After all of the Peter Pan intentions and background, a sidenote of problematic imperialism and racism, and how capitalism is inextricably tied to racism we are back to Taylor's song, Peter! We went through definitions and meanings last time, now let's put it ALLLLL together.
Peter is a great example of braided-lyrics!
There is ONE consistent story that references Peter Pan, with the first person narrator being Taylor. However the “you” she's talking to in the song can bend through different lenses to become several different people/situations. In one version Taylor can be talking to Swiftie-known boyfriend, Joe (actual muse Dianna Agron) for example. The lyrics are the same but looking at them through a different lens it can be Taylor talking to Harry Styles, but in a coming out of the closet together type of way. And through a third lens, it's Taylor talking to a different version of herself.
I know the following picture is tiny, but you know the song already. I’m trying to show a visual example of each character via the color scheme. We're about to dig into this so it's important we're on the same page. Below is the song “Peter” color-coded for who is narrating and who they are talking to. The left column is Taylor talking to a different version of Taylor (think Anti-Hero music video) and the right column someone she dated and/or had plans with.
Now to untangle the lyrics in written format. Unfortunately for clarity, green is the color that makes the most sense to symbolize a few of the characters in this song. I’ve tried to vary the shades, and keep all the greens separated by other colors.
Peter Pan = lime green of entire text since the whole song references the story
Authentic (sad/insane/gay) Taylor = greige
Dianna = green (eyes)
Brand Taylor = red for her vibrant Anti-Hero outfit
Harry Styles = lighter green (his “Larry” color? I’m not really up on this, but it’s what I understood from a cursory Google search)
Peter Lyrics:
Forgive me, Peter, my lost fearless leader
In closets like cedar, preserved from when we were just kids
Taylor knows what the closet is, and what that connotation means. And she’s mentioned it in at least 3 of her songs now. The narrator, authentic Taylor is talking about both of them being closeted instead of out and proud. Authentic Taylor hides in the closet, only escaping through mental daydreams, drinking, and her writing.
Dianna is out of the closet, then back in again. She oscillates between openly dating women and wearing obvious t-shirts to being coy in interviews and marrying men.
Brand Taylor is closeted and her outlet is performing for fans, being the richest with most accolades and records, drinking, and bearding.
Harry Styles deals with the closet by dressing as outrageously as he feels and skirting labels altogether.
Is it something I did?
The goddess of timing once found us beguiling
She said she was trying; Peter, was she lying?
My ribs get the feeling she did
Taylor mentions ribs because Dianna got her Alice in Wonderland quote tattoo removed from her ribs after Wonderland was released on the 1989 album.
And I didn't wanna come down
I thought it was just goodbye for now
…Said you were gonna grow up
Dianna promises to come back and be with Taylor when they’re both a little older and their respective careers are more established.
Brand Taylor promises to come out after she’s in charge of her career. Or after she reaches peak fame. Or after she re-records all her masters. Or after she prepares her loyal fanbase. She keeps signaling, but losing her nerve or pushing it back.
Harry Styles promised to team up with Taylor and come out together once he was out of his strict contract. Things keep coming up that complicate that intention though.
Then you were gonna come find me
Authentic Taylor waits in the closet for the other person to come rescue her.
Words from the mouths of babes
Promises oceans deep
But never to keep
Oh, never to keep
Are you still a mind reader? A natural scene stealer?
Oct 22, 2022 — Dianna Agron voices an outlawed mind reader in the fiction series 'Narcissa'. Fiction
As fans we feel like Taylor knows us like our bestie, and she’s absolutely a scene stealer, too big to hang out.
Does Harry Styles have charisma?
I've heard great things, Peter, but life was always easier on you
Than it was on me
Dianna was on a show that had frequent and varied LGBTQ representation:
https://www.thepinknews.com/2019/06/25/glee-lgbt-characters-best-moments/
Brand Taylor CANNOT be outed. No matter how seemingly queer she acts or appears, everyone will twist themselves into pretzels to explain it away. She can flag, hold hands with women and sit on their laps, and nobody bats an eye.
