Taylor Swift's Ironic Path to Being Taken Seriously

If you've been living under a rock, Taylor Swift has finally made the switch from her archetypal vague mix of country, soft-rock, folk, pop-rock and bubblegum pop. Now she's playing real bubblegum dance pop, with bouncing edm beats and carefree lyrics, like Katy Perry or Lady Gaga.

Taylor Swift's organic pop style is the main thing that drew me to her initially. The soft-verse/loud-chorus dynamic of You Belong With Me was a picturesque and spot-on reiteration of the proud tradition typified in rock music by Led Zeppelin and Nirvana. Up until very recently, all her songs boasted a rich, full, live-sounding rock band behind them with drums, bass, and many guitars. Today's indie and modern rock sounds more like U2 and Yes than it does like my favorite rock artists: countrified crooners Neil Young and Tom Petty. But Taylor's music shares many of the qualities I adored about the music I grew up on from Petty & Neil: folksy organic instrumentations, straight-forward honest lyrics about life & love, and catchy verse/chorus structure. Tom Petty actually writes more love songs than Taylor.

Pop Theory

That being said, I love dance pop very much. And I was thrilled that Taylor finally changed up her style. I love her first four records, but I'm someone who craves varity. Besides, let's face it, she's been playing the same style for at least 3 records, but the first of that ilk is still by far the best: 2009's Fearless. It was time for her to change her style, she's done all she can in the old format right now. When she comes back to organic pop in the future, it'll be fresh and she'll be better equipped to make it really awesome.

When Red came out in 2012, it was supposed to be her transformation into pop. But instead, all the songs were the same as before. A couple of them had some electronic elements thrown on top, but listen closely to I Knew You Were Trouble -- hear that rhythm guitar holding the song together? Even her forays into dance pop still sounded like she wrote them in her bedroom on an acoustic guitar. So when the first single for her 2014 album came out, and it was real, EDM-pumping dance pop, I was thrilled. I'm really glad that Taylor is capable of doing different styles of music, and I'm excited to hear what she's going to do with this one. If nothing else, this will be her best dance pop album to date (since it's her only one), and that's worth more to me than just being her second, third, or fourth best pop-rock album.

A lot of fans aren't happy about the new direction. These are people who've been growing up with Taylor and wanting her to go in a more mature direction with her music. To a Taylor fan, going from deep songs like Ronan and All Too Well, to the bubblegum pop of Shake It Off, is a step down. But as a more critical connisseur of modern pop, I think I see the hidden agenda behind the switch. Don't get me wrong -- the primary reason Taylor is moving to dance pop is so she can fulfill her prophecy as the Stallion Who Mounts the World and finally conquer all four corners of the globe. Every new record thus far has seen a huge jump in her popularity and now her style will be the most accessible of all; she's going to be bigger than Jesus. But there's another advantage to making that switch. In the long-term, Taylor may finally get the respect she deserves.

Pop Hierarchy

One thing that has always annoyed me is how bubblegum dance-pop artists like Lady Gaga are touted as 'legitimate pop artisans' whereas Taylor Swift, who writes much more of her own music, plays much more of her own instrumentations, and writes equally-if-not-more complex lyrics, has roundly been written-off as a children's fad by the mainstream pop press. Even when they're praising her business ingenuity or inescapable popularity, it's done with an implied asterisk of "she's popular because little kids like her." Obviously, all branches of Top 40 have a huge youth audience. But there's an understanding that EDM, R&B-tinged artists like Gaga, Bruno Mars or Rihanna skew more into the teens, 20s, and adult contemporary audiences, while Taylor is placed closer to the children's market with the likes of Jonas Brothers and Justin Bieber.

As time has gone on, and Taylor's enduring popularity has proven steadfast, pop critics have slowly warmed up to her charms. Even so, she doesn't get credit for playing organic music like Adele, and she still doesn't get credit for crafting her style like Gaga. Presumably this is because Taylor comes from a country background. Will switching to pop change her perception? Yes, but not that much. She's still being touted as an extra-fluffy form of bubblegum. Thus far she's not winning over critics merely by matching beats with Gaga and Britney.

