When Taylor Swift posted a teaser clip from her new music video for the single “Look What You Made Me Do,” she got instantly and extensively dragged for a particular image’s close similarity to Beyoncé’s “Formation” and Lemonade aesthetic. The video’s director, Jospeh Kahn, denied any connection.
The full video debuted as an exclusive segment during the 2017 MTV VMAs (Swift’s favorite stage for pettiness and the scene of the original “crime” against her — Kanye’s 2009 interruption that in all fairness did actually “make that b**** famous”). It’s true the visual from the teaser invokes moments in Beyoncé’s “Formation” (as does the sonic aspect of “Look What You Made Me Do”), but in larger context, there’s something else going on.
The video as a whole is an amalgamation of ripoffs: Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, Sia, Nicki Minaj, and Beyoncé videos all seem to be reference points, along with some of Swift’s own. (And those are just the ones I caught on first viewing — I don’t want to watch that thing again.) Apropos of nothing, there’s also a particularly cheap shot at Katy Perry during a car crash scene where Swift’s hair is arranged to look like Perry’s new short cut while Swift grasps a Grammy Award — something Katy Perry has yet to win.
Credit will be heaped on Swift for this “brave, bold” artistic move, but it’s still just another copy. Beyoncé did all this over four years ago
Swift and Kahn may have been using references to other videos as a commentary on the notion of celebrity, publicity, reputation in general. But hidden underneath the collaged cultural references is the fact that Swift actually copied the entire concept and execution of another unlikely Beyoncé production, one that had much bigger implications beyond just music. I’m talking about the Pepsi commercial that prefaced her performance at the 2013 Superbowl and the release of Life Is But A Dream shortly thereafter.
That simple commercial (though nothing Beyoncé does is ever truly simple) was about disassociating a public performer self from a private persona.
Becoming Beyoncé the artist and Beyoncé the person simultaneously. While she’d always been hesitant to speak about her private life in public, 2013 marked an even more extreme shift. She quit giving interviews. She spoke to the public only through the visual medium of Instragram. Since 2013, that intense privacy she created hasn’t eroded. She drew a heavy line as a survival strategy.She hints at this strategy in Life Is But A Dream with a sly reference to Nina Simone. Citing that fans didn’t question what Simone’s daughter was wearing on any given day and that they just enjoyed the music. Beyoncé describes the way the culture of celebrity has changed over…
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