13: "CANCELLED!" — something wicked this way comes

In "CANCELLED!", the showgirl confronts the forces that try to keep women small head on. She’s done trying to play nice. Instead, she embraces infamy and forges a sisterhood with other women who refuse to conform.

This episode unveils the showgirl’s journey from reactive victim to empowered advocate, turning public criticism into a badge of honor. Through allusions to classic myths and Macbeth’s witches, Swift points to the double standards of our patriarchal system, the internalized misogyny that pits women against one another, and the transformative power of refusing to let shame define you.

Our showgirl is scarred but strong, ready to live in the freedom that comes from facing your worst nightmare and surviving.

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Transcript

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In canceled, our showgirl, again, confronts the vicious backlash she's encountered before. Only this time, she's older and wiser, scarred but strong. And instead of directing her ire at another woman, she directs it at the misogyny that tries to pit them against one another. She likens cancel culture to a modern day witch hunt that instead of public executions, uses social stigma to punish women who step out of line. But the showgirl, is done trying to fit in, done trying to win public approval. Instead, she's embracing her infamy as a badge of honor, the cost of doing business in a man's world. Welcome to Lit one 12, the Life of a Showgirl where we treat Taylor Swift's latest album like a novel I'm your host, Mara Eller, a literature and writing teacher with 16 years of experience at the high school and college level. I just retired to focus on editing and book coaching, but when I started getting requests for this series on social media, I couldn't resist. Whether you're a veteran swifty or just an AP lit nerd like me who happens to like her music, all are welcome here. I've even got something for you writers, creative prompts inspired by the subject of each lesson. You can find them at the end of the episodes or at mara eller.com/prompts. so grab your metaphorical notebook and let's unpack this record together, chapter by chapter, song by song. Today we're talking about canceled track 10, part of what I see as the final act in the showgirl drama. It Continues the theme of agency we saw so clearly in wood. Be sure to listen to that episode first if you haven't yet. In that song, we saw her transformation from an anxious, insecure object of male attention into a confident, playful, sexually expressive woman rewriting the script that tries to keep women small. Now in canceled, she takes the next step in her transformation from an isolated, reactive victim to a self-aware, em powered survivor who embraces her notoriety, reclaims female power and offers solidarity to other women facing judgment in a patriarchal system. The swagger we saw in the last chorus of father figure is back coupled with the public facing fu defiance of actually romantic. Only now her focus is not on revenge, but on creating a safe haven for women who refuse to play by society's rules. In wood, she claimed space for herself. In canceled, she expands that space to include any woman daring enough to join her. From the very first track. I've been calling out Friendship as a theme, notable primarily through its absence. But in canceled, the showgirl finally speaks directly about it. The chorus repeats, good thing I like my friends canceled, and the verses are directed at you, whom we assume is another woman scorned. The obvious implication is that she's either friends with this woman or is offering friendship. This is a huge step forward for our showgirl, who has never mentioned having a female friend or anyone to really talk to except her mom. Until these Final four tracks. Now, not only does she have her lover, her best friend, she thinks is hot, but she's also found a female friend, or perhaps more than one, a community of women united by their shared experience of facing judgment for being too much. Let's go to the lyrics to see how this develops in the song. The first thing to note is that the title is written in all caps with an exclamation point plus two Ls instead of one. The use of all caps and the exclamation point obviously emphasizes that this is intense. It's an exclamation or a shout. Spelling it with two Ls is the British spelling for canceled just like they spell traveled with two Ls. Some people say this indicates that the friend Taylor is primarily singing about is British. But I haven't found anything other than that in my little bit of research. I am less interested in the real life material behind the songs, but let me know if you have any theories especially if they relate to the deeper meaning of the song itself. The track is characterized by a heavy beat with a dark reputation era sound, but it starts with simple grunge guitar chords and her vocals. Notice here that her voice is doubled like it was in the last chorus of father figure, which we said there indicated that she was backing herself up. Here, it gives the same sense, our first hint at the community building that this song does. Here's verse one. You thought that it would be okay at first. The situation could be saved, of course, but they'd already picked out your grave and hearse. Beware the wrath of masked crusaders. So this other woman thought her misstep wouldn't be a big deal, but she thought wrong because masked crusaders had already planned her death. Masked crusaders brings