The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Fall 2018 — 5D

Disclaimer: Yes, it’s a little 
embarrassing how thoroughly I 
researched this article and how 
many pages of lyrics I obviously 
had to go through to come up with 
this list. It’s ridiculous to care this 
much about Taylor Swift when 
everybody knows cool people 
with Good Music Opinions don’t 
do that. But consider this: My 
apathy toward having a Good 
and Cool Music Opinion is equal 
and opposite in strength to how 
deeply I care about chronicling 
the evolution of the Dress as a 
motif in Taylor Swift’s music. 
Also, for the pedants out there, 
yes, “Love Story” has a dress in it 
but I left it off of this list because 
it’s a wedding dress and I just 
don’t think there’s much deeper 
meaning to it (I still <3 you, “Love 
Story”). We good? Good.
1. “Tim McGraw”
Key lyric: “When you think 
happiness / I hope you think ‘that 
little black dress’”
Taylor Swift has built a career 
out of weaponizing memory. Her 
gift is in the details: conjuring 
up tiny moments so specific 
and intimate that they become 
universal enough to stab you in the 
heart. She reveals just enough so 
that it feels real, but not too much 
that it feels like it’s only Taylor-
applicable. When a Taylor Swift 
song comes on the radio, we’re 
invited to not only to listen to her 
story, but also to understand how 
it’s our story, too. It’s no accident 
that this was the first song Taylor 
ever released, all about how 
memory can turn heartbreak 
into something a little gentler, a 
little more bittersweet. In “Tim 
McGraw,” she turns moments of 
their time together into relics of 
a time long gone: the song they 
used to dance to, a pair of jeans 
and, of course, a dress. Really, 
she’s repurposing these memories 
to construct an image of herself: 
“When you think Tim McGraw / I 
hope you think my favorite song... 
/ When you think happiness / I 
hope you think that little black 
dress.” It’s about the power of a 
reminder. Just like that, it’s not 
any old dress anymore. And in 
his memory, that’s how she’ll be 

forever: wearing that black dress, 
dancing to that old song. What’s 
funny though is how that image 
stuck, not just in his memory, but 
in ours. Taylor in a dress is one 
of her defining images, and it’s 
embedded deep in our cultural 
databank. Because the Dress isn’t 
just a piece of clothing: It’s Taylor 
herself.
2. “Fearless”
Key lyric: “I don’t know why / 
But with you, I’d dance in a storm in 
my best dress / Fearless”
Sometimes the Dress is a 
distillation of Taylor herself, and 
sometimes, like we see here, it’s a 
shorthand for a certain grandness 
of feeling — the Dress as a way 
to externalize the process of a 
heart swelling. The album art 
that accompanied this song in 
the lyric booklet is appropriately 
melodramatic 
(and 
in 
classic 
Swiftian fashion, a completely 
unsubtle and literal reenactment 
of the lyrics), Taylor in a fabulous 
blue evening gown with her back 
arched as she dances on a rain-
soaked street. The Dress signifies 
an emotion here, a ridiculous, 
almost embarrassing-to-say-out-
loud emotion that doesn’t make 
sense in words, it only makes 
sense in actions (or in a Taylor 
Swift song). Saying it isn’t enough 
— dancing in a storm in your best 
dress might cut it, though.
3. “Today Was a Fairytale”
Key lyric: “I wore a dress / You 
wore a dark grey t-shirt / You told 
me I was pretty when I looked like a 
mess / Today was a fairytale”
Taylor is so good at picking 
details. She offers no commentary 
here, she just presents these 
precious and tiny memories like 
facts. Today was a fairytale — 
that’s not her opinion, it’s just 
what today was. Again, the Dress 
is a way of creating an image of 
Taylor in an aftermath. She writes 
in the first person here, but it’s like 
she’s imagining herself as part of a 
story, reflecting on an experience 
from a comfortable third-person 
distance. At this point in her 
career, it’s “Today was a fairytale 
/ I wore a dress” but later it’ll 
become “It was rare / I was there / 
I remember it all too well.” In both 
cases, her memory is sharp, and 
it’s used as evidence of a feeling. 
Somebody else might try and deny 

