I watched Gone Girl for the first time and I. Was. FLOORED. The story was driven by a woman deeply unsatisfied by her relationship and seething under the veneer of perfection. In watching this movie, I reflected on fame and perfection and how it drives people mad…which naturally led me to reflect on Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department.

Mild spoilers ahead for Gone Girl film, consider this your final warning. I’m only addressing the relevant themes I recognized in the film. I did not, and do not, plan to read the book.

Quick summary of Gone Girl themes

In Gone Girl, the lead Amy, has always been compared to the golden child in her life: The book character Amazing Amy. Her parents based the titular series on Amy’s life experiences, and she resented it. Amazing Amy got everything, like the loving parents, the varsity volleyball team, and the dog.

Amy got none of it.

Despite this, her parents expected her to play the perfect inspiration for the perfect girl. Amy spoke when spoken to, said all the right things, dressed the right way, and she hated it. She could never be her authentic self, and she was a prisoner to the brand her parents created.

Enter her husband, Nick. She finds someone who understands her resentment of the brand… Someone she finally feels free around, until she doesn’t. He expected perfection from her, even as stress weighed on their relationship. They suffer job loss, financial loss, and fundamentally change their lives to support his family. Eventually Nick resents her for expecting so much, and Amy resents him for giving so little. He has trapped her in a different cage, and she HATES it. She crafts a plan that frames Nick as her murderer. The weapon? His apathy.

Amy resolves to kill herself after his arrest, reclaiming the spotlight as the loving wife and perfect victim.

As her resources and options shrink, Amy become obsessed with the public’s attention on the case. She makes desperate decisions that shrink the cage around her freedom, until she’s finally back in control of the spotlight, the narrative, and in Nick’s arms.

Amy is a deeply flawed and dangerous character. She fixates on controlling the narrative, the same way her parents controlled her. She desperately needs public validation because she’s conflated it with love. She says she hates being the cool girl. What she really hates is that it’s a prison built by someone else and enforced by society. When Amy sets the rules, she can be whatever she want. She will lie, steal, and kill to ensure no one can control her ever again.

A brief summary of Taylor Swift and the media

Observations of similarities to Taylor and Amy from Gone Girl have existed since Blank Space and 1989 (view article on Slate), but criticisms of Taylor have persisted ever since she hit the music scene. She can’t sing, she writes about her exes, she makes bad music… Then the media turned onto her personal life.

Through it all, Taylor has been the cool girl, the nice girl, and everything in between. As she’s changed and experienced normal life events, like boyfriends and dating, her activities have been scrutinized. She’s expected to grow up, but never change. As she sings through triumph and heartbreak through different genres, Taylor reiterates that her authenticity is her brand.

If she dates too casually, she’s a slut! If she breaks up with a man, she isn’t good enough to keep him. In either case, she’ll write songs about him and is terrible for doing so. When she wants to win, she’s too competitive. If she’s perceived as static, she’s lost her edge. The media is relentless in claiming that she’s a liar, a snake, and desperately seeking attention. The expectations are high, and the industry is unforgiving… and so are her fans.

Fans relate to her desire for a deep and genuine love, a theme across all her albums. For a time, she found it. After the critical acclaim of folklore and Midnights, 2023 ushered in two high profile breakups for Taylor: one from a long term boyfriend, one from a short-lived and highly criticized relationship. It’s the first time the fans turned on her, their words laced with as much venom as the entertainment industry itself. How could this perfect protagonist love imperfectly? How dare she love someone so wrong?

In The Tortured Poets Department, we see Taylor hitting back. She takes aim at each piece of criticism levied at her. The industry has never been kind to women as they age, that’s expected. She has years of experience with it. Criticism by her fans, a relationship she’s long maintained, is much newer. Taylor tells fans that she will love who she wants, despite their objections, and she will enjoy it. And ever her attentive audience, they have no choice but to watch.

Fame and its crushing effects on young women

The cages are built differently, but the effects are the same. Amy and Taylor buckle under the stifling expectations that their relationships and fame have placed on them. They dare to want more from their partners and lives and are villainized for verbalizing it. Ambition is a punishable offense in a society eager to crush women.

Is it so surprising that they both lost their minds to the madness simmering under their shiny, glossy appearances? Amy has manipulated the circumstances to project a perfect life. By the end of the movie, she finally has it all under her control. She doesn’t need to respond to our complex, and likely negative, feelings about her.

Amy isn’t real person with real feelings, but Taylor Swift is.

Taylor Swift and many young, female celebrities who became famous during the 2000s to early 2010s contended with a lot of media scrutiny. Their breakups were dissected and their breakdowns strung up on display. We’ve learned that some of them came from unsafe homes, worked in exploitative sets, or both. Like Amy, many of these celebrities had parents who used them to ensure financial security. Taylor has a supportive family, but a fraught relationship with the media and her former label. Does anyone escape unscathed?

It’s a miracle any of them still smile with teeth.

Society is not kind to growing girls and curious women. We expect them to be moral compasses and sultry virgins, better known as “sexy babies” in Taylor’s Anti-Hero. This is the stasis of the media industry…but The Tortured Poets Department is the first time Taylor says the fans are as cruel. Taylor gives words to their unspoken desires, and is the conduit through which some people dare to dream. When she loved an imperfect man, she was ripped to shreds. When it failed, fans circled around her broken heart like vultures screeching that they were right.

Taylor has long struggled with the effects of fame. She suffers through the first turn of public opinion in Castles Crumbling, and envies the escape from Hollywood in The Lucky One. She expresses anxiety over her youthful novelty in Nothing New and decries the sacrifice of young women to the media industry in Clara Bow.

She’s always known that the expectations of fame are too much.

Taylor once implored her fans to find another “guiding light” in Dear Reader. When they didn’t, she laughs at them in But Daddy I Love Him. She is every bit the mastermind Amy is, threatening her audience with Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? Taylor wants deep love and affection. She wants success. She’s been true to her brand and self, but 2023 is the first time it’s in conflict with the fan expectations of her. In The Tortured Poets Department, she finally asks if all the choices that ensure her success are worth the loneliness she’s consigned herself to in The Prophecy.

The humanity of Gone Girl’s Amy and Taylor Swift

Celebrities are human. Their brand personas are small and fractured reflections of their real selves. Despite the stories in our heads, we don’t know them. We see small windows into their lives, and eat up crumbs of their stories. We place them on pedestals next to goddesses, easily toppled by mortals.

In these ways, I find Amy and Taylor to be similar and sympathetic because of their upbringing in the prison of fame. They commit crimes of passion. They play the cool girl for men who only tolerate it. They want validation for their unique and intolerable experiences. They want to write stories and control the perception of their lives. They want it all and aren’t willing to compromise their full selves.

In that way, they’re both right. No one should never settle in love or in life. I don’t condone Amy’s crimes, but I understand her madness. Amy wants to play god, but Taylor knows she’s anything but. Taylor loves openly and dares to dream, even if imperfectly.

For each piece of criticism, there are a million ways to be cruel. Celebrity culture and our society are mirrors, reflecting our values right back at us. Do you like what you see?

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