redantsunderneath:

kontextmaschine:

Miss Americana? Well, I don’t have Netflix and there’s no Alamo Drafthouse in town. But if I did see it I’d probably analyze it less as a “behind the persona” view than as the persona’s newest, 2020, mirror in the hall

Yeah. It’s crafted, alright.  But like her whole persona, I think it’s fairly representative of who she is, just optimized for clarity of narrative and edited to remove the guarded bits. The scene where they take off in a private jet feels too much like middle middle class casual, first time in this situation, to be believed and the way they are unprepared for stuff sliding around on takeoff too cute by half, but there was some level on which I bought it… just a good natured girl “from Nashville” trying to be normal in the situation.

The narrative as presented is rooted the gifted child thing I’ve accused her of.  The takehome is she’s trying to learn how not to tie all her happiness into whether others tell her she is performing well, which she feared is all she ever was. It’s a terrible doc if you want more about her dating life (as presented, it’s “I dated and people were shitty about it, I found a more stable relationship with a guy I will barely show,” which was like 2 minutes screen time, one of which was her and London guy eating burritos which she “had never had till recently”) or her father (barely mentioned) or the impact of her mother’s illness (sketchy details). Instead you get her relationship to her weight and political awakening, which is kind of cool to see presented from her perspective (Marsha Blackburn gets more screentime than anyone but Tay and mom and maybe Brendon Urie).

But, since the doc is mostly about showing you how normal she is in an abnormal situation, there’s a “I never grew up” aspect that kind of oozes out.  In the “I put ice in my white wine” part (I’ll let you decode all the cultural shit packed into that) she essentially says red wine is for grownups which punctuates a theme of there being a line she’s avoiding stepping over.  The arrested development aspect of her as a lyricist and production deciderer (something I love and find fascinating) appears to be an aspect of an overall personality characteristic.  She talks about having kids in a way that’s so abstract she should have been playing with a Barbie when she did it. 

Besides the narrative itself, the most interesting thing is her working in studio. There is always a feeling that the “demo” extras on the albums were complete artifice and this, at least, felt more cherry picked than scripted. I would have liked more focus on the summer of 2016 as a clear cut point of crisis from which a new self developed, but mostly it’s just odd that applying screenplay rules to a documentary feels like a correct approach.  Worth a watch.

For gods sake, just borrow someone’s Netflix login like a normal person.

Yeah, I guess her thing has always been “living out the iconic American White Girl life-course”, so she can make art of it

And that now includes “go to therapy for BPD as you turn 30”

Of course the Tayswift version of therapy is thinking about it real hard and getting autobiographical

I’d love to see the branded CBT worksheets, tho