it happened but she was there. 
Today was a fairytale and this is a 
fact, as concrete and airtight as the 
fact that she wore a dress.
Also important to note is that 
Taylor knows the connotations 
of a dress — the way the vision 
of a pretty girl in a pretty dress 
can make a story immediately 
softer, more romantic. And I 
mean, Taylor’s work has always 
built on this distinctly feminine 
association — all hand hearts and 
red lipstick and kittens. Emotional 
and messy, pretty and soft, a 
close examination of the whims 
of a teenage heart. I think this is 
why people tended to write her 
off, especially in the early years, 
because, well, there’s nothing 
especially important about a girl 
in a dress, right?
4. “Dear John”
Key lyric: “The girl in the dress 
wrote you a song”
Yeah, so there’s a lot that’s 
important about a girl in a dress. 
“Dear John” is a culmination 
of sorts. Taylor spent the first 
five years of her career-defining 
herself by a fluttering, deeply 
emotional 
romanticism, 
and 
“Dear John” is, I think, a defining 
moment in Taylor’s evolution 
as an artist: It’s the point when 
shit started getting really, really 
real. Not that I think there’s 
anything light or frivolous about 
her earlier work (“Fifteen” packs 
a hell of a punch and “Forever & 
Always” is full of enough vitriol 
and spite to kill a dozen Jonas 
Brothers, let alone the one it was 
written about), but “Dear John” 
is almost seven straight minutes 
of 
emotional 
excavation 
that 
completely hollows you out before 
lighting your heart just a little 
bit on fire. It’s the Dress, though, 
that really kills me. “The girl in 
the dress wrote you a song” could 
easily be a one-line manifesto 
for Taylor’s entire career. It’s an 
acknowledgment that there are 
strings attached to being a girl in 
a dress, a thing the world sees as 
meaningless, effeminate, stupid.
The Girl in the Dress isn’t taken 
seriously, not ever. Nobody ever 
expected her to fight back — to 
write something as sharp and 
painful and true as “Dear John.” 
Nobody expects the girl who wrote 
a song like “Love Story” to write 

lines like: “And you’ll add my name 
to your long list of traitors who 
don’t understand / And I’ll look 
back in regret how I ignored when 
they said, / ‘Run as fast as you 
can.’” But that’s the whole point. 
The Girl in the Dress is a fragile, 
frilly thing who’s pretty and gentle 
and has her heart perpetually 
broken. Well, she’s angry now, and 
she has something to say. There’s 
a reason this song resonates so 
well, a reason that the crowd is 
full of shining tear-stained faces 
every time she performs it. Taylor 
knows that what it’s like to feel 
underestimated and small — but 
she also knows how to turn her 
vulnerabilities 
into 
strengths. 
The Dress, something that once 
coded her to the world as soft 
and feminine and weak, becomes 
her weapon of choice. “Don’t you 
think I was too young to be messed 
with” sounds like an admission 
of hurt, and it kind of is, but the 
way she sings it makes me think 
it’s more an attack than anything 
else. You hurt me, she seems to say, 
and that’s on you. “The girl in the 
dress cried the whole way home / 
I should’ve known” becomes “The 
girl in the dress wrote you a song / 
You should’ve known.”
On the Speak Now tour, Taylor 
used to act out this transition in 
vivid color. She would perform this 
song wearing a purple dress and a 
ponytail, and sang part of the song 
hunched over her microphone, 
sitting on the stairs in a grand show 
of heartbreak. But somewhere 
between “I should’ve known” and 
“You should’ve known,” she would 
always stand up, the song building 
in momentum. When she got to 
the line “I’m shining like fireworks 
over your sad empty town,” 
massive sparks would shoot from 
the stage, and for a minute all you 
could see was her shape against 
the lights — the silhouette of a girl 
in a dress, singing you her song.
5. “Better Than Revenge”
Key lyric: “They didn’t teach you 
that in prep school so it’s up to me 
/ but no amount of vintage dresses 
give you dignity”
So we’re gonna ignore the 
unfortunate 
2010-era 
slut 
shaming that permeates this song 
and instead focus on the fact that 
Taylor Swift wears more vintage 
dresses than like 99 percent 

