Vivian Asimos's Blog: Incidental Mythology

As an anthropologist, my primary mode of study is words. I rely on listening to the words people tell me and thinking very deeply about all of that. But there’s a problem with words that I have to always grapple with: what words actually mean can be really different depending on the person speaking them, and these meanings can even change depending on the context the word finds itself in. Two people could speak the same word but really be almost speaking different languages, based on the depth, connotations and meanings these words hold.

There’s one word in particular that I’ve been seeing a lot in fandom spaces. It’s not new in these places, but its something I’ve been encountering a lot. Love.

What does it mean to love a celebrity figure or a musical group? What does it mean when a fan gushes with love? There’s one movie that I think is the best to talk about the complicated ideas of fandom and love, and that’s K-Pop Demon Hunters.

K-Pop Demon Hunters is a movie hosted on Netflix, made by Sony Animations. The movie centres around a K-pop girl group who double as demon hunters. They use their voices and their songs to heal the rifts in the world that the demons come out through. While an animated movie about young women who heal the world through the power of song may seem like a silly premise, this brief description doesn’t do justice to the emotional depth this movie really explores. There are many different dynamics to this movie we can delve into, but I think a large majority of its intricate theming can be explored through the simple word: love.

From the very beginning of the film, there is a focus on the fans. Our introduction to the K-Pop girl group Huntr/x as demon hunters is on their flight to their concert which gets hijacked by demons. When the demons threaten the lives of Huntr/x’s fans, the idols get upset and are determined to save them. We see their relationship with their fans through their manager’s phone. When fans call “we love you”, the three idols call back “we love you, too”.

K-Pop Demon Hunters centres the fans, and the relationship Huntr/x has with them. One of the important aspects of their power as demon hunters is their ability to wield the love and support of their fans. So how does Fandom work in relation to love? And how do we see it working in this movie?

Love, in general, is a complicated word to explain. Defining based on some kind word based definition doesn’t often capture what puts love as something inherently different than just “really liking”. Love is inherently experiential. It’s not enough to just think about the words to define, but rather on how love is experienced and explored, as this is more representative of what people mean when they say they love. What someone means when they say they love their spouse is different to loving their parent, and different again to how you love your child. These differences don’t make one wrong in being called love, its just different. And all this can be different again to when someone says they love Taylor Swift.

So let’s talk for a second about this idea of love, and the experiential versions of love. Most of what I’m going to be drawing on here is derived from Mark Duffett’s chapter on love in fandom, where he focused his discussion specifically on music fandoms - which I think is fitting to the discussion of K-Pop Demon Hunters. In order to help us understand what is meant when fans of Huntr/x say they “love” Rumi or Mira, or even Huntr/x as a whole, Duffet has given us some other phrases and words we can use to better explore experiences and considerations which can be subsumed by this idea of love.

The first is “symbolic economy”, by which we mean the type of power dynamics which exist between people, only seen in its manifestations like concerts. It is, essentially, the recognition of the musicians social influence and power over people. It can be seen most visibly in live events like concerts - the high emotional reaction of fans to their experiences at the event. Probably the best explanation of symbolic economy is “energy”. There is an energy to the room when there is a concert imminently happening, or in the middle of it, and that’s something to difficult to explain except in the sheer idea of loving energy.

The second is a knowing field, which is the intense emotional conviction fans collectively enter into when they notice particularly engrossing parts of a performance, or persuasive elements of the context and experience. This is essentially a field of affect where one’s strong emotional experiences feel immensely personal, and yet are also far more than the individual. Entering the knowing field combined with the symbolic economy means that fans are overwhelmed and overpowered by their intense love.

The third is described as a pull, the way in which getting closer to an idol intensifies feelings of pleasure. This closeness can be physical, as in being close to a stage or even pulled up on stage with them. The idol has a particular pull to them, one which the fans can feel and long for, creating a temptation to touch, even if not actually physically.

The last we’ll be talking about today is counter-performance, which is how fans interact with the preformative templates of their favourite performers. By also interacting and performing these same endeavours, the fans unlock pleasures associated with these roles, movements and ideas.

Now all these different ways of interpreting the experience of “love” - again, not the definition of it, but the experience of it - helps to explain what we’re looking at when we talk about fandom love. Not all fans have to experience all of these, but rather they show us different dynamics and explorations of what fan love actually means.

And we see all of these dimensions playing out in K-Pop Demon Hunters.

For most of the movie, we have two competing pop groups: Huntr/x and the Saja Boys, the hunters versus the demons. These two are actively competing for the affection and attention of their fans, as the fans are what gives Huntr/x their powers, and the Saja Boys can use this attention to both lower the affect of the hunters as well as feed the great demon Gw-ma. They compete not only by writing and releasing different catchy singles, but also through active participation and performance for the audience.

In order to illicit a greater connection and feel from their audiences, increasing their inherent pull, the idols attempt to showcase authenticity. The first two song we hear them sing - How It’s Done and Golden - both paint pictures of who they are in reality. They sing openly about their identities, their pasts, and how they feel about themselves in their roles. While Saja Boys are being somewhat authentic in their songs, there’s a sheen of separation between the actual meaning and the lyrics themselves. Soda Pop talks openly about how the fans are their power source, and they want to consume them. However, it’s hidden in a sheen of catchy sugary pop music and large metaphors that are only obvious when you are given knowledge of their deep personal identities kept hidden.

Both Saja Boys and Huntr/x compete in a game of authenticity. Saja Boys try to appeal to the fans by attempting to show personality and interest. Their appearance on game shows, for example, are demonstrations of person-hood that allow fans to connect to them as personalities. Hunr/x does much the same, though already having a history of connection to fans to build on.

Authenticity and direct personalities and person-hood is an important aspect of an connection. Many fans see relatability as an important aspect, something that makes the musical idol something more than just a vessel for music. They become a real human being, one which the audience member can directly connect to and feel an affinity for. These relationships formed are somewhat para-social, but what creates the pull that encourages the attention of love and connection both sides need from their fans.

But there’s a dynamic to both of these presentations of authenticity. In Golden in particular, their openness of what they experience is highly edited. For example, Mira’s lyric “called a problem child/cause I got too wild/now that’s how I’m getting paid” hints at her experiences with a family who did not always just accept her, or even look maybe a little below the surface to examine why their daughter was acting in a particular way. However, she phrases this experience as an inherently positive thing, celebrating how her experiences got her to where she is. While there is an element of authenticity and truth to her lyrics, it’s not still inherently true. We see this at the end of the film when Gwi-ma is able to turn Mira’s own anxieties about finding an accepting and loving family against her, feeding on her insecurities which tell her she doesn’t really deserve one. When she realises her own short comings, it’s phrased as wishing she had “let the jagged edges see the light instead”, hinting to the fact she hid away the more difficult parts of herself from her friends and loved ones, but especially from the fans and from her music.

While Golden and these other songs showcase elements of their personalities, they’re heavily edited depictions and ones which still paint them as somehow perfect. This is, of course, a chosen aspect of the writing for these songs, depicting the pressure K-Pop idols often feel in being perfect and yet somehow relatable.

But, let’s talk about our final song, This is What it Sounds Like. This is the moment where everything is on display, where Huntr/x reveal to each other and to their fans all their flaws and struggles. This is the pure authenticity, the true authenticity, rather than the curated and edited versions. And the crowd responds by singing the song with them.

Singing along at a concert is not exactly new to K-Pop Demon Hunters, this is something people do at concerts, particularly in more recent experiences of concerts. This is part of the counter-performance kind of experience that we talked about before. The experience of being there, of being close, of experiencing what they experience, feeling that intense and overwhelming emotions of the symbolic economy meeting the knowing field, and then coming to fruition with a joining in the counter-performance. The audience is not just feeling their love for Huntr/x, but directly counter-perform to show their connection and love through the act of echoing back the sentiment to the idols.

And this is an important part of K-Pop Demon Hunters - the love and affection of fans is not just a battle for saving people from demons, or a mechanism through which to garner attention on their songs. The attention and love of fans directly power each fighting faction. Gwi-ma feeds on the souls of fans, and Huntr/x relies on the fans souls and love and attention to power the Honmoon as well as their weapons. It is love which grows the power, but mostly because within the love is the connection to the individual person.

There’s an interesting correlation in the film between the depiction and idea of an individual’s soul and their ability to love. The demons are seen as not having a soul due to their inability to love, and this is what Jinu struggles with throughout the film - grappling with the idea of being able to love despite his flaws, problems, and selfish past. He feels he can love, but struggles to overcome the shame of his own past. Huntr/x’s ultimate issue in truly achieving a golden Honmoon is the fact they hide aspects of themselves they don’t love. These aspects of themselves become the part that Gwi-ma most feeds on, the quiet shameful part of ourselves that makes us believe we are not worthy of being loved or loving in return. When Rumi demonstrates that true self-love is recognising the broken parts of ourselves, this is when the souls return to her friends. And its this that also allows Jinu to see himself as lovable again.

The fans ability to give of themselves in their soul to power the Honmoon, then, is not a parasitic idea like the demonic control of Gwi-ma, but rather a reflection of love. And the fandom love, the love shared by fans to both the idol and the community is one dimension of this, but is ultimately re-ignited by Rumi’s encouragement of the fans to also love themselves.

Even though idol love is para-social, there is still a two way dynamic to the relationship which bears attention. When we talk about the social economy, for example, this is a power dynamic in which the idol holds all the power. However, this power is only present because of the love and attention of fans. Without them, the social power is not present at all. Idols and celebrity figures need fans.

When the audience sings along to This is What it Sounds Like, it’s not just a powerful demonstration of fandom love, but rather one in which the power dynamic is on display. The social power is held by Huntr/x, but only after it was stripped away from them. The fans re-connect to Huntr/x, and Rumi in particular, not through false or edited authenticity, but rather through the true and real demonstration of their identities. The personalities are reconnected, through a true and honest view of who they are, fundamentally - flaws and all. And the audience wholly connects to it because they see a truth in it, and they love Huntr/x all the same for it.

And my favourite part of all of this? The love of the fans is not depicted only in these familiar experiences of screaming fans at concert halls or fans explaining their ships. It’s also in the depiction of the fans singing to give their souls to Huntr/x to help fight with. Because to love something, even para-socially, is to give a part of yourself fully. There’s something so strong about loving something to the point of fandom.

The truth of the matter is, love is a complicated word, with a multitude of meanings and readings. The word includes things like admiration, affection, affinity, lust, appreciation, or even just the recognition of creativity. It’s not often that the use of the word “love” in fandom is meant to insinuate something along the lines of romantic connections, rather fans use the word to convey both a deep subjective convictions, like a spiritual connection, as well as a shared sense of community between the fans themselves. It’s not just singing alone at home which provides a power to the experience of the group counter-performance, but the community aspect of it. It’s the crowd gathering to sing it back to Huntr/x that truly conveys the experiences of love we’re talking about there.

Fans fell in love with the meaning of the song. They fell in love with the lyrics. They love the harmonies. They love the passion with which it was sung, and the spontaneous emotional convictions behind its creation. They love with a kind of love that is only experienced by fans, feeling the energy of their shared space, the social power held by the object of their affection, and in seeing their own selves and experiences being echoed in those of someone else on a stage.

On my podcast I’m a Fan of That, we recently did an episode on genre, more specifically on how certain pieces of fiction cross genres. We talked about those successes or failures. I obviously brought up my thoughts on genre and its beautiful mixing in Shape of Water, which I wrote about more extensively already. But, as we were talking in that episode, as well as after, I was left thinking a lot more about genre, and how the divisions we draw between different forms of fiction are incredibly nuanced and not exactly all that clear. So, today, I want to talk about three areas of writing and reading that intersect all the time, whether you realise it or not: Science Fiction, Magic, and Religion.

