It had to happen at some point. The cracks in Taylor Swift’s seemingly flawless public persona were bound to appear, and it has felt as though the tide has started to turn against the world’s biggest pop star this summer. That’s not to declare the end of her career: whatever dissenters have to say, Swift is still ridiculously popular and currently shimmying through a gigantic seven-month world tour that’s packed out stadiums across Japan, Europe and North America. But people are starting to question her chirpy girl-next-door image – #squadgoals and all.  Related: Taylor Swift's response to Nicki Minaj was faux-feminist and tone deaf  What started as a grumble over racial stereotypes in the Shake It Off video turned into cries of “cut the white feminist nonsense” after an ill-advised Twitter exchange with rapper Nicki Minaj in July. And now, with the colonial-fantasist video for single Wildest Dreams – premiered on Sunday 30 August after this year’s MTV VMAs – it looks like people have yet another reason to bash out an enraged thinkpiece. This time, writers across the web – including the Huffington Post, Salon and the Daily Dot – have taken issue with her new video’s romanticised view of European colonialism in Africa – and we’re yet to even learn in which one of the 54 African countries director Joseph Kahn even shot Wildest Dreams.  Fine. So, people are angry on the internet. Welcome to another day on planet Earth. Swift and her team couldn’t have been so naive as to think that critics wouldn’t have opinions on an Out of Africa-style video that not only replicates the colonialist tendency to exoticise an entire continent, but does so without factoring in the perspectives of any actual Africans. Decolonisation on the continent only really kicked into gear about 65 years ago, so for NPR contributors like James Kassaga Arinaitwe and Viviane Rutabingwa, the traumatic and violent legacy of European minority rule in Africa feels a little too fresh to look at through a rose-tinted lens in 2015.  But, really, this video isn’t all that bad. It isn’t hard to imagine a whitewashed reality for colonialists in which the only so-called native Africans – out of sight, as in this video – would be domestic workers or manual labourers, rather than the film crew we see in Wildest Dreams. It’s a clumsy move, but not one that merits outrage. Why would we have expected Swift, a savvy businesswoman and brand, to use a music video to teach her sizeable audience about the harsher truths of colonial rule? Her main political agenda involves a saccharine take on non-intersectional feminism that hinges on being friends with women and bringing them on stage with her.  Related: Taylor Swift accused of racism in 'African colonial fantasy' video  Of course, Swift could have taken a leaf out of indie artist Petite Noir’s book. In his Best video, he depicted a vision of one part of Africa that seems to show an understanding of its textures, colours and smells. Even leftfield French pop singer Petite Meller chose to feature and dance with young Kenyans in her Nairobi-shot Baby Love video.  But the ease with which writers have slammed Wildest Dreams seems to show Swift’s polished veneer is starting to dull. She is just a person, one who makes mistakes, albeit with millions watching – not some kind of celebrity saint. Female pop stars in the US who strain to keep their goody-two-shoes images alive often either burn out or “go bad” – see Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Miley Cyrus, Jessica Simpson, Ariana Grande. Swift, instead, stuck to her sweetheart guns, and people seem to be growing tired. While she’s been embracing a more sexualised look as she’s grown older, there’s still a childlike enthusiasm to her breathlessly positive social media posts and performances – as brilliantly parodied by writer Lara Marie Schoenhals in a video that went viral last month.  For all the blogging about Wildest Dreams, Swift seems to have pre-empted the backlash. “All of Taylor’s proceeds from this video will be donated to wild conservation efforts through the African Parks Foundation of America,” reads a message at the end of the video. A kind gesture, though I’m not sure the promise of about $4,380 (approximately $.0003 for each of the 14.6m streams so far) will keep her decriers at bay. It may be too late to stem the tide now.
The star has been on the receiving end of scathing critiques for her Wildest Dreams music video. Has her time as America’s pop sweetheart run its course?