Ahead of its Netflix premiere, here's what you need to know about Taylor Swift's MissAmericana.
20 Feet From Stardom,
the film is billed as a “raw and revealing look” at the superstar. While there are moments of genuine tenderness, humor and reflection, it offers little more than a glowing, milquetoast rehash of events we’ve already seen play out on social media., which was recently referred to as a “a documentary in name only” and a “celebrity vanity project” byTV critic Doreen St. Félix in her review of another Netflix celebrity vehicle, Gwyneth Paltrow’s.
No one other than Swift and her mother, Andrea, ever address the camera directly. Few of her collaborators are even named. It’s like watchingstripped of tragedy or sex: a montage of glittering concert footage, hotel room musings and career milestones.
What the film does most effectively—and perhaps inadvertently—is expose the strange, lonely core of superstardom: Swift’s life appears to be mostly spent surrounded by people on their laptops, drinking wine with her publicist, working out lyrics in windowless studios, and eating meals out of clamshell containers on private planes. A one-on-one dinner at home with a childhood friend has an uncanny,air, both of them visibly nervous while Swift grapples with the looming specter of turning 30.
A frustrating theme in the film is the insistence that being seen as “polite” and “good” was Swift’s only option as a former country singer. The backlash to the Dixie Chicks’ criticism of President George W. Bush is cited as Swift’s reason for never speaking out politically, but the framing of the issue fails to pay homage to the many artists who have made activism a central part of their platform, or acknowledge the obvious cultural shifts that have happened the years since.
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