I know on the surface these three as being my case studies here may seem a bit strange, especially throwing in that last one of Religion. Obviously, we can think that religion has very little to do with fiction - or, maybe, that’s only what religious people will argue against. Others may be very excited about this category being thrown in. Spoiler alert, neither of you may be expecting which way this is going. But even when we remove religion, we are left with discussions of science fiction and magic, two worlds which are, very much, kept separate.

On it’s very simplistic basis, science fiction can be defined by imagined scientific futuristic endeavours. Space and different planets are often the setting for science fiction - not limited to these settings, of course, but it is typical - because discussions of space travel, different atmospheres, and different locations throughout the universe feel very “science”.

But then, we have Star Wars. Star Wars is very obviously a fantasy story, but it’s given the very typical science fiction setting of space. In fact, Star Wars is probably the best case study to use for the intersections of our three main endeavours here of science fiction, magic, and religion. It’s setting is space, with space travel and laser fights, and all the typical renderings of a science fiction movie. But the story is a fantasy, with magic forming the basis of a lot of the interactions and engagements between peoples, and the basis of this magic is in religion. Because, whether you realise it or not, the Jedi are a religious order - a deeper dive into that should be reserved for a different time, but its not exactly a hidden aspect of the movies.

So let’s take this one at a time, slowly complicating and nuancing each of these genres - and some not genres - of storytelling.

We’re starting with Science Fiction for a few reasons. For one, I think it seems, on its surface, as the most directly different. As someone who reads fantasy and really has never really gotten on with science fiction, I could probably argue that there is some kind of inherent difference between the genres. I think I can explain this while still keeping these very fuzzy distinctions in mind, but we’ll get there.

But we should start where its always best to start academic discussions: with definitions. We start with definitions because otherwise we’ll be arguing over different things thinking its the same. So what is science fiction? As I stated above, it’s typically reserved for avenues of futuristic tellings involving space. But those are typical settings, not typical definitions. You can have a science fiction story set in the past. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells is a good example, and speaking of H.G. Wells, War of the Worlds, while not being set in the past, is set in the same time period as his time of writing, so still not future.

So let’s not settle on something that relies on setting. Maybe we should focus on an important word in the title of this genre - science. What’s important in science fiction is not necessarily the very real possibilities of what is happening, but rather the fact that it could or is explained by science.

In science fiction, the scientific explanation for what is going on in the world is important. The Time Machine is a scientific instrument, the aliens coming have a very real possibility of existing due to the very real scientific possibilities of life on other planets. Science needs to be used to explain things.

I’m always reminded, here, of Star Trek - the ultimate science fiction television show. Unlike Star Wars, Star Trek is not a space fantasy, but it is an active space, futuristic, time travel. And we know this because we are given scientific explanations and backing, even when it’s all not actually based on the science in our non-fiction world. Travelling on the U.S.S Enterprise necessitates Geordie explaining things about nuclear fusion generators to us. We’re treated to explanations as to why things have shut down when they have. It’s necessitates Wes or Data using references to astrophysics or subatomic particles in some fissure as a way to solve the problem.

And if my above explanations seems strange, I think this is why I’ve personally never really enjoyed science fiction. It’s all fiction, I don’t care about your strange explanations. I can buy the system is down and you gotta wait to restart it. I don’t need to hear you ramble something about physics that doesn’t exist to make a reason for it. Because this is an important part of science fiction - the explanations don’t have to make sense. They don’t necessarily have to be grounded in reality, just to seem like it is. If we needed it all to be real, then we wouldn’t have amazing futuristic stories of space travel - we can’t do inter-dimensional travel yet (at least, as far as I know).

So, science fiction is defined by explanation, by the way things are happening and the way it’s being presented to us. When we have space travel and people just shrug and say “we just do” then it doesn’t feel like science fiction in the same way it does when we have a man with a visor explaining particle physics to us.

And this explanation is important. Even in our current world, with the technology we have, we don’t always have the explanation present. It’s summer here in the UK, and as such I’ve been dying of the heat. I don’t like hot weather, and am currently in my annual lament that we do not live further north. And so my husband and I were talking about potentially buying a small portable air conditioner unit. And I realised something - I have no idea how AC works. If I was in a science fiction book, I would be the one making it fantasy, because I don’t have the explanations. I don’t have the reasons and the science behind it. It just works because it does - it’s almost like magic to me.

Because that’s the thing about science fiction - it necessitates an authoritative voice explaining the mechanisms behind the extraordinary feats to us. And if we don’t have this, it can seem just like magic. And that’s how we get space fantasy with Star Wars - because without this authoritative explanation, we are left with the same levels of wonder as magic.

Which brings us to magic. So, as we did before, let’s talk about some definitions here of magic. Here is where things can start getting a little tricky, so we’re going to tread a bit lightly. We’re also going to state very firmly here that we are grounding a lot of this discussion (at the moment) in the world of fiction. We’ll touch on magic outside of fiction a very little bit, but we’ll get there. We’re starting with fiction first.

So how do genres define magic? Magic for these fantasy worlds are special actions which are left unexplained, or they are explained but by using supernatural or mysterious circumstances. Magic is set as firmly against science in this manner. The explanations are missing, because it’s just special magic. Or these explanations are given through non-scientific explanation.

Magic, essentially, becomes the catch-all for amazing actions and feats that we cannot explain. Picard succeeds due to the scientific explanations of how thrusters work, but Gandalf succeeds because he’s a wizard, and wizard does special unexplained stuff. We don’t really know how Gandalf does it, we just know he does.

But magic can work differently depending on where we find it. There are a variety of different types of magic that proliferate the fictional scene, so much so that we have begun to categorise them into two different types: hard vs soft. Soft magic systems are a bit more malleable, and typically not as easily explained. Soft magic systems are often the ones where you shrug and just say “because magic”. Hard systems, on the other hand, follow very firm rules and explanations that the reader can map and understand. These, of course, are less strong categories and more of a spectrum that magic systems can fall along.

The most recent writer I’ve come across that loves a good hard magic system is Brandon Sanderson. The Mistborn trilogy, for example, sets up the reader to know the exact dimensions of the magic of the Mistborn. We’re given detailed information, studies of how it all works, details of where it comes from. All this means that when we are reading, we know exactly the limits and dimensions of the magic our protagonist has. We know how desperate the situation can be, or we can try and figure out how exactly they’ll get out of it.

In these instances, magic functions very differently to the “unexplained answers” aspect of magic that we started off with. Hard systems, and even some softer systems which adhere vaguely to rules, can begin to feel a bit like a kind of science. It follows a structure, there are elements and possibilities, it follows a reality to the world that is based on real functions for the world. Not everything is on the table, but only that which fits within the realm of what is established possibility.

And here, we begin to strike on something that is inherently present in any distinction drawn between science and magic: it’s all relative.

Our idea of magic as something inherently different or separate from science is an inherently social and culturally built conception, and has been partially influenced by the view of religion created by white and western scholars looking at other cultures.

I know, where did religion come from in this discussion? Remember when I mentioned that our discussion of magic can be complicated, and we were going to start by only looking at fiction? Well, it’s time to start looking at it outside of fiction. Because as much as we like to think about our fiction books as being separate from the world, they are very much a part of our world. Writing and reading are all inherently political acts, and these books - yes, even silly little smutty romantasy books - can make big statements about the world we live in.

A lot of the views of magic and other cultural worlds can be summed up by the work of early anthropologists. There are a few different branches this can take us, but we’re going to talk about two things in particular.

The first is the idea of cultural evolution. While this is almost fully renounced now-days (though, there are a few who still use this - be wary), cultural evolutionary theories were quite the rage in the 1800s. This began due to the popularity of the biological theories of evolution that began to be circulated both in academia and outside of it. Charles Darwin’s work had a huge impact on the literary landscape, the social landscape, and the academic landscape. Anthropology was no exception.

Scholars like James Frazer and Edward Tylor began to think of anthropology along similar lines of evolution, and created the idea of cultural evolution. The idea was that we, as humans, have now “completed” our biological evolution (I know, it’s already wrong, we’ve got a long way to go), and after reaching this point, started a development of cultural evolution. The idea was that societies started out as animistic, then became polytheistic, then monotheistic, and ended their cultural advancement by getting to be atheistic.

Obviously, there are a lot of problems here, but before we tackle them, there’s another really important dynamic of their thoughts here: these scholars believed that by studying a community of polytheists in Africa, they could understand the early thoughts of polytheistic Britain. On top of that, they also thought that this cultural evolution also was something we went through as we grew up - meaning that studying children was akin to studying that group in Africa.

Obviously, there’s a lot wrong here. The first of which is that the history of different groups does not reflect this exact growth. Very few groups have developed along these same exact lines. Some areas have gone backwards on this line, and some not moved at all. Also, this assumes a lot about the white scientific atheist.

But on top of the inherent wrongness of this theory, it was primarily rooted in basic good-old-fashioned racism. It’s based on the idea that white people were the most culturally advanced, and Black people were not.

There was a second level to this dynamic as well - the idea of rationality. This is also something at the core of our science/magic divide. Where one’s explanation of authority of science makes it feel more inherently possible, compared to the hard magic system of authoritative explanation that falls short of this. These same early scholars of anthropology and religion often saw religious ideas - particularly those who were not Christian or atheist - as inherently irrational. This is still something that comes up a lot when engaging with studies of other religions. I had to often field students’ snubbing their nose at people different than them simply because they couldn't comprehend a mindset which allowed this thought process as rational.

Enter our second branch of anthropology chat - that of E.E. Evans-Pritchard. His book Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande was formulating one important basic fact: other people are just as rational as us. Their systems of religion, belief, and ideas are based on considered thought and hard understood systems. They were not improvised, but rather deeply intentional. And it all made complete sense.

It may seem crazy to think of an anthropologist making waves by simply having a thesis which states “other people think like how we think”, but - as you can see from our above discussion - it actually was immensely groundbreaking.

What is still inherently present in our society, though, is the lingering presence of the cultural evolutionary theorists’ view of the Other. For many in the UK or USA, Christianity will be heralded as something which makes sense, while another religion - say, Haitian Vodun - is considered irrational and silly.

Essentially, “magic” has become a catch-all for beliefs and actions white people don’t like to see as either religion or science. “Religion”, or rather “proper” religion, has explanations we can get. It’s something which has a history of our understanding, and therefore gets treated differently.

Despite this, there’s a lot of elements of science fiction which can be found in mythologies around the world. We can find automatons in Greek mythology, and flying machines in Hinduism. If found in an old fiction book, we’d describe it as science fiction. But because it’s mythology - a word we often keep in the realm of religion - its considered something different. But if these weren’t, and explained through an authoritative voice, would they be science fiction? If they weren’t, would we think of them as magic?

Regardless of how writers may feel about these various categories, we are, in the end, at the mercy of our systems. A library or publisher is going to label something the way they will - and we very seldom have any say in the matter. How genres are split is sometimes overly simplistic in comparison to the far more nuanced humans who are creating and reading them.

Perhaps we can do something, though, and we are not fully at the mercy a system beyond us. This is where the crossing genres can be really fascinating. By blurring the boundaries between different genres, we can demonstrate how complicated these genres can be. That was part of the genius behind Shape of Water - it showed interesting sides of each of the genres, proving both their nuance and their boundaries. It demonstrated some of the beauty in the monster, allowing each of their facets to shine.

Maybe someday, one of you lovely amazing writers will write a cross between science fiction and fantasy that demonstrates something about each of these genres. It’ll illuminate the similarities, but also the differences in an interesting and unique way that I haven’t even thought of.

And I look forward to reading that.

Kiki’s Delivery Service is a coming of age tale. It’s a story about a young witch, Kiki, who leaves home to spend time away, honing her craft as a witch. She’s supposed to increase her specialisation, find her role and place. During her time away from home, Kiki grows up. She learns about how to live on her own, how to balance her work, how to deal with different personality types and dynamics, all while finding herself as both a witch and an adult.

