Speak now? Aviation, activism and accountability 

The other day, I received an email. It went straight into the special folder of my inbox where any emails containing the keyword ‘Swift’ are automatically programmed to go; this is my desperate attempt to try and maintain some compartmentalisation of my professional life, since I do actually also have to maintain a normal full-time workload on top of repeatedly telling the media why All Too Well (10 minute version) is a masterpiece (which, don’t get me wrong, I love to do, because it is). The email read:

“Apparently, Taylor Swift doesn’t mind using her two private jets 170 times a year in a world that wants to outlive our current generations. That is almost once every two days.

I’m not someone who participates in large-scale climate events. Neither do I think a public figure has to be a saint. However, is it acceptable that Taylor Swift who’s got a lot of influence worldwide makes such a self-centered choice? 

Private jets pollute the air many times more than a commercial flight that she can easily take in business class. Like approximately 40 times more. 

It’s not my place to ask you whether you would mention her choice in your lessons. I am worried about the future of her fans and I think some disillusionment about a singer songwriter’s good taste is in order. What are your thoughts on this, if I may ask? I am convinced that you have a sound view on this as a young professor.”

This writer is not the only one to think I might have a sound view on this topic: I receive similar questions on a regular basis. Not only in relation to Taylor’s private jet usage, either; recently, I was harassed on both my personal and Swifterature social media accounts by people who seem to think I am Taylor’s official spokesperson or guardian, and therefore have the power to compel her to speak up about what is happening in Gaza (or, as my friend put it, ‘Like did I miss the part where you have become Taylor’s publicist and are PERSONALLY responsible for everything she does?’) 

There seems to be a common misconception that, just because I am passionate about using Taylor Swift to teach English literature, I am also a Swiftie evangelist who preaches the gospel of her perfection, and for whom she can do no wrong. (While I’m on the subject, another common misconception is that all we do in class is read Taylor Swift lyrics. This is not what we do. Oh, and it’s also not ‘a degree in Taylor Swift’.)

As has been happening since summer 2023, my personal and professional interest in Swift has made me an easy scapegoat for internet trolls and keyboard warriors itching to release their pent-up dissatisfaction with 2023’s ‘Person of the Year’. In fact, the attribution of that very title to Swift has led to much outrage (some of which has been expressed at me), even though there appears to be a fundamental misunderstanding that it isn’t an automatic designation of heroism or worth, simply of pervasiveness ‘for better or worse’ – after all, Hitler and Stalin were also noteworthy historical recipients of ‘Person of the Year’. 

To save my responding to such emails and messages individually, here are some things I’ve been mulling over as I become increasingly blamed for Swift’s life choices. They’ve surfaced during the course of my teaching, in discussion with my students (we talked about Swift’s private jet usage in our seminar on nature writing and ecocriticism). They’ve come up in the Q&A sessions of talks I’ve given, and I’m grateful to all those questioners for giving me food for thought.

Like any good professor, I’m going to sidestep the actual question and ask, instead, what do you think? 

Just joking. Well, only slightly. What I’m going to do, as I’ve been doing with every negative response to Taylor Swift and English Literature (Taylor’s Version), is to turn it around and ask you to think about the assumptions and ideologies that underpin such responses, and what they tell us about our ideas regarding culture, fandom and celebrity.

What fascinates me about the furore over Taylor’s private jet usage and apparent lack of statement on Palestine – for the purpose of this post, they fall into the same category, although they are of course different issues – is what they suggest about the changing status of celebrity in the past few years. I wonder, genuinely, when we started to expect our celebrities to be everything to everyone. When did we expect a billionaire icon of the entertainment industry – not exactly known for its sustainability nor its frugality – to also become a spokesperson for environmental sciences? Why do we lambast a pop star for not taking a stand on complex political issues? It’s fascinating to me that, amidst the comments on every single social media post I see relating to Taylor Swift, are hundreds of proclamations of outrage at her private jet use. Even an innocuous post showing her taking a selfie with a young fan will garner comments like ‘WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN OF THE FUTURE, TAYLOR, WHO YOU’RE KILLING WITH YOUR PRIVATE JET CARBON FOOTPRINT?’ This is also the case for social media posts about English Literature (Taylor’s Version): strewn among the standard responses like ‘what a waste of time and money’ and ‘our universities have sunk to new lows’ are a few ‘how can you encourage students to idolise someone who’s single-handedly destroying the planet’.