up images, both of Vigilantes Taylor Swift song referenced there. Including masked superheroes. So these can be anti-heroes, people using questionable methods to pursue a positive result. But this could also bring up ideas of less benevolent crusaders like. The K, K, K. In this context, it certainly refers to people on a mission to right, a perceived wrong who are wearing masks in order to protect their identity. Right away it brings up power imbalance. The people wearing masks cannot be identified, so they're immune from criticism beyond the reach of justice, even as they purport to be enforcing it. The word wrath here with the subject matter of the song reminds me of the idiom, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. That's a paraphrase from a satirical tragedy by William Congreve that premiered in 1697 called The Mourning Bride, as in grieving mourning. The original quote reads, heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned nor hell a fury like a woman scorned. The first part reminds me of actually romantic with love, turning to hate. The second part refers to the concept that women often become extremely angry and vengeful when they are rejected. This idea is often considered misogynistic because it suggests that women are inherently irrational or dangerously vindictive when scorned, while ignoring that this can be equally true of either sex. It's another double standard. When men are angry, it's okay. It's natural, even necessary. But when women are angry, it's unbecoming at best, often irrational and crazy at worst. Anger has historically been a reason to send a woman to an insane asylum even if she wasn't physically dangerous. This is precisely what Taylor critiques in her song, mad Woman from Folklore. I'll share some of those lyrics because they're so precisely relevant to this song. Every time you call me crazy, I get more crazy. And when you say, I seem angry, I get more angry. And there's nothing like a mad woman. What a shame she went mad. So she plays there on the word mad, angry, and also crazy. No one likes a mad woman. You made her like that. And you'll poke that bear till her claws come out and you find something to wrap your noose around. So the idea is that you'll poke the bear until it gets angry, and then you'll say, ah, see, you're angry. Now we can string you up and hang you. She's singing about the way the system oppresses women and then calls them crazy for not liking it, and then criminalizes that. And then a little later in the song she sings and women like hunting, witches too, doing your dirtiest work for you. So she points out that it's not just men who engage in these witch hunts. Women become some of the most enthusiastic polices of other women. Which is a result of internalized misogyny. We learn to see the world through the eyes of patriarchy and then become part of the system that oppresses us. The pre-chorus of canceled gives us a glimpse of what the showgirl and her friends may have done to evoke the wrath of these masked crusaders, because that's the thing about cancel culture. It all depends on what people are getting canceled for. If someone is guilty of something truly egregious that somehow escapes legal ramifications, then social stigma might be an appropriate and useful consequence. But if the person is innocent or simply guilty of something the people in power don't like, it becomes a very different story. Which brings us back to the question, who gets to decide what deserves cancellation and what doesn't? We have to look closely at the kinds of things, the showgirl names in the verses that are leading her and her friends to getting canceled. Did you girl boss too close to the sun, did they catch you having far too much fun? Girl Boss is on its own a revealing word I've never heard. Boy Boss as a term. Girl boss implies that a female was acting like a boss, which means she was stepping outside her prescribed gender role because being assertive is considered inherently masculine, as is leadership. When women are assertive, they're called bossy, but that word is almost never directed at a man. So girl bossing is already a problem, but then girl bossing too close to the sun. This brings up the myth of Icarus. Icarus wore wings attached to his back with wax to try to escape imprisonment, but he disobeyed his father's instructions and flew too close to the sun, which melted the wax, plummeting him to his death. In this line, the showgirl plays with that classic myth by mixing it with that of witches. Here she's saying, if you fly too close to the world reserved for men around whom the earth revolves, if you get too close to the world of power and success, they'll try to burn you as a witch. So the crime there is claiming too much power or authority getting too big for your britches, so to speak, especially when you should be wearing a skirt in the first place. Then did they catch you having far too much fun? This crime is simply enjoying yourself too much. Just as no one likes a mad woman, no one likes women who are truly happy either, especially if their happiness doesn't seem to be dependent on a man, or if they're happiness involves sexual freedom, like she exposed in wood. The second pre-chorus adds to our list of offenses women seem to commit. Did you make a joke? Only a man could. This seems to be exactly what Taylor and our showgirl did in wood. She made lots of dirty jokes about male genitalia and about her own pleasure. And how was that received in our culture? As slop, trash and lazy songwriting, at best as a shallow if fun ode to her