Taylor swift is a prominent singer and song writer. In her song 'Blank space' she visits a common topic and theme that she has made multiple songs about. That theme being the theme of love. A top ten list shows the plethora of love songs she's made. Taylor often focuses on the idea of heart break and volatility within a relationship. Expressing problems such as domestic abuse, infidelity and emotional instability. Taylor Swift, in 'Blank Space', explores the topics of domestic abuse and also trivialises love by depicting it to be materialistic, lust driven and shallow through denoting superficial desires, such as good looks.
Genre
The genre of 'blank space' fits comfortably in that of 'electropop'. Electropop is the combination of electronic music, such as that of synthesizers, and normal pop music instruments. Synthesizers of which, are used to create the main beat of the song. This is done to form a snappy catchy beat, which in turn allows the audience to listen to the song and enjoy it, but not pay attention to its meaning. It allows passive consumerism by allowing it for people to easily remember the simple catchy beat and paying little attention to the lyrics.
Characteristics
Taylor swift's 'Blank Space' primary characteristic is the characteristic of a story driven music video. Which depicts the rise and fall of a superficial shallow relationship. From initially showing us a fairytale-esque relationship where Taylor and her lover seem to be having a good time. But then developing the story to the polarisation of the relationship, where it devolves into domestic abuse and violence due to jealousy and infidelity. The music video ends with the death of her lover and the appearance of her new lover, indicating that it's a never ending circle that is bound to repeat itself. Taylor swift's 'Blank Space' also has the slight characteristic of a performance music video. This characteristic is evident when Taylor lip syncs the words of the song in her music video, however this is only a minor detail and doesn't represent the music video as a whole.
Style
Blank space is filmed in a way, through mise en scene, to show us the time period that Taylor is trying to set her music video in. From the opening scene we can see a vintage car pulling up to an also vintage French Normandy stylised mansion. The car is a 'Shelby ac Cobra' which is a rare sports car from the 'sixties'. This idea of a 'sixties' time setting is further developed when we see Taylor riding a bike which is reminiscent of bicycles from that time period. The time period is a very important device that Taylor is choosing to. This is because the 'sixties' was a time period where the slogan "make love not war" could be used as a staple for that time period. It was also a time period which saw the rise of pre marital sex and promiscuity as sex before marriage became less of a serious principle and sex was normalised and less controversial. This change in society can be seen in data shown through the number of increased premarital teenage pregnancies since the 1950's. Taylor uses this time period to further her point of superficial shallow love where partners are for short brief moments and not for life under a sacred bond. She shows this in her lyric "I can make the bad guys good for a weekend" 
Taylor also uses editing to stylise and give deeper meaning to her work shes uses the use of slow motion to give the sense of being stuck in the moment. By slowing it down she shows us the idea of of stuck in love or living in the moment. She repeats this in multiple scenes and uses it to capture the emotions of the characters by allowing the audience to focus on movements and facial expressions. This allows us to get a better understanding on the characters and how they feel.
Taylor also incorporates camera angles and special effects into her style. With special effects we can see when Taylor throws her lovers Jacket out the window it spontaneously catches fire, which holds deeper meaning as their relationship which was at first okay suddenly 'went up in flames' and turned abusive and painful.
Taylor uses camera angles to further her style and message. As we slowly the flaming jacket fall down to the ground the camera is placed so that the foreground is completely obscured by the flaming jacket. It slowly falls to reveal the male standing behind it, the juxtaposition between the male and the jacket on fire suggests to the audience that the rage and anger that is being felt by the character. This is because fire connotes to anger and rage.
Meaning
Taylor uses a mixture of mise en scene, lyrics and other techniques to create meaning in her music video. From mise en scene we can see that Taylor's character is connoted to be a dangerous and slightly deranged character.
In the first scene that we see Taylor's character we can see that she is wearing a black dress, has a cat draped over her arm and that she is wearing red lip stick. The fact that she lives alone is also pointed out to the audience. This first scene is important because it has foreshadowing of what is going to happen and connotations to what Taylor's character is like.
Her black dress firstly has connotations and foreshadowing of death. The colour black has strong connotations to death and is usually always the colour of choice at a funeral.
The idea of her living alone and having a cat has connotations to mental instability due to the 'crazy cat lady' stereotype which is prominent in popular culture.
This stereotype originates in English history. During the 15th century and up until the 18th witches were wildly believed to be real, which resulted in the deaths of countless women during the periods witch hunts. Witches commonly had 'familiars', which were demons in the disguise of animals. The common representation of these familiars were cats, which is where the 'crazy cat lady' originates from. This connotation to being 'evil' and a 'witch' is also further represented later on in the music video.
Later on we can see Taylor with a red apple and red lipstick. The colour red has quite a few connotations due to it being a very emotionally intense colour. The emotion Taylor is trying to give off could be seen as danger, desire, lust and anger. Red lipstick connotes to lust and desire, whereas red apple connotes to danger and anger. This is due to the connotations that a red apple has. Biblical references can be made to the apple of Eden but what I believe the intended viewing of this message is that of poison and witchcraft.
The scene where Taylor goes to bite half the apple and her lover spits out the half as he bites has strong implication the Disney story of sleeping beauty. Where an evil witch poisons the main protagonist (snow white) out of jealousy by giving her a half poisoned apple. Which references the songs theme of infidelity and jealousy in the lyric “Oh my God, who is she?” & “I get drunk on jealousy”
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