In
this video, the artist plays the role of protagonist and narrator as she is the
main character whose eyes we see the story through and she is also singing the
story to us, with this being both narrative and performance based. The video
portrays objective character identities in the narrative as everything we see,
again, is through her eyes. The only point for arguing towards it being
subjective is through the boy’s emotions when he sees his girlfriend cheat on
him, however, even this is seen through the protagonist’s eyes; it is her story
we are seeing. We can apply Todorov’s narrative model to this video as it
involves the three stages: equilibrium- the
geeky girl is in love with the boy next door who only sees her as a friend.
Disequilibrium- the girlfriend cheats on the boyfriend. Resolution- the geeky
girl is transformed into a beautiful girl and gets the boy. The ideological
values being reinforced through the narrative structure can be interpreted in a negative way, in that
this video is suggesting you need to be hot and beautiful to get the boy in the
end. On the other hand, it can be interpreted in a way that states everyone can
be beautiful or is beautiful no matter who they are.
We
can identify Propp’s characters in the video as there is a hero- (character who
seeks something: Taylor Swift), a villain- (character who the hero must
overcome: the girlfriend), and a princess- (the reward and goal for the hero:
the boy). These types of characters used together for a narrative are quite
common, however, stereotypically the hero and villain are male with the
princess being a female, not surprisingly. The fact that the roles in terms of
gender have been flipped here, refers to this idea of women becoming more
empowered and how we as a society have evolved. The video involves a number of
pairs of opposites reflecting (and resolving) the narrative conflicts and there
are different sets of oppositions between the jock, the geek and the
cheerleader. This is where Levi Strauss’ theory comes into play. You get the
battle between popular vs unpopular and beauty vs ugly. These oppositions identify
the central ideological messages of the video, being the celebration of beauty
and the physical aspects of life.
Barthes’
narrative codes are present in the music video. There is an action code which
is when any action implies a further narrative action that we as an audience
are meant to piece together. This is seen when the boy is having an argument on
the phone which is inaudible to us but we can assume it is between him and his
girlfriend. There is also a cultural code in that we as a society have prior
knowledge on certain things that help us understand the narrative codes. For
example, high school stereotypical characters, and how the ranks work. There is
an enigma code in that we ask the question of why the boy is still with the
girlfriend when he knows he likes the girl. A semantic code can be applied to
the dress sense of the hero and villain towards the end of the video. The hero
is in white, signalling purity, innocence and goodliness while the villain is
in red, implying danger of such. Additionally, the glasses, notepads and
wallpapers reference her geeky lifestyle. In terms of the villain, even her car
is red to emphasise how she is the villain.
There
are subconscious references in the video in which we can almost go on to say it
uses parody as a way of critique, taking apart the idea of the jock and the
geek. Most postmodern narratives are thought to be like this with the stories
familiarly involving the concept of two completely contrasting individuals
fighting over a prize which happens to be the love of another. In reference to
Cameron’s modular narratives theory, there are no anachronic types involved as
there are no flashbacks or flash-forwards in the video. There are also no
forking paths or split screens as there are no alternative versions of the
story; there is only one outcome and additionally, the screen is never split.
