there, but why? It’s not particularly good or fulfilling to consume, yet it remains a prominent cultural reference point.

What I am interested in is Swiftie culture. As a fan primarily of filmmakers and 50-year-old musical artists, the idea of having such a rabidly dedicated relationship with my favorite artists is bizarre. It’s not a completely foreign concept to me, though. What Swifties remind me of most are sports fans. It makes sense then that the latest round of Taylor Swift tabloid coverage has been about the enormous attention she has brought to the NFL from one of the few demographics that don’t currently engage with the sporting behemoth. The maniacal, personal connection Swift’s fans feel to her is matched in passion only by sports fans. An us-against-them mentality permeates the entire fanbase, one caused by major critical and tabloid disrespect from early in her career. They need to feel validated by outsiders that their favorite is also the very best. This is exactly how sports fans feel when ESPN, Fox, or CBS don’t give their team much credit, even when they are winning. It’s not enough to be successful, they have to have everyone else acknowledge it too.

The parasocial relationship between Swift and her fans is nearly identical to the one sports fans often have with their teams. Swifties feel like she is their friend because the artist plays into that connection. She releases music and merchandise just for them. She performs songs just for them. She made this new movie just for them. Likewise, sports fans will often talk about their teams in the first person. We are looking good this season. We need to find a better quarterback. We should throw the ball more. Fans talk about their teams as if they played a part in the outcome, as if they were part of the organization (admittedly, in some cases where teams are partially fan-owned, they do). Both Swifties and sports fans feel the success of their beloved idols is an extension of their own success, and so seeing them at the very top makes the fans feel like the world sees them.

For me, this fascinating dynamic between the artist and her fans is the entire draw of Swift’s new concert doc. Experiencing this film in a theater on opening night is like a sociological field study. Excitement isn’t exactly the word I would use to describe my feelings going in — particularly given the Eras Tour setlist is heavily skewed towards later career music — but I was curious. My social media feed was filled with videos from screenings that looked like the cult dances in “Midsommar,” what on earth was I getting myself into? Nothing crazy, unfortunately. The excitement in the air was palpable, but you could tell the Swifties weren’t certain how to act. Could they be themselves and show their passion to no one in particular? Should they behave as if it were any other movie playing?

Before the film, there were friendship bracelet exchanges, a big cheer for Travis Kelce when his Pfizer commercial appeared, and lots of chatter. It felt more like pre-show at an actual concert than any movie screening I’ve been to. And yet once the film began, the crowd tried to be more respectful of other viewers while still enjoying themselves as if they were at a concert. There was some standing up and dancing from a small subset of the crowd for a few songs, but for the most part, any noticeable actions from the audience were kept to singing softly in their seats and cheering and clapping for the intros to certain eras and the ends of their favorite songs.

As for the film itself? There’s not much of note to talk about. It suffers from the same problems most other concert docs do in that it doesn’t work as a movie. This show is not staged for the screen. The blocking, production design, and performances are all built for a stadium act, and they come off as clunky when seen in a movie theater. The only difference between this film and the millions of videos on the internet taken by concertgoers is highly expensive cameras and movement. On the last bit, director Sam Wench’s camera movements are aimless, trying to get every possible angle so decisions can be made about what to show in post-production. And yet, the haphazard editing doesn’t do anything to either keep the energy up or draw our attention to certain parts of the frame. There’s a dull, predictable rhythm to each cut that it almost becomes sleep-inducing throughout the nearly three-hour film.

But the Swifties don’t care about that, nor do I think they necessarily should. They are there for a concert, and the energy in the room suggests the doc is a resounding success. However, given the hype, you’d expect the experience to be more memorable, if not from the film itself than at least from the communal aspects of seeing something that so many people care so deeply about. Instead, if you aren’t a Swfitie, seeing this film by yourself makes you feel more alone than seeing any movie in an empty theater ever could. The grand scale of the concert creates a distance between the viewer and the artist that, no matter how hard the artist tries to connect to each member of her audience individually, means not already having a strong emotional connection to the work will leave you feeling empty.