Our disappointment in Taylor Swift certainly points to an apparent raising of the bar in terms of our standards for our celebrities. More complicated is the question of whether this is a positive or negative development; I suspect it is both.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think it’s great for anyone to spend a lot of time in a private jet. This, and Swift’s extreme wealth, have certainly complicated her relatable, ‘girl next door’ image for me in recent years. I absolutely feel some of the ‘disillusionment’ that the writer of that above email wants me to feel (and to cultivate in my students). I think that celebrities, with the enormous amount of influence they can wield, have great power and thus great responsibility, and that if they can harness this for good, so much the better. But I also completely understand the reluctance of a singer whose primary goal is to entertain her fans with catchy songs and relatable lyrics to speak out on complex geopolitical issues, especially since whatever standpoint she takes is likely to arouse critique and vitriol. She’s damned if she does (‘Taylor Swift faces boycott after attending Gaza benefit’), damned if she doesn’t (‘Taylor Swift’s political silence on Palestine diminishes her legacy’). 

Something I find very telling about the obsession with Swift’s private jet usage is that it is exemplary of a wider and more troubling global trend from recent years: the strategic shifting, by Big Oil, governments and corporations, of climate-related blame and guilt onto the consumer, in order to divert attention away from the biggest and most responsible perpetrators. You may know that BP, in a PR masterstroke, coined the term ‘carbon footprint’ in 2004, kick-starting a shift in which individual consumers started to shoulder the figurative burden of climate change. We fret over the linings of takeaway coffee cups and worry that our plastic straws that might end up in the nostrils of sea turtles, shaming our neighbours for their poor recycling practices or judging those who can’t afford reusable cotton buds, all the while failing to consider or target the people with actual power to change the world (thankfully, this has started to change recently, with the activities of Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion and similar organisations and protests). Perhaps it’s psychological: coffee cups and straws are achievable, micro changes that we can actually make, and thus make us feel like we’re actually doing something. I sometimes wonder if people harass me on social media about Taylor’s behaviour for a similar reason: because they’re more likely to get a reaction from me than from Taylor herself.

There are more detailed articles out there on this topic – I’ve linked some below. I make no pretence to be an expert on climate change or Middle Eastern politics, but, in short: yes, as a ‘young professor’, I do have views. We debate and discuss those views in my classroom, where I encourage students to think critically and to interrogate their own, and our societal, assumptions. I praise Swift’s feminism, for example, but I also acknowledge that it’s very curated, aesthetically-pleasing, selective and White. Just recently, I hosted a professor from the UK, whose guest lecture on Swift, precarity and capitalism prompted interesting follow-up discussion on whether Swift’s incessant ‘exploitative’ merchandising made us feel guilty about supporting her and attending her concerts. This has always been my aim: to analyse the broader phenomenon that is Swift, for better or worse, and the discussions and debates that increasingly coalesce around her as her popularity rises (and, in turn, how we might link these to literature). 

I don’t think Taylor Swift is perfect. Nor do my students. I definitely think we should take an open-minded and interrogative stance, even towards our idols, and talk about what our expectations of celebrity signify, and why. My course is not actively promoting, nor complicit in, private jet usage or political apathy; it aims to look critically at the whole package that is Swift, her oeuvre, her reception, and how it might prompt us to look with greater scrutiny at both literature and at ourselves.

Further reading:

Taylor Swift and other jet setters can send a climate message

Taylor Swift and climate change: is the youth shaking off or embracing carbon intensive lifestyles?

Hollywood divided over Israel-Hamas conflict

The harsh truth about Beyonce and Taylor Swift’s Gaza silence