Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour has been scoring rave reviews across the board, except from one notoriously contrarian critic.
Armond White, critic for the conservative outlet the National Review, shared his scathing thoughts on the film last week and baffled users when it reached X/Twitter.
In his article, he claims the three-hour concert film that has ‘Swifties’ dancing in the aisles is a sign of the downfall of society as we know it.
He titled the piece ‘Taylor Swift’s Asylum Seekers … A movie concert promotes post-Madonna, post-Obama mind control’, and it only goes downhill from there.
One particularly snide extract has been doing the rounds, and reads: “The Swift circus doesn’t replace the thrill of originality and profundity that accompanied the advent of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Supremes, the Jackson Five, which Gen Z knows nothing about.
Read more: Taylor Swift fans can still buy last-minute tickets to The Eras Tour UK
“Instead, Swift specialises in degraded girl-pop – teenage solipsism, the silliness that kids will ideally outgrow. Yet her songs corrupt puppy love into jejune sophistication.”
The review takes a nosedive into tasteless territory when White compares the film’s director, Sam Wrench, to Leni Riefenstahl, who directed several Nazi propaganda films.
He claimed: “Wrench is no Leni Riefenstahl able to turn the event into an impressive aesthetic spectacle.”
This passage has been mocked relentlessly, with one X user reposting: “Armond White (during Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour): god I wish I was watching Nazi propaganda right now.”
Another fan wrote: “Taylor Swift has already made it in the movie industry.
“The only negative review [on Rotten Tomatoes] for The Eras Tour film is from known s**tbag troll Armond White. Our little girl is all grown up.”
White also makes a sickening connection between dancing Swifties in theaters and mass shooter James Holmes, who attacked a Batman screening in July 2012.
“The teens in TikTok clips who pitifully bounce and sing along with the film’s pre-recorded concert are the flip side of those nerds and sociopaths who lined up for The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colo,” he writes.
White finishes his damning review by implying Swift’s fans see her as a “totalitarian leader”.
“It will take a counterrevolution to repair Swift’s moral, aesthetic, and political damage,” he concludes.
Thankfully, White is very much in the minority when it comes to The Eras Tour, as the film currently sits at 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes with 66 reviews.
Plus, Swift herself clearly isn’t letting the hatchet job faze her as she was back in Kansas City to support her NFL star boyfriend Travis Kelce on Sunday.
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is in theaters now.
