‘Miss Americana’ Chronicles Taylor Swift’s Prolonged Growing Pains

Released on Netflix during the tumultuous first month of the new decade, the new Taylor Swift documentary Miss Americana finds the singer struggling with her past and trying to make the best of her future. Over the course of the film, we see her wrestle with her life – work balance (work wins), discussing her 2017 sexual assault case against a gropey morning show DJ (Taylor wins), entering the nation’s turgid political discourse (the person she spoke out against wins) and playing with her cats (we all win). More than anything, it sees Swift working through the prolonged growing pains which seem to have afflicted her ever since leaving the genteel yet controlling gated community of country music for the cruel and chaotic megalopolis of global pop superstardom.

Giving the audience exactly what they want, the film begins with Taylor sitting at the piano at home while an impossibly cute kitten walks across the keys. She then thumbs through her old journals from when she was 13. She tells us she used to write with a quill. Even she rolls her eyes at the memory of it. Seriously, this could have been the entire 85 minute movie, and fans would have declared it the greatest movie ever made. If she was a performance artist instead of a pop star, this would have been the movie. If she was Lana Del Rey, this would have been the movie. Taylor – it’s a good idea – think on it.

Despite the lost opportunity of Taylor Swift Plays With Cats And Reads Her Old Journals: The Movie, it’s all a set-up for Swift to tell her about her enduring neurosis of always wanting to be thought of as a “good girl.” Home video footage of Taylor getting guitars for Christmas and glad-handing at county fairs and sporting events play as she tells us she lived for the “pats on the head” she got for being a good musician, a good singer, a good songwriter, of doing what she was told and what was expected of her. “I was so fulfilled by approval that…that was it,” she tells us.

A montage of costume changes chart the course of her career. Given how young she was when we first met her, it’s disconcerting to see her morph so quickly from an innocent tween into an alluring 20-something vixen in knee high boots and skintight outfits. Filmed by director Lana Wilson over the past few years, even in her late 20s Swift seems more like the girl who dreamed of becoming a star than the woman who is one. Later she says, “There’s this thing people say about celebrities, that they’re frozen at the age they got famous and that’s kind of what happened to me.”

Having conquered country music with her debut album, Swift turned her attention to the pop charts. It was not an easy transition. She cites Kanye West’s interruption of her acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards as setting her off on self-destructive “psychological paths,” which also may have contributed to an eating disorder. Part of me wants to say, “get over it,” but later she tells us how at one point the hashtag #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty was the #1 trend on twitter worldwide, asking, “Do you know how many people have to be tweeting that they hate you for that to happen?” No I don’t Taylor and I don’t think I can ever imagine how traumatic that must have been.

The final third of the film concerns Swift’s decision to speak out against Republican senatorial candidate Marshal Blackburn ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. While management frets about alienating her middle-American and presumably politically moderate fanbase, Swift explains how Blackburn’s opposition to gay rights and the Violence Against Women Act have pushed her to action. While cynics may claim this is just another publicity claim, watching her make her case, her voice breaking and on the edge of tears, there can be no doubting her passion and sincerity. Though Blackburn won the election, Swift’s tweets have been credited with helping get over 60,000 young voters registered.

At times Miss Americana reminds me of Metallica’s Some Kind Of Monster in how both the singer and band seem so far removed from the reality of everyday life that their reactions to events, whether big or small, are totally out of proportion to how anyone else might react. But of course, anyone else isn’t having people break into their home and sleep in their bed or having Kanye West diss them in a rap song. If Swift feels triumphant at the film’s end, newly empowered at the age of 30 to “Deprogram the misogyny in my own brain” I still can’t help feeling sad for how one of the most successful, talented and beautiful women in the world could be shaken to her core by an unflattering photograph or tweet. I hope she finally realizes how free she’s always been.

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.

Stream Miss Americana on Netflix