Taylor Swift's ‘Fortnight’: Unpacking the 13 Layers Of Meaning Behind the ‘Tortured Poets Department’ Fashion
(yes, the lack of apostrophe does bother me), looking, by turns, for reported references to (a wholly unconvincing “golden retriever”), (who clearly doesn’t appreciate the real estate value of a “house by the Heath”), and “the Christian chorus line” that is, presumably, .Allow me, then, to home in on the video—specifically the diamond watch choker that Swift wears while visiting what looks like the same (ethically questionable, Severance-esque) clinic featured in Ariana Grande’s This being Swift, of course, said necklace is no mere necklace; it is the fine jewelry equivalent of the White Rabbit, a portal to an alternate Swiftian universe where everyone’s obsessed with Via Carota and has precisely zero redeeming qualities.But I digress. Swift’s most obvious reference here is , whose biography and aesthetic echo throughout The Tortured Poets Department’s and accompanying visuals, with track 16 using her story as a metaphor for the fickleness of fame, the ephemerality of entertainers (“You look like Clara Bow / In this light, remarkable / All your life, did you know / You’d be picked like a rose?”)Bow, a Brooklyn-born ingenue, became a silver-screen darling in the ’20s by way of 46 silent films, 11 talkies and five broken engagements in five years.