Taylor Swift Reframes Her Legacy in The Official Release Party of a Showgirl

With The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, the film released in tandem with The Life of a Showgirl on Friday, Taylor Swift reframes her own legacy, while celebrating her love story with fiancé Travis Kelce, and taking audiences behind the scenes of her creative process.

In the 89-minute film, Swift divulges her inspirations for the album and details her directorial perspective. Audiences see Swift star in and direct the music video for “The Fate of Ophelia” with her signature enthusiasm for performing first captured by Lana Wilson’s 2020 documentary Miss Americana, collaborate with Sabrina Carpenter, make reference to Kelce without ever saying his name, empathize with cancel culture, and deliver a brief history of showgirls in popular culture. The Life of a Showgirl isn’t entirely about retroactively correcting Swift’s own history, but she does toy with changing her tune about love, loss, and fame.

Swift opens the film by saying that she has “never done this before”— sharing the making of a music video with her fans. She reunites with her Eras tour collaborators, including acclaimed cinematographer Rodrigo Pietro (Brokeback Mountain, The Wolf of Wall Street) and choreographer Mandy Moore, for the “Fate of Ophelia” video. Visual references range from portrait depictions of the titular Hamlet character, who drowned during a state of manic hysteria in the play; Marilyn Monroe (the music video is slated as “Sequins Are Forever,” a wink at the song in Monroe’s 1953 film, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes); and Liza Minnelli in Cabaret. There is even a redheaded Kate Bush-esque sequence aboard a theatrical pirate ship representing “purgatory,” as Swift explains. “This is art history for pop fans,” Swift says as she explains the video’s references to showgirls throughout history, ranging from 1800s Raphaelite paintings to Busby Berkeley’s showstopping ensemble stage productions.

In the music video, Swift literally steps out of a slew of frames, including wooden tableaus, life preservers, and more, to break the chain of the ill-“fated” showgirl like the fictional Ophelia. She goes so far as to say that her love life has “saved” her from drowning in insanity, especially given how much “men were gaslighting” her throughout her career. There is a reason why her own story “didn’t end tragically” like the “poetic hero” Ophelia’s. Despite Shakespeare’s, at times overlooked character, Ophelia dying, Swift herself was not “driven mad” like she could have been. (Swift adds that she “loves” William Shakespeare and The Bard is “not overhyped.”) “The Fate of Ophelia” is a rewriting of a character’s cultural history: Swift is asking what would happen if she became impenetrable to criticism–and then she lives out the answer.

Viewers learn that the music video required three weeks of rehearsals, and nods at Kelce with Swift catching a football in a scene. Her love for baking is also incorporated, as the only quasi-celebrity cameo is a round loaf of sourdough that Swift herself baked.

Further on, the retconning of Swift’s discography culminates in the title track, “The Life of a Showgirl,” featuring Sabrina Carpenter. The “Espresso” singer recorded her feature during her days off of touring in Sweden. “That is a showgirl for you,” Swift says, praising Carpenter before introducing the lyric video that includes footage of Carpenter opening for Swift during The Eras Tour. In the song, Swift and Carpenter play two characters mirroring the cyclical nature of fame: one is Kitty, a fictional showgirl who advises a fan to not join the music business, and the other is an aspiring singer who then later cautions one of her own fans against becoming a performer. “The more you play, the more that you pay…/You don’t know the life of a showgirl, babe/And you’re never gonna wanna,” the lyrics warn. The sentiment is one Swift now uses as “fuel” to prove she has endured the industry for more than 20 years. Throughout the film, Swift continues to say that there is a prevailing perspective that apathy equates power, and that respect is granted to those only who appear to be the most “unbothered.”

During a 3 p.m. showing on Friday in New York City, the largest audience reactions came from what Swift didn’t say about Kelce in her behind-the-scenes videos. When introducing the phallic-implied “Wood,” Swift explains that the song is all about superstitions in love, while adding a smirk, to laughter from the audience. Of course, after dubbing Kelce a “redwood” and singing that he has reached “new heights of manhood,” (a reference to Kelce’s podcast, New Heights) the whole “knocking on wood” lyric is evidence of Swift’s signature use of double entendres.

Kelce also serves as inspiration for “Opalite,” as the song is named for the manmade version of the Kansas City Chiefs player’s October birthstone, opal. Although Swift does not once say Kelce’s name during The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, the references are overt. Swift cites her and her mother’s shared love of opals, leading to the title “Opalite” to honor the synthetic growth of the gemstone. The manmade quality of the stone does not undermine its value though, and perhaps even adds to it. Swift says that the track is a metaphor for making her own happiness and assuring herself that anyone can choose their own path. That journey led to Kelce, whom Swift further implies is the first man whom she has felt has worshipped her.

Kelce’s influence is also felt on “Honey,” one of the first tracks Swift wrote for the album, and it cemented that she was creatively in “new territory.” The song revisits the use of pet names thanks to Kelce. “Honey” and “sweetheart” take on other meanings when used by a lover, as opposed to being “weaponized” in a misogynistic society through condescending, “passive-aggressive,” and “evil” tones; the sincerity of being called “honey” can be “awesome,” Swift says, depending on who is saying it.

That earnestness is what Swift is celebrating with both the album and film. She is allowing herself to be “soft” with the album, but that doesn’t mean her bite is any less sharp: Perceived slights to Olivia Rodrigo and Charli xcx are seemingly confirmed in the most diplomatic way possible by Swift when introducing the songs “Father Figure” and “Actually Romantic.” Swift cites how “Father Figure” (which interpolates George Michael’s 1987 hit with his estate’s blessing) is about the relationship between an “ingénue and a mentor” that ends in “betrayal.” We know Swift’s cinematic nods to Monroe, Clara Bow, and more, but this calls to mind All About Eve. (Vanity Fair has reached out to Swift’s representative for comment on these and other interpretations, but have not received a response as of publication.)

Swift deems “Actually Romantic” — a title that evokes Charli xcx’s song “Everything Is Romantic” which was most recently used in the Wuthering Heights trailer— a “love letter to those who hate you” and expresses her own shock at realizing that she was such a large “part of someone else’s story,” which Swift calls “flattering.” “Thank you for all the attention,” Swift says in the film, adding that the motto of the music industry is “attention means affection.”

Elsewhere, Swift is further embracing being one of the patron saints of cancel culture. She’s endured hate from President Donald Trump, Kanye West, NFL fans, and others, but Swift is wearing the scarlet letter of being proudly á la her Reputation era. Swift says she is “wiser” after weathering “social outrage” and has become a resource for those also navigating public backlash—without naming names, though. Swift adds that she has “less judgment now” for anyone who has been canceled.

The reframing of both Swift’s personal and professional lives on the album and in the film proves that the songwriter is deftly able to walk the tight rope of fame–and all else that goes along with being a showgirl.