Lana Wilson’s documentary addresses the rise of Taylor Swift in the music industry in the last five years where she is absolute queen, but also the scaffolding of an artist under construction, with the prevailing need to compose her own songs, and then as a concerned citizen for the rights of dissidents and minorities.

In his extraordinary novel the war of the gyms, César Aria tells that the protagonist tries to work his body for a concrete and specific goal: “I want to provoke fear in men and desires in women”. It is a type of phrase that defines a destiny, a way of acting and, in a broad sense, a mode of political intervention. He was thinking about this while watching Lana Wilson’s documentary Miss Americana that addresses Taylor Swift’s journey through the music industry in recent years where she is an absolute queen.

It is dominated by two phrases that structure the life (physical, mental, emotional) of the artist from her beginnings as a country promise until she became the great savior of mainstream pop, white, blond and straight landing in crowded stadiums all over the planet – which was a bit of what Kanye West wanted to fight in a clumsy, brute, macho and regrettable way when he took the microphone off him at the 2009 VMAs (something the documentary addresses very well). On the one hand,

Being a Good Girl:

Taylor Swift talks about “being a good girl” in the first part that we could call “The rise of a future star.” And on the other hand, once Taylor discovers that fame is hard to handle in an adult person who is hyper-exposed to the outer judgment on social media networks – he has more than 126 million followers on Instagram – and the inner frustration of not living up to what is always demanded of a woman and never of a man, is the phrase “The correct side of the story” in the second part which could be called “The world is always hell.”

Between one sentence and another, which as a powerful dictum definitely dominate the artist’s actions, the path that Taylor Swift has taken to this present is played: first as a good student (or employee of the month) who met the expectations of others that they deposited in her mind (starting with the mother and continuing with herself flagellating herself with insane objectives in her own diary as a child) and led them to their maximum expression of success in commercial terms and artistic credibility,

Which had its scaffolding in the prevailing need of composing his own songs and those, really, are the best moments of the documentary. And later as a citizen concerned about the rights of dissidents, minorities or those who put themselves on the other side of the prevailing norm.

Is this documentary Credible?

Once the documentary ends, two questions necessarily arise: is it credible? I mean, the social concerns and the redefinition of gender equality before the law that Taylor Swift exposes in this film are about to reach her 30th birthday and with a period context in her favor. That is to say, the feminism that she proclaims, and it is totally necessary,

Of course, but it is understood that the point is another, it is part of a claim that has been around for many years in all social classes. Which brings it closer, at one point, to a kind of strategy to conquer a type of market that wants artists to express themselves politically. And this leads to the other question: why make a documentary when Taylor Swift is an artist who brings her life to her songs (just as they did from Bob Dylan to Janis Joplin, to name just two) and, as she rightly says in the film,

Those who enjoy his music can know everything that happens to him throughout his albums? In other words: Taylor Swift is already someone who documents her existence in her works. What is the correlation between these songs and this audiovisual support? It is in this sense that the documentary as a film loses its value as a cinematographic work to become a souvenir for staunch fans who always, always seriously want more and more of their obsessively loved artists.