Am I OK with Tay Tay on Time Cover? Sure

From Reuters, Time magazine released image of it's Taylor Swift covers.

As a choice for 2023, I don’t think Time Magazine missed by naming Taylor Swift as its person of the year.

In some ways, it’s her second time, since she was part of the group of women on the cover when “The Silence Breakers” appeared in 2017.

But there’s no doubt that Taylor Swift is huge this year, and it’s a testament to her enduring power as a performer. She’s lasted 16 years as a star in the fickle world of popular music, and she has used some savvy moves to make herself the center of an entertainment empire. Which culminated this year with the ongoing Eras tour/movie and the cover of Time.

When Swift first started to make it as a singer, I wasn’t much of a fan. Her early songs were country pop, and that’s not my jam. “Tim McGraw,” her 2006 first hit, isn’t something I’ve listened to very often.

With Swift, her songs are often promoted by and appear as popular videos, and the one for “Love Story,” 2008, is slickly produced, but the arc of the song is irritating to me. The country music feel here didn’t help, but the real “Romeo and Juliet” wasn’t a love story, it was a tragedy about manic infatuation that left a trail of bodies in its wake. If he was Romeo and you were Juliet, you two would be dead now.

Then again, I didn’t hate early Taylor. “You Belong with Me,” 2009, shows that her voice has matured a bit. Her lyrics were getting better, and her sound is transitioning.

It’s still country, but definitely more at the pop end. And, true, the video is ridiculous, with evil (dark) Taylor contrasted with nice (blonde) Taylor—and Swift’s female pop-singer supermodel level good looks make her ineffective playing the wallflower.

Since those early years, Swift’s songs have grown more sophisticated and relatable. She began to get sassier and edgier after her teen moon-eyed faze.

Think of “Mean,” released in 2011. Still country, but the lyrics are getting more fun. “Someday, I’ll be living in a big old city and all you’re ever going to be is mean.” Maybe it’s a little thin skinned, but given where she is now, I guess I’d have to say it’s accurate foreshadowing—someday she did indeed become big. And big is an understatement, although she wasn't all that small in 2011, either.

I was getting a bit more into Taylor Swift. 2013 was the year of “22,” and “Red.” “Red” seems so raw and sincere—a song I can listen to.

And “22”? Even in my 60s, I can recall being that young, and Swift captures the feeling of young adulthood very well.

Plus: “happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time” is a way many of feel at any stage of life.

More mainstream pop and more adult Taylor Swift produced one of the most watchable music videos ever in 2014: “Blank Space.” And that year, she also advised us that she was going to “Shake it Off” about media critiques of her life.

The "Shake it Off" video shows a woman at the top of her video-making and song-making game.

Thus, by about 10 years ago, Taylor Swift was creating songs that an old man still finds interesting, relatable and listenable—and she’s only grown from there. In 2019, there was “You Need to Calm Down.”

A rumination on both anti-homosexual culture and the nature of celebrity, "Calm Down" is a relevant, interesting song. Totally on my playlist today.

Then came 2020, and “The Man,” one of my favorite Taylor Swift songs and music videos. Yeah, the nature of media attention to you would be very different, Taylor, if you were a guy Taylor rather than a girl Taylor, and way to point that out.

I tend to be a little behind in listening to Taylor Swift’s music, so I don’t have as much to state on her more recent songs, except that perhaps my favorite Swift song of all time, so far, is 2022’s “Anti-Hero.”

“I have this thing where I get older but just never wiser, midnights become my afternoons.” In my speech classes, I try to teach students to begin any public discourse with an attention-grabber—and has anybody ever heard those opening lines and not wondered what’s coming next? And what comes next is, to me, interesting and compelling poetry.

“I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror.” It’s always easier to look out at the world, even to burn our eyes with a dangerous look (don’t stare directly at the sun) than it is to understand the self, to stare directly in the mirror.

“Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism, Like some kind of congressman? (Tale as old as time).” Give Swift credit, she seems to be doing a bit of mirror looking here.

I have mixed feelings about the official music video for Anti-Hero—the little sit-com funeral scene is OK, but interrupts the song. Since she wrote and directed it, I blame Taylor Swift for that. It’s her, she, she’s the problem.