fiance's sexual prowess. But when men sing or joke about the same things, no one bats an eye. Were you just too smug for your own good? Smug is a negative version of confident. It means arrogant or haughty. So the question is, was the woman actually arrogant or is it just a lack of insecurity being interpreted on a woman as haughtiness? Even if it was actually arrogance. Is that reason to kill slash cancel someone? Only if that person's a woman is the implication here. Or bring a tiny violin to a knife fight. This is a play on the idiom, bring a knife to a gunfight, which means to show up woefully unprepared for a battle. Interestingly, swift used the original idiom in her song, Call It What You Want on Reputation when she was still licking her wounds from her own cancellation. But here she plays with the idiom by bringing a tiny violin to a knife fight. A violin symbolizes emotion, which often includes passion, but a tiny violin is a more recent idiom used to offer mock sympathy. It's a way of saying your problems aren't that bad. It's not exactly nice, but again, it's hardly cause for execution. So considering this list, the song seems to be calling out that women get canceled for very different reasons than men. Male celebrities get canceled generally for abuse of power, including bigotry and sexual harassment, but female celebrities generally get canceled for petty crimes, like making jokes, men don't like being too ambitious, too assertive, or too happy. So she's saying, did you commit one of these crimes and now they're gunning for you? She says, come with me. When they see us, they'll run, something wicked this way comes. The first part of that definitely implies that she has some power, at least the power to intimidate that she's a force to be reckoned with. since they'll see her and run the other way. But something wicked this way comes is more ambiguous At first, we're tempted to think she's referring to herself and maybe her posse, but that might not be the case. The line comes from Shakespeare's Macbeth. It is spoken by the witches, but it is in reference to Macbeth. They are calling him Wicked, morally corrupt. But there's an irony there too, because the witches are also wicked. Or perhaps we assume they are wicked because they fit the stereotype. Shakespeare leaves it ambiguous whether the witches cos Macbeth to kill his king or whether their prophecy was merely a foretelling of what he was already going to do. So in the play, the question becomes are the witches agents of evil or merely female observers who have the audacity to call it like they see it? The play offers the convenient option of blaming the women for the man's violence. It's like she made me do it. It's a pattern that goes all the way back to the story of Adam and Eve, where Adam blames Eve for offering him the forbidden fruit and bringing sin into the world, which has of course been used as the rationale for the subjugation of women in Judeo-Christian cultures for thousands of years. Point being in canceled, swift is playing into this ambiguity. Something wicked this way comes. Is it her and her friends, or is it the men they dare disobey? Or is it maybe the cancel culture itself that supports this new yet ancient way of punishing unruly women? It could be all of the above. This idea of women being blamed for chaos, they didn't cause is also present in Hamlet. Ophelia is entirely innocent of the betrayal and scheming that destroys the Danish court, yet she suffers for it nonetheless, perhaps more than any other character. That might support the interpretation that the witches in Macbeth were similarly innocent, yet blamed for the mess made by men, or at least that that's what Taylor wants us to think about here. But in canceled, swift and the showgirl complicate this dynamic because this coven is not entirely innocent. They have secrets. Bodies in the attic, which we'll come back to, and still like Ophelia, like the witches, they're unjustly punished for crimes they didn't commit or for misbehavior that's not unlawful, but simply unbecoming for women. So that's something to look for as we continue through the lyrics. Now we get to the chorus. Good thing. I like my friends canceled. I like'em Cloaked in Gucci and in scandal. While most people would stay away from someone who's labeled a witch for fear, it would rub off on them, the showgirl wants to be their friends. In fact, she prefers it that way. Why? As we find out at the end of the chorus, it's because that way she knows exactly who her friends are. They're the ones with matching scars. They're the ones who have been through the same hell she survived, and now they're bonded by this shared suffering. Cloaked in Gucci and in Scandal is one of my favorite lines. It uses a rare play on words called zeugma, Z-E-U-G-M-A. Where a verb is used with two objects that create a double meaning for the verb, one literal and one non-literal. So she likes her friends cloaked in Gucci, literally wearing Gucci clothes, but she also likes them Cloaked in scandal, figuratively covered in scandal. This is just one example of the amazing word play that Taylor does so well in her songs. Something that we'll be talking about in my upcoming Write Like Taylor Swift workshop. You can learn more and register at maraeller.com/writeliketaylor. The word cloaked also has connotations of witches, and the implication is that she too is cloaked in Gucci and scandal, since she's emphasizing what she and these other women have in common, matching scars, symbolizing a shared history of persecution. So with this