Taylor Swift and the allure of a big celebrity wedding

{"text":[[{"start":6.35,"text":"The writer is an academic, critic and broadcaster"}],[{"start":9.75,"text":"“Marriage,” Robert Louis Stevenson once observed, is only “a sort of friendship recognised by the police.” Which is just as well for Taylor Swift, since reports estimate that there may be 200 NYPD officers marshalling the crowds expected to gather for what is looking very likely to be her Madison Square Garden wedding extravaganza this weekend."}],[{"start":32.75,"text":"What is the allure of the big wedding? And — whether it’s Taylor and Travis, Harry and Meghan or Grace and Rainier — what accounts for the fascination with which the celebrity variety seems to grip so many of us, Swifties or not?  "}],[{"start":47.8,"text":"It may be undignified to scrape the internet at night looking for the latest on whether Blake Lively will or will not be attending (the nays currently have it), who’ll be making the dress (the smart money is on Monse) and if Ed Sheeran is the entertainment (yes, although “entertainment” might be a stretch). But it’s so deliciously fun to be nosy about the personal life of superstars we barely care about!"}],[{"start":72.19999999999999,"text":"Most obviously, celebrity weddings can be magnificent displays of the vulgarity and vainglory of the ultra-rich and famous. It is, in fact, a moral obligation to bring them down a peg or twenty by pointlessly tutting over their monstrous excesses. In Swift’s case, the pending nuptials are estimated to be incurring costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars in public security and clean-up services. Last month, two piazzas were cordoned off so that newly weds pop star Dua Lipa and actor Callum Turner could party in Palermo, while protesters plastered the area with posters complaining “This city is not for rent” and “Our square is not your living room”. (A payout of £5,000 to affected locals possibly sweetened the blow, but let the outrage still stand)."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":119.94999999999999,"text":"The 2024 nuptials of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant (respective scions of Indian business tycoons) entailed lavish pre-wedding festivities in Gujarat, a Mediterranean cruise for around 1,200 guests and a multi-day jamboree in Mumbai. Rihanna performed at one event, Justin Bieber at another. Somewhere among the thronging crowd, genially jammed between industrialists and tech billionaires, you imagine Boris Johnson and Kim Kardashian, gamely bobbing along to the Bollywood tunes. "}],[{"start":149.7,"text":"Never known to wear his Classics degree lightly, Johnson may have taken the chance to mention Elagabalus, the third-century Roman Emperor whose apocryphal party antics variously included serving a meal of 600 ostrich brains and smothering his guests (to death, no less) under a mountain of rose petals. Swift’s wedding planner probably doesn’t need advice on how to party from ancient Roman Emperors, but who knows what her moodboard looks like."}],[{"start":175.95,"text":"Still, even if we’re accustomed to regarding weddings as public declarations of love, the reality is that our inner lives are mostly unreachable to others. That’s what’s so special about being a wedding guest. We’re invited to take the briefest glimpse into the most private and precious worlds. The peculiar parasociality of digital life might make us think this is a right, but really, it’s a gift.  "}],[{"start":199.79999999999998,"text":"It’s easy to romanticise. Sure, “You’ll be the prince and I’ll be the princess / It’s a love story, baby, just say, “Yes”, but what really constitutes a union is far more mundane than that. “What does a happy marriage sound like?” the great American philosopher of marriage, Stanley Cavell, once asked. Bickering is the answer. “Bickering that is itself a mark, not of bliss exactly, but say of caring”. Marriage, he wrote, is a “devotion to repetition, to dailiness”. It’s ordinary, quotidian and deeply tedious often enough, but no less miraculous for it. Have fun, Taylor Swift. Once the rose petals at Madison Square Garden have been swept up, I look forward to more love songs about the boring stuff."}],[{"start":250.29999999999998,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1783142374_3483.mp3"}