If you share my obsession with romantic comedies, you’re probably familiar with the narrative in which a coldhearted, big city, usually-female executive (or celebrity) returns to her small, rural hometown and falls in love with a ridiculously attractive local who helps her rediscover joy, love, and a basic sense of morality. It’s the plot of classics like “Sweet Home Alabama” or “Hannah Montana: The Movie.” This trope is so pervasive in holiday romances that one commentator asked “Why do Christmas movies hate cities so much?” Though the portrayal of both small towns and big cities in these stories are a far cry from reality, these narratives reflect an enduring image of the benefits of small town communities and, in contrast, the soullessness and ruthless individualism of cities.
Taylor Swift takes on this type of story in “Midnight Rain,” offering a stunning repudiation of these idyllic portraits of small towns. The song describes how “My town was a wasteland/ Full of cages, full of fences/ Pageant queens and big pretenders.” Those who remained there (ostensibly one of her exes about whom the song is written) “wanted it comfortable” and ended up with superficial, meaningless things like a “Picture perfect shiny family/ Holiday peppermint candy.” In contrast, Taylor rejected the confining limitations of that town (calling it “the life I gave away”) because she was “Making my own name/ Chasing that fame.” For Taylor, a small town did not provide a romcom happy ending but rather meant limited opportunity, and thus she highlights the negative consequences of the idealization of small town communities.
In 1942, Arthur E Morgan (a deeply controversial political figure at the time who helped spearhead the New Deal but also enabled and encouraged some of the most intensely racist New Deal policies) complained about how “The small community has been despised as something to escape from to the larger better life of the city.” (Somehow he doesn’t think small communities can exist in cities). As such, he would have loathed Swift’s portrayal of her wasteland town in “Midnight Rain.” Morgan, echoing the beliefs of Tocqueville and Jefferson (who famously described cities as “pestilential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man” and said they “add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body”), viewed small towns as central to sustaining civic virtue. As Morgan put in “The roots of civilization are elemental traits—good will, neighborliness, fair play, courage, tolerance, open-minded inquiry, patience,” and these traits “are learned in the intimate, friendly world of the family and the small community.” Defacing the bucolic image of small towns, like Taylor Swift does, threatened civic virtue in Morgan’s mind, even if, as Taylor notes, this notion – that we should promote small communities in which shared social structures and close ties cultivate civic virtue – is inherently confining for talented singers who dream of becoming global superstars.
Though, like Swift, Eliot escaped his hometown (and country) to pursue opportunity, he sounds a lot like Morgan lamenting the decline of close-knit, small-town-style communities in “The Rock.” Like a bad Hallmark movie, that play criticizes the dissolution of small communities, complaining about how “And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads,/ And no man knows or cares who is his neighbour/ Unless his neighbour makes too much disturbance,/ But all dash to and fro in motor cars,/ Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.” Thus, it seems likely that Eliot wouldn’t be a fan of how Taylor is obviously someone familiar with roads (and airways) and settled nowhere.
However, it’s worth noting that Eliot disowned “The Rock.” But even so, the way he portrays urban life and individualism in “The Waste Land” would confirm Jefferson’s worst fears. The poem describes a depressing “Unreal City/ Under the brown fog of a winter dawn” where “A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many.” The dreary image seems like something out of a city-phobic romcom. As if the unreal city couldn’t be more bleak, Eliot describes the people walking: “I had not thought death had undone so many./ Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,/ And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.” Swift-like, each person focuses on themself; There’s minimal recognition of the existence of other people, let alone shared norms that promote civic virtue and social ties.
Taken together these signs seem to indicate that Eliot would disapprove of Taylor’s portrayal of her town as a wasteland, given that he’s clearly not thrilled about the dissolution of small communities and he sees few redeeming qualities in individualist city lifestyles. But even so, in “The Waste Land” (and all of Eliot’s work, actually) no social structure is good and no one is ever remotely happy, so it’s hard to imagine that Eliot would be as upset about “Midnight Rain” as someone like Morgan would be. And, Eliot would probably be honored that Taylor chose to reference his work by calling her town a “wasteland.” So all things considered, Eliot would probably still enjoy “Midnight Rain.”
1) great to see you back. It's been a minute!
2) now I can't stop wondering what a romantic comedy written by TS Elliot might look like!