The real secret comes in when Taylor inevitably makes her switch back to a more acoustic, more organic, more live-band style. This may not come for many years. She has to go on her Napoleonic reign of conquest first. It could be five, ten, twenty years until she abandons bubblegum. But it is utterly, incontrovertibly, incorruptibly inevitable that eventually Taylor will go back to writing songs on acoustic guitar in her bedroom, like has been so instrumental to her throughout most of her life. When she's getting older, you can absolutely guarantee that Taylor will have a home studio and she'll take her guitar in their to pen lush, introspective records about life and the autumn of youth.

New Beginning

A lot of fans wanted Taylor to get more mature, instead of going pop. But the thing is, it wouldn't have made the impact it deserves. If she got more acoustic, more organic, more introspective right now, the media en masse would see it as nothing but more of her teenage diary entry songwriting style. However, after becoming a pop artist, when she does go back to her organic style and her confessional lyrics, finally it will be seen in the proper context. She'll be praised for writing all her own songs (like she did on Speak Now, to little fanfare), and critics will marvel at the sparse, haunting instrumentations. What's more, after playing dance pop, Taylor will naturally be inclined to be especially deep, especially complex, especially rich and organic. Because eventually she'll want to turn away from her new pop style, just as much as she wanted to turn away from her old style. And that's one reason why all Taylor fans should be happy about this change. Even if you're not keen on the style itself, this is part of a larger arc that is going to turn out in Taylor's favor, in many meaningful ways.

The Descent

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS **SPOILERS**

I love creature features, because I love creatures. But at least nine times out of ten, they're very poorly scripted and the special effects are even worse. SyFy Channel and The Asylum have made the problem five times worse by taking that z-grade shlock and mass-producing it on some kind of monthly basis.

The Descent is widely considered one of the best creature feature films. In fact, outside of Jaws, it may well be the most critically-acclaimed creature film in the horror genre. The film's director, Neil Marshall, went on to direct one of Game of Thrones' biggest episodes.

Genre Perfection

I first watched The Descent a few years ago on recommendation. But horror films can rely as much on your incidental mood as they can on anything else, in order for them to be effective. I enjoyed The Descent and I could tell it was a well made film, but it was also like the fifth film I had watched that night and I just wasn't really in the mood for the kind of film it turned out to be. I knew someday I'd have to go back and give it a proper view. Then, for whatever reason, a couple weeks ago I was struck with the insatiable urge to watch The Descent. And I'm happy to say, it was every bit as good as I had been expecting. I'm now pleased to rank it among the best of horror, especially for being so good in a subgenre that sadly is so poor.

It's a clever and well-built film throughout. A movie where the monsters are the only obstacle can sometimes be too simplistic or bland. A lot of monster movies remedy this by putting in some asinine human angle, where bad humans are leading the rest of the group to the slaughter. Rather than following that cliche', The Descent fills the gaps by depicting the myriad treacheries of spelunking. The monsters don't even show up for probably 45 minutes, maybe even an hour, and it works out perfectly. It's claustrophobic, nerve-wracking, and a little bit beautiful to endure these daring cave adventures, especially knowing that they've entered an unknown, uncharted cave. These kinds of innate, physical horrors are vastly underused in a horror genre overripe with far too many knife-wielding maniacs and two-bit hauntings. That makes The Descent not only a godsend to the creature feature category, but also an indispensable classic for man vs. nature horror as well.

Horror Magic

My favorite thing about the horror genre isn't the fear, it's the wonder. Within the context of this dark mayhem you often find kernels of true awe and amazement: moments where that which is imaginary feels truly real. I don't know what it is about horror that makes this so much more effective to me than it is in feel-good fantasy films like, say, The Waterhorse. Maybe it's the scarcity and rarity of it, or an inherent cynicism that tells me fantasy elements which try to kill you are more realistic than fantasy elements which want to hug you. Or maybe I just find horror films more immersive, and in my immersed state I'm more open to being moved by fantasy elements. But whatever the reason why, dark films like The Blair Witch Project, Pan's Labyrinth, and Trick 'r Treat illicit in me that same sense of soaring spectacle that is more unanimously experienced in films like Jurassic Park and E.T.