Today, we’re going to delve into Kiki’s world. Kiki finds herself in a new and quite loud and busy town, one which is full of many personalities and relationships she struggles to find her place in. Kiki’s social insecurities create a drive in her to make money, urging her to find her place through purchases and money. The intense drive she suddenly has for work and money drains her creativity, which is directly tied to her witch powers. Part of Kiki’s coming of age is finding her balance, and learning how to allow her creativity to thrive.

When I mentioned Kiki’s social insecurities, this may come as a surprise. Often in movies and television shows, characters with social insecurities are often depicted as being either introverted or having an awkwardness in their social flows.

Kiki has neither of these. Kiki is extroverted, and seems freely able to hold a conversation with those around her, even those incredibly different from her. She seems to enjoy chatting to others, and seems to find pleasure in getting to know about them. She doesn’t hesitate to ask questions. She seems quite comfortable once she’s in the conversational flow, and as soon as someone responds positively, she’s happy to continue to engage.

Not only does she feel it comfortable to speak to others, she also properly engages with them. She’s constantly happy to help out. Her immediate response when she first meets Ossono, who is trying to catch the attention of a mother who left her child’s binky, Kiki doesn’t think twice about offering to help. This continues through her other engagements. She chooses to help out Madame, the older lady who is wanting to have her deliver a pie. Kiki helps to make the pie and clear out an oven for it to cook. While the pie is cooking, she volunteers to help in other areas of the house.

So it’s not other people, per se, that Kiki struggles with, but rather a kind of person, a kind of interaction. When Kiki first leaves home, she comes across another young witch, who seems incredibly impersonal and stand-offish. At first, Kiki doesn’t seem to react in any negative way about it. But when she arrives in the city, Kiki finds herself surrounded by people unwilling to talk and unwilling to engage with her. She sees people being ungrateful, disconnected, and impersonal, which causes her to question her own position. The biggest view of this she gets is with Madame, who she helps to bake a pie for her granddaughter’s birthday. When Kiki delivers the pie, the girl is ungrateful, breaking Kiki’s heart.

Kiki doesn’t feel as an introvert would when faced with social interaction, but rather how an extrovert who loves people feels when faced with people turning their back on her. She struggles when people seem to be unkind and uncaring, or - maybe even worse for her - indifferent. While she isn’t shy, she is working through a form of social anxiety.

Leading up to the climax of the movie, where she loses her powers, she continues to struggle to form close personal friends. And the most frustrating thing for her is: she doesn’t know why.

One of the reasons why is that, despite her active engagement with others, she does have a lot of deep rooted personal insecurities. We see these immediately in the film, before she even leaves home. Kiki is supposed to leave home when she is 13. Her family is planning on her leaving a week later than she decides to, but she feels an intense need to leave early because of it being a clear sky and a full moon - the “perfect” night. She’s obsessed with the idealised view of her life and her possibilities, which means that when things don’t go perfect, she begins to struggle.

Kiki also has a lot of uncomfortable views of herself and aspects of her witch tradition. It’s tradition to wear the black dress of a witch - her mother informs her of this when she complains about how ugly the dress is. She has made her own broom, so gets upset when her mother insists Kiki take hers instead. Kiki sees that broom as too big, not just right, a less than ideal alternative.

Kiki’s obsession with feeling ugly and out of place continues. When Tombo first sees her, he spots her immediately as a witch. While this may in part be due to her flying on a broom, he specifically mentions her black dress. This makes Kiki upset, and she refuses to speak to him. Why? Because it’s a reminder of the part of her she thinks as ugly.

Very early, we see Kiki’s obsession with trying to change her appearance. She stares in the window of a store, looking at a pair of red shoes, commenting on how beautiful they are. But she also sees their price, and laments on how expensive they are. It seems these become her financial goals, and she begins to work hard to change these aspects of herself.

Kiki throws herself into her work, and seems more interested in doing what she can to either fit in or make money than in finding some aspect of her work that’s personal to her. When she sets up her delivery service at the beginning, she says it’s “the only thing she can do”, not that its her favourite or her goal. She also gets quite a bit of a first payment, and so sees the potential of the work.

When she’s invited to a party by Tombo, she comments that she doesn’t really have anything to wear, but is assured that her black dress is fine. After finally agreeing to go to a party with Tombo, it rains on her way home. She decides to let Tombo go on his own, and shouts that she has nothing to wear as she stomps up the stairs.

Kiki has a habit of self-rejection in this way. Her insecurity about her dress makes her remove herself from situations, though she may not be super clear as to why. After her self-rejection from the party, she is pushed to hang out with Tombo. She is having a good time with him, finally establishing a friendship between them. As they lounge in a park, a car full of Tombo’s friends pull up, and he rushes to chat with them. He then says he wants Kiki to meet his friends. Instead, Kiki makes excuses and runs away from the situation.

When she is back home, talking to Gigi, she says “You should have seen how Tombo’s friends looked at me”. Despite her bemoaning this, there’s no evidence in the scene they were questioning or looking at her in any particular way. Later, she tells Gigi:

“Gigi, I think something’s wrong with me. I meet a lot of people, and at first, everything seems to be going ok. But then I start feeling like such an outsider.”

She seems at least somewhat aware, then, of the way the reality of the situation was different than her own perception. In fact, Tombo’s friends seemed impressed she had a job at her age, rather than resentful or critical of her. She didn’t run away from Tombo’s friends because they were overtly rude to her, but because she was scared they would be. She’s so scared for the possible othering that she others herself to make sure it doesn’t happen.

She isolates herself because of this, and pushers herself more and more toward her job to try and make up the difference with the money she could make. She sees the money has the way out of this isolation. If she had a prettier dress, then maybe she wouldn’t react this way. She literally makes herself sick through the effort, both physically and spiritually.

Kiki wakes up one more unable to access her witch’s powers. She has isolated herself so much that she no longer even understands Gigi, and she’s unable to fly - her own access for her job.

Despite her concern that she has forever lost her witch’s powers, the adults around her seem less upset. Ossono tells her to rest, and it’ll come back. Urusla, an artist in the woods Kiki met during one of her deliveries, offers to have Kiki stay with her to recover. Kiki takes her up on it.

Ursula and Kiki both discover that Ursula’s artistry and Kiki’s witchery are inherently related. Ursula says “painting and magical powers seem to be very similar”. During this conversation, Urusula is actually sketching Kiki. She had been inspired by Kiki’s previous visit, but felt something was wrong. Kiki seems suprised she would be even interested in her. The act of this intimate artistic moment between them is one step to healing Kiki’s insecurities. She begins to see herself as worthy and beautiful as she sees literally beautiful art being made of and about her.

At night, the conversation about these connections between art and magic continues. Kiki notes how surprising the similarities are, and listens intensely as Ursula recounts her own time that she suffered from an artistic burnout. Ursula shows Kiki how making her art her job causes more chances for the art to escape and be lost in the rushing of the everyday push.

Ursula encourages Kiki to “go for walks”, to enjoy life, to slow down, to stop thinking too much about it.

Creativity, and how we study or analyse creativity, has, historically for academics, been focused on the product of the thing. Like Kiki, scholars of creativity were focused on the outcome and the result, what we can get out of it, rather than on the process. A lot of this is because it’s a bit complicated to study creativity without looking back in hindsight. We see something made, and then go “oh, how’d that happen. Let’s look at it” - which means that we are somewhat focused on the outcome.

Despite this, creativity is a process. And one that is social and cultural in its basis. We often speak about creativity as if its an individual thing - a person is creative. But rather, creativity is communal. It is helped and encouraged by being around people. We learn from others, we grow from others. Our creativity is spurned on through the discussions and interactions we hold with the other people around us. Creativity isn’t individual, but communal. It’s social.

And so when Kiki isolates herself, she is breaking herself apart from her own creative spirit, furthering her ostricisation and her creative burnout. And its when she reconnects with the social around her that things change. Her relationships with Ossono, Ursula, and - ultimately - Tombo, help to heal her burn out and creative slump, and its through an attempt to save and reconnect with them that she heals her creativity and has her powers come back.

Kiki’s difficulty was in understanding the relationship her creativity held in connection to the strange other worlds of the new social space she finds herself in, as well as the previous social worlds of her tradition. Her push against her black dress is a demonstration of her push against her tradition. She feels othered by being a witch, but also feels a close affinity with being a witch. She finds her tradition complicated, and she struggles to find her own place within it.

Her isolation and difficulty with her own worlds is a combination of all these factors: her isolation, her obsession with monetising, and her need to fit in with these new social worlds. Its a dangerous combination for maintaining her creativity without burnout.

Creativity is often thought of as complete innovation, but there is a lot of creativity in alterations on the established. In a book on creativity and improvisation, Tim Ingold and Elizabeth Hallam compared this to building a house. When a house is built, we praise the architect’s creativity, but the actual builders are not given the same consideration. But there is creativity in the active alterations that are necessary when something is being brought to life. Not everything goes according to plan, and sometimes builders are the ones who have to make these decisions. And this is a form of creativity - an alteration on tradition, a choice to change the structures.

Therefore, when Kiki tries to establish her own form of witchness based on her tradition, this is, too, a form of creativity that is tied to her witch powers. We see an element of this when she grabs the nearest broom to try and save Tombo. She finds herself and her place within her tradition, but also in her new social world. What began as simply a way to make money simply through her witch powers became a connecting thread between her and new friends - her ability to fly. Tombo is obsessed with aviation and flying, and so is in awe of her abilities.

Her relationship with Tombo, therefore, shows how she begins to find herself in her new life - the way her tradition meets her new situation, and gives birth to her own unique form of creativity.

I love Kiki. It addresses how sometimes our life is not as ideal as we would prefer, and sometimes we have to deal with that. She learns how to harness her creativity, but also to give space for her creativity to breathe and renew, and not be so bogged down in her need to buy things to fit in. She sees her social worlds slowly forming in new ways, having learned tough lessons that even adults still need to learn, and re-learn, on a regular basis.

I’ve said it many times. I will say it many more times. But as these views of mine are new and fresh to substack, I will say them one more time: storytelling is so much more than words.

As a specialist in mythology and myth studies, I’m often surrounded by words. Old texts are transcribed by who knows who, who knows when. I’ve spent many many years of my life leaning over a desk, studying words and analysing words, teaching through words about words. At the heart of the actual thing, the alive thing that is myth, there is so much more than words. When we actually do myth, myth is performed. It’s active. It’s movement. Its music. Its dancing.

And it’s food.

Today, I want to just explore, generally, the topic of food and storytelling. Now, this is something which can (and does) have books on the subject - I’m not doing that here. Here, I want to explore just the core idea of the topic, a quick overview of my thoughts and ideas on the subject, and my own personal narratives around food.

Food and food consumption is a type of storytelling. It’s a way of communicating a lot of different types of narratives all at once. I recently moved to an area of Salisbury which made it a lot easier to access our local Polish shop. The consequence is that I’ve been eating a lot more pierogi than usual.

Pierogi are home to me. Growing up, pierogi were the marker of my family. At Christmas, we made homemade pierogi, eating them fried with caramelised onions and sour cream. We started in the afternoon, me and my three sisters gathered around kitchen counters, rolling dough, cutting shapes, filling the little dumplings. We made enough to feed an army. My mother’s family are Polish immigrants, and she brought her own background to us, showing us where she came from with what we ate.

And we ate it at other points, too. Prepackaged pierogi were fried up for just a Wednesday meal. I was used to going to school and mentioning them, and no one knowing what a pierogi even was. It may have been embarrassing when I was younger, but as I grew I learned how deliciously beautiful these connections were. Even my father, after the divorce - who wasn’t Polish at all - still made pierogi with us - because the taste of pierogi with sour cream had become the taste of our family.

Food tells stories in how it tastes. Now, as a new immigrant in a new country away from my family, I feel unable often to show my husband the life I used to have. I’m not able to show him my old schools or have him meet my old friends. He can’t see where I grew up or where I played on my bike as a kid. He’s not around my family enough to truly get regular stories and understandings of the Vivian I was before I met him.

