On 27th of February 2020, Taylor Swift released the MV The Man, in which she directed, starred, wrote both the plot and the lyrics of the song.
The MV set off in an office-like background, with a man standing up straight looking over the city through a vast mirror. He turned out to be the boss of the company, who would be disrespectful, aggressive, and bossy with his employees and still got praise for doing so. One scene to be noted is that he grasped the paperwork of one employee, crumpled and threw it as trash and the women in the background cheerfully caught it. Is this some sort of symbol indicating that there are some women who do not realize that they are put into the disadvantaged, inferior position? Even, there was one woman holding a cup written: “I’D BE THE MAN”. Perhaps they did spot the inequalities between men and women, yet instead of fighting, they chose to accept that men are superior to women by wanting to be a man.
The next scene took place in a subway. The man disrespectfully spread out his leg, smoked, and left the ashtray on the floor. It is not an uncommon picture and clearly, such actions annoyed the others around. He then read a newspaper that is all about men and as soon as he got off the subway, he urinated inappropriately in public. All are common, typical scenes to encounter in real life, so common that we seem to come to terms with them.
The man was a kind of playful one, being on a yacht with women laying around, then waking up in a hotel with a naked woman beside.
Another scene depicts the man with his daughter in the park. He literally just patted the daughter on her head then lifted her into the sky and all the women around were amazed and recognized him “World’s greatest dad”
Then he came to a bar, talking about women’s bodies with his friends, and they made some silly sexual jokes while others fought against each other. The only women who appeared there just served them and let them do anything.
Also in the MV is a marriage between an old man and a young beautiful woman. What’s the problem with this? Love grows regardless of age gap though. Then, why is there such a scene?
Above was my record of almost all events in the MV. Frankly speaking, most, if not all of them are bad images of men, but accusing all men of doing so is unreasonable. However, please draw attention to the last couple of minutes of the MV.
The MV ends with a made-up behind the scene, where a male actor, who previously acted hard in his role, received suggestions such as “be sexier” “more likable” while the woman who only rolled her eyes in the scene is assessed as doing excellent work. Why would a man need to be sexier and more likable? Obviously, Taylor is mimicking those often said to the actresses, or in other words, she is switching the man and woman role in real life.
Therefore to fully comprehend the MV, we must see it in a reverse role, see the Man as the Woman. What if it is not the Man, but the woman who yells at her colleagues, spreads her legs in the subway, smokes and leaves ashtray, then urinates inappropriately? What if the Woman was the one at the yacht with muscular men surrounding, waking up with a naked male beside, then went to a bar making fun of boys and fighting against other women? What if an old woman married a young handsome man? What if the woman cared for her children?
As a matter of fact, women get more serious criticisms when it comes to wrongdoings, and receive less credit when they do good work. Perhaps the biased expectations for women to be well-mannered while men can do however crazy things have stood long enough for us to unconsciously exert more hatred towards women when they commit the same crime as men, even if we are female or feminists.
The life and career of Taylor Swift herself is the solid evidence of the circumstance mentioned above. Taylor Swift vs Kanye West scandal was one of the most disruptive ones and this post would only discuss on the one in 2016 when Kanye West released the song “Famous” where there is a line:
“I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex
Why? I made that bitch famous”
He claimed to have called Taylor and got her acceptance for the lines but Taylor insisted that she was not informed about the word “bitch”. “You don’t get to control someone’s emotional reaction to being called ‘that bitch’ in front of the whole world,” she wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post. Still, the Kim family blamed her for playing the victim, and with their influence, they shaped her image as a cunning snake who was trying to make her name by deteriorating the fame of others. The whole world believed in his story, all called her snakes and carried out a collective bully on her.
It is true that being a star means one has to accept the possible media pressure, but when one is bullied by the whole world when everyone seems to be against you, it makes you doubt yourself and lose your mind. It is painful already, for example, to be isolated by your classmates. The loneliness one suffered then, is one that cannot be measured, one that is severe enough to kill oneself. Taylor Swift then was a world-wide famous singer, one of the most influential idols, and just by some accusation of a man who she regarded as her BFF, all her career collapsed, and kept herself aloof from the showbiz for two years.
Fortunately, she was brave enough to stand up again and fight against the false accusation with the support of the full record of Taylor and Kanye’s conversation on the song. Otherwise, if she held all the criticisms, she would drown herself in the unbearable feeling of being unheard, and we might lose our Artist of the Decade.
However, this sheds a light for us to reflect back on ourselves. Would we, the women and men, stand up for other women to speak out about their problems?