Taylor Swift's "The Man"

 

The great advantage of art is that it is the one place one is permitted to speak truth. The disadvantage is that most people either misunderstand or misrepresent what you say; usually to mean the opposite. The classic example is the parables of Jesus.

But another example that has come to my attention recently is Taylor Swift’s music video “The Man,” which one of my grad students has been asked to comment on. Everyone reads it as a criticism of male gender roles and a complaint about the oppression of women by the patriarchy.

“It's a thinly-veiled attack on the disparity between how men and women in the same roles are viewed by society,” explains the BBC. The Washington Post calls it a "symbolism-packed takedown of the patriarchy."

I don’t discount the possibility that Taylor Swift herself believes so. That is not relevant, for it is the intentional fallacy. Artists are not necessarily aware of or in agreement with what they are saying. They are inspired; they are speaking, ideally, for a higher being. As Cohen writes in “Going Home”:

But he [Cohen; God is speaking] does say what I tell him

Even though it isn’t welcome

He just doesn't have the freedom

To refuse

The video indeed seems to be doing this. Superficially, Taylor Swift’s video is a feminist lament about the advantages of being a man. Examples of traditional complaints include “manspreading”; the sexual double standard that men are permitted to be promiscuous, while women are criticized for it; that men are the bosses in the work force; that men are more free to express anger, while women must always be “nice”; that old men get to marry younger women. Even that men get to pee standing up. Each familiar claim is portrayed in a brief tableau.

But the whole thing seems subverted at the end of the video by the big reveal: that the man being portrayed is not a man at all, but Taylor Swift in masquerade.

What is the point of this, if not to suggest that the image of the male life being portrayed is not real, but a woman’s fantasy of what it might be like? As if demanding of us that we question its accuracy. The more so since the final scene knocks down the fourth wall and demonstrates this was all a video as well, all “made up.”

Also subverting the superficial interpretation are hints throughout the video that woman are actually in control “behind the scenes.” Most obviously, at the end, Taylor Swift is revealed as the director, giving orders to the man and criticizing his performance, while he humbly defers and promises to do better. When the credits run, everything was done, they say, by Taylor Swift, and “no men were harmed in the making of this video.” Suggesting a status for men equivalent to that of a trained animal, or a pet.

In an earlier scene, of a man competing in a tennis match, on the rear wall we see the legend “Womens’ Charity.” That id, all the effort being put out by the man is for the benefit of women. A shot on a subway displays, on the rear wall, a fake movie poster titled “Man versus Master.” Which surely implies that the man is not the master. Another scene features a poster that reads ““Missing. If found, return to Taylor Swift.” 

In light of these background references, we have a right to assume irony. Now go back and look at the visual examples of male privilege. Are they not actually mocking these claims? Beginning with their chilche’d nature. The man manspreading on the subway has his legs spread absurdly wide. He is wearing a business suit and smoking a cigar—not the sort of person you would see in a subway, and not something you could get away with in the real world. Images of men throwing bills in the air; stepping over women lounging in bikinis on a private yacht. 

More irony: the imaginary man is seen throwing a tantrum on the tennis court, on the ground and banging his fists. Is this meant to illustrate a male right to express anger? But it seems most obviously to refer to a recent such outburst by Serena Williams. A female line judge rolls her eyes in a brief reaction shot: men are not allowed to get away with such behavior.

A gentleman of obviously advanced years is shown marrying a younger woman. If this is meant to suggest male privilege, her big smile as she flashes a huge diamond ring to the camera is not the best way to do so. It implies instead that she is getting just what she wants here.

A woman has to work twice as hard as a man to get ahead? The video shows the very opposite: immediately after criticizing her male lead, Taylor Swift as director heaps praise on a female actor for doing no more than rolling her eyes at the camera. The scene is too obvious to be without meaning.

The reality Taylor Swift is portraying is that feminism is all wrong. Men do not get the better end of the social bargain, and never did. Women are always in control; for the simple reason that men do everything they do in hopes of pleasing women in the mating dance. A pretty young women gets whatever she wants, whenever she wants it. She simply says, “try to be sexier—try to be more likeable”; as Swift does to her male alter ego at the end of the movie; and any man will react like a cowed but devoted dog. 

Men are whatever they are because that is what women tell them to be.