16: From Shakespeare to Swift: Can Popular Art Be Great Art?

In this first bonus episode, we step beyond the showgirl’s story to explore the bigger picture of Taylor's reception as an artist. 

I’m sharing an essay I wrote that’s been getting a lot of attention on Substack about why some art—like Taylor Swift’s songwriting—is dismissed as “popular,” while other work—like Shakespeare's plays—is celebrated as “serious” or "literary." It's about artistic hierarchies, who gets to decide which art is considered important, and what those decisions say about who we are as a society. 

You can see the piece (including citations) and join the conversation over on Substack. 

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Transcript

1:18

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. So grab your metaphorical notebook and let's unpack this record together, chapter by chapter, song by song. Hey everyone. Today we're doing something a little different. the first of our bonus episodes, now that we've finished analyzing all 12 songs on the life of a showgirl, I'm sharing an essay I wrote that's been getting a lot of attention on Substack, about why some people are so obsessed with separating popular art from serious art. Why Taylor Swift gets dismissed while Shakespeare gets celebrated for the same kind of writing. Thinking about wood here, It got me thinking about artistic hierarchies, about who gets to decide which art is considered important, and what those decisions say about who we are as a society. So settle in. Today we're gonna be talking about how artistic hierarchies were formed, why it's so important to rethink them, and what might be a truer measure of artistic merit. Hope you enjoy.​From Shakespeare to Swift, Can popular art be great art? It turns out the surest way to go viral is to mention Taylor Swift and Hemingway in the same sentence. When life of a Showgirl released on October 3rd, I wouldn't have thought much about it, except that I saw some really scathing and frankly misogynistic criticism on social media from a writer I had previously respected. After spending far too much time reading the post comments, I had to listen for myself. At first, I was not impressed. The first track, the fate of Ophelia struck me as fun and musically interesting, but disturbingly reductive toward women promoting the passive princess in need of rescue stereotype. I found so repulsive in Disney movies. Then I got to father figure where she seemed to be singing about a pimp and repeats the line because my parts are bigger. I had nowhere to put that in my existing concept of Taylor Swift. And perhaps because I was listening in the car with my 10-year-old daughter, it made me distinctly uncomfortable. Still. I was intrigued. I hadn't listened to Swift's full catalog yet, still working on that. But 1989 and folklore were staples in our family playlists, and I respected her as a musical artist. I wanted to understand how this album fit into her ovo, or to be thoroughly convinced that it didn't. After a couple more lessons, it became clear why the album struck me and so many others. So strangely, it wasn't just a collection of songs, but rather a concept album. A novel in song form, telling a cohesive narrative from start to finish. In this case, a showgirls rise to stardom and struggle to stay whole amidst the chaos of massive fame. On a whim, I posted my thoughts on social media and it went viral, 450,000 views and thousands of comments. Later I caved to request to do a series on the album, analyzing it as I would a novel. It's been a ton of fun and has received some rave reviews, but not all the comments were positive. Part of why the Post went viral was because I had compared Swift to Hemingway saying that both his novels, some of my favorites to teach and her album had to be read more than once to uncover their full meaning. People were outraged. How dare I liken Swift to a true literary giant? I hadn't directly equated their talent, but the more pushback I got about it, the more I started to wonder why not? Is that so inconceivable? What is it about Taylor Swift and her music that makes such a comparison so outrageous. And as I continued to think about it, I became convinced that the real question we should be asking is this, what does our dismissal say about us? Dylan's precedent for music as poetry. A few days after becoming a TikTok star, please hear my verbal irony there and embarking on my literary analysis of the album. My husband and I watched the recent Bob Dylan biopic, a complete unknown starring Timothy Chalamet. It's a fantastic film, but what captured my intention were the parallels between Dylan's rise to stardom and Swifts, or rather, the showgirls whose story mirrors Swifts in many ways. both started out completely unknown. Young singer songwriters with big dreams, both experienced meteoric rises to extremely high levels of success and celebrity. Both struggled to navigate the pressure of controlling music producers, public scrutiny and media backlash. both became performers with controversial and adored personas, yet both were slash are originally and perhaps most fully poets writers. Yet Dylan navigated those pressures differently and the differences are revealing. While women seemed to have been drawn to him, he received little criticism for his various flings. His story contained none of the sexualization and objectification. So present in swifts slash the showgirls narrative and Dylan ended up being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016 for his songwriting. My first thought, could Swift ever win a literary award of such prestige? She certainly won't win the Nobel Prize unless her writing becomes significantly more focused on activism. Since that particular prize goes to an outstanding work in an idealist direction, but ignoring the details of specific awards, would our world ever consent to name her as a literary giant? Dylan has written over 600 songs at this point. Swift less than half that. Of course quality matters far more than quantity, but at only 35 Swift could easily surpass Dylan in quantity. If she continues at a similar rate for another 20 or 30 years. Quality is much harder to measure. But she boasts dozens of songwriting awards at this point, including a recent nomination for the songwriters Hall of Fame. This is the first year she's eligible. Multiple college professors have incorporated her work into their literature classes, including Stephanie Burt's Harvard class, Taylor Swift, in her world. In her new book, Burt Writes that Swift's Art is, quote, many layered, emotionally compelling, individual