Mediast10 Paper 2

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Dec 6, 2023

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Teresa Viriya Tenggono Media Studies 10 Professor Josh Jackson November 17, 2023 Celebrities and Their Star Text Popular culture, particularly American pop music, has recently emerged as a critical factor shaping cultures worldwide when globalization has an ever-increasing impact. Singers and songwriters, for example, are crucial cultural champions because they use music to convey personal identities, sentiments, views, and bigger societal storylines. However, the widespread availability of cultural goods highlights the complex ways individuals might understand artists with opposing viewpoints. Taylor Swift's career in the music industry demonstrates how artists, their artistic identity, and the various things that people do that influence how people react to their work are all interconnected. This research aims to describe in detail how crowd actions affect how celebrity identities evolve in American pop music. The thesis of this paper is that Taylor Swift's response to her controversy with numerous musicians, particularly Kanye West, was to release the tune "Look What You Make Me Do," which received mixed reactions from fans; some considered her as independent and strong, while others saw her as manipulating and childlike. According to the Celebrity lecture, a celebrity can be defined as someone who draws so much attention that their lives and traits are of public interest. It is also a form of text that the public can analyze for meaning, and the accumulation of the concept or meaning behind a particular celebrity is called the star text. There are four components of celebrities’ star text. The first component is the body of their work; a singer’s body of work would be their singles and

albums, whereas an actor or actress’s bodywork would be their movies. The second is promotion, which functions as authorized image construction of the celebrity; it could be press releases, advertisements, posters, and social media outlets that are controlled directly by the celebrity. The third component of star text is the celebrity’s publicity, generated by the press outside the celebrity's control. Audience practice, the fourth component of star text, is the central concept discussed in this paper. Audience practices are ways the general public, including fans and anti- fans, perceive a celebrity. As Fiske elaborated, the ideological meaning behind a celebrity is more important than the products they produce. However, in the context of singers or musicians, it highlights the musical pleasures that are highly resistant to analysis and challenging to communicate in the words and pictures that are vital in the flow of culture (Fiske, n.d.). The first focus of this paper is to discuss Taylor Swift's initial star text before she was involved in scandals. Taylor Alison Swift, also known as Taylor Swift, is a female American singer and songwriter. She began by establishing a robust public presence as a genuine, likable girl with a developing and maturing sense of self who was also a country star (Luu, 2020). She started writing music lyrics at 14 and was famous for being a country musician for years. Taylor Swift's debut single, "Tim McGraw," was titled after a country performer and began delineating her identity at a time when the music business was keen to identify a fresh young talent in this specific genre (Allan, 2019). During her debut, she confirmed to be in a romantic relationship with Joe Jonas, depicting a teenage dream of falling in love and making her fictional music a reality, attracting more fans as they can feel the relatedness with a teenager’s love life. Even though she was known as a country singer before, as music and art keep evolving, she has changed her songs into pop songs while maintaining her previous fans, creating a solid fandom for her music career. Her 1989 album marked the beginning of Swift's career as a global star.

1989 was her first "official" pop album, which peaked at the number-one position on the Billboard chart. Swift’s first single from this album, "Shake It Off," also charted at the top, and her 1989 World Tour earned more than USD 250 million (Allan, 2019). Swift's evolution as a performer continued with the release of this album; even though some songs dealt with pertinent relationship concerns, she still maintained the love themes that made her famous and identifiable melodies. Throughout her music career of approximately 18 years, she has made many global- worthy songs with a theme of love and heartbreak, such as “Wildest Dreams,” “Style,” “All Too Well,” and “Speak Now.” Though her personal tales may appear to be far away from what many people have gone through, there is something at the core of them that we can all identify with (Luu, 2020). Nevertheless, her album Reputation in 2017 was the hallmark of change. Reputation was musically more electronic and darker in its synth-pop sounds than her earlier country or pop fare. However, it was also lyrically more fan-oriented in places, allowing her to reconnect with her fans (Allen, 2019). Her title track, “Look What You Made Me Do,” was her most significant changing point throughout her career, as she created a solid song to insult her haters. Her intense and dark single was a response to a scandal that was accused of by no other than Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian. Taylor Swift and Kanye West’s drama had occurred since 2009, hugely impacting Swift’s career and star text. It all started when West cut Taylor’s speech when she won an award for Best Female Video in MTV Video Music Award (VMA) in 2009. Several years later, Swift’s first tested the public's patience at the 2016 Grammys when 1989 defeated Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly for album of the year (Nevins, 2018). The dispute began to rise when Kanye West released a new single called “Famous,” with lyrics that used Swift’s name and called her “a

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