of people in this world, so this 
insult is either a self-aware many-
layered joke or a deeply hilarious 
self-burn. Either way, it makes me 
really happy. Also, Taylor refers 
to boys exclusively as toys and 
property in this song and I am very 
proud of her.
6. “Holy Ground”
Key lyric: “Spinning like a girl in 
a brand new dress / we had this big 
wide city all to ourselves”
Like in “Fearless,” the Dress 
is a shorthand for a sparkling 
feeling. A girl in a brand new dress 
spins and it’s a signifier for the 
wide open emotion of first love 
and youth. She’s so happy that 
she twirls; she can’t contain it. In 
“Holy Ground” memories stack 
on top of each other, the words 
coming quickly and breathlessly 
as if she can’t help herself, she just 
has to get this off her chest. I don’t 
think it’s a coincidence that this 
song is the perfect tempo to spin 
along to (not that I’ve tested it out 
or anything — ahem). The whole 
song sounds like a rush of emotion 
— it sounds the way spinning in a 
brand new dress feels. It’s notable 
here, though, that Taylor herself 
isn’t the Girl in the Dress anymore. 
She’s spinning like the girl. The 
image of herself as the fluttery 
romantic girl is a past tense thing 
now, a self-created archetype 
relegated to memory. “Darling it 
was good / never looking down / 
and right there where we stood 
was holy ground,” she sings, and 
you get the feeling that the brand 
new dress is a piece of that ancient 
history. The old Taylor isn’t dead 
yet, but she’s fading away.
7. “Dress”
Key lyric: “Only bought this dress 
so you could take it off”
I don’t know if Taylor Swift 
wrote “Dress” using every single 
narrative device I love most in this 
world specifically with me in mind, 
but I am very grateful it exists 
anyway. After spending 10 years 
building a distinct image off being 
a Girl in a Dress, she quite literally 
throws that dress on the floor. 
Reputation may not have been the 
image overhaul we expected based 
on its marketing, but “Dress” 
is a quiet deconstruction of the 
Taylor she used to be. “Dress” is 
what happens when a hopeless 
romantic grows up. Instead of 

“Today was a fairytale / I wore a 
dress” it’s “Flashback when you 
met me / your buzz cut and my 
hair bleached / even in my worst 
times / you could see the best in 
me.” These are still gentle, tender 
memories, full of love, but they’re 
less about using retrospect as a 
way to construct a romanticized 
version of the past, and more an 
admission of honesty.
For the most part though, 
“Dress” is a completely different 
kind of Taylor Swift song in that it’s 
written in the present tense. She’s 
careful to say it’s a “flashback” 
rather than the usually unspoken 
agreement between listener and 
singer that the whole song is a 
memory. With the exception of 
maybe “Sparks Fly” I don’t think 
she’s ever written a song about 
wanting somebody in the now. 
But the Girl in the Dress is getting 
older, and so she turns all of her 
old habits on their head in “Dress,” 
a song all about the nuances of the 
now. “My hands are shaking from 
holding back from you,” she sings, 
and there’s nothing bittersweet 
about it, the way her details 
usually are. It’s unfiltered, clean, 
straight to the vein emotion, no 
hazy layers of memory between 
the Taylor singing and the Taylor 
experiencing.
Up until this very moment, 
the Dress has been a marker of a 
Taylor long gone, a Taylor alive 
only in a memory. The Dress has 
been in dusty pickup trucks, it’s 
gotten ruined in the rain, it’s been 
worn on first dates and last dates, 
it’s been a sign of weakness and 
a spectacular show of strength 
— but it has never made it into a 
present tense song before. The 
Dress has been a distillation of 
Taylor herself and it has been an 
image Taylor sees from a distance, 
watching herself wearing it. But 
in the end, it’s always been part 
of a story. It’s a way of turning her 
life into a narrative, a process that 
grants her a kind of immortality — 
because an image can live forever 
in the memory of someone long 
gone.
It’s powerful stuff, writing 
yourself into a story, into someone 
else’s very heart. But if Taylor 
Swift has taught me anything, it’s 
that the Girl in the Dress is a lot 
more than a memory. She’s real.

