No, Taylor Swift is not Mary Shelley

The philistine supremacy is real.

Literature professor Matthew Green has said that “Taylor Swift’s gothic work is as important as the novels of Mary Shelley”. This is an absurd contention. We should be able to praise Swift’s extensive achievements and strongly imaginative work without making these glib assertions. Yes Taylor Swift is impressive; no, she is not Mary Shelley. To maintain that they are equals (remember, Swift is on the syllabus at Harvard, and is the subject of further serious academic discourse) is to mislead the young and perpetuate an illusion upon the public.

Perhaps we should review Mary Shelley’s achievement, to make this distinction clear.

Mary Shelley confronted the radically new ideas of science and philosophy which were the basis of a social and cultural revolution throughout the early nineteenth century. The question of how science should be used and to what ends it could be put was vital and urgent. In the preface to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley referred to experiments conducted by Erasmus Darwin, Charles’ influential grandfather. Her knowledge of the work of Humphrey Davy, who theorised that chemistry was the underlying principle of all life, was central to Frankenstein’s concern that scientists would endanger society by seeing themselves as the masters of creation.

These are not, as with Swift, mere tropes: Mary Shelley was working with cutting-edge scientific knowledge. Frankenstein is a profound thought experiment about the fundamental changes that were taking place in the world. Today it retains its relevance as we explore the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence. It has the power of a modern myth, a new Ovid for a new aeon. Critics have had much to say on this topic, from the idea that Frankenstein was a call to democratise and domesticate science, to the fact that Shelley worried about the masculinity inherent in experimentation, to the way that the victims of the monster, like Justine, are often women.

Frankenstein is also a thought experiment of the leading philosophical debates about upbringing and development: the question of whether the mind is a tabula rasa or that we are “born free and everywhere in chains” is clearly the basis of the relationship between the monster and the doctor. The question of parenthood and determinism was newly important in the age of the Enlightenment, and plays a central role in Frankenstein.

On every page, Mary Shelley is dealing closely with the most advanced ideas of her time. And in doing all of this, she invented the literary genre of science fiction.

Despite the enormity of her achievement, Mary Shelley was routinely dismissed. It was assumed from the start that Frankenstein had to have been written by a man. Betty Bennet says in the ODNB, “Once it was discovered that its author was a woman, however, critics seldom directly addressed the novel’s politics, considered a ‘male topic’.” Indeed, Frankenstein has often been mis-credited to Mary’s husband, the genius poet Percy Shelley.

However much credit Mary was or wasn’t given, her creation became unavoidable. It has been an essential modern myth for well over a century, with more than a hundred stage and screen adaptations, and the name Frankenstein being in common usage as a shorthand for her ideas (albeit largely misunderstood). She invented a whole way of thinking about modernity.

How can we compare this to Taylor Swift? Yes, Swift’s work draws on many tropes of Gothic and Romantic literature. Yes, she reuses ideas to do with the unstable nature of the self that are familiar from the philosophy of this period. Yes, she has a lyrical style clearly influenced by writers like Wordsworth. But so what? Are we seriously expected to believe that because she reworks Gothic tropes into modern feminist pop-music that she and Mary Shelley are the same?

Matthew Green says of Shelley and other Gothic novelists,

Writing during the industrial revolution, their popular novels used desire, the supernatural and the sublime to ask questions about gender, power and personal freedom.

This grossly understates Shelley’s achievement. She did not merely “ask questions”. How reductive! How diminishing! Where is his mention of Shelley’s use of leading scientific and philosophical ideas? Of her attendance at chemistry lectures? Of her deep understanding of the latest experiments? Is the fact the she was popular supposed to be more important than the fact that she was scientific and philosophical? Why?

Green continues,

Like these writers, the value of Swift’s work is often undervalued due to biases over gender and genre, but she too references and develops a rich literary tradition.

Undervalued by whom? Swift was pop music’s first billionaire. The idea that because some people dislike her work (or make right-wing critiques of her songs) she is “undervalued” is quite remarkable. Taylor Swift may well be the most admired person alive.

The real undervaluing is of Mary Shelley. Shelley did not “reference and develop” a literary tradition. For God’s sake—she invented one. In his judgement, is Green not part of the long line of men who have denied Mary Shelley the true extent of her praise, cutting her down to size as the equivalent of an entertainer?

Shelley created the whole myth of Frankenstein; Swift wrote in her sleeves notes “We are mosaics of our worst selves and our best selves”. They are not the same. To say that, “With unprecedented global reach, Swift gothic addresses audiences with deep questions about selfhood and culture”, is just silly. These are not deep questions. They are the same questions that have been asked for centuries, expressed in simple metaphors and entertaining lyrics.

Speaking to us with pervasiveness and power, Swift’s works are every bit as profound, significant and foundational as Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho, Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Every bit as profound? Are we expected to believe that the Eras Tour is going to have the same hold on the collective imagination two hundred years from now as does the idea of Frankenstein’s monster today? Am I seriously being invited to believe, by a professor of literature, that Mary Shelley’s amalgam of cutting edge scientific and philosophical ideas is comparable to Taylor Swift’s latest album in which she sings,

You smoked, then ate seven bars of chocolate
We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist
I scratch your head, you fall asleep
Like a tattooed golden retriever
But you awaken with dread
Pounding nails in your head
But I've read this one where you come undone
I chose this cyclone with you

This is what philistinism looks like: the refusal to differentiate; the elevation above all else of the impulse to celebrate; the cordial enjoyment of an artist’s beliefs rather than their thought processes. Taylor Swift has reached a high form of achievement but it is not the same as Mary Shelley’s remarkable innovations, it is not the same at all. We cannot be serious unless we admit the difference—especially in our institutions of higher education.

That Swift is an excellent pop-star and performer distracts Green from deeper considerations. Swift is beyond so many of the usual critiques (have you noticed that she is immune from anti-billionaire discourse?). The songs Green praises are full of lyrics which, quite simply, do not have anything like Shelley’s originality.

Wait for the signal and I’ll meet you after dark
Show me the places where the others gave you scars
Now this is an open-shut case
Guess I should’ve known from the look on your face
Every bait and switch was a work of art

When professors make claims like this they are refusing to teach the young what Mary Shelley’s achievement truly was. In his rush to praise Swift he eclipses Shelley, whose work is of world-historical significance. Swift’s art is not the same as Shelley’s and we should stop telling people that it is, especially the young who deserve knowledge and education rather than the trivial blandishments of an ideology obsessed with the relevant, the accessible, and the popular.