As a man, Harry Styles doesn’t have to contend with the level of heteronormativity that women do. There is no perceived aging out of marrying or having kids. Heck, there’s no firm expectation that a man has to marry and have children. Women are treated as if they will expire if those two milestones aren’t met quickly.
Authentic Taylor was raised when there was little to no mainstream queer representation. She saw the Dixie Chicks get canceled when they spoke out, and witnessed Chelly Wright lose her career when she came out. Authentic Taylor has a lot of familial, media, and fan expectations to weigh. Her conservative background and country roots imbued her with major internal homophobia and she feels fear about living her truth. Even when she has had to abandon real love, she’s constantly chosen the safety of the closet, which as TTPD has shown us, has taken a mental toll.
Country music only became synonymous with mainline conservatism (only became consistently political) in the late '60s, a shift that not only helped buoy Richard Nixon into the White House, but reshaped the media landscape. The wars of the Dixie Chicks are the legacy of these years, but so are Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Fox News. The idea of values-based marketing to conservatives began with country music.
Popular audiences don't read policy papers -- they want to be entertained. And the mass media required to reach popular audiences must be sustained by advertising. Before Limbaugh and O'Reilly could serve up entertaining conservative punditry, a marketing segment had to be created that would pay to hear conservative pronouncements by buying the products of advertisers.
If one person can be credited with discovering that market, it is arguably Merle Haggard, who stumbled upon it with his 1969 hit, "Okie from Muskogee." Haggard claims the "Okie" character, who mocks hippies, anti-war protestors, and student activists, was a parody. But if Haggard wrote the song in jest, he quickly realized that he had nailed the feelings of millions of conservative Americans who felt forgotten by popular culture. Haggard told Penthouse Magazine in 1976, the song "said something to those people who were called 'the silent majority.' Finally, they were having something said [on] their behalf, and they really came unwound..." An unidentified record executive explained, "Just as rock music often has challenged the values of the 'straight' world and tapped a reservoir of alienation among youth, the patriotic, conservative songs now gaining vogue are tapping growing resentments in Middle America. This looks like a hot field & [because] nobody has really appealed to these people's political beliefs before."
In March of 1974, Nixon made the first-ever presidential visit to the Grand Ole Opry. "I wanted to take this opportunity on behalf of all the American people to thank country music for what it does to make America a better country," he said. "It talks about family. It talks about religion, the faith in God that is so important to our country ... Country music radiates a love of this nation. Country music, therefore, has those combinations which are so essential to America's character."
https://prospect.org/article/country-went-right/
“Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.”
Despite numerous clarifications and apologies from Natalie Maines and the Dixie Chicks, a full on boycott of their music was called for by pro-Bush, pro-war, and pro-American groups. Their single “Landslide” went from #10 on the Billboard charts, to #44 in 1 week, and the next week fell off the charts completely. Radio stations who played any Dixie Chicks songs were immediately bombarded with phone calls and emails blasting the station and threats of boycotts if they continued. Some DJ’s who played the Dixie Chicks were fired.
Dixie Chicks CD’s were rounded up, and in one famous incident were run over by a bulldozer. Concerts were canceled in the US as the Dixie Chicks couldn’t sell tickets, and rival concerts were set up that would take Dixie Chicks tickets in exchange. The Dixie Chicks lost their sponsor Lipton, and The Red Cross denied a million dollar endorsement from the band, fearing it would draw the ire of the boycott. The Dixie Chicks also received hundreds of death threats from the incident.
The boycott eventually lead to the virtual demise of the band. They went on hiatus in 2008, though their bounce back album in 2006 produced by Rick Rubin called Taking The Long Way went gold in its first week, debuting at #1 on the Billboard country charts despite absolutely no radio play.
https://www.savingcountrymusic.com/destroying-the-dixie-chicks-ten-years-after/
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/
And sometimes it gets me when crossing your jet stream
We both did the best we could do underneath the same moon
Dianna’s name is derived from goddess of the moon:
This line harkens back to I Hate it Here where authentic Taylor goes to her secret garden rather than dealing with unpleasant realities of her life. [Lunar valleys in my mind IHIH/TTPD]
Simultaneously, Taylor that is seen in public (brand Taylor) deals with unpleasant realities by being boisterous and performing no matter how much it hurts [ICDIWABH], drinking, and bearding.