I love Taylor Swift, and a couple other concerns 

‘A Fantastic Woman’ is a 
triumph thanks to Vega

Chilean foreign film “A Fantastic 
Woman” completely lives up to its 
title, proving itself to be fantastic, 
if not outstanding. “A Fantastic 
Woman” 
is 
a 
consummate 
example of giving minority gender 
identity stories a voice in film, 
especially with visionary direction 
by Chilean-Argentinian director 
Sebastián Lelio (“Gloria”) and 
a breathtaking performance by 
Daniela Vega (“The Guest”). It 
is no shocker as to why it rivaled 
American films this past season, 
resulting in an Oscar win for Best 
Foreign Language Film. 

A story to be revered and 
admired, “A Fantastic Woman” 
underscores the complexities and 
complications of love and loss, and 
the quest for personal and gender 
identity. Marina, played by Vega, 
is a transgender woman living 
as a singer in Chile, dating an 
older, wealthier divorcee, Orlando 
(Francisco Reyes, “Neruda”). But 
despite some tropes of relationships 
with a vast age difference, Marina 
doesn’t use Orlando for his money. 
Marina doesn’t care about any of 
that. In fact, the only possession 
she desires after his passing is the 

dog they share. Orlando provides 
her with one thing that no one else 
can: He sees her. When Orlando 
suddenly suffers an aneurysm and 
dies, Marina is forced to confront 
prejudices and suffer abuse from 
Orlando’s family. They try and tear 
her down, but she perseveres.
“A Fantastic Woman” is also a 
tale about self-preservation and 
resistance. Lelio doesn’t give us 
much of a glimpse into Marina’s 
backstory 
because 
we 
don’t 
require it. The film’s dialogue is 
simple and deliberate. Based on 
Vega’s performance — its nuance, 
tenderness and strength — we 
can infer it hasn’t been easy for 
her, but it’s not overly sentimental 
and it doesn’t make us feel pity for 
her. She is ridiculed by Orlando’s 
ex-wife, who calls her a “chimera,” 
or a fire-breathing monster in 
Greek mythology. The investigator 
who questions her after Orlando 
dies refuses to call her Marina 
because he knows she is trans. 
But none of this surprises Marina; 
she doesn’t expect anything from 
anyone, which makes the loss of 
her love, her one piece of hope, 
all the more heartbreaking. Vega 
herself, 
who 
brings 
Marina’s 
fortitude to life, is a big trans 
rights crusader in South America. 

This will not be Vega’s last stellar 
performance.
Vega tells the story through 
her acting, while the rest of the 
story is told through avant-garde 
cinematography by Lelio that 
elevates 
the 
film’s 
aesthetics 
into an artful and abstract piece 
of work. Despite some sleepy 
moments, daytime shots are met 
with sensual, dream-like night 
sequences with colored lights 
and glitter that reflect Marina’s 
deepest desires of peace — to be 
met back with her love and be on 
the stage. Sparkly choreographed 
sequences of Marina dancing and 
singing, breaking the fourth wall 
and distancing from the reality of 
the piece, don’t allow us to forget 
about her suffering. And the 
quite striking and unusual shot 
of Marina walking as the wind 
pushes back on her, used in the 
trailer, is an in-your-face visual 
allegory of her defiance in a world 
that repeatedly tries to knock her 
down.
Really, “A Fantastic Woman” is 
about not judging others. It urges 
us to be accepting and to open 
our minds and our hearts. It’s 
heartbreaking, at times too tragic 
to even watch, but by the end, 
we’re all on Marina’s side.

