Easter Eggs In Taylor Swift's Fortnight Music Video You Missed
Taylor Swift fans had to put their sleuthing hats on when she dropped her music video for "Fortnight," a visual feast full of Easter eggs. Swift is the mastermind behind the video, having written and directed it herself, and one of her most masterful moves might have been giving viewers a glimpse of her collaborator Post Malone without his facial tattoos; erasing them transformed him into a love interest more suitable for the video's vintage setting.
There are seemingly two "eras" represented in the video. In some scenes, Swift is wearing a black, ruffled gown similar to those worn by Victorian-era women while in mourning. For Swift, the most obvious source of her grief would be a lost love. She also sports a stunning makeup job straight out of the silent movie era in what is most likely a nod to "Clara Bow," another song featured on "The Tortured Poets Department." Clara Bow was a massive star in the 1920s but also a tragic figure. One of the silver-screen icon's great-granddaughters told People, "[Swift] has the same sultry stare that was signature of Clara Bow. And there's no denying the precise application of the lipstick."
Some scenes take place in a mental institution. Swift is shown inside a slanted, topsy-turvy room that might be an homage to the work of another silent movie-era artist, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" director Robert Wiene. His German Expressionist sets had a similar surreal quality. Swift also paid tribute to a few talkies.
Taylor Swift's Dead Poets Society homage
While the title of "The Tortured Poets Department" is believed to be inspired by Joe Alwyn, it's also similar to the title of the 1989 coming-of-age film "Dead Poets Society." Swift even cast two actors from the movie in her music video: Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles. They're two of the doctors in lab coats who hook Swift up to a machine that looks like it was lifted from the "Bride of Frankenstein" set. Or maybe Swift's intention was to channel Emma Stone in "Poor Things" when she pretended to get a mega-dose of electricity.
Fans get to see what a department full of tortured poets might look like when Swift and Malone join a group of writers who are cloaked in black and seated behind typewriters. The machines emit swirls of gold and blue as they write. Could this harken back to the "Reputation" track "Dancing With Our Hands Tied"? It includes the lyrics, "My love had been frozen deep blue, but you painted me golden."
Some fans observed that Swift is wearing a bridal gown similar to her 2024 Grammys look when she breaks a two-way mirror in her barren asylum room, and one X user pointed out that Swift and Post Malone seem to replicate their 2019 American Music Awards hug in one of the video's sweeter scenes. At this point, Swifties have already found so many Easter eggs that it might take a fortnight to list them all!