Harry Styles has a song called Canyon Moon where he is thinking of someone left behind during his travels:
In different galaxies
[When they found a better planet/Only the gentle survived IHIH/TTPD]
And I didn't want to hang around
Authentic Taylor uses fantasy and writing as a means to escape in her mind [IHIH/TTPD]
We said it was just goodbye for now
Chorus
And I won't confess that I waited, but I let the lamp burn
authentic Taylor
As the men masqueraded, I hoped you'd return
Dianna
https://www.popsugar.com/celebrity/dianna-agron-dating-49152528
Brand Taylor
Harry Styles
For Harryween, Styles’ Dorothy costume may have additional layers underneath the dress and petticoat alluding to imagery of queer acceptance. Known widely throughout the LGBTQ+ community, a “friend of Dorothy'' euphemistically translates to a label for a queer person. The term most popularly originates from the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz,” in which Judy Garland (a known gay icon) played the role of Dorothy, a young girl who fully welcomes the unique characters she befriends. En route to the Emerald City, the obstacles faced by Dorothy and her friends are noted to mirror the very obstacles of coming out and having to form a chosen family as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Fans were quick to draw allusions to this coded expression as Styles entertained MSG in a bejeweled homage to Garland. Singing his own rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow '' later in the night, a melody that famously catalyzed the creation of rainbow symbolism within the LGBTQ+ community. Styles enjoyed a dance break during “Treat People With Kindness”' with a skip in his ruby-slippered step and a radiant pride flag in hand.
On the second night of Harryween, Styles electrified the stage in another costume with queer imagery. Styles may have made reference to Pierrot the Clown. A fictional character in the late 17th-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris, Pierrot wore similarly ruffled and layered garments to Styles’ own costume. Philosophically, Pierrot embodied the struggle of post-revolution France struggling to secure a place in the bourgeois world as a result of over trusting “clownery.” This is perhaps related to the common doubts that those in the LGBTQ+ community face in trusting a principally diverse world to accept them.
https://huntnewsnu.com/67064/lifestyle/column-harryween-empowers-the-queer-community-with-style/
With your feet on the ground, tell me all that you'd learned
'Cause love's never lost when perspective is earned
And you said you'd come and get me, but you were twenty-five
And the shelf life of those fantasies has expired
Lost to the Lost Boys chapter of your life
Dianna
When the pair first began dating, a source told Us Weekly, "It's pretty new, but it's serious. Nick [Mathers] is amazing, from Australia. [He's an] incredible designer [and has] great restaurants like Ruby's Burgers in Australia and NYC, Goldie's and Eveleigh here [in L.A.]. He's a really super sweet, lovely guy." Agron has kept her latest romantic relationship very private. The pair have only been photographed together a handful of times, however, this may have also been due to their busy schedules. Agron previously dated a few Hollywood hunks, including Sebastian Stan, James Franco's younger brother Dave Franco and I Am Number Four co-star Alex Pettyfer.
https://www.eonline.com/news/509935/dianna-agron-and-restaurateur-boyfriend-nick-mathers-break-up
Just a few months ago, it was reported that Agron was hanging out with Nicholas Hoult — yep, Jennifer Lawrence's ex-boo — but while there were reports of canoodling, there was never any confirmation. As for her dating past, Argon was once in a relationship with fellow actor Alex Pettyfer. Rumors about the former Glee actress' dating life have spread before, but it looks like the latest one could be true. According to Us Magazine, Dianna Agron is dating Winston Marshall of Mumford & Sons fame. After Fourth of July weekend, Agron and Marshall were spotted strolling hand in hand through Paris, where the actress was attending some fashion shows and Marshall was performing in a show with his band. Agron told Glamour after she filmed a movie in France, "I would just take a backpack because it was warm at the beginning, just cram as many things as I could in a backpack and hop over to London, go to the south of France, go to Amsterdam even.”
Brand Taylor
Harry Styles
Forgive me, Peter, please know that I tried
To hold on (hold on) to the days (to the days) when you were mine
But the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light
Authentic Taylor is finished waiting on the past to catch up to where she is now.
chorus
