Textual Analysis - Taylor Swift - Mine

Taylor Swift - Mine

The video itself has a narrative story line that is very traditional, it keeps to the structure of equilibrium, when they first meet and get to know each other and their relationship seems perfect, dis-equilibrium, when they’re arguing and showing how dysfunctional their relationship is, and new-equilibrium, in which they have sorted out their differences and spent the remainder of the video in tranquillity.
The video starts with a girl walking into a café, the girl is Taylor Swift, immediately the audience associates the video and song with her. In the right of the screen there is a couple fighting, as she watches them it changes to a reverse angle shot and then it went to a flashback of her parents arguing, it is then clear to the audience what happened in her childhood.
As the lyrics start the scene changes to one of her in a woodland area, surrounded by pictures strung up to the trees. This scene then becomes the performance area, this is the only place within the video that she is seen singing. The pictures around her show her memories as well as ones symbolic of her relationship.



The scene then goes back to the café and her meeting the guy that the song then becomes about. Close ups are used to show their faces and the eye contact that they had with each other, this is based around clips of performance, these shots also use close up shots of her, keeping her face at the same distance, allowing the clips to blend together better. The last clip within the café shows them at a medium shot, including the table and some of the people around them; this shot then zooms out quickly, showing the time passing between them.
As the chorus starts the scene changes to the couple on a beach, the footage fits in with the lyrics of the song: ‘by the water, you put your arm around me for the first time’. The chorus shows them together by the sea, the colours used are bright, showing the innocence of their relationship and how they’re having fun together.

The next verse is about how their relationship has progressed, the video shows them moving in together, as she unpacks her belongings she gets out a picture of her and her parents, a reverse angle shot is used, also showing her reflection in the photo frame, which shows that she is scared that she’ll become a reflection of her parents, also the lyrics say ‘you said we’d never make my parents mistakes’, this gives the audience a piece of mind that they happy couple will never argue. This is contradicted in the next line, ‘but we’ve got bills to pay, we’ve got nothing figured out’ which shows that they have reasons to be arguing and that not everything is going perfectly.

The next chorus shows them getting on well and him proposing to her, this shot is done in duller colours, making it look like an old movie scene, the clothes they’re wearing also look older fashioned.

Yet it is after this that the audience’s suspicions are proved right, the third verse is the dis-equilibrium of the song, the point at which they start arguing, she runs out of the house, this is merged with her running away from her parents as a child, this scene is set in darkness showing the bad place their relationship has gone to. Yet it plans out differently from her parents as he follows her saying ‘I’ll never leave you alone’. The following chorus is then filled with flashbacks of them at the beach and when they moved in together, going back over all the things that made their relationship great. These then progress onto their marriage, which is a medium shot of the two of them leaving the church, the colours used are bright, showing that everything is good again.



The rest of the video happens over several years, including them having two children, showing them as a family. The video ends with a shot from the beginning, of them in the café, this shows that the whole video was from their imagination as they can both see each other as their perfect partners.