Would Mary Shelley listen to Taylor Swift?

This may be my best clickbait title yet.

In an article last week, Matthew Green, Associate Professor in Literature and Popular Culture at the University of Nottingham, writes

Swift’s works are every bit as profound, significant and foundational as Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho, Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Henry Oliver rejects this assertion in the strongest possible terms, at least as it applies to Frankenstein.

The real undervaluing is of Mary Shelley. Shelley did not “reference and develop” a literary tradition. For God’s sake—she invented one.

…

Shelley created the whole myth of Frankenstein; Swift wrote in her sleeves notes “We are mosaics of our worst selves and our best selves”. They are not the same. To say that, “With unprecedented global reach, Swift gothic addresses audiences with deep questions about selfhood and culture”, is just silly. These are not deep questions. They are the same questions that have been asked for centuries, expressed in simple metaphors and entertaining lyrics.

I’m going to explore this conflict from a few angles, starting with a claim that’s easier to define precisely, although not easier to definitively prove.

Mary Shelley would love Taylor Swift

Mary Shelley’s views on music and poetry, on a high level, agree with Oliver’s views on art in general. As Maria Schoina puts it here, Shelley “reifies taste.” In her criticism and other nonfiction, there’s good art and bad art, and unsophisticated audiences on whom the good art is wasted. She’s not one of Oliver’s “philistines” who don’t believe in either distinction.

But she demonstrably disagrees with Oliver’s specific approach to music criticism. In his rebuttal to Green, Oliver quotes a few verses from different Swift songs, without analysis, trusting his audience to recognize their banality. In the comments, he defends this approach:

The large claims made for her significance surely suggest we would be able to appreciate her on the page, without all the costumes and sets and so on? If the lyrics only "work" in situ with the visuals then I take that as further example that her artistry is rather unliterary.

In contrast, Shelley’s commentary and reviews emphasize the role of the actual performance in elevating performance art. In a letter, she writes about a production of The Marriage of Figaro:

There are one or two airs in this piece which are spoiled because they devolve on inferior singers. La Vendetta, for instance, which Francesco Novello fills full of animation and beauty, is lost in the stupid Bartolo of the Opera.

And in another, she gets even more holistic.

A play, in fact, is nothing unless you have people you like with you, and then it is an exquisite pleasure.

Shelley loved watching Italian improvisatori, whose nonce poems, usually accompanied by music, were made up on the spot. But her love of opera, demonstrated in almost all of her writing about music, is the most telling about her opinion on whether the lyrics to a song should stand on their own, without audio or visuals. Opera lyrics, I think it’s generally agreed, don’t need to be good. Here’s a translation of another revenge aria:

Revenge is a sweet thing,
one ill turn deserves another,
and getting back is a great delight!
In vain are excuses and reasons
to try to placate an outraged woman;
don’t believe that she will forgive you!
The woman that has never taken revenge
has peace in her mouth and war in her heart.
When taking revenge, she won’t forgive
even the most welcome lover
who adores her and wants to make up
when the fierce and proud fellow
loses respect for her.

In Italian, admittedly, it rhymes.

For comparison, hm, do you think Taylor Swift’s written any lyrics about a woman wanting revenge on a lover?

mad woman

What did you think I'd say to that?
Does a scorpion sting when fighting back?
They strike to kill and you know I will
You know I will
What do you sing on your drive home?
Do you see my face in the neighbor's lawn?
Does she smile?
Or does she mouth, "Fuck you forever"?

Every time you call me crazy
I get more crazy
What about that?
And when you say I seem angry
I get more angry

And there's nothin' like a mad woman
What a shame she went mad
No one likes a mad woman
You made her like that
And you'll poke that bear 'til her claws come out
And you find something to wrap your noose around
And there's nothin' like a mad woman

Now I breathe flames each time I talk
My cannons all firin' at your yacht
They say, "Move on", but you know, I won't
And women like hunting witches, too
Doing your dirtiest work for you
It's obvious that wanting me dead
Has really brought you two together

I'm takin' my time
Takin' my time
'Cause you took everything from me
Watchin' you climb
Watchin' you climb
Over people like me
The master of spin
Has a couple side flings
Good wives always know
She should be mad
Should be scathing like me

In the flat, dead sliced-up form that is quoting lyrics meant to be sung, Swift’s lyrics show considerably more animation than a libretto.