But he can taste it. There’s something so wonderful about picking up that pack of pierogi at the Polish shop and frying them up with onions. We eat them with sour cream and there’s a small moment of being able to share with him who I was before. I’ve even convinced him to make homemade pierogi with me for Christmas, so he can get the full experience.

Food’s stories in taste can come from a lot of different forms. The recipes which vary from household to household tell the stories of their own history, the way they used what they had, and it became embedded in the way they eat.

Pierogi have a lot of variety. They can be just boiled, or fried. They can be eaten with sour cream, or just butter, or a squeeze of lemon. They have a variety of fillings - potato and cottage cheese, sauerkraut, mushrooms, and I guess some people do meat. My family’s pierogi are going to taste different to a different family’s. Mine tells the story of a particular area of Poland, but also the adjustments made by immigrants. But what is even more beautiful is the differences in flavour developed more recently, by a single mother of three girls, making adjustments to share pieces in new and difficult times.

Food also tells stories in the choices we make to eat at a particular point of time. Christmas is the taste of pierogi, not ham or turkey or nut roast. It’s not roast potatoes or brussel sprouts. It’s fried dough, filled with cheesy potatoes or sauerkraut. It’s the sweet addition of fried onions. It’s the creamy addition of sour cream. It’s hard to taste those pierogi and not remember the hunt for the Christmas pierogi, or the marking of numbers eaten by notches of sour cream on the rim of a plate.

I’m actually writing this up while I sit at my desk, sipping on a taro boba tea I picked up on a much needed walk. I have created for myself a type of Pavlovian writing response, where something tasting sweet instigates the ability to type a bit better. I have a lovely habit of eating cake and drinking coffee at a cafe while I write.

To take us away from pierogi, I also have a love of sweet things. I have a cake rule for writing: when I get a rejection, I’m allowed some cake. It encourages me to submit to things, because even the failure can be nice. I’ve shared this moment with other writing friends - and now the sharing of cake has become a shared experience of rejection and the communal pick up after.

Food can be a social thing. It tells the stories of family and friends. It ties me to the social engagements and ties of my family, even when I’m an ocean away. It ties me to my new friends, the new life I’ve carved for myself through the exchanging of cake.

Our food is our social worlds, our cultural contexts. It tells the story of access to ingredients, stories of time spent with others, stories of geography and those geographic changes. It tells stories of economies - their ups and downs. It tells stories of love, of tears shed over another rejection. But it also tells stories of a life so far from where we are now that it feels like a different person. And when we take that bite of crispy dough, it comes rushing back to us, reminding us of who we are, and whose stories still haunt us like ghosts and aftertastes.

I’ve decided to take the Taylor Swift research forward. After writing the essay on Taylor Swift and folklore, I found my mind constantly wanting to return to that space. I kept thinking about new things to add, new things to think about, new things I wanted to delve into. And so, the book idea of mythology and Taylor Swift is now a high priority for me.

I’ve decided to do research a bit different for this one. In most of my research, I prefer doing qualitative research - in other words, I prefer doing research where I deep dive details into a small quantity of people. The idea of qualitative research is in its name, quality over quantity. I may only talk to 15 or 20 people, but those people I get to know in extreme detail. But for Swift, I’ve decided to shift things a little, and instead to quantitative research. I’ll be looking at a huge amount of people more surface. Quantitative has a lot of stats and numbers.

This isn’t the first time I’ve worked on a survey, but is the first time in many years. Surveys are always a little more complicated than people think. You need to be direct, but not so direct that it’s leading. You have to ask a lot, but not demand too much of their time. You need to get numbers, but also specificity when you need. Saying, for example, twenty percent of people think this, that’s great - but why?

Its a lot of info to sort through, a great amount of data and details and considerations. And you need to make it seem effortless for the people who are taking it.

I’m in the middle, right now, of what we call “a pilot study”. Essentially, I’ve written the survey. Looked it over and made some edits/amendments. And now it’s sent off to a handful of people who represent the larger group I’m going to research who are taking the survey, and then going to give me notes about it. I have the answers they give to look over, make sure I’m getting what I want to get, it’s easy to take, the instructions are clear, and any other issues are considered.

I’m really proud of my little survey. Well, I say little - it may not be as little as it could be. But I’m getting some interesting notes already, and feel like the survey is going well. I still need to wait for a few more responses to come in before I fully review things.

At that review stage, I’ll be looking over the notes to ensure everything is good. When I said, above, that “I’m getting what I want to get”, I don’t mean that the answers line up with my thoughts, and if not I change things. What I mean is if I’m asking a question with the intention of getting information about, say, friendship bracelets, and instead I’m getting information about Taylor’s discography - clearly, I did something wrong. This hasn’t happened to me yet - fingers crossed - but it could.

If it does, there are two ways to handle it. The first is that I need to rephrase the question. Maybe I worded something strangely or in a way that’s ultimately unclear. The second, is that I may need to re-think my approach at all. Let’s say, for example, that my question is pretty clear, people are just taking the opportunity to talk about the discography. This means that I either (1) don’t have a space to talk about this aspect, (2) no one really cares about the friendship bracelets, or even (3) the two are so intricately connected that I need to rethink how I phrased the question to either separate, or take this into account.

Obviously, as I said before, I have not had this issue yet, so hopefully I don’t have to delve too into the weeds here.

I have to be honest - I really enjoyed the process of putting together this survey. And even though its out with just a small handful of people, I’m finding myself constantly refreshing my page, waiting for the number of respondents to tick up. I’m already thinking about each of the answers, how that fits or doesn’t fit into things. I’m just finding myself constantly thinking about this project.

I don’t think I’ve been this excited about a sizeable nonfiction project since Cosplay and the Dressing of Identity. Not that the other things I’ve delved into aren’t fun, but they feel more like me trying for something, rather than just enjoying the process.

I’m really just enjoying this process. I’m giving myself over to it. I know it’s kinda different from the very nerdy things I normally do, but I don’t think it’s actually all that different. I mean, aren’t Swifties just giant nerds?

So, I’m looking ahead with a lot of hope and excitement. I think there’s something interesting here, and something really fun. I can’t wait to start digging into mounds and mounds of data. I’ll just go swimming in it.

Recently, Taylor Swift was finally able to buy back her Masters, after it had been sold to a variety of different owners, one of which was Scooter Braun. In a letter posted on her website about the purchase, many of Taylor Swift’s fans combed through it, searching for easter eggs and references.

This type of detailed, close readings of Taylor Swift’s work is not new. Songs in the Taylor Swift discography are no stranger to speculation, discussion, and detailed thoughtful expressions of meaning. Swifties – the term noted for fans of Taylor Swift – spend time distilling and analysing her songs, music videos, and even interviews. Swift has, either purposefully or inadvertently, created a community who feels comfortable creating detailed critical readings of song lyrics, symbols and notes which are important forms of communication between the community and their idol.

But these are stories, the songs are communications of a story on its own. These tales exist outside of their creator, and yet also live undeniably linked to her. The complicated web of stories, exegesis on songs, and Taylor Swift’s biography create a detailed and intricate mythos for any Swiftie – or budding Swiftie – to dig their nails and fingers into.

Essentially, Taylor Swift’s music exists as a form of contemporary folklore, and as such is not limited to Swifties alone. Her story, the stories she creates, and the stories spun from the original stories, all exist in a complicated weave of individual and communal storytelling which thrives on its context and its life outside of this context simultaneously.

In this essay, we’re going to explore how Taylor Swift’s music functions as folklore and how the multiple layering of narratives creates a complex weave of story and meaning. In a short primer, a brief essay, Swift wrote for her album titled folklore, she describes her idea of folklore as “a tale […] that is passed down and whispered around […] Someone’s secrets written in the sky for all to behold.” If anyone can feel this for their own life, it’s Swift, whose life has been the subject of speculation as well as the primary source of inspiration for her work. Her secrets, painted in the sky, have become, through the experience and speculation of her music, secrets of others, who also tell the stories and relate to them and connect to them. She has become, through this complicated interweaving of meaning, a piece of contemporary folklore.

It is not just Swift’s definition of folklore we are going to be looking at. Folklore is the basis of an entire academic discipline, and therefore there exists many different definitions and considerations of what could be possibly considered “folklore”.

Most commonly, the idea of folklore is one tied to three primary ideas: traditionality, rurality, and irrationality. The primary idea of folklore, at least colloquially, is that folklore is something necessarily old, built upon years of tradition and oral recitations. Folklore is something our grandparents’ grandparents did, stories passed outside of time and location. Folklore is something happening in countrysides, in rolling hills from a people far from cities and education. It’s a furtherance of ideas going beyond old wives’ tales and stories of monsters hiding in the forests.

These ideas even held in academic studies of folklore. Stith Thompson, for example, wrote: “the idea of tradition is the touchstone for everything that is to be included in the term folklore”[1]. Richard Bauman, too, wrote: “there is no single idea more central to conceptions of folklore than tradition”[2]. In other words, the idea of the traditional nature of the stories was what made folklore folklore for many scholars, and this has spread more broadly for other cultural considerations.

Folklorist Daniel Ben-Amos, however, has fought against this idea. His essay “The Idea of Folklore” takes each of the three primary points of folkloric consideration – traditionality, rurality, and irrationality – and demonstrates why each of these either cannot or should not be used to define folklore[3]. For Ben-Amos, he claims these ideas are ideals scholars, and society more largely, have determined what folktales are, is truly something folklore “should have been, but only occasionally was”[4]. Ben-Amos was far more aligned with Mamie Harmon, who believed folklore may exist in any group or individual, regardless of any specific time or location requirements[5].

This sift was important in consideration because many folklorists noted how variation in narrative is an important characteristic for the process of folk communication, rather than something designated as something being particularly from the past and marred by misremembering over time. In other words, the ways narratives change between storytellers is a natural part of communication through a large group, and is sometimes even an important part of the creative process for storytellers, and not due to faulty memory of many years.

Folklore, like the people who share these stories, is far more complicated than the simple breakdown of time and place. Urban legends, while using amore “legend” moniker rather than folklore, still continues to exist and spread, and has also become a large subject of study in contemporary scholarship. Folklore existed in every society, and sometimes this folklore was attributed to an individual, and sometimes it was anonymous. Sometimes it was traditional, but sometimes it was not. When we look at much of folklore, the stories and definitions bend dependent on the community and individual narrative we are looking at. But, as Ben-Amos urges, we as folklorists in the contemporary age, must “demonstrate it anew”[6].

What is folklore, then, and how can we define it if not by the traditional boundaries of tradition, country and irrationality? Well, we must start with the people telling the story. Folklore is, by the very nature of the world, the lore of the folk, a story coming from a folk group of some sort. Alan Dundes, another folklorist, has defined a folk group as “any group of people whatsoever who share at least one common factor”[7]. This means folklore can spread between any large group of people to any small group, to even just two or – in a case made by folklorist Jay Mechling – just one[8]. Many folklorists seem comfortable using Dundes’ broad consideration of the folk group, and many have demonstrated size is less important than the form of communication between the people.

The communication we are looking for is something which is sometimes described as “networked” by folklorists Beth Blumenreich and Bari Lynn Polonsky[9]. Folkloric communication, for them, is interactive communication and networks of experience. In other words, folklore is something to be determined on an individual level, based on their interactions and experiences. What is folklore to me may not be folklore to you, because we have different views, thoughts, experiences, and backgrounds.

While Bumenreich and Polonsky thought of networked communication as necessarily face-to-face, others have since demonstrated how virtual communication is just as folkloric as physical[10]. This is not meant as massive criticism toward Blumenreich and Polonsky, as they were writing far before the growth of online communication being something so second-nature and ubiquitous.

So, essentially, we’re looking at narratives communicated freely between a group of people which share something and see themselves as some kind of inherent group. Therefore, a group of people who share something in common could be the Swifties, who all connect through their love of Taylor Swift.

Saying there is a shared connection between peoples just for loving the same bit of pop culture may seem outright strange to some, but is a constant presence in fandom. When doing research at CoxCon, a fan convention for Youtuber and streamer Jesse Cox, one attendee expressed an ease at meeting new people there because they saw all attendees as “having the same values”. There is a connection drawn between enjoyment of a piece of pop culture and similar ideas about the world and worldviews for these fan groups[11].