and new. And she contends that such artistry merits the designation of genius. So it's not absurd to contemplate Swift's literary merit. And yet comparing her to Hemingway evokes such ire, why the false hierarchy of art Dylan's Nobel win was not without controversy. It was the first and to date only time the award had gone to a songwriter, which brought up the question, should songs be considered literature? And perhaps more controversial, should pop music be considered literature. The debate around whether music and popular music specifically could be considered art dates back to the 17 hundreds. By the early 19 hundreds, most intellectuals endorsed the elitist consensus that popular music could not be considered art because it lacked genius and artistic autonomy, meaning independence from socioeconomic pressures. It was widely thought that popular music lacked, quote, the interplay of ideas and formal experimentation that characterizes fine art and that therefore popular music and the popular arts more generally, were quote mere entertainment. This is from a peer reviewed academic journal, the Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The distinction between high and low art, between serious artistic expression and mere entertainment is one that persists to this day and extends far beyond music. The primary critique hinges on the idea that in order to generate widespread appeal, the art must be easily accessible and generally pleasurable, and that those things preclude meaning. The implication is that the masses do not want to be challenged, but rather merely to be entertained. To be delighted, perhaps titillated, but ultimately to have their biases confirmed and their sense of wellbeing. Enhanced. Think of the classic rom-com. It's deliciously predictable and always provides that feel good Ending indeed, the massive popularity of romance novels as well as crime novels supports the assertion that the majority of consumers want something easy, predictable, and comforting. Where the bad guys lose and the good guys and gals live happily ever after. Okay, so maybe most people do want entertainment over enlightenment, but does that entail that everything popular is artistically or intellectually vacuous? Of course not. The problem isn't that all popular art is necessarily shallow. It's that we've been trained to look for depth only in certain containers. And such stereotypes can be hard to overcome. I wrestle with these biases regarding my own work, the novel I've been planning, discussing, and occasionally writing centers on female characters and romantic relationships. Yet I bristle at labels like women's fiction or worse romance. I admit this is partly snobbish bias. I don't wanna denigrate this skill and effort that goes into many such novels, but if I'm honest, I feel like that would be beneath me. But it also reflects my desire to write something complex that challenges assumptions. The kind of book I'd actually want to read. Sure. My novel is rooted in women's experiences, but it explores universal themes. And I want it to be taken seriously. I don't presume to have the talent to win literary awards, but I'd like to at least be in a category that makes me eligible. I'm not alone in this snobbery. A friend of mine hesitated when her first book was classified as self-help rather than literary nonfiction. Even though that classification allowed it to help more people, as a highly trained musician, she knows well, the divide between serious and popular artists and the shaming shrugs often directed at the latter. But can't a serious artist achieve commercial success? Can't popular musicians take their craft seriously? Of course. So why do we still consider serious and popular to be opposites? We've inherited a cultural hierarchy that prizes certain forms, novels, symphonies, fine art over others, pop music, genre fiction, TV shows, but as history repeatedly demonstrates the boundaries are artificial. Bob Dylan, for example, faced intense criticism from the folk purists when he started to expand his repertoire. His new music was massively popular, but he was disparaged for going electric, for being too commercial, for mixing poetry with pop, and then he won the Nobel Prize for literature. Shakespeare was also considered common or low class in his day body irreverent, full of love plots and crude humor that made him beloved by the masses. But this OGs, pop Storyteller, is now revered by literary scholars and taught in almost every high school and college in America. Dylan and Shakespeare both ended up canonized. So why not Swift? The gendered canon? We can't avoid the question of gender. Dylan's lyrics became literature, but Swift's are diary entries. Shakespeare's crass humor is considered masterful, but Swift's is considered raunchy slop. Why? Perhaps it's because she made a joke. Only a man could to quote her. Recent song canceled. The misogyny embedded in how art is classified cannot be ignored. Our definitions of high art Have always excluded the feminine coated modes of self-expression. Those that focus on emotions and relationships. Just as women's labor historically confined to the home was and still is seen as far less valuable than male labor outside the home, fine arts has long been a designation reserved for artistic modes, historically reserved for men. Fine arts were those that required training expensive materials and a grander scale than the quote domestic arts women might perfect within their prescribed spheres. think marble sculptures versus embroidery that the overwhelming majority of recognized artists have always been male. Only confirmed this prejudice. Nevermind that few women had access to the education or leisure time required for such pursuits. Instead, women might be the subjects for work by male artists sitting as models for paintings or sculptures, such as those included in Swift's, the Fate of Ophelia Music video. They were objects of art but not creators. Even when women have been able to make fine art, it is consistently devalued because of their gender. Researchers at the University of Luxembourg found in a 2017 study that quote, respondents consistently ranked works They believed to have been made by male artists higher than those believed to be by female artists, and that works by women typically sell for 47.6% of the prices male artists fetch at auction. This mirrors the gendered pay gap more broadly with recent studies showing that quote, when women enter fields in greater numbers, pay declines for the very same jobs that more men were doing before. That quote is from a New York Times article. Simply being