So, taking it as proven that Shelley would judge Swift holistically…what did Shelley look for in a performance? One recurring theme in her commentary is that she appreciated talent and technique alongside a lack of affectation. She wanted her artists to be good and to make it seem effortless, like the improvisatori on the stages and in the streets of Italy. In another letter, she writes, of a friend of her husband’s family,

The younger lady was a ward of one of Shelley's uncles. She is lively and unaffected. She sings well for an English debutante, and, if she would learn the scales, would sing exceedingly well, for she has a sweet voice.

Her preference for authenticity, or its manufactured facsimile, wasn’t confined to her taste in singers. We can see this from the praise she heaps on author Prosper Mérimée in a review:

[The plays he published under the pen name Clara Gazul] were in every way striking and interesting productions, possessing at once the faults and beauties of their models, full of spirit, originality, and fire. They were introduced by an account of their feigned authoress, which, as well as the dramas themselves, is remarkable for its utter freedom from affectation. There are to be found in them none of those defects too generally attributed with justice to French imaginative works: there is no circumlocution, no parade, and their very hyperbole as being common to the Spanish drama is natural and in its place.

…

[His Illyrian poems] are warlike, pathetic, and amatory—and, above all, whatever is their theme, they are characterised by the utmost simplicity, while a vein of sweetness runs throughout, that lends to each a particular charm.

…

One of the most interesting parts of this book is an account of Vampyrism, and a detail of the death of a girl, the victim of a vampire. But…every lover of nature in its wildness and its freedom, will find pleasure in these emanations of a mind, imbued with grand and unsophisticated imagery…

…

This meeting of two fierce natures in unnatural discord presents a new and terrible source for dramatic interest. Each scene transcends the one before in its appalling horror; and the last, in which the miserable girl poignards her father, completes the dark picture, spreading over the canvas the lurid hues of whirlwind and volcano. We turn trembling from the contemplation, while we confess the force of the genius that presents it to our eyes.

The very qualities Oliver finds so unimpressive in Swift—her unsophisticated imagery, her simplicity and accessibility, the social nature of her appreciation—were hailed by his heroine as signs of genius, sometimes as essential to the craft. Add in all of the unfair advantages a modern-day performer has in production value, and I’m pretty sure Shelley’d be a bit of a Swiftie.

Shelley’s genius is an observation, Swift’s is a prediction.

The astute reader will notice that none of the above rebuts Oliver’s main argument. Oliver acknowledges that Swift is impressive. His objection is to the idea that her work is just as “profound, significant and foundational” as Shelley’s, who, lest we forget, invented an entire literary tradition.

Now, by a certain definition this is just as self-evident as he thinks. Shelley’s work was foundational to multiple strains in the next two hundred years of artistic evolution. Swift’s work can’t possibly be, because the next two hundred years haven’t happened yet. Check and mate.

Similarly, Shelley’s work has been the subject of millions of words of analysis. “Critics have had much to say,” as Oliver puts it. I agree that this is proof of its profundity. If people are always finding new things to say about it, it must be deep. I don’t think that’s what profundity is, but it does seem to be the only possible way to prove its presence. Anybody can claim to find deep meaning in anything—to provide any real evidence, they need to explain what they found. Swift’s work plausibly has the same volume of words written about it, but not nearly as much distinct analysis. Again, there hasn’t been time. It’s also more difficult to write about performance pieces than it is to write about prose. You’re a critic and a translator at the same time. You need to describe a unique experience of a unique performance, one many readers won’t share, before you can even start plumbing its depths. As the saying goes, writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

I think a large part of Oliver’s indignation comes from this dynamic. Shelley’s work is obviously, undisputably important. Swift’s work isn’t. That might feel like it demonstrates a difference in quality. But that’s a fallacy of demanding impossible evidence. No contemporary artist can possibly be obviously significant in the way a long-dead one can. That’s not an indictment of contemporary art, it’s just how linear time works.

