Suffering isn’t civilized, it’s elemental. Earth, air, water, fire.
A rite of passage story where the hero has to enter the spirit world before completing the quest. The hero must make sacrifices. The sacrifice includes the self. The hero can’t find herself if she doesn’t lose herself first.
In the song, the question “are we in the clear yet?” means: when will this relationship feel secure? When will I feel like we’re in the safe zone, when will I know we’re gonna make it? In the video, the question means: When will I be clear of that relationship, of these emotions? When will I be whole?
So the video sometimes works with the lyrics and sometimes against them. The song says “your necklace hanging from my neck” but the video shows her yanking it off. The lyrics are about the fragile feeling of being in a relationship on the verge of crashing, but the video is about what happens after the crash. The song is about a relationship “built to fall apart,” but the video is about surviving the fall. The boy is gone –– it’s too late to show us what it was like to lie on his couch or dance with him. In fact, he doesn’t need to be shown at all. Her struggle is internal now. He triggered the crisis, but he’s irrelevant to the process of solving it.
After she rips off the necklace and goes to the cliff edge, is she reaching out for it or watching it fall? She’s made a gesture of defiance, but then she dives off the cliff after it. Her declaration of freedom was premature.
When she reaches “remember when you hit the brakes too soon,” she’s no longer wearing the long flowing dress (the dress meant to evoke the day it ended). Instead, she’s got a short simple slip of the same color, the better to crawl through the mud with. She’s become a stronger, sharper version of herself. So it’s not the wolves who succeeded in ripping the dress off, it’s her own struggle that strips off the superfluous princess layers and reveals the clearer outline underneath.
In the song, “you were looking at me” is that rare moment of safety in the midst of disaster. Whatever is happening is happening mutually: they are looking at each other. In the video, when she sings “you were looking at me,” it’s the moment when she becomes entangled again. Her eyes close and the thorny vines wrap around her. She’s fixed high on a twisted pedestal –– he’s looking, we’re looking. The moment of safety is transformed into a moment of vulnerability.
Then the climactic “I remember” is the trigger for her falling down over and over again –– in the mud, in the snow, on the rocky beach, by the cliff. It’s remembering that makes you fall, it’s remembering that makes you hurt. She insists on remembering anyway.
Little Red Riding Hood. The girl entering the woods –– the zone of sexual danger –– has to watch out for the wolf who wants to defile her. In the fairy tales, she wins by staying pure. Here Taylor wins by getting dirty. She has to crawl in the muck if she wants to get out. In the final moments she masters every threat. Then it’s the muddy, bedraggled Taylor with the short slip who taps the clean, long-skirted Taylor on the shoulder to make her turn around. “I was looking at you” and “You were looking at me” become “I am looking at myself.”
To get out of the woods you have to burn them down.
2087
prguitarman
turnnoffyourmind
areudirty
dailybridgerton
