Taylor Swift glittered movie screens with oranges, blues and a splash of self-confidence at “The Official Release Party of A Showgirl.”
From Oct. 3 to Oct. 5, AMC theaters are screening “The Official Release Party of A Showgirl,” offering viewers a unique insight into Swift’s artistic and lyrical production alongside a sneak-peek viewing of her music video and lyric videos. This movie featured the songs from Swift’s album “The Life of a Showgirl,” which was released on Oct. 3.
Before the film started with a title screen of Swift’s iconic countdown sequence, fans entered AMC theaters showcasing their merch in various eras of Swift’s music. One high school student from Camino Nuevo Charter Academy, Ellie Carpinteyro, wore her own shirt mimicking Swift’s “Junior Jewels” shirt, featured in the “You Belong With Me” music video from “Fearless.”
“I’m so excited,” Carpinteyro said. “I just wanted to see her creativity come to life. You know everything has a meaning, and there’s a spoiler somewhere.”
The film began with the music video for “The Fate of Ophelia,” the opening track on the album. In this music video, Swift features various types of showgirls across history, from muses in a painting to burlesque dancers, traveling through time and ending on a pop star persona.
The music video uniquely utilizes camera panning and visual allusions to float Swift seamlessly between periods of history. The video opens on a movie theater, then turns to show a painting on the wall depicting Swift lying similarly to Ophelia in the famous painting by John Everett Millais in the 1800s. Quickly, the camera zooms in to reveal Swift moving and crawling out of the frame. Similar effects are used again when Swift dives into the water of an acting set, mimicking her stage-dive in “The Eras Tour.”
Additionally, the music video constructs a musical image layered with choreography and dance numbers. From the dressing room to large platformed stages, Swift chose to present “The Fate of Ophelia” with a decadent musical-like production. In one moment, reflecting platformed dance sequences in the film “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” with Marilyn Monroe, Swift stands at the height of a semicircle of stairs in a blue feathery outfit, while dancers entice the audience with retro lifebuoys.
The consistent focus on water in the music video calls back to the original tale of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” where she drowns due to the madness brought on by her father’s death and turbulent relationship with Hamlet. Swift mentions in the film that she feels a particular draw towards reimagining Shakespeare’s characters with happy endings, a callback to “Love Story,” where Swift imagines Romeo and Juliet marrying each other. In “The Fate of Ophelia,” Swift focuses instead on how she was saved from Ophelia’s fate by falling in love.
Small easter eggs are littered throughout the music video, hinting at Swift’s personal and professional life. For example, in a scene where she is posing as the muse of a painting, a loaf of bread she baked is sitting on the table in front of her, a callback to when she mentioned on the “New Heights” podcast with her fiancé, Travis Kelce, that she loved sourdough bread baking. Additionally, the cast of the music video are members who were a part of her team on “The Eras Tour.” Finally, the video closes with a shot of Swift’s face partially submerged in water, signaling back to the album cover for “The Life of a Showgirl.”
Following the music video, Swift spoke specifically about each track on the album before displaying the lyric videos for each song. In between lyric videos, Swift showed more behind-the-scenes footage for “The Fate of Ophelia.”
In her explanations, Swift sat casually in front of a floral-painted backdrop, speaking honestly about her creative process and personal relationship to each song. Behind Swift’s favorite song, “Opalite,” Swift recounted her familial love for opal that she shares with her mom, and how she wrote the song because she loved the idea of man-made beauty and making oneself out of struggle and perseverance.
Though many of the songs on the album feature Swift’s relationship with football star Travis Kelce and her personal journey of growth as a performer and artist, other songs on the album highlight the pain and difficulties that come with her level of fame.
Swift spoke of the intense scrutiny she’s faced across her career, and how when fellow public figures get rejected or “cancelled” on social media, they always turn to her for advice in the song “CANCELLED!” Also, in the song “Actually Romantic,” Swift sings about how when a person is gossiping so much about her and dedicating so much effort to her, it almost feels romantic. Some fans have speculated that Taylor wrote the song about singer Charli XCX, but Swift has not verified these claims.
In the lyric videos, Swift used elements from “The Fate of Ophelia” to create new clips and distort them in a kaleidoscope fashion. Though fonts were changed across the videos, the effects were often repetitive, and in some videos, where the clip color was similar to the font color, the lyrics became difficult to read.
Despite large similarities across the lyric videos, some stood out from the rest of the album. “The Life of a Showgirl feat. Sabrina Carpenter” featured clips from “The Eras Tour” when Carpenter and Swift sang together on stage, and the closing of the song used audio clips from the tour to highlight the collaboration between the artists. In her explanation of the song, Swift mentioned that she views Carpenter as the epitome of the “showgirl,” bouncing back from criticism and finding a deep love for the grind of creating music and touring.
Finally, to close the movie, Swift thanked her audiences for their dedication to her music and their immense love at “The Eras Tour.”
“I feel like we’ve seen her go through so much already in life through her music,” Carpinteyro said. “It’s just like that ‘happily ever after’ type of thing right now. We see her in a better place in life, so it’s like a sort of closure we got from Taylor.”