What we can do with present-day artists is make predictions. Oliver, to his credit, does frame part of his conclusion as one.

Are we expected to believe that the [ongoing] Eras Tour is going to have the same hold on the collective imagination two hundred years from now as does the idea of Frankenstein’s monster today?

I think Green might very well answer yes! Or, at least, expect to be believed when he claims to believe in that prediction, based on his study of both the Romantics and contemporary music. Personally, I have no idea. I look forward to reading Green’s case, if he publishes one more detailed. There’s a lot of unknowables about the next two hundred years, so I don’t think confidence is warranted on either side. Maybe nobody will speak English by then. Maybe Swiftism will become the new Catholicism, and you’ll be forced to like it on pain of death.

On the Appalling Lack of Scientific Thought In Swift’s Discography

Oliver never quotes Shelley in his essay in her praise and defense. Presumably, it was too hard to effectively communicate the merit of Frankenstein with just a few out-of-context lines. Instead, he mainly praises the way Frankenstein incorporates, and critically engages with, cutting-edge science and philosophy. Swift doesn’t do this in the same way (unless you count Swift On Security). Is this a damning discrepancy?

I can’t resist the temptation to invert Oliver’s temporal chauvinism here and note that Swift’s depiction of 21st-century technology, as in songs like “All Of The Girls You Loved Before,” is far more accurate than Shelley’s depictions of the same. Her philosophical influences, likewise, can’t help but be more sophisticated than Shelley’s…they incorporate Shelley’s. But that’s silly. Oliver’s point isn’t that the science or philosophy referenced in one work is better than another. He’s praising Shelley’s achievement in incorporating then-cutting-edge ideas, and asserting that Swift has no comparable achievement.

But doesn’t she? We have to remember to translate across milieux. Oliver is impressed by Shelley’s “attendance at chemistry lectures.” Would he be impressed to find out that Swift has also attended chemistry lectures? Would he be impressed if Swift wrote a song riffing on concepts she read in a preprint of a paper to be published in a leading academic journal? I doubt it, and he shouldn’t be. Swift and her audience have easy and instantaneous access to all of the world’s knowledge. Knowing things just isn’t as impressive as it used to be.

What is impressive today is that Swift is the first musician ever to make a billion dollars solely from music. That requires skill, innovation, good choices, and luck. You might dismiss those as having little to do, on their own, with actual artistic merit. But then, neither does incorporating the contents of a chemistry lecture into your fiction. The impressive thing, in both cases, is that they were able to do all that and still be artists.

You never see people writing centuries-old classics these days

If Swift’s a fan of Shelley’s, and Shelley would’ve been a fan of Swift’s, why are we making them fight?

Swift vs. Shelley isn’t a meaningful question in itself. But, in aggregate, these comparisons end up meaningfully informing one’s worldview. There are quite a few people (I get the impression Oliver is one) who are constantly comparing popular art to the art of the past, finding it wanting, and thereby concluding that our culture has worsened. Cultures getting worse is a thing! It can happen! But if you’re not careful, you can end up giving our artistic past lots of extra bonus points for being the past. The past is more influential than the present. There’s more written about it. We focus on its best, most timeless, products. Everything was harder back then, so an equivalent-quality work is a greater achievement. These are all true, and can be reasons to enjoy old stuff, but if you mistake them for the past being better, you lock yourself into a reactionary worldview, one you can’t be liberated from without impossible evidence.

The trick is to be well-calibrated. To be reactionary where the past was actually better, and progressive where it was worse. That’s the right way to honor Mary Shelley—don’t canonize her, emulate her. Look for the most promising, and the most dangerous, ideas around today. And then, look at them, and share what you see.

I was going to edit together a goofy Frankenstein/Swift mashup for my preview image, until I realized they’re both everywhere so of course it would already exist. This is from when she hosted Saturday Night Live.