Owner of a Lonely Heart Klosterman Response Paper

Taylor Swift, according to Klosterman, is not what she seems. She is deeper than people are willing to believe, a fact derived from her femaleness. I agree with Klosterman’s statement that this treatment would be different if she were a male artist. Our pop culture has always associated femininity with shallowness and aesthetic properties, not much beyond that. Our female celebrities, many like to believe, are two dimensional. It happens to many other female artists too, like Nicki Minaj or Britney Spears. Klosterman’s argument about Swift’s gender affecting how her audience treats her is a true one: because she is a woman, pop culture makes her seem shallow and ignores her many depths.

Klosterman also talks of fabricating lives. Swift has fabricated her career, has built her career deliberately herself. He touches on the fact that celebrities have to built their persona and Swift has to a greater extent tangled herself in her persona. Even people who aren’t famous have to navigate this, now more than ever. With social media, we have to create our own personas that we show to the entire world online, tangling ourselves within these personas. Social media has changed the way we portray ourselves and, as Klosterman accurately argues, the way the celebrities are interpreted and can keep track of how they fare in public opinion.

Overall, I agree with Klosterman. Swift’s career and public interpretation has been shaped largely by two factors: her gender and social media. Both factors have changed the path of her career, a truth that Klosterman successfully explored.

Taylor Swift and talyor swift

Klosterman originally illustrates Taylor Swift as the stereotypical popular artist; a paparazzo following, a luxurious car, a home in Beverly Hills, and even pictures of a probably expensive shoot for Wildest Dreams.

However, Klosterman quickly contrasts this stereotypical image through the extraneous details regarding Taylor Swifts personal life, providing an entirely new perspective some of us may have not considered.We can see this contrast in action when Taylor ends her call with J TIMB, where Klosterman directly critiques taylor's reaction to Justin Timberlake. Right before this call, Taylor was showing Klosterman snippets of her new weird, whacky music video for Wildest Dreams, and then provides a new personality from taylor swift for us to consume.

Klosterman then turns this into a narrative element through which we reels in the reader's interest. As the article adopts a more traditional interview-style later in the article, Klosterman paints Taylor Swift when questioning her on her personal life being a main influence on her music. In a way, Klosterman is able to maintain this presentation of T/taylor's two personalities by abruptly switching between each during his narrative, most likely to cement the idea of the existence of dual personalities regarding media and to maintain it. A motif we've been seeing with Klosterman's articles is this dual personality idea, suggesting that if this is occurring with multiple roles models, this is most likely occurring to us as well; whereas, media has now created the NEED for a second personality, celebrity or average Joe.

Two Lives

Justin Song

Hendricks 4B

When reading and analyzing Owner of a Lonely Heart, it introduced me to a unique perspective on the apparent hectic life celebrities like Taylor Swift have to live in everyday. To me, Chuck Klosterman made me feel that I knew Taylor Swift personally; instead of acknowledging her as just a celebrity within the life of fame, I acknowledged her as a normal person within everyday society. This feeling has a lot to do with how Klosterman wrote this article. His narrative esque style contributes many details, both major and minor, to fully encapture the setting and events of the interview Klosterman conducted to Taylor Swift. This detailed analysis allowed me to understand a piece of Taylor Swift’s life in fame, and how she deals with various tasks that are caused by being a popular music star.

What was also interesting when reading this article was how Klosterman intertwines Taylor Swift’s celebrity life to her personal life. He delves into the topic of loneliness, where he notes that Taylor Swift mentioning her friendships so often presents her feelings of solitude. The deeper analysis by Klosterman on the emotional aspect of Taylor’s personal life only comments on the duality of her life, and although her music and her life is combined, they are also very much separated.

(Word Count: 215)

The Consciousness of Fame

 Regan Ramsey

Hendricks 3A

"Owner of a Lonely Heart" Response

The Consciousness of Fame

(Word Count:250)

In “Owner of a Lonely Heart”, Chuck Klosterman’s writing style is personable and flowing, while still addressing a multitude of important topics. And, by jumping between his actual experience and interview with Taylor Swift and more theoretical discussions about how she consciously furthers her fame by combining her art and personal life, Klosterman keeps reader engaged. His topic- the rise and continued influence of the music star Taylor Swift- is a compelling, because even if you don’t listen to Swift you’ve heard of her. This integration of pop culture into his writings helps the reader to forge a more personal connection with Klosterman’s message- that people have the ability to construct their own realities, and that this can have both positive and negative consequences.

Klosterman’s characterization of Swift via dialogue, description, and even the title of his piece is vital to understanding how Swift’s complex social and professional spheres are intertwined. His methods of characterization are fascinating to me- they’re very reminiscent of fictional works, which allows Klosterman to consciously create the image he wants readers to see. For example, the title “Owner of a Lonely Heart” isn’t explicitly referenced but implies that Swift is lonely, and her evasive answers to questions about her social life support that.

There was nothing confusing about the article, but it made me wonder if all famous people act as consciously as Swift, or if she’s the exception.