The Descent also boasts one of the best scenes of this "horror-magic." The group's way back has been blocked, and they're travelling deeper into the Earth with limited resources on the slim hope that they might find a way back above ground. They don't know if they will even live to survive the day. But travelling down through this uncharted, undiscovered cave, they find prehistoric cave paintings. There's this brief, spare moment of utter transcendence where it dawns upon them they're the first people to see these paintings in at least a hundred years (since the last set of doomed explorers), possibly tens of thousands. They want to stop and stare, but can't waste the battery power on their equipment. This scene is as magic as anything from Spielberg.

Regarding the Ending

The version I watched featured the U.S. theatrical ending, where our protagonist escapes the cave and drives off into the sunset. On Youtube I watched the "Unrated" ending, which is really just the U.K. theatrical ending. The U.K. ending is this really gorgeous scene, where Sarah's escape was merely a hallucination. Still in the cave and facing imminent death, she hallucinates the familiar vision of her daughter and her birthday cake, and she gets this completely amazing, twisted smile on her face.

I'm torn on which ending I prefer, because I really love them both. The U.K. ending is grim and beautiful and dark. But I honestly think the U.S. ending hit me harder, believe it or not. Killing off the final character at the end of a horror film is such a common finale. It's terribly depressing in the sense that they go through all this suffering in the hopes that they will survive, and then the audience's hope is dashed. But on the other hand, killing them at the end is a sort of catharsis where -- in a certain sense, all the horrors the audience has endured, are released into the ether. You kill the character, the ordeal is over. Watching Sarah submit to death in the U.K. ending left me less disturbed than seeing her survive in the U.S. version because I imagined her having to survive with all that brutal baggage. It was like her suffering had only just begun. But both endings are great and impactful in their unique way.

Is This Real Life?

I had read on the internet that some people believe the monsters in the film are imaginary, so that was the thought constantly dominating my mind during this viewing. I was dilligently on the look out for clues to corroborate or contradict that theory.

For a while, it looks pretty plausible that the crawlers could have been imaginary. We have it clearly stated before entering the cave that auditory and visual hallucinations can be side-effects of hardcore spelunking. We find the mutilated deer which plants the image in the people's minds that there could be some kind of monster predator in the area. Finally, we have the cave paintings which incite thoughts of primitive, potentially monstrous humanoids. Then we have the fact that Sarah doesn't eat lunch with the rest of the group. Hunger and dehydration can greatly contribute to these types of hallucinations.

So it seemed like a pretty good base for som imaginary monsters. In the dark, dripping water can sound like a creature, rocks on the ground can feel like bones. Sarah is the first one who sees them. Paranoia and mass-hysteria can ensue when someone says they see something. That's perfectly natural. Point your flashlight at the wall and say "there it is, the monster!" It's no surprise that the rest of the group thinks they see it, too. That's how their first encounter with the crawlers goes.

Problem is, that first encounter is the only one you can explain away with hallucinations. After that, every member of the group gets extremely physical with these creatures. There are not just a few but countless scenes of physical brawls with these monsters that can't be equated to paranoid delusions. If the battles were even a little bit toned down, I could start to buy the hallucination angle. But they're so very physical. By the end we have Juno and Sarah fighting them virtually in unison. It just strikes me as unlikely.

In order to go along with the theory that Sarah is imagining things and she kills everyone, you have to throw out the entire film. You have to accept that nothing we see in the film is even remotely what happened -- Sarah kills everyone and *after* the fact, her damaged mind composes this broad fantasy to protect her from the truth. That's a perfectly valid interpretation if you choose to use it, but I prefer to believe that what the audience sees can at least connect to what really happened.

I further find the theory of Sarah killing everyone to be highly unworkable because the one person who Sarah actually has reason to kill -- the one person who actually DID let one of the group die, and the person who slept with Sarah's husband -- Sarah doesn't kill Juno, she merely maims her and leaves her to the crawlers. You expect me to believe Sarah was ruthless on everyone else but took mercy on the only person she had motive to hate? Doesn't make sense. Besides, if there are no crawlers, Juno could still crawl her way out of the cave (hypothetically).

Ultimately, here's my take. The idea of the crawlers being imaginary is something that Neil Marshall himself has mentioned as a possibility they were working with. But ultimately it's not the angle they went with. You could tweak the film and make a really awesome movie where the crawlers are imaginary. But the way the film is in its original state: no, I don't think they were hallucinations.