Abstract
ABSTRACTBefore Taylor Swift came out as a supporter of the Democratic Party in October 2018, the neo-Nazi and white supremacist website The Daily Stormer published 12 articles tagged ‘Taylor Swift’. The Daily Stormer was not the first to notice Swift’s ‘Aryan spirit’. In 2013, an online poster that went by the name ‘Emily Pattinson’ started creating memes with pictures of Swift and quotes by Adolf Hitler on Pinterest. At first glance, these appropriations of Swift’s persona might be interpreted as one-sided fan practices from an undesired audience. However, Swift is not merely the object of these activities. I argue that she offers ample hooks for them in her music. Swift’s star text courts and facilitates a white-supremacist reading, at the same time that it eschews the consequences of this play from her mainstream fan base. Nonetheless, it has become increasingly difficult for Swift to seize control over her star text. In a celebrity landscape so drastically changed by social media, which have destabilised older ideas of celebrity-audience interactions, a polysemic star text that declines to explicitly claim political position provides opportunities for hijacking by audiences.
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