associated with women can cause work and art To lose its perceived merit, the literary world offers disturbing proof. A 2017 study found that books classified as belonging to feminized literary sub-genres are least likely to be reviewed by mainstream critical outlets. The fact that Women's Lit exists as a sub-genre is in and of itself, evidence of gender bias. Where is the sub-genre for men's lit? The implication is that literature is by definition, male. So literature by and for women requires a special classification. And that designation makes it less likely to be taken seriously. However, the bias against female literary merit persists Outside those sub genres. That same 2007 study found that quote, even when women writers publish books in androcentric sub genres. Like scientific or academic texts, or gender neutral categories of literary fiction, their books are less likely to be selected for review compared to those written by their male counterparts. Since a critic's review distinguishes an author's literary efforts as worth knowing about and discussing. This serves as both an essential indicator of perceived value and a powerful determinant of success. More broadly, Similar patterns of inequality appear in other artistic forms, including film and music. The idea that art produced or enjoyed by women can't also be profound is a widespread, if often subconscious bias. An ugly inheritance from patriarchy and elitism. It's baked into the language we use to describe art, the institutions that validate it, and the markets that assign worth. In other words, the problem is not with the art itself, but with the sexist lens through which it is viewed, until we dismantle that lens, we will continue to undervalue voices that refuse to conform to a male defined standard of genius. Swift's lyrics like the art of Countless other women before her are proof that depth wit and universality are not confined to one sex. That talent is no respecter of persons, despite what we've been socialized to think. Can the gatekeepers please calm down? The undervaluing of women's art is part of a larger pattern. Certain forms and creators are repeatedly dismissed simply because They challenge established ideas of what serious art should look like. Whether it's regarding so-called women's literature, personal development books, or pop music, the effect is the same work that resonates widely is written off as lesser, especially if it's made by or associated with women. Yet history keeps proving the gatekeepers wrong. Shakespeare's body plays. Delighted the groundlings and are now taught in every American high school. Dylan's electrified folk and rage purists before he won the Nobel Prize for literature time and again. One generation's low art becomes the next generation's canon. The rules that gatekeepers try to enforce are less about quality and more about power, about exerting control over who gets to be considered a serious artist. It's about protecting privilege, maintaining established hierarchies, and keeping unconventional or otherwise undesirable voices on the margins. But if we strip away who is writing and what form the work takes. The art itself becomes undeniable. Swift songs, for example. Build vivid characters, dramatize, conflict, and wrestle with universal themes. Love loss, identity, desire. Her lyrics, use wordplay, unreliable, narrators, allusions to classic literature and clever acoustic techniques that she delivers these poems with melody, instrumentation, choreography, and elaborate visuals, whether in music videos or concerts. Only makes her work more impressive, not less Shakespeare. Dylan Swift, if we look closer, they all show that great popular art has always done the same work as what critics call literary art, shaping imagination, revealing truths, and articulating the emotional life of a generation. Mass appeal and literary merit are not opposites. They're intertwined. The best storytellers have always known how to speak to both the crowd and the critic, translating the inner life into the language of the masses. the true measure of artistic merit. So-called purists. Keep trying to separate popular from literary bromance from real literature. Taylor Swift from Shakespeare, but time keeps proving that the boundaries they protect are porous and meaningless. What if the truest measure of art isn't exclusivity but resonance? Maybe the distinction isn't between literary and pop, high and low, serious and unserious. Maybe it's between art that hides behind abstraction and art that tells the truth. Despite gatekeeper's best efforts, when art speaks with radical honesty, it resonates deeply regardless of who made it or what form it takes. The storytelling impulse, the desire to turn lived experience into lyric form. Remains at the heart of great literature. And if that's true, then studying pop lyrics as literature isn't overreach at all. It's simply a more faithful way to read the culture we actually live in. Shakespeare became literary only after his time when critics and institutions decided to canonize what was once entertainment. Dylan's Nobel Prize marked that same shift for folk songs. Will Swift be next? Only time will tell. Until then, I, for one, will continue exploring the lyrical depth of her songs. Even as my daughters and I dance around the living room to their infectious beats. And that's the essay. If you wanna see my sources and join the conversation, head over to Substack and check it out. You can find the link in the show notes. The more I've dug into these songs, the more impressed I've been with Taylor's Craft. I'm even more convinced now that she deserves serious respect and that her writing is well worth studying. That's why I'm super excited for write like Taylor Swift, a 90 minute live workshop where I'll be unpacking her most powerful writing techniques to show you how to apply them in your own writing. If you've been following the podcast, you already know that her writing is a treasure trove of metaphors, interlocking symbols, literary illusions, and vivid imagery. Now you get to try them out for yourself. The workshop takes place live on Wednesday, December 10th, but the replay is available for a full year. So go ahead and sign up even if you can't join us live, or even if it's now past that date. Trust me, you don't want to miss this. Head to mara eller.com/write like Taylor, or you can find the link in the show notes. Hope to see you there. 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. And don't forget to sign up for, write like Taylor Swift by going to maraeller.com/writeliketaylor, Until next time, class dismissed.