Posted on 04/22/2024 12:07:01 PM PDT by Red Badger
There’s no denying that Taylor Swift dominates pop culture, but the fact that her politics align with the left, which has a stranglehold on pop culture, helps explain why colleges and universities all across the nation are featuring classes on the singer — hell, even Harvard is offering a class dedicated to Swift.
And we wonder how an entire generation can be so uninformed. But make no mistake, the driving force is Taylor Swift’s politics, with the Trump-hating singer proving to be a great platform to further advance the prescribed left-wing narrative.
“We will learn how to study fan culture, celebrity culture, adolescence, adulthood and appropriation; how to think about white texts, Southern texts, transatlantic texts, and queer subtexts. We will learn how to think about illicit affairs, and hoaxes, champagne problems and incomplete closure,” reads the Harvard class listing.
The University of Tennessee class listing says: “In our semester-long study of Taylor Swift, we will explore fan culture, celebrity culture, girlhood, music industry ethics, marketing and promotional strategies, and social media theory, along with race, sexuality, and feminism.”
Swift did not endorse a presidential candidate in 2016 and took a lot of heat for it. After Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, the left-leaning Guardian said of the disdain for his presidency, “But a notable voice has been missing from the chorus: that of Taylor Swift, the world’s biggest pop star. Her silence is striking, highlighting the parallels between the singer and the president: their adept use of social media to foster a diehard support base; their solipsism; their laser focus on the bottom line; their support among the ‘alt-right.’”
Prior to the election, NPR leaned hard on Swift to elicit the proper response: “So, this is happening: Some white supremacists have anointed Taylor Swift an ‘Aryan goddess,’ claiming that she secretly espouses far-right beliefs and is waiting for Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency to make her true views known.”
Suffice it to say, Taylor Swift did not make the same mistake in 2020, as the pop diva was quick to get behind Joe Biden. And now she is held up before the nation for unchecked adulation, including being the subject of study at university.
Here’s a quick sampling of responses to the story, as seen on X:
VIDEOS AT LINK....................
I don’t know about everyone else, but I believe Taylor is overexposed these days.
Can’t even watch a sports show without her name coming up somewhere along the line.
I watch sports to escape from the everyday toils just to be relieved for a hour or so...................
Parents who send their children to college these days might as well flush their money down the toilet.
Don’t take any course where they make you study Beowulf, or Taylor Swift.
$200,000+ in student loans to "study" this:
Taylor Slut 101
Pathetic academia sewage.
Colleges are also offering remedial classes for the kids who can't write or do simple math. This problem should be dumped on public high schools for failing on every level. Not handed off to places charging #70,000 a year for tuition.
In the past citizens 'chipped in' on pell grants etc.. c - as an investment for our own future. But helping the 'Didn't Earn It' and 'Can't Use the Skills' and 'Too Stupid to Be There' 'students' is stupid and wasteful.
Don’t Goethe there.....................
As a musicologist, I would be willing to teach a semester on Taylor Swift as the center of 21st century pop culture, all from a music theory/music history perspective—but it would be for music majors, and primarily for those planning to have careers in non-classical music, or classical musicians wanting to see how the other half lives. The idiotic approach to this course taken by Tennessee, and almost certainly everywhere else, just demonstrates why my generation should be the last to be college professors, and why college in general should be allowed to die a quick and painful death.
I hope I live to see the day when Swift is old and wrinkly.
You’re right studying Taylor in the context of learning entertainment marketing makes sense for marketing or music majors. But only in that context.
Or business/marketing majors
It’s not like studying Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms or even Lennon, Croce or even Lynyrd Skynyrd. She’s still alive and making music, which can change as she progresses through different stages of life....................
I’m sure her late string quartets will be very different from her early quartets.
She’s 34, so it won’t be long.....................
I’m sure her idee fixe will be above a pentatonic tintinnabulation............
I worked at Trinity College Hartford, CT) in the early 90s, back when Tucker Carlson was a student. The decently regarded private college already had a course on Star Trek back then. I remember rescuing a file for a student taking the course. A politically correct piece on Women in Star Trek. The file name was telling, though…”Babes in Trek”
Where no man has gone before...........................
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