In the midst of the anticipation of Taylor Swift’s new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” UT is offering a new class this fall that will study the social, economic and cultural impacts that Taylor Swift has had on the media and film industry.
Darcey Morris, a cinema studies professor, is the architect of this class — CNST 400 — which will be offered on Mondays and Wednesdays from 9:10-11:10 a.m.
“We’ll talk about Taylor Swift from every possible angle,” Morris said.
Over the last several years, Swift, at only 34 years old, has transformed from an American pop star to a world-famous icon. Her fanbase of “Swifties” is fiercely loyal and multigenerational — something that has scarcely been seen from a musical star since Beatlemania of the ‘60s.
The reason Swift has such a powerful influence is because she is a master at making her audience “feel things,” according to Morris, a devoted Swiftie herself.
“With her songs, she expresses so many uniquely feminine experiences,” Morris said. “And also just complex human emotions, in ways that are powerful and really resonate with people.”
Swift has influenced and inspired thousands of women just through her music, including Presley Poehler, a sophom*ore studying psychology who discovered Swift’s music after her mother introduced her to Swift’s “Speak Now” album when she was a little girl.
“Listening to her songs and experiences has reminded me I’m not alone,” Poehler said. “I’m not a person who speaks out about how I’m really feeling, so hearing that others go through the same things I do makes this big world feel a bit smaller … Swift’s music can bring us back to the reality where it’s OK to feel different emotions, and it’s OK to talk about them.”
Historically, women in media have always been discounted, according to Morris, but because of Swift, women now have more opportunities to be taken seriously. While other affluent women have also used their platforms to bring about change, no one has quite played the game like Swift, and Morris argues that we could all benefit from analyzing this.
In this class, students will not only have fun watching Swift’s music videos, concerts and films but they will also analyze and learn about her business decisions, lyrical texts, aesthetics and public persona.
Something that makes Swift unique in the pop star realm is that she has come of age in her career at the same time that social media has. When she first began using social media, Swift promoted herself on Tumblr and MySpace. Today, she has multiple platforms across Instagram, Twitter and TikTok to Apple Music and Spotify that she utilizes to place clues for her fans to find and decode about her upcoming songs and albums.
“She kind of taught everybody else what you could do with (social media),” Morris said, “And how you could use it to maintain and create strong relationships with fans to promote yourself without going through traditional gatekeepers.”
Swift is also a master businesswoman and market strategist. She has used her musical abilities and following to spearhead connections and negotiate with people and companies to influence politics, the economy and even football.
Part of the reason Morris has named her class “Gender/Media (Taylor’s Version)” is to cleverly attribute Swift's strides in reclaiming her music after her management company, Big Machine Records, sold her masters to Ithaca Holdings, whose music manager Scooter Braun, sold to Shamrock Holdings for $300 million in 2019. This prevented Swift from earning royalties for her own music.
Swift said that Braun repeatedly bullied her, so to fight back, she re-recorded her original six albums and dubbed them “Taylor’s Version,” regaining her power and control over what is rightfully hers.
“The fact that Taylor Swift can stand up and stand out when treated poorly is opening doors for women instead of letting men walk over them,” Poehler said. “She encourages women to speak up and pursue what they want, not what others want.”
Since then, Swift’s fanbase has grown more loyal than ever, almost exclusively listening to “Taylor’s Version” songs to support her career.
“The idea that musicians don't own their own music is pretty shocking to people, and I think (even) if you're not a Taylor Swift fan, or very knowledgeable about her, that’s something you can recognize is just good business sense,” Morris said.
Swift’s recent Eras Tour is the highest-grossing music tour ever, surpassing $1 billion in revenue and generating over $6 million for the United States economy.
In November 2022, it became very apparent just how big the Swiftie fanbase was amid the Ticketmaster presale fiasco. Ticketmaster said they faced “historically unprecedented demands,” causing the site to crash.
Ticketmaster then had to modify its rollout process to accommodate fans. Still, most fans spent several hours waiting in the site’s queue just to see if they could even get a ticket to see Swift in action.
Because of the broad nature of film studies, this class offers a gateway for students aspiring to be in any field to learn something from this course. Whether students want to be accountants or filmmakers — Swift’s career encompasses it all, and there is much to learn for Swifties and non-Switfies alike.
“She is redefining the music industry and strengthening women all over the world … There is a lot of potential for this class, and if students are passionate about this subject, I believe they can learn a lot from it,” Poehler said.