But I love the song. It touches on one of the great human problems—in all of our lives, isn’t it often true that we feel like monsters on the hill rather than sexy babies? And don't all of us sometimes recognize "I'm the problem?" So here is the lyric version of the song video; it's not as much fun as the official song video, but uninterrupted:

A few weeks ago, I was at an event put on by Guardian Institute of Martial Arts, a school in Marion that is run by my daughter and her husband. Some of the black belt Taekwondo instructors there are teen girls. I think it could have been my daughter, but someone mentioned to them at that event that I’m a Swift fan.

Three of them came over to ask. Yes, I said, I am a bit of a Swiftie. No, I know, I’m not as obsessed with Taylor Swift as a true Swiftie is, nor do I have a friendship bracelet. I meant that I am aware of her music and that I’ve grown to enjoy it. I am a fan.

The girls were pretty excited about that. They love TS, too. And that’s nice. Often, popular music and musical choices shift with time. For most of us, our most enduring favorite songs were ones that we encountered as teens or young adults—there’s something about the soundtrack of key transitions in our lives that sticks with us, like the smell of fresh bread baking that can draw you back into your mom’s kitchen. When I hear an early Heart song, I’m taken back to my youth.

But I don’t mind listening to newer music. And I don't know what is says about me, but I do have a thing about female performers. While I can think of many men whose music I enjoy, I am drawn to female singers.

And enjoying new creations, I think, is important as I age. I still live in the world of today. True, these days, music is over-produced, and there was some raw energy and honesty in the pre-disco music of the 1970s that I really like. Yet here I am. Taylor Swift is person of the year. It’s a meaningless media accolade, but I don’t mind this weird annual ritual created by Time magazine.

And I don’t argue with the choice this year.

Humans Don’t Always Look Good in “Arirval”

Amy Adams as linguist Louise Banks in "Arrival." That's no human vehicle parked in the background. All images on this post appeared in online news stories or reviews and are credited as Paramount Pictures PR images.

In case you didn’t catch the Amy Adams movie “Arrival” when it came out five years ago, I’ll try to avoid spoilers in this essay about the film. Which seems a bit ironic when writing about this movie, which plays with and twists notions of both time and language. My wife and I noticed the DVD at a sale price, and took a chance on it, and Friday I watched it for the first time. Amy Adams, don't you know. I can watch her read the phone book, I think. She's a bit like Sarah Michelle Geller--in that her eyes to a lot of the acting, too.

What we think are memories aren’t that at all. And what did the word “weapon” actually mean in that pretty ink blot alien tongue? Having just watched the movie for the first time, I feel that I missed a key plot twist that hinges on that word, which, after all, comes close to igniting a world war.

And why did the heptapods (the aliens sure do have feet) come to Earth and give us a language that opens what sounds like a cool super power but that turns out to involve a lot of complexity in choice, fate and pain? Well, that question is partly answered when Abbott (one of the two aliens the Amy Adams character converses with, the other is named, by her future or past love interest, “Costello”) tells her that they will need human help in a few thousand years, but that again raises a whole bunch of questions.

We don’t ever know where the heptapods came from. Did they travel faster than light, or is theirs a different way of viewing reality mean a journey of thousands of years at sub light speed seems undaunting? And that foggy, misty environment that they live in—what is their reality like?

The movie is clever. It plays with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in an interesting way, seeming to suggest that we experience time in a conceptual way that is tied to language, which shapes how we think. That hypothesis, by the way, is useful for understanding language, but not always all that useful for understanding all of human experience. It’s the notion that the nature of our language shapes the nature of our perception. What follows is my opinion (although most of what preceded is also my opinion, a fact you probably remembered)—but sometimes I think people take that useful hypothesis too seriously. For example, I’ve seen people make a big deal out of the supposed fact (I don’t know the language, so I don’t know if it’s actually true) that Arabic has no equivalent for the word “compromise.” Or that Inuit people have a gabagillion words to say “snow.” Or that some color labels don’t exist in some languages.

Sure, those are ideas worth exploring. They shape perception. But they don’t dictate it. If I don’t have a label for “teal,” for instance, it doesn’t mean that my eyes won’t see the color (my visual organs and optic nerves are still very similar to the equivalent organs in most other not-color-blind humans), and thus I may notice the hue even if I cannot name it. I think people from a linguistic tradition that doesn’t label “compromise” probably can, and probably do, grasp the idea anyway. I may not have individual words that differentiate between wet or powdery snow, or snow in the air or on the ground, or snow that has blown—but I can still see and appreciate nuances of snow.

