“You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me”
The Tortured Poets Department and Disability Politics at 1 year
I am a self-professed Swiftie. I grew up with Taylor Swift. She’s my age. Fearless and Debut guided me through my first major breakup and her album through a series of others. When I listen to her more romantic songs, I think of the stability and happiness I have with my now-partner. I am an Eras Tour-ist— I went in Philadelphia N1 and Toronto N4. All of this to say, I was pumped for The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD). I still am— I think that it’s a beautiful exploration of a series of deep emotions, hurt, religious trauma, fame, and so much more.
Yet I also think that, in the words of Chelsea Fagan, fans do way too much unpaid PR for their favorite artists. If we can’t critique them when they use problematic themes and tropes, who is actually going to hold them accountable? No artist hits the mark 100% of the time, and as a disability scholar and a disabled/neurodivergent/Mad person committed to Mad liberation, I have some complicated feelings about the sometimes glib employment of madness, institutionalization, forcible treatment, and asylums as tropes and plot devices on TTPD.
TTPD opens with the line “I was supposed to be sent away, but they forgot to come and get me,” referencing the last line of “Hits Different,” a Midnights deluxe song, which asks: “or are they here to come and take me away?” Swift documents a journey with “functioning alcohol[ism]” throughout the song and provides commentary on “miracle move-on drug[s],” the hurt of having to run into an ex-lover and their new wife. She even provides some commentary on the American dream itself. All in one 3:48 minute song riddled with casual murder references in the name of her artful songcraft.
Themes of mental health and the asylum loom large over the album, and Swift was no-doubt experiencing profound mental distress when she wrote these songs. She describes the period of her life as one of “restricted humanity” and “temporary insanity” in her epilogue to the album, “In Summation.” She describes the love affair on which the album is based as:
It was a mutual manic phase.
It was self harm.
It was house and then cardiac arrest.
Her muses were “acquired by bruises” and the “tick, tick, tick of love bombs.” She makes it clear that this episode of her life was not the joyful time “in her glittering prime” that fans thought they were observing. In “I Can Do it with a Broken Heart,” she speaks glibly of performing at your peak even when “you wanna die.” “All the pieces of [her] shattered as the crowd was chanting ‘MORE!’” In “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”, while describing the music industry and celebrity environment in which she came of age, she snarls: “you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me.”
Given the clear distress Swift must have been experiencing, I am hesitant to cast aspersions on any language she needed to describe this moment of “temporary insanity.” Yet the words and tropes artists use have consequences.
The “Fortnight” video and set on the Eras Tour both used imagery similar to a psychiatric ward— Swift is forcibly medicated and given what seems to be electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Nurses restrain her as she is running toward the one she loves. Taylor Swift refers to her upbringing as an “asylum.” Yet she does not grapple with the full implications of the imagery she invokes.
The asylum plays a pivotal role in the history of eugenics— which sought “better breeding,” therefore controlling the reproduction of those deemed “defective,” typically those deemed to be “sexually deviant,” racialized or gendered people, and those we would be considered disabled people in contemporary parlance. These people were subjected to horrific abuses, including: forcible sterilization, medication, or institutionalization/incarceration.
Although the deinstitutionalization movement brought many people back into the public sphere and allowed them to claim greater rights and independence, the reintroduction of people deemed “deviant” into society has also come with prominent psychiatrists advocating to “return to the asylum” and, even more insidiously, Health & Human Services Secretary RFK Jr.’s call for people with substance use disorders to be sent to “wellness farms.”
Being sensitive to eugenic histories requires attention to a eugenic present. . As Jess Whatcott powerfully argues: “all detention is eugenics,” because it seeks to control the reproduction and social lives of detained persons. Therefore, it’s also important to think about all of the ways in which detention takes place in our society, from forced hospitalization (which has been described as “torture” by some experts) to immigrant detention. All of these are examples of contemporary eugenics. Attacks on disabled people and other marginalized groups such as immigrants, racialized minorities, and trans people are far from over.
For these reasons, glibly harkening back to an era of the asylum, whether it romanticizes it or not, is insensitive at best and potentially harmful When I expressed this on Twitter, someone replied that people will always moan about something; however, silencing the voice of Mad and disabled people on this subject reinforces a dangerous precedent of ignoring the violence perpetrated against them on a daily basis.
I still enjoy TTPD despite its complicated relationship to mental illness and histories of asylums and forced medication. But I also think it’s important to engage critically with concepts and imagery invoked by even our favorite artists. To this end, I would call people to also read about eugenic histories and politics, starting with books like Alexandra Minna Stern’s Eugenic Nation and Jess Whatcott’s Menace to the Future. Read books by disabled people and people in detention. Then, take action— call and write your state and federal representatives about the rights and well-being of people detained in prisons, mental health institutions, immigrant detention centers, and other inhumane forms of confinement.
We can walk and chew gum here— we can enjoy the beautiful artistry behind TTPD, and still recognize that it doesn’t do enough to confront the institutionalization and detention that we must actively work to dismantle. This tortured poet hopes that on TTPD’s birthday, we can do both.