cloaked in Gucci and in Scandal line, she's saying, you want to try to take us down with these accusations, but I'm going to wear them as one more costume I can use to my advantage, and not just any costume. haute Couture. She once again changes the narrative such that the scandal becomes a symbol of luxury, a sign of success, something she wears with pride. Then she sings like my whiskey sour and poison thorny flowers. The whiskey sour reminds us of the brown liquor, the father figure drank, so she's drinking it now, only sour. Or actually sweet and sour because whiskey sours are actually a quite sweet cocktail along with the sour, so sweet and sour. Poison thorny flowers. Flowers are a recurring motif in this album from the daisy in wood, to the lovers who withered in Elizabeth Taylor and the wilted corsage in Ruin the friendship. Poison comes up a lot too. Here my best guess is that the flowers represent a romantic gesture, but thorny flowers indicates a threat hidden within that act of courtship, and maybe she's saying she'll poison them before giving them back. I would love to know your thoughts on this one, if you see any better ways of interpreting that part. I also see another reference in this line to call it what you want, where she says, all her flowers came back as thorns. So love and happiness was killed, replaced with pain and misery in that song, but here she has thorny flowers, so maybe it's a sense of reconciling the two of finding beauty and joy amidst the imperfections. Then she says, welcome to my underworld, where it gets quite dark. This is where she gets a little more explicit about taking on the persona of the villain, or at least the anti-hero. She lives in. The underworld now is perhaps the queen. Where she can finally reign without obstruction. Verse two says, it's easy to love you when you're popular. The optics click, everyone prospers. That word prospers to remind us of father figure. A little bit of a predatory sense there. This points to the idea that friends are easy to come by when you're doing well, when your last hit was hot. But the implication is that those friends are using you, riding on your coattails to get closer to success. But one single drop, you're off the roster. Could be a football reference. Drop the ball one time and you're kicked out. But for women, it's not just getting kicked off the team. The next line says, tone deaf and hot, lets effing off her. Tone deaf means lacking self-awareness or sensitivity to the way your words may be perceived in a particular cultural climate, so that you accidentally offend people. Again, not a positive quality, but also not a good reason to kill someone. You also have to ask here, is it worse because she's hot? Tone deaf and hot? That seems to be the implication, that being sexually attractive makes you more of a target. Then we get the pre-chorus and the chorus again with one part that's different. Welcome to my underworld. It'll break your heart. I feel like this is acknowledging that she's not above it all. She's saying it's gonna hurt, I know. It'll break your heart to lose all the people you, you thought loved you, but at least now you'll know who your real friends are. She also says, honey, at the beginning of this line. It's not an accident given the title of the next song. Is she calling her friend, honey here? In verse three, she says, but if you can't be good, then just be better at it. This reminds me of wood. If you can't be a good girl, then just be better, smarter at being a bad girl. Everyone's got bodies in the attic. This doesn't literally mean dead bodies. It's another way of saying skeletons in the closet. Secrets. Everyone has secrets. Everyone's made mistakes. I like how she's repeating the idea that they may have made some mistakes, that they're not perfect. She's not claiming they're totally innocent, just that they don't deserve the level of backlash they're receiving. This is actually fairly significant because in literature throughout history, women tend to be portrayed in two opposite ways, either as the evil horror witch temptress, or as the pure innocent virginal angel. And there's no room in between for complex female characters like we heard about in wishlist. So in a way, Taylor or the Showgirl is giving us complex female characters within this song. Bodies in the attic could be even more metaphorical since attics have been used in literature to represent the subconscious, the place where things we're ashamed of and don't want to face are hidden. You could even consider books like Jane Eyre, where the crazy wife was locked up in the Attic. So maybe she's saying we all have parts of ourselves that society deems unacceptable. We all have bodies in the attic or took somebody's man. This reminds me of Elizabeth Taylor and her affairs with married men. Again, not good, but something women tend to be disproportionately blamed for. And it makes me think of the line in honey, about someone's man looking at her wrong. The idea that she could be minding her own business and still be blamed for a man finding her attractive. We'll take you by the hand and soon you'll learn The art of never getting caught. We is an important word there and implies a community of women inviting in another woman. The art of never getting caught. So she is not going to stop, quote, misbehaving, but she's gonna get smarter about it. Then the final chorus has the line, I salute you if you're much too much too handle. Another reference to women being unruly and that phrase too much to handle. Who's doing the handling there? It's kind