As a writer, I believe in the power of the word. I loved the way Amy’s character Louise quickly concocted a lie about “kangaroo” to explain a truth. As humans, our words are inexact attempts for us to capture and share our experiences, but I also think experience can be “real” when it’s not bound up in a word.

That’s a long way of saying that the time-bending nature of “Arrival” was interesting, but didn’t completely work for me. And the foreboding tone of the movie made it sometimes too heavy—Louise Banks seems disturbed and fearful in her contact with the heptapods, and I wanted a bit more wonder and whimsy. The movie was clever, but sometimes too clever (that Hannah is a palindrome seemed to be emphasized way too much—so is dud).

Will I watch “Arrival” again? Yes, I think I will, if existence and time and my life cooperate. It’s not my favorite movie but it was a worthwhile and interesting one, and I’m pretty sure I’ll see details in the next watching that I missed in the first one. I also loved the idea of aliens whose written language has nothing to do with their speech, which made me wonder if there was any meaning at all in their vocalizations, yet again one of those many unanswered questions in the film.

And I respect a movie, especially a science fiction adventure, that doesn’t feel it has to answer all questions and that defies some norms of the genre. It doesn’t rely on too many car chases or breathtaking action scenes—it builds great tension with more subtlety. It has a heroine who never smacks anyone and never fires any weapon, at least as I understand the word even if I still wonder if a heptapod would agree. It’s an alien war drama where war fails to break out out—and where it was the humans and their poor choices and inability to function without clarity that caused the real danger.

Our hero uses her mind and language to save the world. No light saber, just enlightened thought.

Seems human to me. In my life, the most important problems are caused either by mindless microbes or by other hairless apes who irk me—and right now, irksome humans who respond mindlessly to certain microbes.

Obligatory pandemic side rant: I don’t care what “omicron variant” can be rearranged to spell. Potential overlords aren’t dumb enough to leave an obvious clue like that, but silly humans are prone to misinterpret words and forget that the variant wasn’t named omicron for the sake of a sick joke or some secret code; it was just the next letter in an old alphabet. We should respect words, but we can read way too much into them, too. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis also means that we can construct reality with language, and we’re sometimes shoddy builders.

Back to this interesting movie. I kind of wish Amy could smile or laugh a bit more. She has a few seconds of “oh gee” facial expressions when she meets the aliens, and I kind of wanted a bit of emphasis on that. It seemed to me that wonder was among the reactions that would be worth exploring.

It was a thoughtful, but perhaps too heavy, movie. “Arrival,” how many stars should I give you? I was thinking three, but that seems too few. You're too interesting for that. How about four? And did you remember beforehand that was what I was going to write?

Magazines: Diverse and Alive Print Niche

Mount Mercy Magazine, 2018 edition.

Books are the oldest print medium; newspapers are the algae of the news ocean. Books are still with us but have an uncertain future—newspapers are clearly in decline in print, but attempting to morph into new kinds of news organizations.

What are magazines? Almost as old as books, clearly important in the news universe but not as vital as newspapers, magazines are very diverse—they come in many different forms.

According to a magazine trade association report, there are more than 7,300 magazines in the United States today, a multi-billion-dollar industry employing tens or hundreds of thousands (depending on how you count—many media professionals have roles in magazines but don’t work in the industry full-time).

2019 Magazine economic impact--most recent numbers I found online.

Various ways magazines count audience.

General circulation magazines that depend on a mix of ads and subscription for economic viability—like all traditional print media roughly following the penny press economic model of a cheap publication that presents ads to survive—have taken a hit in recent years. “Newsweek” ceased print publication recently during ownership changes, for example.

But not all magazines follow that model. And the number of magazines has actually remained steady while newspapers have been in decline, and magazine readership has grown, although those numbers can be a bit fuzzy because magazine publishers like to include web editions along with print editions.

According to www.agilitypr.com a Public Relations reference site, in January 2021 top 10 circulation magazines in the United States are:

• AARP Magazine.
• AARP Bulleting.
• Costco Connection.
• Betters Homes and Gardens*.
• Game Informer Magazine.
• Good Housekeeping*.
• People Magazine.
• Woman’s Day.
• National Geographic.
• Time.