It is not the reality of shared values that is important when we talk about community groups, but rather the assumption or perception of this shared trait. That’s how most community groups are formed, from the perception of connection more than any reality of it. Sometimes, the reality of it is important, but sometimes its just the idea of it. As Benedict Anderson has described this in his study of “imagined communities”. For Anderson, “imagined communities” are not imagined in a not-real sense, but in how the reality of these communities is based on imagined similar traits. As Anderson explains, it is not whether these traits are truly present that matters for the existence of the community, but the idea the trait exists[12].

So for Swifties, they are a community group - a folk group. They share something - a love for Taylor Swift. And this love for Taylor Swift is directly connected to many other traits, such as feminism, critical thinking, and an intention to embrace others.

While we’re thinking about definitions of folklore, Taylor Swift has her own. In her short essay which accompanied the release of her album entitled folklore, she described her idea of folklore.

“A tale that becomes folklore is one that is passed down and whispered around. Sometimes even sung about. The lines between fantasy and reality blur and the boundaries between truth and fiction become almost indiscernible. Speculation, over time, becomes fact. Myths, ghost stories, and fables. Fairytales and parables. Gossip and legend. Someone’s secrets written in the sky for all to behold.”

cover of the album “folkore” by Taylor Swift

She ends her piece by encouraging the listener - “Now it’s up to you to pass them down.” She is calling to the idea of folkloric transmission, the encouragement of her folk group to continue their process of folk transmission and communication. To whisper and chat about the stories, to think about them, to pass them around, and continue the process of storytelling.

Taylor Swift, and her music, is not new to this form of storytelling. Gossip, speculation and continued retellings has become common place for her. While this form of speculation is not new to pop music, nor unique to Swift herself, it is particularly prevalent for her work. Her particular tendency to be at the centre of this kind of conversation is mostly due to her length of time in the spotlight, her history of affairs in the entertainment industry, and her tendency to write deep and personal songs directly related to her life.

Taylor Swift first came to prominence in 2006, with her debut album Taylor Swift which reached number five on the US Billboard 200. She would have been about 16 at this time. At the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, she was the subject of tabloid intrigue when Kanye West interrupted her acceptance speech for Best Female Video for her song “You Belong With Me”.

Her dating history was also of huge interest, primarily through her romantic connections to other leading figures in pop culture, such as Harry Styles and John Mayer. Her songs became speculation on which figures she was discussing, and which she wasn’t. She rarely directly mentions the name of the individual her song is about. The closest she has gotten was “Dear John” about John Mayer, and “thanK you aIMee”, whose capitalization points at Kim Kardashian as the subject. But without these clues, there are other points of connection and hints to clue the audience into who the song is referencing.

Despite the specificity of her lyrics and the clear connection with the very direct experiences of her life, Swifties see a universality in her lyrics. Taylor Swift has come to embody the experience of the typical woman for many, her stories therefore moving from specific individual narrative to communal connection and universality. Finding personal meaning in her stories is a common experience for Swifties, and one which allows individuals to also connect to each other.

Her stories have a declared and obvious author, something not typical of the traditional view of folklore, and yet the way individuals connect, speculate, and interpret her narratives is quite similar to considerations of folklore.

As an introduction to her pandemic album folklore, Taylor Swift wrote:

“A tale that becomes folklore is one that is passed down and whispered around. Sometimes even sung about. The lines between fantasy and reality blur and the boundaries between truth and fiction become almost indiscernible. Speculation, over time, becomes fact. Myths, ghosts, stories, and fables. Fairytales and parables. Gossip and legend. Someone’s secrets written in the sky for all to behold.”

Swift’s definition of folklore is not too far off from our considerations of folklore so far. The focus here is on the way tales are explored and passed around, rather than on some other element of the narrative. As someone who also loves to blur the boundaries between the definitions of various types of traditional narratives, such as gossip, legend, myth, and folklore, I appreciate the combination of them here, the way Swift has connect the various ways stories can be more than stories, and are often more important than a simple distinction between truth and fantasy.

And I think this is an important part of folklore and storytelling for Swifties. Gossip and rumour become elements of storytelling in which narratives are given greater meaning. Because even outside of Swiftie descriptions of folklore, gossip and rumour can have a place in the greater landscape of storytelling.

We all know the way urban legends start: “I heard this from a friend of a friend” or “they say that…” These kinds of openings to more traditional narratives are therefore strangely like gossip. They spread through a strange string of whispers where one piece of the string can never even fathom where it even started.

Gossip is definitely something which follows Taylor Swift around, and has defined much of her career, whether she planned it that way or not. Her very personal storytelling in her songs, though without the direct mentioning of names, means fans are often left piecing together bits and pieces of her life through gossip and songwriting. Though we’ll talk more about that later.

But folklore does not exist in a vacuum. As we discussed in our various definitions of folklore, folklore necessitates more in-depth communication. And for Swifties, their own folkloric community is built on more than the stories they share. It’s not just music and gossip between them, but also aspects of material culture, symbols, and communication within a parasocial relationship.

Symbolically, Taylor Swift frequently uses symbols and motifs throughout her discography, music videos, and even fashion in order to communicate specific messages to her fanbase. When Swift and long-term boyfriend Joe Alwyn broke up, the fanbase was able to point to this before media outlets announced the separation because they saw her being photographed with a butterfly on her jeans. This butterfly is interpreted by many to be a symbol of freedom and a new chapter, and so seeing her re-using this symbol without her boyfriend in sight, the fanbase could interpret what was happening in her life.

Taylor Swift dressed referencing her song “The Albatross” at the Grammy’s

But Swifties also have their own symbols with one another. Inspired by her song “You’re On Your Own Kid” from her album Midnights, attention was brought to how Swifties make friendship bracelets for and with each other. Though, even before Midnights, the trading of friendship bracelets at Taylor Swift concerts was a common occurrence and a way for Swifties to make friends with one another. Since the groundbreaking Eras tour, the practice has grown much wider. Many of the bracelets spell out album names, or song names, or even sometimes an important lyric for the individual.

Once again, we see the importance of both the community and the individual happening simultaneously. While the actual choice of the album or lyric or song is important to the individual, it also is a communal act. The creation of the bracelets is a communal activity - Swifties gather to do so together. Sometimes, they are made alone, but the act is a form of communal cohesion, a way of signalling to others you are like them and one of them. The act of exchanging the bracelets is also communal, a way of connected to others like you, and to grow your own direct social circle and make new connections at the concert.

Like looking at the way stories can extend outside of just the telling of them to other social and culture activities, there are other forms of storytelling inherently linked to folklore and folkloric practices. Folklorist Alan Dundes talked about the role of “metafolklore”, which are folkloric statements on folklore[13]. For example, if I was doing a folkloric retelling, and made some asides as part of my performance, this would be metafolklore. But it can also be a lot more than this. Dundes describes metafolklore as also consisting of jokes about jokes, folklore about folklore, and folksongs about folksongs.

We as humans are essentially storytelling machines. We tell stories all the time, and therefore we can very easily tell stories about our stories. We create our own commentary, create new versions of what used to be, and make a story about how we have altered this story to fit our needs. We joke about the jokes people used to tell. This type of commentary reveals a lot about how cultures can change overtime, and how we may have altered our storytelling to fit this change - or maybe how we hope to create that cultural change through our storytelling.

Much of Taylor Swift’s discography can be related to metafolklore. The metafolklore for Swift happens in a few different ways. Much of the way Swifties connect and discuss the music is in the digestion of its meaning and relationship to Swift’s greater life and contexts. Swifties pick apart the lyrics to find the exact references and individual’s the song may be about. This creates a greater catalogue of stories about the stories Swift has written, a library consisting of video essays, blog posts, and online threads. Therefore, the Swifties are creating folklore about the narratives Swift has provided, and often these commentaries become just as important to the songs as the songs themselves.

But fans are not the only ones who create metafolklore on Swift’s songs. Swift herself does this, not just in commentary online but also in the songs she writes. Songs reference other songs. Most recently, her song “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus” on the Tortured Poets Department album directly references “Maroon” from her album Midnights: “So if I sell my apartment / And you have some kids with an internet starlet / Will that make your memory fade from this scarlet maroon?”

So while songs may reference and give other clarity to other songs, there is also commentary on her relationship to the fanbase and how they overanalyse her songs. Also from the Tortured Poets Department, her song “But Daddy I Love Him” directly discusses her fanbase and their parasocial connections to her. Directly referencing some of her fan base feeling they could control her own choices in life is made clear from the very beginning of the song: “Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best / Clutching their pearls, sighing "What a mess" / I just learned these people try and save you / ... cause they hate you”. Swift directly plays with the way the fanbase assumes truth and reality in every lyric by a piece of her chorus: “I'm having his baby / No, I'm not, but you should see your faces.” And, true to her assumption, there are a plethora of reaction videos online to this lyric, where you see people assume Swift was pregnant for a brief second.

Swift, therefore, has written a song about the way the fanbase creates and spins metafolklore about her. So “But Daddy I Love Him” is metafolklore on metafolklore, a deeply interwoven tapestry of stories upon stories which continue to build with each new commentary on it.

As I have written in many other places before, traditional forms of storytelling have not died out. The idea of folklore, mythology and legends not existing anymore, they are only carried forward from a time long past as some kind of museum-esque remnants, is a gross misunderstanding of folk-telling and how storytelling functions for individuals. As Ben-Amos already explained to us, to think of folklore as only traditional and rural and old is to think of an idealised folklore which many never truly exist.

We, as humans, love stories. We tell stories all the time. We tell them when we are asked about our day. We listen to them through whispered gossip. And we even listen to them through our headphones, being sung to us by a woman we’ll never meet.

Folklore, like myths and legends, have not stopped at some arbitrary point in time, it has only changed the form it comes to us in. Understanding how folklore looks and function sin our contemporary society will give us a better understanding of how people connect and why they connect. We do not have to wait for our times to pass to be able to study them. We can do it now, through the stories we tell, whisper and sing.

What Taylor Swift’s specific form of storytelling and story-singing shows us is how folktales and songs still linger, in strange new forms of celebrity idols whose life we speculate on and whose songs we dissect for meaning. We find personal meaning for the writer, but also personal meaning for us, and group social meaning for all of our community.

We can learn a lot from Taylor Swift, and not just in the way fan group can be built and maintained. We can learn about how our contemporary narratives are carried in the voice of someone like her. She is our contemporary folklore – not the only version of it, but definitely the most known.

References

Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.

Asimos, Vivian. 2019. ‘Navigating Through Space Butterflies: CoxCon 2017 and Fieldwork Presentation of Contemporary Movements’. Fieldwork in Religion 14 (2): 181–94.

———. 2021. Digital Mythology and the Internet’s Monster. Bloomsbury Academic, An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Bauman, Richard. 2010. ‘Folklore’. In Folklore, Cultural Performances, and Popular Entertainments: A Communications-Centered Handbook, edited by Richard Bauman. New York: Oxford University Press.

Ben-Amos, Dan. 1983. ‘The Idea of Folklore: An Essay’. In Studies in Aggadah and Jewish Folklore, edited by Issachar Ben-Ami and Joseph Dan, 11–17. Folklore Research Center Studies, VII. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press.

Blank, Trevor J. 2009. ‘Introduction: Toward a Conceptual Framework for the Study of Folklore and the Internet’. In Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World, 1–20. Logon, Utah: Utah University Press.

Blumenreich, Beth, and Bari Lynn Polonsky. 1974. ‘Re-Evaluating the Concept of Group: ICEN as an Alternative’. Folklore Forum Bibliographic and Special Series 12, Conceptual Problems in Contemporary Folklore Study:12–17.

Chess, Shira, and Eric Newsom. 2015. Folklore, Horror Stories, and the Slender Man: The Development of an Internet Mythology. Palgrave Pivot. New York: Palgrave Pivot.