of a gross phrase. Can't you see my infamy Loves company. This is a play on misery loves company, but here it's infamy, negative fame. So she's embracing negative press, embracing the role of the villain, and she's happy to share her new home with her new friends. Now they've broken you like they've broken me, but a shattered glass is a lot more sharp. It's a version of what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. It actually reminds me of one of my favorite Hemingway lines from a farewell to arms. The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places. Here she says sharp instead of strong, which has a double meaning. Sharp can mean smart, but also cutting or dangerous. And the song ends with at least you know exactly who your friends are. You know who we are. They're the ones with matching scars. So we end with a vision of this community of scarred, but strong and sharp women supporting one another to pursue their dreams despite the world that tries to keep them down. In fact, she's been pushed down so many times that she's made her home in the underworld where it might be dark, but at least she's free. And she finally has female friends. Taylor has often written about how the media and music industry. tries to pit women against each other, and I think that's an important motif in this larger narrative. It supports the idea that actually romantic is the showgirls low point that she later regrets. She thought it was a high point of victory, but then she looks back and hates the way she treated that other woman, which we get a hint of in wishlist and a confirmation of here and canceled. It's like she realizes that in a patriarchal world, the showgirls are all lambs in wolf's clothing, pitted against one another when the true enemy is actually the system that uses them up and leaves them for dead to quote the final track. So like in actually romantic and father figure, the showgirl is done playing nice, but this time she's realized who the real enemy is and that if she chooses to, she can use the pain she's been through to help her protect others from the same fate. She's not just saving herself from the fate of Ophelia. Now she's helping other showgirls to save themselves as well. She finally has friends, including her best friend she thinks is hot signaling that our showgirl is finally finding wholeness. Overall cancelled demonstrates the showgirl's newfound resilience, her acceptance of the life she has, imperfections and all. What once dragged her down and might have drowned her is now just another costume on her rack, another tool she uses to play the game and win. That is it for today's deep dive, but I do have a couple of discussion questions as well as your writing prompts. Here are those discussion questions. First, what do you think poison thorny flowers means? Do you see any other connections to flowers or poison in the album that might illuminate this line? Second, do you see this as confirmation that the showgirl has embraced the role of the villain? Where do you see her morally at this point in the story? Third, would you agree that friendship is an important part of the Showgirls character arc? Why or why not? And now for your writing prompts. Remember you can get these all in one place by going to mara eller.com/prompts. We'll start with memoir. One. Swift points out that women are too much when they are overly ambitious, confident or happy. Have you seen these societal expectations show up in your own life or in those of people you know? Two, what qualities do you look for in your friends? How has that changed over the years? Three Swift reframes, infamy as a badge of honor. How might embracing criticism or negative labels be empowering in your own life or work? I will quickly share that I got my first hate comments or you know, trolling comments when I had my very first post about Taylor Swift's album Go Viral. And it was kind of shocking at first, but then I realized, you know what this means, I'm saying something important. It's kind of like a badge of honor or a right of passage. Because if you're not saying something that someone disagrees with or feels strongly about, then you're not really saying anything that truly matters, and I wanna say things and do things that matter. So I decided to reframe that as a positive. It also helped that I had so many of you guys giving me really positive feedback as well. So I really appreciate that. Okay, let's do your fiction prompts. One, write a story about a secret community of women bonded by shared experiences of betrayal, public shaming or societal judgment. How do they protect each other? Mentor one another or reclaim their narrative? Two, either in a new story or in your work in progress, give each of your main characters a hidden past they're ashamed of. How does that complicate their emotional landscape? Three, in your work in progress, explore the idea of unspoken rules. What are the unforgivable crimes that everyone knows will get you canceled in some sense of the word within the world of your story? And that is it for today's lesson. If you're loving these deep dives. Make sure to follow the podcast or come join the discussion on social media. My links are in the show notes. I'd love to hear your questions, comments, and insights. Class is always about bringing you into the conversation, helping you to do your own thinking and come to your own conclusions, so I'd love to see you involved. and don't forget to sign up for, write like Taylor Swift by going to maraeller.com/writeliketaylor, Until next time, class dismissed.