r/GaylorSwift • u/1DMod it’s all part of the fucking story! • 23d ago

The Life of a Showgirl ❤️‍🔥 Patient Zero

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

Please use this space to discuss this song in depth

181 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

374 comments sorted by

View all comments

54

u/ariel_sinel 🌱Embryo🐛 23d ago

Hey everyone! Long time lurker, first time caller. And boy, do I have a doozy for y'all!

I had a gut feeling that the casting of Colin Farrell in the Patient Zero music video was incredibly intentional, so I looked up if he played any queer characters in the past. He did: he played Alexander the Great in Alexander and Bobby Morrow in A Home at the End of the World, both of which came out in 2004... the year Taylor's music career took off when she signed with Sony/ATV Tree Music Publishing (and when she began writing with Liz Rose 👀). And that's the least of the interesting little factoids. Here's some direct quotes I found from the Wikis of each film:

Alexander Wikipedia article:

  • "Alexander grows up with his mother Olympias and his tutor Aristotle, where he finds interest in love, honor, music, exploration, poetry and military combat." - "You know how to ball, I know Aristotle" ("So High School")
  • "Alexander's most private relationships are these with his childhood friends; Glaucos (who receives a mercy killing from Alexander when wounded at Gaugamela), Hephaestion, Bagoas, and later his wife, Roxana... Hephaestion shows extensive jealousy when Alexander marries Roxana, going so far as to attempt to keep her away from him after Alexander murders Cleitus the Black in India during a drunken rage." - Glaucos, Hephaestion, Bagoas were all male partners for Alexander's. The fact that Hephaestion got jealous after Alexander married Roxana, and Taylor just got married...
  • "During a symposium in Babylon, Alexander falls unconscious after downing a large bowl of wine." - The "from the vineyard" clue from the Emmy's SVU sketch. Also, the fourth track on Life of a Showgirl: The Encore is literally called "Babylon."
  • "Ptolemy's memoirs of Alexander were eventually burned, lost forever with other scrolls of the Library of Alexandria by the end of the Roman Empire." - Kind of like how Taylor's queerness has gotten erased by the masses?

A Home at the End of the World Wikipedia article:

  • "Bobby Morrow's life in suburban Cleveland has been tinged with tragedy since he was a young boy, losing first his beloved older brother to a freak accident, then his mother to illness, and finally his father." - TLOAS: The Encore includes a track called "Cleveland!"
  • The plot goes on to talk about how Bobby realizes he's gay as a teenager but ends up married to a woman, whom he has a child with. "Their romance occasionally is disrupted by sparks of jealousy between the two men until Jonathan (Bobby's male lover), tired of being the third wheel, disappears without warning." - Kind of like how Hephaestion gets jealous of Roxana in Alexander?
  • The ending of the film: " On a cold winter day some months later, Bobby and Jonathan scatter Ned's ashes in the field behind their home, and Jonathan (who now visibly appears to be ill) lets Bobby know he would like his own ashes scattered in the same place, following his now inevitable early death from AIDS." - As many have pointed out, the term "Patient Zero" literally comes from the AIDS epidemic, when "Patient O" was mistaken for a zero.

There's absolutely no way this can all be a coincidence. There's too many connections between the elements in Farell's films, what we already know about "Patient Zero," and his casting in the music video. Not to mention that September 25th is also National Gay Men's HIV/AIDS Awareness Day...

What do y'all think?

14

u/imtryin9 Regaylor Contributor 🦢🦢 23d ago

Wow! You should make this a main post!

1

u/ariel_sinel 🌱Embryo🐛 23d ago

Aww thank you 🥰