Taylor Swift And The Politics Of Appropriation

"Shake It Off" is a brilliant counter-example to the Miley Cyruses and Iggy Azaleas of modern pop.

Billboard

I have never before watched a Taylor Swift video or listened to a Taylor Swift song.

But today I watched the video for “Shake It Off.”

I was moved to this unprecedented act by a brief story that came through my Facebook feed. Rapper and Twitter-er Earl Sweatshirt had objected to the video because it features Swift and a group of Black girls twerking. The recent history of white musicians appropriating Black culture has both horrified and fascinated me, so I watched the video to see just how terrible this Taylor Swift person was.

This video is brilliant. Mr. Sweatshirt's criticism is off the mark. (He admitted in his tweeted criticism of the video that he hadn’t actually watched it.)

The cultural appropriation complaint was based on the fact that, in the video, Taylor Swift appears with a group of performers break dancing and with another group of performers twerking. Both of these dance forms are outgrowths or expressions of hip hop and Black culture, so on the face of things, a claim that Swift is appropriating that culture seems plausible.

Given the recent history of white female musicians engaging in blatant appropriation (Miley Cyrus and her twerking, Iggy Azalea and her faux southern Black accent), the claim seems down-right probable.

The video, however, is actually a repudiation of that behavior. It is about dance, race and culture. In the video, Swift appears with a variety of dance groups representing a plethora of cultural forms, including:

• classical ballet (ala Black Swan)

• “modern dance” (think "college workshop")

• break dancers

• pop lockers

• twerkers

• ribbon dancers (!)

• modern pop dancing (a parody of Lady Gaga)

• high school cheerleaders

In each of these vignettes, it is clear that Taylor Swift has no idea what she’s doing. Possibly in a self-deprecating reference to the “Taylor Swift can’t dance” meme, the video plays up the fact that Swift is out of her element in each of these milieux. One entertaining example involves a talented pop locker doing some kind of (apparently magical) moves with his hands on the left side of the screen, while Swift, on the right, attempts the same, only to find her hands tied in arhythmic knots. This is played for humor.

The only portion of the video where Swift appears to be in her element is among a group of white kids dancing good-naturedly in the kind of non-specific, shake-yourself-more-or-less-on-beat style that is common at middle school dances in the suburbs.

Far from being an example of cultural appropriation, the video appears to be a criticism of it. The dance tropes of many cultures are represented, and in each, Swift plays the role of the white girl attempting — and failing — to copy that mode of dance. The professional dancers are portrayed as talented athletes; the video clearly appreciates their skills on their own terms. Swift is portrayed as the outsider. Her attempts to imitate the professional dancers are humorous in a Horatian tone, with Swift as the target. Only when she engages in the style of “nerd dancing” that has come to be associated with her does she fit in. She and her fellow average white kids shake themselves energetically to the beat and appear to be having a grand time, despite their lack of professionalism. There’s probably something in there about the universality of dance as a form of expression, but maybe I’m reading too much into this.

I love this video because it is a subtle jab at a certain flavor of white appropriation, as well as a celebration of the dance traditions of many cultures. It may be the case that Swift is parodying Miley Cyrus, but she is definitely not trying to be Miley Cyrus.

For what it’s worth, the song is pretty catchy, too.