Echo

Alex Pham

Period 3A

09/06/18

Taylor Swift Response

Owner of a Lonely heart, although is more so conventional in comparison to various texts, is not your typical Chuck Klosterman essay in being descriptive rather than satirically commentative. Narratorial voice, a literary technique Klosterman largely employs to normally conduct didactic communication and humor, is in this essay a means to create imagery of his and Taylor’s circumstance. Thus, Klosterman establishes in place of introspective thinking an audient stance of observational status. This is employed as a means to emphasize on the distance discussed, between Taylor with celebratory standing, and us with normality. I find the idea of   in itself very interesting. That someone who appeals and is so relatable to an incredibly expansive and diverse audience is unusually but entirely lonely, is really quite a phenomenon. There’s that paradox again, of being so connected yet separated at the same time which is something that is emphasized not only in Klosterman’s other essays, but also in The Age of Earthquakes as well. Personally, I don’t know what to think of this issue. It’s also very strange that when certain people, bands, or even ideas become more vastly accepted that it is at the same time rejected more. There’s this incredibly intricate relation between mass media and people whereby media delivers and is influentially powerful,  but people have the power to accept or reject the platform. In terms of Taylor Swift, her rise to fame and her position in fame has the same complexion and is vastly accepted and rejected at the same time ultimately leaving her, as a person, isolated from reality. She instead identifies more often with a facade, portrayed to the vast. (274)

Response to Klosterman's "Owner of a Lonely Heart" - DISCLAIMER: I like Taylor Swift.

Response to Klosterman’s “Owner of a Lonely Heart”
Sharon Battula
250 words

I think the way Klosterman approached the writing of the interview significantly enhanced our understanding of Swift as a character rather than an icon. He weaves seemingly disconnected questions into his internal commentary and observations to create an overarching narrative that ultimately presents itself as more genuine and personal.

Periodically, Klosterman throws in phrases like “there’s a long tradition of musicians expressing”, “like almost all famous people”, and “popular people often claim” that recognize her fame and initially serve to distance her from the reader (almost like a reality check that she’s not just a “normal person”). However, after these brief insertions, Klosterman immediately follows up with an anecdote or perspective from Swift that serves to distinguish her from most other famous people and/or subtly challenge the notion that she is contrived and insincere. By juxtaposing general “star” mentality with Swift’s responses, Klosterman makes the reader feel as though they are getting a more intimate and honest look into her identity. Consequently, the reader is inclined to view her as a person to be understood rather than a popstar to be vilified. Klosterman’s charming personality helps.

I appreciate how Klosterman explicitly acknowledges that even the most serious critics inevitably discuss the more tabloid aspects of Swift’s life in the interview and then goes on to capitalize on that factor by titling the article “Owner of a Lonely Heart”. It’s brilliant, in that it draws in those who define her by her “relationship drama” and forces them to see her differently.

T-Swizzle is Lonely

Ainsley McGowan

Word Count: 241

Klosterman's Owner of a Lonely Heart Response Paper

Probably the most interesting thing that I noticed in Klosterman’s essay about Taylor Swift was how he described her as being somewhat obsessed with her friendships and associations with people. He discussed how people were skeptical of her friendships as they figured they were more like acquisitions, and he also drew a picture of a famous entertainer devoting her day to performing and signing autographs and talking to people, to then having to come home to an empty house and, in Taylor’s case, watch a show about other people and their friends. She also did not directly state that she was not lonely, she just talked about how she has so many friends and how she is around so many people all the time so when she comes home and spends time alone, she’s relaxed. However, to me, the fact that she comes home and watches Friends suggests a subconscious loneliness, which is something Klosterman may be hinting at as well. Another thing I agree with is where Klosterman writes/says “you never say who your songs are about, but you concede that if enough people believe in something it essentially becomes fact”. I think this has a lot of validity to it; general consensus for something usually becomes the truth, even if it is not. In relation to this, by Taylor Swift still keeping the true answers a secret, she does still have the upper hand, as mentioned in the essay.

No Longer Just a Celebrity Interview - A Short Response to Klosterman’s Essay on Taylor Swift

When you first begin reading Klosterman’s Owner of a Lonely Heart (otherwise known as his Taylor Swift essay), your first thought is not that this is another celebrity interview, it’s that this composition is an informal anecdote, one that seems to take on the tone of a casual conversation between two people--Klosterman and you, the reader. I find it interesting how Klosterman writes in such a way that his written voice has a distinct cadence that gently guides the reader through his narrative thought process as he interacted with Taylor Swift. This tone was probably helped along by his combination of informal and formal diction, paired with different sentence structures to reflect the formation of thought and speech. For example, his use of parentheses and footnotes imitate the way people tend to interrupt themselves and interject as new information occurs to them. Again, the reader tends to feel like they are having a conversation with Klosterman rather than reading a typical celebrity interview.

As for the content of the essay itself, Klosterman portrays Swift in an attractive and compelling light by developing her as a character in his story. He juxtaposes the generic, tabloid image of Swift with the lesser-known developing character that he met and talked with, constantly comparing the two throughout the interaction. As a result, this new Taylor Swift emerges in the reader’s mind as someone who is shrewd, self-aware, and reflective and with more experience in her short lifetime than anyone.

(Word Count: 245)