It’s easy to forget these days, but Taylor Swift is technically an actress. She’s starred in a 2009 episode of “CSI,” in “The Lorax,” and even in the cinematic masterpiece that was 2019’s “Cats.” Perhaps most overlooked among her filmography is her small role in 2014’s “The Giver,” where she played the titular Giver’s tragic daughter Rosemary.
Rosemary, it’s revealed, was once the dystopian community’s designated Receiver of Memory. Like everyone else in this community, she grew up with her emotions and overall humanity suppressed. When she was thrown into the chaotic world of emotions that regular humans live through, she was too overwhelmed and asked to be Released. Like most capitalized verbs in a young adult story, “Released” is more unpleasant than it sounds: she essentially asked to be euthanized, and the town granted her request.
Rosemary’s section is arguably the most emotional part of the whole movie, which is surprising considering she’s never directly shown in the book itself. In a movie filled with controversial changes from the source material, Rosemary’s inclusion is the one part nobody really argues with, because it’s a rare moment where the emotion actually hits. Granted, it helps that Taylor Swift doesn’t linger too long in this movie. She steps in, tugs on our heartstrings, and then politely steps back out of the narrative.
Swift’s performance was fine, but ‘The Giver’ was a disappointment
“I was lucky enough to get a small role in a movie that has an amazing cast. It’s an amazing script,” Swift told reporters at the time. “It’s a beautiful story. And it’s Meryl Streep, Jeff Bridges, a bunch of other amazing actors.”
But while the movie was certainly star-studded, it did not get the critical acclaim Swift or the other actors seemed to expect. The main issue was that the movie took a fairly minimalist, ambiguous book and turned it into a standard Hollywood action movie. Main character Jonas was aged up from 12 to 16 so he could carry a romantic subplot absent from the book, and the conflict between him and the community was ramped up in a way clearly meant to cash in on the at-the-time recent popularity of “The Hunger Games” franchise.
The worst was how surprisingly immature the movie was despite aging up its main character. The book deals with a lot of complicated emotional situations, and the movie streamlines all of them into simple conflicts that leave the viewers with little to think about. It’s especially disappointing given how boundary-pushing the book was. “The Giver” is one of the most frequently banned books in the country, in part because it presents sexual repression in a negative light. The book took plenty of risks with the handling of its themes; the movie took none.
It seems that when it comes to Taylor Swift acting appearances, her one CSI episode is still her shining achievement. Although sadly even in that category, she was outdone by Justin Bieber, who starred in two of his own CSI episodes in 2010 and 2011 as a psychopathic teenage killer. Bieber’s CSI appearances went viral due to his character’s chaotic final scene, which really seemed to be pandering to the anti-Bieber backlash at the time. But even if you liked Bieber, it was still fun to watch him play such a crazy role. If Bieber acting wild isn’t peak TV, I don’t know what is.
