Taylor, Travis, and my Gen Z students

Pop star Taylor Swift’s engagement to NFL tight end and podcaster Travis Kelce was, as you can imagine, a bit of a deal for my Gen Z students. It happened during the first five minutes of my creative nonfiction course and was a.) a moment I knew I had to lean into and not try to control, b.) a moment where a lazier and more cynical version of me (note: this version exists, often) would have said something like, “I don’t think about Swift and Kelce at all,” when asked what I think of their engagement, and c.) a monocultural moment where we could all consume the same thing at the same time, which is pretty magical, even when the thing we’re consuming is relatively stupid (like this).

Also, my students are really smart and fun to talk to, so there’s that. As such, a number of angles presented themselves, just as we talked about how we might write about a moment like this. Here they are, with commentary:

What if it’s all performative and somehow a gigantic public relations ruse intended to promote her new record and the start of his season? This is a fair question and certainly what I thought at the beginning (see: cynical). However, asking Swift (and by extension, Kelce) not to perform would be like inviting Michael Jordan down to Hoover Park in my hometown, where pickup basketball was played all the livelong day, handing him a basketball, and asking him not to shoot it or dunk it. Point being, if you’re Taylor Swift, the Faustian pact that you’ve made with certainly yourself (and maybe the devil) is that no aspect of your life really goes “unperformed” and in fact the attention is something needed, in the same way that a smack addict eventually needs the drug just to feel normal. Point being, I think they both need attention like this just to feel normal.

What about the institution of marriage, like from a spiritual standpoint? This is another incredibly fair question. Of course, we live in a fallen world where pagans live as pagans, and then also sometimes enter into an institution created by God, that is supposed to mirror Christ’s relationship with His bride. There’s a part of me that is really encouraged when a couple decides to stop living in sin, and decides to marry, even if that couple shows no evidence of regenerate hearts and not even a modicum of interest in the church. This is still a good thing, but not as good, as joyful, as life-giving as going to a wedding between two of my students who love the Lord. It’s even less good when said marriage is less a holy union between two people and more a publicity-fueled marketing move. To be fair, I don’t know if it is this, or not.

But even though Swift and Kelce are living their lives performatively on a macro level, aren’t we all doing the same thing on a micro level via social media? Meaning that if you’re a kid going to college for the first time there are probably a variety of emotions at play. You probably cry a little bit when you hug your parents goodbye, you may not immediately like all of your roommates, and you may feel homesick. But when you produce your five-image Instagram post on Moving to College you omit the crying picture, omit the ambivalence vis-à-vis the roommate and include a beautiful shot of your campus, a shot of the string of lights in your dorm room, a shot of the latte you purchase in the campus coffee shop, and a shot of you looking unspeakably happy while surrounded by people. How is this qualitatively different than Swift and Kelce essentially producing a reality show that is also, functionally, their wedding?

Is Travis Kelce even interesting? No, not really. But the entire Kelce empire is basically the proverbial “ships” being elevated by the rising tide that is Taylor Swift and her even more substantial empire.

Isn’t it awkward and sometimes disastrous to do business with family? Yeah, that could get dicey.

Why does this feel kind of gross and calculated but Josh Allen’s marriage to Hailee Steinfeld doesn’t? I’m not sure, but it probably has something to do with the fact that the Allen/Steinfeld nuptials felt like something for them and about them, but Taylor Swift’s wedding feels—like her music—like something that is somehow for and about us. Which is the exact nature of the genius of her music, but also the exact thing that makes her personal stuff feel the tiniest bit gross.

What happens to her music when there are no more breakups to write about? I have absolutely no idea.

Kluck, do you even care about this? No, not really. (But I did just write a column about it.)