True Romance: How Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce Give Us What Hollywood No Longer Does

How Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce Give Us What Hollywood No Longer Does
by Sasha Stone July 8, 2024
True Romance: How Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce Give Us What Hollywood No Longer Does

The Left writ large has invested so much in apps like Twitter that are plugged into traditional online media (yes, the internet is that old) that it’s missing out on the major artery for pop culture in 2024—TikTok.

As far as I can tell, Hollywood is way behind the curve here, and I am curious to know how they’ll catch up. One of the reasons Barbenheimer was such a box office sensation was that it became a TikTok phenomenon. Celebrities haven’t figured out that it will be harder to maintain their status if they don’t live on TikTok now. The next generations aren’t going to be sitting around watching entertainment television or reading the trades.

Old school publicity isn’t really working. It’s way past time to take it to the next level.

I first realized this during the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial. We were all on Tik Tok watching it unfold. We became active participants in it. We were making videos, offering commentary and eventually helped move the needle in defense of Depp, who became a Tik Tok sensation.

The same can be said for the rise of Taylor Swift and her romance with Kansas City Chiefs’ Tight End, Travis Kelce. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t lived it. Like so many on TikTok, I was sucked into the world of Taylor Swift because of the clips from her Eras tour flooding the app. They came from everywhere.

First in the United States and then all over the world. They’ll be going on until November.

The real-life drama that played out was quite a thing to see. It wasn’t until I watched TikTok and Taylor Swift fall in love with Kelce that I realized how Hollywood doesn’t make movies like that anymore.

We never get the princess being rescued by the prince. We get the girl boss who rescues the guy, the weaker man. We saw this most recently in The Fall Guy, where Emily Blunt’s character is the director of the movie, and Ryan Gosling is a lowly stuntman. There was nothing romantic or fun about it. It was, as usual, a slog.

Real life doesn’t have activists or social justice hall monitors making sure all are incompliance.

It doesn’t have “sensitivity readers” or “intimacy coordinators.” It’s just the truth. The Depp trial would never be a movie in Hollywood because they’d never cast the Me Too victim as the villain. The Swift/Kelce love story probably wouldn’t make it past the pitch meeting (though it is apparently a movie coming to the Hallmark network).

It seems to me that Hollywood continually gives people what they should want instead of what they do want. What do they want? Masculine men, beautiful women, love stories, true crime, and thrillers.