*These are published in Des Moines, Iowa, by Meredith, Corporation.

Today, some magazines still retain national prominence. Investigative reporting in the “New Yorker” and “Atlantic” magazines often sparks stories that become major news across the media. Yet one reason the magazine industry has been so resilient is that it exists in some many forms in so many places.

Here is a partial list of the kinds of magazines that there are:

• Trade and organization magazines. The top two magazines by circulation number in the United States are both published by the American Association of Retired People—AARP. Many prominent national organizations sponsor magazines as part of their member or audience outreach programs.

• Corporate sponsored. Some magazines are meant to market goods or services or create a sense of community. Costco, for example, published a magazine. If a corporation is large enough—if it has tens of thousands of employees in diverse locations—a magazine publishes specifically for its own employees might exist. Many organizations, including most colleges, publish at least one magazine to stay in touch with parents, potential donors and alumni. Large universities publish multiple such magazines.

2007 corporate magazine published in Cedar Rapids.

Special kind of "corporate" magazine--local government PR magazine in Cedar Rapids.

• General circulation. These may be news magazines like “Time.” Or they can be more oriented to an audience, sort of like cable TV. “Elle” and “Cosmopolitan,” for example, target young women. “Sports Illustrated” is for sports fans, primarily males. “Better Homes and Gardens” pretty clearly targets women of financial means in settled households. This category is the one most impacted by media changes—but even here, still includes large and important publications.

"Time" person of the year in 2017 (above) and 2020 (below). It's a sometimes controversial choice--conservatives were angry when Biden and Harris were named--but "Time" is not "honoring" a person. In 1938, person of the year was Adolph Hitler, and "Time" was not endorsing fascism. The news magazine picks what it considers the most newsworthy personality of the year (not always one person). The cover is not a prize.

• Niche publications. The Iowa DNR publishes “Iowa Outdoors,” unusual because it’s a government magazine that is subscription based. The internet tends to divide audiences up by specific interest—an idea that is not novel to cyberspace, because it has been a magazine strategy for generations. Many large cities have specific city magazines. Almost any hobby or profession will have one or several magazines associated with it. Magazines are often creative incubators—new fiction writers may see their first stories published in this medium before they complete their first novel. Poetry and prose literary magazines, even including “Paha” at Mount Mercy University, provide an important creative outlet for writers as well as the pleasure of discovering new voices for readers.

Published by Iowa DNR, but subscription based.

• Scholarly journals. The best of these are “peer reviewed,” that is, research articles are only published if a panel of experts in that particular field agrees that the research described in the article is worthwhile. Many of these journals are also web sites, and quick sharing of information on COVID-19 via both government sites and science journal sites has been a key collaborative tool that helps explain, for example, why vaccines that usually take a decade or more to develop are starting to be available just one year into this pandemic. Any “hard” science or social science will have a whole series of journals that researchers publish in—and it’s those publications that serve as major news sources of new research, as well as accolades such as the Nobel Prize in physics or chemistry. The cover of Science, by the way, is from December 2009—the cover article is on groundbreaking gene research done at Iowa State University, and one of the authors of that article was Dr. Matthew Moscou. Being on the cover of science is unarguably a highlight of his career—although he also has the distinction of being Joe Sheller’s son-in-law. Coincidence? Yes, yes it is.
  

Cover of Science, a scholarly journal, reporting on gene editing technology studied at Iowa State.

Anyway, because magazines exist in such diverse forms, they have a more diffuse cultural impact. One impact that has been of concern in recent years is the unhealthy body image our culture puts forth as the ideas for young women—impossibly thin super models whose bodies are transformed using Photoshop appear in images in magazines that target females, particularly teens.

It’s too complex of an issue to blame on magazines, that both are promoting an unhealthy body image but are also following the preferences of their audience.

Magazines are among the most difficult to classify of media—and that is their strength. They don’t follow one model, but many. And many of them are closely associated with, or responsible form, online sites that draw traffic.

Final point: The magazine industry has many publications headquartered in New York, the publishing capital of the United States, but this diverse industry features important publishers in other places, too. “Better Homes are Garden” and some other very large, nationally important magazines are published by a huge company called Meredith—located in Des Moines, Iowa.

One of the U.S.A.'s largest magazine, published in Des Moines, Iowa.