Dundes, Alan. 1965. ‘What Is Folklore?’ In The Study of Folklore, edited by Alan Dundes. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

———. 1966. ‘METAFOLKLORE AND ORAL LITERARY CRITICISM’. The Monist 50 (4): 505–16.

Harmon, Mamie. 1987. ‘Folklore’. In Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, edited by Maria Leach, 1. paperback ed., [Nachdr.]. San Francisco, Calif.: Harper & Row.

Mechling, Jay. 2006. ‘Solo Folklore’. Western Folklore 65 (4): 435–53.

Thompson, Stith. 1955. Motif-Index of Folk Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Medieval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books, and Local Legends. Revised and Enlarged Edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. http://www.ualberta.ca/~urban/Projects/English/Motif_Index.htm.

[1] Thompson, Stith. Motif-Index of Folk Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Medieval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books, and Local Legends. Revised and Enlarged Edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955. http://www.ualberta.ca/~urban/Projects/English/Motif_Index.htm.

[2] Bauman, Richard, and Richard Bauman, eds. ‘Folklore’. In Folklore, Cultural Performances, and Popular Entertainments: A Communications-Centered Handbook. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010 [1992].

[3] Ben-Amos, Dan. ‘The Idea of Folklore: An Essay’. In Studies in Aggadah and Jewish Folklore, edited by Issachar Ben-Ami and Joseph Dan, 11–17. Folklore Research Center Studies, VII. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1983.

[4] Ben-Amos 1983, 16.

[5] Harmon, Mamie. ‘Folklore’. In Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, edited by Maria Leach, 1. paperback ed., [Nachdr.]. San Francisco, Calif.: Harper & Row, 1987.

[6] Ben-Amos, 1983.

[7] Dundes, Alan. ‘What Is Folklore?’ In The Study of Folklore, edited by Alan Dundes. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1965. Emphasis in original.

[8] Mechling, Jay. ‘Solo Folklore’. Western Folklore 65, no. 4 (2006): 435–53.

[9] Blumenreich, Beth, and Bari Lynn Polonsky. ‘Re-Evaluating the Concept of Group: ICEN as an Alternative’. Folklore Forum Bibliographic and Special Series 12, Conceptual Problems in Contemporary Folklore Study (1974): 12–17.

[10] See for example: Blank, Trevor J. ‘Introduction: Toward a Conceptual Framework for the Study of Folklore and the Internet’. In Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World, 1–20. Logon, Utah: Utah University Press, 2009; Chess, Shira, and Eric Newsom. Folklore, Horror Stories, and the Slender Man: The Development of an Internet Mythology. Palgrave Pivot. New York: Palgrave Pivot, 2015; Asimos, Vivian. Digital Mythology and the Internet’s Monster. Bloomsbury Academic, An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2021.

[11] Asimos, Vivian. ‘Navigating Through Space Butterflies: CoxCon 2017 and Fieldwork Presentation of Contemporary Movements’. Fieldwork in Religion 14, no. 2 (2019): 181–94.

[12] Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.

[13] Dundes, Alan. ‘METAFOLKLORE AND ORAL LITERARY CRITICISM’. The Monist 50, no. 4 (1966): 505–16.

I think Alexis Rose from Schitt’s Creek is probably one of my favourite characters from recent years. There’s just so much about her to love. She has crazy stories, she’s got an amazing way of saying “David”, and I think she has one of the most interesting and dynamic character arcs for a silly comedy television show.

One of the reasons why Alexis really shines on the screen is through the way the story is being detailed in more than just words. Don’t get me wrong. The words are also great. The script is beautiful and deserves so many accolades, but there’s something more to Schitt’s Creek in general, and Annie Murphy, who plays Alexis Rose, more specifically.

To understand Alexis, we need to understand something really important about storytelling. Storytelling is an inherently complicated endeavour. It’s not just the words we read, or speak, but also the way we perform with our bodies. Bodily storytelling is not new, nor is it unique to contemporary visual storytelling like television and movies. The ability to tell a story, to explore a character, through things not described or exampled through words, but rather in action, makes a narrative incredibly impactful, and allows the audience to form deeper and more meaningful connections with the character.

Any dancer could probably tell you in greater detail than I can about how bodies can move to explore narratives. Dancers are skilled in the art of moving the legs, arms, torso, neck, every bit of the body to explore most of the narrative elements like cause and effect, emotional connections and disconnections, and the growth and development of character. But storytelling like this isn’t only for dancers, its present in so many other forms of storytelling.

Bodily storytelling is a mechanism of narrative exploration which does not involve written or spoken words, and instead is communicated through the movements, dress, and adornment of the body.

Stories are inherently performed - they are told through multiple gestures and actions. And the best example of this is Alexis Rose.

There’s a lot of little movements, gestures, and ticks Annie Murphy does to convey the character Alexis Rose. She holds her hands in a particular way, has a specific way of fiddling with her hair which feels natural while also reflecting a caricature of the stereotype of woman Alexis is.

Because this is an important element of Schitt’s Creek. Each of the main characters embodies a type of stock character we’re so used to seeing. David is an uncaring neurotic pretty-boy who cares too much about his appearance. Johnny Rose is the rich successful entrepreneur. Moira the overly-dramatic soap star whose gotten too spoiled from a comfortable life. And Alexis is the vapid rich girl who cares about nails, fashion, and celebrity gossip.

But what makes this show amazing is how these stock characters are given greater depth, character exploration, and growth over the course of six seasons to give the audience greater insight on both the possibilities and the realities of people like them. As the show goes on, we learn more about them, see they may not have always been as flat as they were initially presented to us, and then grow and develop even more. Schitt’s Creek is a masterclass in storytelling in general, and body storytelling is an important part of this.

Alexis Rose is probably my favourite character in modern storytelling. Well, maybe that’s a bit of a push, but she’s definitely up there - it would be a lengthy discussion at the very least. I love her so much. She’s crazy and weird but also so wonderfully deep and caring. Her body storytelling is the exact reason why her character is so full and well-rounded.

At the beginning of the series, when we first meet her, she appears, at first, to be a vapid self-centred woman whose focused on fame, fashion, and money. She drops celebrity names like they’re her new currency. But as we get to know her, we realise her self-centred nature is primarily simply an interpretation of her holding the people around her at a distance. She doesn’t have a great relationship with either of her parents, and this is not just clear in the way she holds them apart from her, but also in the crazy stories she tells of escapades she had at very young ages. Her parents were clearly not present in her life, and not even caring enough to pay attention to where she may be.

But there’s one person she does hold close - her brother David. Alexis and David’s bickering back and forth is quite unique compared to others. This is partly due to the sibling dynamic, but also because they truly feel they only have one another. David, like his sister, doesn’t exactly have a great relationship with his parents. And also like his sister, all of their friends and acquaintance completely dropped them as soon as they lost their money.

An example of the way David and Alexis’s relationship has always been closer than the others in their life is described in more detail in the third season, when David is stressing about needing to renew his driver’s license. He confesses every time Alexis was on one of her crazy story gallivants, it was always him on the other side of the phone. It was always him sending her passport or worrying where she might end up next, not their parents. How much Alexis was aware of this is less clear, but she seems to know David is her closest confident from the very beginning.

There’s much less of a wall between her and David compared to their relationships with other people. They bicker and trade jabs back and forth, but in a way reveals a lot of their loving dynamic. They share with each other, and confide in each other, in a way not really shared with other members of their friends or family.

And here’s the thing - we see exactly how Alexis feels about David, and not just due to the conversations had. Alexis has a little social tick she does from the very beginning, where she lightly taps someone’s nose. At the beginning of the show, the only one she does this little tick to is David. At first, we as the audience can think it’s some kind of sibling rivalry type of interaction. David shirks away from the physical touch, and she goes in to annoy him.

But then Alexis continues to grow as a character. The character arcs of the family are all quite interesting, and often run contrary to some of the expected ways things may progress. Of the two siblings, it’s often the woman who is shown to grow by getting married and settling down, while the man grows a business and gains financial and personal independence. In Schitt’s Creek, these roles are both reversed and combined. David forms a business, sure, but he also settles down, has a wonderful solid romance and settles down. Alexis, on the other hand, begins to figure out what it is she wants in life, and grows away from defining herself through the people she dates. She ends the series by pursuing a career, rather than a man.

As Alexis grows, so, too, does her physicality with the people around her. While, at first, she only booped the nose of David, she begins to do so with others. Stevie receives it after Alexis allows herself to see Stevie as a complicated and fully rounded character. Stevie is also the first female friend Alexis forms, other than Twyla. But Twyla’s relationship with Alexis is far more complicated, and takes longer for Alexis to see true connections with. This is partly because Stevie is never considered by Alexis to be a rival for a man. Stevie is at first romantically linked with David, but this falls apart quickly. After, her movements are very different to Alexis, and therefore Alexis sees her completely different than Twyla, who was romantically linked with Mutt when Alexis first arrived, and who she wanted to date.

So it’s a cute moment when Alexis first gives in to her sudden connection to Stevie and boops her nose. She sees a kinship with her, and one initially linked to her brother. So, therefore, the connection across makes a lot of sense. Her brother’s best friend becomes close to her. Similarly, when Alexis boops Patrick, who eventually becomes David’s husband. Patrick obviously is a very good fit for David, and makes him incredibly happy. This is something Alexis picks up on, and she even frequently encourages David to not screw up the relationship. Again, like Stevie, connecting to these other people as members of the family becomes easier due to having David as her conduit.

Nowhere in the script does anyone explain in explicit detail this is part of Alexis’s character. We don’t see someone explaining she only boops the noses of people she cares for. We don’t get this explained on paper - or in verbal dialogue - but its an element of her character we get and understand through watching. Its through the stories she tells with her body, the way we understand and take in the way bodily shifting, connections, and movements help to explore the story of Alexis’s character - and without it, we would be losing a key component of feeling her as a complete person. The way Annie Murphy moves communicates Alexis Rose fully, and even moves differently as the character changes and grows to demonstrate this with more than just words.

Despite how important the body is to storytelling in general, as we see in more formal forms of this like dance, as well as pop culture examples like Schitt’s Creek, attention to the body in anthropology is… lacking. The anthropology of the body wasn’t really given much formal attention until about 1973, mostly brought forth by anthropologist Mary Douglas. She was bolstered by others in philosophy, like Foucault, and sociologists, like Bourdieu. In fact, Bourdieu shifted the field to see awareness of the body as a form of social practice.

That being said, there has been movement on this front. Academic buzzwords like “embodiment” has become much more prevalent. On the front of storytelling, for our purposes on this channel, Katherine Young established the idea of a subfield called “bodylore” - a subsection of folklore studies focused on how the body can communicate and partake in folklore.

We are bodies. To study people necessitates studying bodies. It is through our bodies we experience the world, and through which the world experiences us. The body is the location in which culture and self are both grounded and understood.

This is why, as the final episodes of Schitt’s Creek are beginning to come to a close, we see Alexis’s boops with much greater fondness, and as a way Alexis’s character has grown. The first we’ll discuss is her boop with Moira, her mother. Alexis and Moira’s relationship has always been fraught, which has definitely also impacted Alexis’s relationship with other women. But as the story progresses, Alexis comes to understand aspects of her mother in different and new ways. While Moira has never been, and never will be maternal, she at least had tried in a few new endeavours, and even began to understand her children differently. In the first season, Johnny has a funny line when Moira asks if they did a bad job raising their kids, and Johnny responds they sent them to the best boarding schools and always had nannies. It demonstrates the parents’ separation from their kids, and their unwillingness to consider her past choices.

However, as Alexis sees her mother grow and develop, try and take on new things, and also try and be there for her kids, Alexis starts to see her mother differently. Its takes both of them to bend a little for their relationship to start to mend. There will definitely still be scars, but they can at least start to heal. And so when Alexis finally boops her mother’s nose for the first time, its laden with deep emotional growth and development.

