Taylor Swift Is Our Biggest Cinematic Universe

Sometime on Saturday, Oct. 4, 12 orange doors were installed in 12 cities around the world. They were not to be opened; they didn’t lead anywhere, anyway. Affixed to each door was a QR code that, when scanned, called up a YouTube Shorts video loosely themed around Taylor Swift’s new album, “The Life of a Showgirl.” Each clip contained hidden letters that spelled a word; taken together, these words formed a secret message, a classic Swift marketing tactic, which then helped her fans unlock more content elsewhere. The experience was part fantasy — one fan compared it to C.S. Lewis’s Narnia — and part sci-fi. It is a fitting device for an artist who has long seen herself as the creator of a parallel world: one where fans can go “down a rabbit hole,” as she has put it, hunting for clues to the star’s next move and subjecting her every word to endless exegesis.