The polarization in American society today, and the way in which it is reflected in our popular culture, is a fundamental focus of the now-available 11th edition of Signs of Life in the U.S.A. And so I'd like to inaugurate my return to the Bits blog with a look at how political passion can pop up in some of the weirdest places, causing controversy in the most apparently innocuous circumstances. Allow me to explain.
As I have noted a number of times in my years of blogging here, I participate in an online hobby forum (no, it doesn't involve firearms) where many of the participants are quite conservative. In fact, that's the main reason I still visit the site: it provides me with a glimpse into a world that tends to fly under the radar of most mainstream media coverage, and which is generally invisible to most cultural analysts. My participation on the site thus offers me insights into what is going on in places outside the ordinary academic orbit, and I am sometimes mystified at first by what I see there because I do not know the codes behind a lot of the comments there.
For example, in the run-up to Super Bowl LVIII there was a discussion on the site about who was going to win the game. That, of course, is only natural. A number of the comments, however, explicitly said, "I'm for any team except the Kansas City Chiefs." That was a bit odd. I mean, what's wrong with the Kansas City Chiefs? Perhaps, I thought, the hostility might be due to the Chiefs' recent domination of the Super Bowl (a sort of "damn Yankees" reaction), but I also noticed an obsessive focus on Kansas City Tight End Travis Kelce and how much attention he was getting. That puzzled me until it became clear that the objection was to Kelce's relationship with Taylor Swift and all the attention the two of them were getting. But that puzzled me too, because I thought that the kind of people who participate on the forum would adore this heartland-of-America team and the wholesome young couple at the center of it.
So I was faced with a perfect opening for a semiotic analysis, one that begins with a question ("what is going on here?"), rather than a conclusion. And to answer that question I had to do some research.
Now, I am sure that many of you reading this blog will already know the answer to my question because all-things-Swift are well known to just about everyone. Except me. But I learned a lot in my research, including the fact that Taylor Swift is known to have voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and has generally indicated an inclination towards liberal political positions. Of course, I've also learned that long before Swift finally did announce her endorsement of Kamala Harris, her support was eagerly sought by Democrats and Republicans alike, though it was assumed that she would probably lean blue.
So the explanation for all the conservative fuss about the Kansas City Chiefs on the web site is a simple one: the Chiefs had become Taylor Swift's team, which meant, in the code, that the Chiefs were anti-MAGA, which is why some Republican voters are now repudiating their Swiftie pasts. But the obviousness of the conclusion only becomes apparent when you can crack the code.
As various news outlets like to say after things like presidential debates, there are five takeaways from this blog's analysis:
- Political polarization has infiltrated every nook and cranny of American popular culture.
- This polarization is often expressed in insiders' codes, which can be decoded by situating their signs in larger systems of associated phenomena that reveal what is really being said.
- A semiotic analysis best begins with a question – what is going on here? – rather than with an opinion or a pre-formed conclusion.
- One's own political views are not a part of a semiotic analysis.
- Taylor Swift is occupying a great deal of mental real estate, and not only among her fans – which says a great deal about the power of popular culture.
Image courtesy of IHeartRadioCA via Wikimedia Commons