Twyla is the other boop that was meaningful and intentional. And I think the best part of the moment with Twyla is how Twyla understood, deep down, what it meant to receive that from Alexis. While Twyla was a kind of rival to Alexis for most of the show, she was also a friend who Alexis kept at a distance due to their close romantic connections. Twyla represented a lot of what Alexis could be as a person. She was financially comfortable - as Alexis once was - but saw joy not in spending the money but in living in a community and forming meaningful connections. Twyla is a wonderful foil for Alexis, one who has many similarities, but with very important and substantial differences. This foil kept Alexis from seeing Twyla as an actual friend, despite the fact Twyla continued to act as one.

For Alexis, Twyla was primarily a sounding board for her problems, but one she began to actually listen to as time progressed. In the beginning, she didn’t. Twyla was ignored despite Alexis coming to the cafe regularly to chat with her. In essence, Alexis was chatting to Twyla, but as her time in the town progressed, and she began to see Twyla as a full person in her own right, and some of the actual good advice she had, Alexis began to actually give in and allow herself to feel a real female friendship with Twyla.

This is why, at the end of the show, Alexis giving Twyla her boop is so meaningful.

There are many examples which could be used to demonstrate the role of body storytelling for contemporary narratives. The best actors and directors will make sure the body helps to communicate a narrative, a character, and/or a character’s growth.

The important thing is that stories are performed - they are told through multiple forms and actions. To study narratives, we need to appreciate the role the body has in our understandings for both the creation of narrative and the consumption of narrative. Bodily storytelling is an incredibly important way in which stories become real, deep, and impactful.

The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro's 2017 dark monster romance, has been on my list to watch for many years. And I finally did. And I want to talk about it.

I know it's a bit late on to be talking about Shape of Water - nearly eight years after its release - but I think sometimes hindsight can help to enlighten new thoughts and new perspectives. When I had it on my list, I knew it was a monster movie that became the butt of a lot of jokes about a woman wanting to have sex with a fish. I thought it was an exaggeration, but seeing how quickly it came together, how much this woman really did fall in love, made me a little surprised, and understand a bit about how it all came to be a small joke.

But I think Shape of Water reveals something really interesting about genre, and how the tropes of a genre can be used, manipulated and put on display to make really strong and fascinating points.

Shape of Water is a mixture of genres. It’s a romance - first and foremost. We watch as two people fall in love across their differences, and how they fight against the odds to be together. Typically, romance stories follow a three-act structure following a particular structure to the narrative. Often, the plots are focused more on character development and the growth of the relationship. Commonly, the structure starts with a meet-cute, there are challenges as the relationship grows, a midpoint crisis, and then the resolution comes when the couple overcomes their obstacles and achieve a happy ending. Obviously, there can be differences and alterations on the pattern, but this is the typical structure.

The Shape of Water fits this structure. The focus on character has us following Elisa, a mute cleaner working in Baltimore during the height of the Cold War. She communicates with sign language, finding communion with only two people who have learned her language – her neighbour Giles, and her coworker Zelda.

During her shift, Elisa sees a creature who has been brought into the military research facility she cleans, a water creature dubbed The Amphibian Man. Elisa feels an affinity for the creature, and she begins to find connection with the creature as they occasionally meet for Elisa’s lunch.

But the creature is being used for military experiments, and when the Amphibian Man’s life is threatened, Elisa acts and rescues him from the facility. Away from the facility, Elisa and the creature’s love blossoms even more.

If this was a typical romance, the couple’s primary problem would be their ultimate difference – the fact one is a fish monster and the other is a human woman. But this is not the difference that plagues them. What plagues them, what causes them strife, is the other genre: the monster movie.

If the movie was told through the perspective of any of the other character – well, at least the ones from the facility – this would be a quintessential monster movie. We have a strange otherworldly monster, who may or may not be a god. Something that seems otherworldly, unable to exist in this world without causing fear and angst.

The Amphibian Man is, quite frankly, scary. From Elisa’s point of view, we see him as primarily sympathetic, but one of the first scenes we as an audience see of him is a bleeding and injured Colonel Strickland. The man had lost two fingers. We immediately see, therefore, that the Amphibian Man is violent. Maybe only when brought to it – as we do know that Strickland is a complete ass – but it is still possible.

Monsters are often a reflection of what we fear the most. Monsters are often what lives on the borders of the possible. Monster Studies scholar Jeffrey Cohen notes how important it is that monsters live on the borders of what is possible, and as such often come to represent the Other. They represent the foreigners, and the worlds of the unknown. Here Be Dragons. A monster is a reflection, one which reflects a culture back on itself. It shows us what is respectful and “normal” and contrasts this with what is scornful and disgusting.

The different perspectives on the Amphibian Man reflects this perspective on monsters. He’s a hybrid, a creature policing the boundaries of the possible. He’s amphibious, possessing the ability to move between land and water without disrupting his breathing. And he’s humanoid, a creature unlike anything else the world has ever seen.

The definitions and categories the Amphibian Man is putting on display are the boundaries of personhood. What bestows someone personhood? For Dr Hoffstetler, the primary scientist in charge of studying the creature, he begins to see the creature as having personhood because of his ability to communicate. He sees the creature and Elisa together and realises his ability to understand human speech means there is some form of personhood bestowed on him.

For Elisa, however, things are different. And its this difference that is at the core of truly understanding the importance of the Shape of Water.

There are three main human characters: Elisa, Giles and Zelda. Each of them have an important place in a discussion of the way personhood is experienced, communicated, and felt.

Elisa is mute. She is not deaf, and so not a part of the deaf community. She has to communicate with her friends and the world around them through signing, putting her also somehow outside of the hearing community, despite being able to hear. For some of the movie, her signing just seems to be a natural flow. Zelda understands her, and so does Giles, and the fact Elisa is signing doesn’t stand out.

But then Elisa communicates with others. One of my favourite scenes is the confrontation between Elisa and our antagonist Stickland, when Elisa bravely begins to sign “Fuck You” to Stickland, but he’s unable to understand her direct in-your-face insult. He knew it wasn’t something good, but didn’t know what it was and therefore was powerless – to an extent – against it.

But at the core of this scene is also the primary way Elisa is situated in relation to other members of society. She sits outside of them, unable to communicate fluidly and freely with those she lives and works around. For Hoffstetler, would this give Elisa a form of personhood? She may understand human speech, but she cannot voice it.

Giles, too, sits outside typical society. He’s a closeted gay man, and his decision to help Elisa comes after he is forcibly rejected by a restaurant owner, after the owner revealed he was both racist and homophobic.

Zelda, too, is marginalised. She is Black woman, someone firmly on the outskirts and often rejected and silenced. Her discussions about her husband show how it is not just her position as a person of colour that Others her, but particularly her as a Black woman.

Both Giles and Zelda are silenced as much as Elisa. While it is not a physical removal of their voice, their social voice is still removed, ignored, and silenced. Giles is thrown out of establishments alongside a Black couple. Zelda is often ignored by her own husband, and looked over when it comes to higher-ups in society.

The Amphibian Man is, too, on the outskirts, and the way he is controlled and his existence is put at the mercy of the white men who run the facility mimics the positions of his saviours. It is these people, on the outskirts of society, who see him for what he is. And this also includes, to an extent, Hoffstetler himself, a foreigner in the middle of Cold War America.

Sometimes, mixing genres can be strange and one can overshadow the other. But in this case, in the case of the Shape of Water, the mixture of genres shows us exactly what is at the core of the movie.

If this movie had been made from a slightly different perspective, a monster movie, then the villain of the film, Richard Strickland, would have been the hero. He would have been the victorious strong man who was able to hunt down a monster and use it to help his country. But because the film’s perspective is flipped, and we’re following the marginalised, he became a villain.

Mixing the typical monster movie with romance has one important effect: it softens the roles of many characters, and provides a human filter on the monster. The way we are focused on the romance narratives means that we, as an audience, are also focused on the way people treat the creature. We see humanity, similar to the characters who also see humanity and personhood in the creature.

In other words, it is primarily because of the addition of a second genre – the addition of romance – that makes the monster movie more poignant. It changes the perspective of a monster movie, making us suddenly sympathetic for the monster because we see the human inside. The Romanticism of this added genre makes us see new perspectives on the dynamics of communication. Love gives us new languages: body language, the language of love and community - forms of communication which are sometimes the only ones available to someone like Elisa.

Sometimes, mixing genres can muddle things. It can confuse the outcomes and make things unclear. Or maybe one genre outshines the other. But sometimes, when done masterfully and beautifully, the mixing of the genres can reveal aspects and dynamics of one another that is, otherwise, lost.

Taylor Swift’s relationship to her fans is incredibly complicated, interesting, and in many ways unique to her and the times we have her in. The way she has cultivated her fanbase, and the way she maintains it, is one which could not have possibly been replicated previously due to the changes and developments of technology. In many ways, Swift has grown with the fanbase, both actively by her own measures, and passively through the way the fans have brought her with them. Swifities carry Swift in a multitude of ways.

Swift fulfils many roles. She’s an idol – a pop star whose music, fashion and concerts have centred her as an important pop cultural icon. She puts out albums the fans listen to, analyse and love. She has songs Swifities blast out car speakers and shout as they drive with their friends through the streets of their hometowns.

She’s also a symbol. She’s more than just herself. She’s a stand in for others, a symbol of womanhood and what it means to be feminine in our society today. She speaks honestly in her lyrics about her experiences dating. While her romances are displayed publicly on tabloids and splashed over the internet, the fanbase gets to watch it and relate it to their own experiences in the dating field. She sings of her experiences in a misogynist society, one which sees her as inherently worse than her male counterparts simply because she’s a woman, something her female fanbase can directly relate to as they have, too, experienced this.

Taylor Swift, in many ways, is a corn wolf. Now, bear with me here, because I’m sure you’re thinking this sounds rather crazy. But crazy thoughts is kind of the reason behind what I’m talking about.

The Corn Wolf, at least the way I’m discussing it here, comes James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, who wrote about all sorts of different mythical and folkloric figures in a lot of different places. The Corn Wolf is a spirit of the corn originating in France, Germany, and some Slavic countries. From Frazer comes a commentary by Ludwig Wittgenstein, who also spent some time talking about the Corn Wolf. The Corn Wolf is a lot of things. It’s a spirit of harvest, one hidden in some areas and found spectacularly in others.

Combining the discussion of Wittgenstein and Frazer, we have several views of what the Corn Wolf is for the people in these areas, which is why directly explaining what the Corn Wolf is proving to be a bit difficult. It’s a spirit of harvest, and one found, defined, and lingering in several places.

The Corn Wolf is hidden in the last sheaf of corn that is harvested. The Corn Wolf is the last sheaf of corn itself. The Corn Wolf is the man who binds that last sheaf. And, as pointed out by Michael Taussig in his book The Corn Wolf, the Corn Wolf is also the sacrifice which stands in for the corn spirit in ritual, the effigy of the spirit. There are four different places, definitions, and forms the Corn Wolf can take. Its complicated, and multiple.

We can approach something like this in two ways. The first is that the multiple meanings, definitions, and approaches to the spirit can be related to a variety of different interpretations and perspectives. One variant of a story is that the Corn Wolf is in the last sheaf of corn, and the other is the man.

But there’s another perspective on this, one Michael Taussig explains, and one I personally see in my own studies: all of the above can be true simultaneously. People can hold a singular idea at being many things at once. This is actually quite typical in religion. Jesus, for example, is human, God, Holy Spirit, prophet, and exemplar all at once.

Humans are inherently capable of holding multiple meanings and at once. This is often where symbols shine – their ability to hold many things as true all at the same time.

Taylor Swift, therefore, is a Corn Wolf. She is human, and idol, and symbol all at once. She is the music and the performer. She is the writer and the topic, and even the theme. All of these are possible, and it is because all of these are possible that she is the figure she is.

Not only is she all of these, but, like the Corn Wolf for Taussig, she is also the effigy. She is the sacrifice presented at the alter of womanhood, the symbol comes to represent the many others – or, at least, that is how the fanbase sees her.

