What Madonna Can Teach Taylor Swift

There’s a moment in Taylor Swift’s music video for “Look What You Made Me Do” in which all the ghosts of her past stand in a line as though they’re about to be executed by firing squad — only instead, they begin sniping at each other. The geeky, T-shirt-wearing Taylor of the early-career “You Belong With Me” is dissed by the prima ballerina from “Shake It Off”; the ringmaster Taylor from the 2012 Grammys calls the weeping young “Fearless” Taylor a fake and a victim. It’s played for laughs, but there’s a darker subtext, one of deep shame and self-loathing. “Oh, you hate me?” it seems to say. “Not anywhere near as much as I hate myself.”