ASIF BECHER
Summer Editor in Chief

SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

What’s better than a story about 
a man and his dog? A story about 
a man and his horse. Er, a boy and 
his horse, in the case of “Lean on 
Pete,” the most recent film from 
the 
burgeoning 
powerhouse 
that is A24 and director Andrew 
Haigh. Adopted from the novel of 
the same name, written by Willy 
Vlautin, “Lean on Pete” tells the 
story of working-class, 15-year-
old Charley Thompson (Charlie 
Plummer, “Boardwalk Empire”) 
who has just moved to Portland, 
Oregon with his single father and 
is looking for work. “Lean on Pete” 
is at once a coming-of-age story 
and gut-punching drama that 
forces its protagonist to grapple 
with problems that most people 
will never have to face. Above 
all, though, it never glamorizes 
its characters’ troubles or inflicts 
trauma without intention. “Lean 
on 
Pete” 
reminds 
audiences 
how strong the desire for self-
preservation can be.
The film begins simply: Charley 
alone in his house, hearing through 
a door the sounds of his father and 
his girlfriend having a flirtatious 
chat in the bedroom. He leaves 

to go run, presumably used to his 
father’s behavior, and discovers 
Portland Downs nearby. There’s a 
magnetic connection. Charley goes 
to work for Del (Steve Buscemi, 
“Neo Yokio”), a racer who owns the 
eponymous horse, to make a little 
money. With it, he buys food, which 
reveals the family’s financial need. 
Haigh illustrates how Charley’s 
literal hunger, a recurring problem 
in the film, motivates almost all 
that he does. There are multiple 
scenes involving food that serve as 
punctuation for Charley’s journey: 
His home kitchen, the restaurant 
at the tracks and the gas station 
where he steals a map and a pastry 
wrapped in plastic. 
Although “Lean on Pete” does 
do good work with basic wants 
and needs in its beginning third, 
it can occasionally feel robotic. 
Scenes involving more than two 
characters are stiff and staged, 
and they stick out in a film that is 
so good at capturing the emotional 
experience of a person alone. This 
is evident when Charley has to 
interact with both Del and jockey 
Bonnie 
(Chloë 
Sevigny, 
“The 
Snowman”) in the same scene. The 
dialogue seems uneasy, as if the 
film knows that it’s about Charley’s 
internal experience. 

Once 
past 
its 
first 
third, 
however, “Lean on Pete” blossoms 
in to a journey of survival and 
self-discovery, as Charley goes 
on a quest to find his Aunt Margy 
(Alison Elliott, “20th Century 
Women”). En route, he is forced 
to make some difficult decisions, 
some of which lead him to lie, steal 
and harm others. By the same 
token, his motives are pure — he’s 
looking for safety and comfort 
in a dangerous world. The film, 
however, never places a moral 
judgment on Charley’s actions. It 
never strays from emphasizing 
Charley’s will to complete his task.
Above all, Charlie Plummer 
gives a performance that borders 
on greatness. Plummer’s ability to 
convey Charley’s vulnerability and 
resilience is never cartoonish or 
ham-handed, and he knows exactly 
when to channel which trait. 
The film’s emphasis on Charley’s 
interiority requires an actor that can 
display a wide range of experience, 
and Plummer is up to snuff. 
Without him, the film could have 
fallen prey to overdramatization 
or sentimentality. “Lean on Pete” 
keeps its focus tight, demanding its 
audience to witness the tenacity of 
the human spirit.

‘Lean on Pete’ reveals 
the tenacity of the spirit

A24

SOPHIA WHITE
Daily Arts Writer

JACK BRANDON
Summer Managing Arts Editor

