‘Tortured Poets’ meet ‘Dead Poets’ in Taylor Swift’s ‘Fortnight’ video

By Megan Thomas, CNN

(CNN) — Taylor Swift and Post Malone are trying to get through a seemingly painful black-and-white era.

The music video for “Fortnight,” the lead single off Taylor Swift’s 11th studio album “Tortured Poets Department,” debuted on Friday night. The duet features the two artists in various states of melancholy reflection and despair, set in a dystopian and mostly monochromatic world.

The video starts with Swift chained to a matressless iron bed frame in a white observation room. After begrudgingly swallowing a “forget him” capsule given to her by an orderly, Swift wipes her face with a towel, revealing Malone’s facial tattoos on her face in the mirror.

“And for a fortnight there we were forever running to you/ Sometimes ask about the weather/ Now you’re in my backyard, turned into good neighbors/ Your wife waters flowers. I wanna kill her,” Swift sings darkly.

The two then sit at desks in an office – seemingly the titular “department” – surrounded by masked people in all black, typing while they sing. The video soon cuts to Swift and Malone standing face-to-tattooless-face on a stormy road as papers swirl around them.

Swift is then shown strapped to a gurney with a mysterious electrical contraption attached to her head. Playing off her new album title, researchers portrayed by Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles – who appeared together in the 1989 film “Dead Poets Society” – examine Swift.

“I’m still laughing from getting to work with the coolest guys on earth, @ethanhawke and @mrjoshcharles (tortured poets, meet your colleagues from down the hall, the dead poets),” Swift wrote Friday on social media about their cameos.

Eventually, Swift breaks free. Papers burn, rain falls and the strange yet beautiful video ends with Swift and Malone reaching for each other’s hands as she kneels on top of a phone booth.

The-CNN-Wire
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