Because, while it may seem impossible to think of Taylor Swift as both person and idol and symbol and effigy all at once, it is entirely possible. This is typical of mythological thinking, and its role as a contemporary mythological figure which puts her on the pedestal she stands today.

Stardew Valley is a farming simulation game, made with the inspiration of classic games in the genre like Harvest Moon, now known as Story of Seasons. Stardew Valley is a constantly evolving game, a labour of love from a singular game designer - Eric Barone. First released in 2016, the game has been given greater complexities and more content with each update, including some massive changes in the 1.6 update released in March of 2024.

The story starts with the player character leaving their corporate job in the city in order to maintain and tend to their grandfather’s farm, after his passing. The player helps to contribute to the revival of the town through the development of their farm, acts of assistance to the villagers, and also restoring the town’s old community centre.

The game, however, is not just farming, and mining, and fishing. Developing relationships with the townsfolk leads to discovering more about them and the world the player inhabits. The world-building is presented to the player through small pieces: item descriptions, quick bits of information from the villagers, and just walking around and seeing the world.

Religion, like most aspects of the extended world-building in Stardew Valley, is left largely up to player interpretation. We do learn about Yoba, a god figure for the game, who is mentioned several times in dialogue and item descriptions. But, what is this religion? What can an anthropologist of religion (hi, that’s me) learn from this religion?

So let’s chat about Yoba, first. Yoba is, by all accounts, the god for the figures in Stardew Valley. A lot of the dialogue uses similar types of language to Western Christianities, but with “God” or “Jesus” replaced with “Yoba.” Sometimes, Robin may say “My husband almost set the house on fire last night with his science experiment. One of his beakers exploded and sent a fireball into the rafters! Thank Yoba I used fire-resistant lacquer when I built the place." During Maru’s 10-heart event, Demetrius says “Sweet Yoba… It talks!”

Even without other references or views of the different religious elements, we can gather that Yoba is a god-like figure for the villagers. But there is, of course, more than the off-hand comment. There is a visual connection to Yoba - a symbol that looks almost like a Y. The symbol appears on gravestones, on shields, and even a protective ring.

This symbol is known as the “symbol of Yoba”, or sometimes “the sign of the vessel”. We often see this where Yoba is particularly referenced. There is a religious alter, like a little church, inside Pierre and Caroline’s house, and it has the symbol there, too.

This symbol is an Anglo-Saxon rune, “ear” - and yes, pronounced like “air” not like “ear”. This rune is a relatively later development to the language. The meaning is often ascribed as “grave” or “earth”. It can also mean something like “the end” depending on which scholar you’re talking to. Though, its reference to the end may be because there is an Anglo-Saxon rune poem, where each rune is given attention and description, where “ear” comes last.

The translation for this poem appears here:

“Grave is frightful to every warrior
When the flesh begins inexorably, the corpse, to cool,
To embrace the earth,
The dark as its companion, fruits fall away
Joys pass away, promises fall”

There is attention, here, then, to graves. When we talk about earth, we are more meaning it in this sense - the dirt that is dug and buried.

This isn’t exactly unrelated to its use in Stardew Valley. We only get a fragment of the textual religious background to Yoba - the Book of Yoba. A selection of it is found by the player for the library. The bit that we do get is, essentially, the creation myth for Stardew Valley. It reads:

“Before time there was only the endless golden light. The light called out to itself...’Yoba’. Yoba wanted more. Yoba swirled the golden light into a vortex. Yoba swirled and swirled until a hole formed in the eye of the vortex. From this hole sprung a seed. Yoba smoothed the golden light. Yoba smoothed and smoothed, and the light became soil. Into this soil, Yoba planted the seed. The seed sprouted, and behold! A vine sprung skyward, twisting and probing, casting a writhing shadow onto the golden void. After 11 days, the vine bore fruit. Yoba, with knowing wisdom, peeled the tough skin off the fruit and saw that the world was inside. And so that is how the world came to be.”

Alright, there’s a lot that can be said here. Let’s start with the light - as the text does. Before time there was only the endless golden light. The light called itself Yoba, and Yoba swirled the golden light into a seed. It also then smoothed the golden light to form soil. In essence, then, Yoba is bright golden light - this is something we see in a lot of the elements we see associated with it. The alter is bright gold, the ring of Yoba is bright gold. Not every use of the symbol is this way, but it is worth noting.

But the language of the creation myth also shows us how Yoba is in everything. Yoba is the light, the seed, the world which comes from the seed, and the soil which gave its birth. Its a nice poetic way to say this. It also recalls a lot of the elements of the game.

The game is about farming, but it goes beyond the simple elements of gameplay mechanics in this regard. The creator ensured that Stardew Valley focused the player on how relationships with nature and other humans should be holistic, nature forward, and aside from the gruelling cog machine of capitalism. Despite being a game about creating things to make money - and despite how many players like to mid-max to ultimate profit margins - the game is more about rebuilding community and finding connections to the landscape.

A creation myth, therefore, that brings attention to tending to nature, the growth of plants and vegetation, fits well with the deeper meaning of the game.

But there’s another interesting part of this story. “A vine sprung skyward, twisting and probing, casting a writhing shadow onto the golden void.” Where there is light, there is shadow. But this shadow is not seen as a wholly negative in the story, just something that is bound to happen when something grows in the way of the light.

And we do have something that relates to this shadow. Its in the form of my favourite little villager - Krobus. Krobus is a shadow person, a race of peoples who are said to come from “the void”.

The void, like Yoba, is often said in dialogue to refer to something opposing the golden light of Yoba. Like the dialogue inherently replacing God with Yoba, other dialogue inherently replaces “hell” with “the void”. Pam, for example, at one point says “What in the void is wrong with you?”

If the void is a shadow, one cast through the actions of Yoba, that it may make sense that the people from the void, the Shadow People, would also be believers in Yoba. However, this isn’t made explicitly clear in the game. There is only one Shadow person we can directly chat with for an extended period of time, and that is Krobus. But Krobus is only one person, and so we don’t know if he’s view is shared by other Shadow People, or if it’s unique to him.

But we can talk about Krobus. We know that Krobus does believe and worship Yoba. In fact, Krobus has a particular form of worship that is important to him - he remains silent on Fridays in devotion to Yoba. Whenever the player tries to talk to Krobus on Fridays, we only get quiet ellipsis. He still sells things to the player, though, because Krobus runs a little shop in the sewers, hidden away from the eyes of humans. But he’s interested in humans, and studies them. He says he thinks humans like to shop, and so has opened a shop.

Krobus’s vow of silence is not something we see replicated in other believers. He seems to be the only one. This could be because of one of two reasons: the first is that this is Krobus’s own personal take. If Krobus is one of his only people who believe in Yoba, than maybe he has created his own rules and rituals, which would be why he has his own unique takes on the religion. The second reason, could be that this form of devotion to Yoba is something in the culture of the Shadow People.

While we don’t get a lot of information about the running of the Shadow People’s society, but we get some glimpses through what Krobus tells us and what we can gather from the world. Krobus notes that he’s different from the other Shadow People, and that he doesn’t really get along with them. It could be assumed that he either was removed from the society or removed himself, though the specifics are still not exactly laid out for the player.

We do run into other Shadow People, they are hostiles in the mines. Which seems really cruel, especially if you’re friends with Krobus. Like, you’re going to be chill friends with Krobus but then go into the mines and kill his potential friends or family? Seems weird. But either way, we run into them. There are two types of Shadow People enemy: Shadow Brute, which is just a shadow person who attacks you, or Shadow Shaman, who wears a mask and sends magic your way.

Now, let’s talk very very briefly about Shamanism. The fact that these people are shamans does not point to any particular religious background. Shamanism is a loaded term, especially in the anthropology of religion, with many arguing over both its definition and its applications. Siberian Shamans were the first to become widely known to Western academics, so the Tungus word of the practice became attached to similar practices, regardless of where they originated.

In many practices, Shamans can fulfil many roles, including being a psychopomp, a priest, a healer, therapist, or even a spiritual-warrior, spirit-controller, a medium or even a powerful communal leader.

While we see the Shadow Shamans in Stardew Valley as fitting more the “spiritual-warrior” role, this is all we really see of them - in a hostile position against us. We don’t really see the Shadow community and other roles that they may fulfil for their society. Having a Shaman present does not necessarily mean they either are or are not part of the Yoba tradition - context of different societies and communities is important. While Neo-Shamanism may look different to other practices, that’s because the context is different - things are not ever exactly the same across time and geography because those elements are important to the context of a belief. And this would be the same for the Shadow People.

So, let’s swap tracks just a bit here. I’ve been talking a lot about “believers” in Yoba as somehow something that is inherently not a given - and that’s because it’s not. In Stardew Valley, not everyone is a believer. Despite having the chapel in their house, Caroline and Pierre are described as “not very religious” - the chapel was already there. This is not to say that Caroline and Pierre are outright atheists, they’re just not very religious - there is a difference. Their child, Abigail, asks the player at one point about what you think happens when you die, so maybe she could be described as agnostic? Hard to say for certain.

Shane is a confirmed atheist. He says exactly as much in one of his heart event scenes. You get a choice to help him with his suicidal thoughts, and one option is to tell him it’s a sin - which is interesting Christian-centric phrasing, though maybe that’s something to take on for a different time. But if you say that, he responds with “ugh, don’t you know I’m an atheist?”

Other villagers are less confirmed, though may dabble in one way or the other. Emily has a habit of holding up the symbol in specific circumstances, but is also our crystal girlie. George says he doesn’t believe, but still attends Sunday services because, in his words, he’s old. The carpenter Robyn and her husband Demetrius are unconfirmed, but they both use Yoba’s name in dialogue. This could be just a cultural hangover, or it’s a sign of where they fit.

One of the interesting elements of the religion in terms of discussing the game is how it fits into other aspects of the supernatural world of the game. As players engage more with the world and explore elements, we see a lot of different elements of spirituality and magic which are definitely present and real in the game world. However, Yoba as a figure is never really a part of this.

The best example of this is Junimos. Junimos are little nature spirits, cute little brightly coloured figures who are deeply connected to the world around them. When the player first encounters them, they are in the old community centre, using the run down building to live in. But they are also providing ways for the player to fix up the centre and improve the community of Pelican Town.

When we first encounter them, they are using symbols to communicate that the player cannot decipher. However, after visiting the wizard - because, yes, there is a wizard - he gives you the ability to read these symbols through a potion that connects you to nature.

Junimos are considered to be folklore or fable in the world of Stardew Valley. When the player enters the community centre with Mayor Lewis, Lewis cannot see the creatures. We can assume then, that there is some kind of supernatural element present.

Despite their relegation to folklore, Junimos are definitely present for the player and the world of Stardew Valley. So this folkloric creature is brought as inherently true. And magic is definitely true to life, as well. I mean, its common knowledge for the villagers that there’s a wizard who lives in the forest. He’s the one who builds the mazes for the Spirit’s Eve festival. The player also uses this magic, not just the nature potion but also various totems that magically transport the player around the world.

Basically, some elements that we, in the physical world, think of as supernatural or spiritual is presented as active and true. So it wouldn't be a large leap for the same to be said of Yoba. Despite this, we don’t really get any definitive answer one way or the other, though the objects we do get that are inscribed with his symbol are also effective. They do the think it says it will - obviously this is important for games because you can’t have an item that says it’ll do something but then it doesn’t. That would be bad game design. But if we’re looking at it from the angle of a scholar like this, then its something that’s interesting.

There’s a lot of questions, there’s a lot of uncertainty, around the worldbuilding of the religion in Stardew Valley, but there’s something really interesting about the way the religion is presented. We get to see how religion can function in reality - through a diverse way of interactions, interpretations, and explorations of the same functions. I think discovery in this way is fascinating, and a fun experience for players, which helps to hide some really thoughtful ways to approach devotion, community, social difference, and individual needs for spirituality.