So, if you were unaware, Gayle is a HUGE Lady Gaga fan. For lots of reasons! Some of which may be another post! But Gaga's newest video for "Alejandro" just dropped today. And it is: interesting! It is essentially a Madonna video, with way more gender-queering. Which is ok, because I have always loved Madonna's video for "Express Yourself," because it is ridiculously sexy.
But, gentle Readers, thoughts? About the war imagery, the police force, the use of religious iconogaphy, the fucking with gender? Is there meaning here, or just a parade of Madonna tribute-type scenes? Also, regardless of meaning, do you just like it or dislike it? This is, after all, a very pretty piece of film-making, and I'll have to watch this video like 4 more times before I get over looking at all the outfits and cinematography and various other aesthetic distractions before I can pay ANY attention to the meaning of the cross taped over Lady Gaga's crotch (I think? That's what's going on, right?).
This is NSFW! Obviously! (Also, if you are in another country and can't watch the video, where can I link so you can? Let me know! Or drop the link in comments for others. Thanks).
I'm going to watch more later when I have time, but my initial gut reaction is conflicted, especially since I've been thinking about Madonna after I very recently read this:
ReplyDeletehttp://stevenstanley.tripod.com/docs/bellhooks/madonna.html
Since when did goose stepping become appropriate again?
ReplyDeleteI've been pissed off at her since she started making comments about how important it was that people knew she was a cis-gendered woman (flashing her labia in Telephone being one example), followed by using trasngendered women in her videos for added edge (Telephone being an example again).
I used to feel like she was an ally but I think she has a long way to go before she really gets it.
Iany, seriously, yeah. The making sure everyone knows she is a cis lady in Telephone really pissed me off. Actually, a LOT about Telephone pissed me off. But then Alejandro is so homoerotic and gender-fucky? And I like that part, even if I don't think the whole video is good?
ReplyDeleteLady Gaga is a big bundle of good and bad things, but I also don't think any pop star is ever going to be all good or all bad. Especially, I mean, what do we expect from our pop stars? What Lady Gaga DOES do is get everyone talking, whether it's about trans-exclusion or appropriation, or about gender, or male gaze, or whatever. And this is more than I think I've usually expected from my pop stars, and thus, I love Lady Gaga as a force in the world.
To be clear, I am not minimizing the way she treats transfolks. Because it is problematic. And maybe someday she'll get it. But maybe someday I'LL get it, too. At least the talk part happens, and I hope those of us who don't get it can learn. So, ok, actually I am saying I don't love Lady Gaga, but what she seems to do in the world. What she provokes and inspires in other people. There is just something about her, you know?
I have very mixed feelings about Lady Gaga. Sort of like you, Gayle, I like the fact that she inspires discussion, I think that is great and really extremely positive. I am also dismayed by some of the imagery she uses, and also, like you guys mentioned, her treatment of trans issues. (But she is a young artist and as she evolves that might improve.) On the other hand, I love that she's so extravagant and ballsy, in that respect she is frequently awesome. That I like. But I don't like her music. Overall, I have a more positive than negative opinion of her as a pop star, but I really don't like listening to her music. In that respect, she's been a disappointment. :/
ReplyDeleteOne interesting question that arises when pop stars are considered is - can a successful female pop star exist without her being inevitably and continually presented in highly sexualized terms? Can we have provocative, interesting, artful and edgy videos without the pop star being (near)naked and engaging in very sexualized behaviour and/or dancing? And if not, is that because sexualization of the pop star is necessary for her to be artful, provocative and edgy, or for her to be successful and famous?
ReplyDeleteI think the latter is true, and I think the way Lady Gaga plays with gender and queerness in her videos shows that she's aware of it, and shows that she's attempting to subvert this imperative of the pop star always being sexualized. I'm not sure, though, that she always succeeds in it completely.
ASP, I have thinking about this? And maybe no, pop stars can't be pop lady pop stars without getting clothes-less? I don't know? I mean, I love that Lady Gaga is sexy and genderqueer and homoerotic, and that alone is definitely good. But can a pop star be famous without showing a lot of skin? Um . . . dunno. So many pop songs are about love and sex. Do we know how to illustrate sexy in a 5 minute video without showing a lot of nudity?
ReplyDeleteAlso, what is interesting to me about Gaga is sometimes she is VERY covered, in her weird outfits, and the nakedness or not seems to be not the expected default but a choice she makes about what she wants to portray. I think that's pretty different. She doesn't just do nakedness because it is automatically expected of her; sometimes she wants to be all covered up like a sparkly broccoli lobster in Bad Romance, too.
Oh my god, Gayle, I love you for seeeeing it! And you too, ASP!
ReplyDeleteI don't begrudge her her success and I love the fact that she's at least trying to support the queer community... Even the fact that she is casting queer people in her vids, there is some good there.
A lot of bad as well but I am very glad that she alive, kicking and being a successful woman. Maybe one day she'll wake up, we can only hope.
I don't like her music but she definitely impresses me. She's opening doors to better things, I hope.
Um, also, I need to say: I love her fucking music.
ReplyDeleteIt is the BEST to dance too. I have primarily danced around in my kitchen listening to Gaga while cooking, but this Saturday night I went out with some ladies dancing in the public, and it was also immensely fun there, too.
Also: she has a date rape song! I so love that she has put that into the world, bless her.
Oh, and I was saying this to someone, about how she fucks with the traditional male gaze - you know how in Telephone when she kisses that really butch-y lady in the prison yard? I LOVE that. Because that wasn't every straight male's fantasy of the two women together, because one woman was so dyke-y and didn't look interested in then turning around and doing a dude. That was like every queer woman's fantasy. I thought that was AWESOME. How many times have we ever seen that in popular culture? Except in Boys Don't Cry? Like, never.
I will admit, I'm sick to death of straight women kissing other women to attract the male gaze. I like that Gaga is subverting it but the fact that she is straight automatically makes me leery. I can't help it. That's Gay has an entire episode dedicated to women going les but not full les. Mad props to her for actually giving some music to something that silences women as badly as date rape can, she does put a lot more effort into her music than most any other popstar on the map.
ReplyDelete(although Amanda Palmer may have done that first. She's viciously upbeat: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x78h7i_amanda-palmer-oasis_music)
I did like telephone... I'm just more of an indie rock lesbian. I think maybe Gaga kissing a dykey lady might just be every queer woman's fantasy but mine! I like Catherine Zeta Jones and Natalie from Community Channel (both are way too good for me).
Uh, Gaga doesn't identify as straight. And as a lady that also kisses ladies and dudes, I like her pushing back against the "ladies kissing ladies is only for the men" thing.
ReplyDeleteI have some, um, other problems with Amanda Palmer, ones that rub me far worse than anything Lady Gaga has done.
And I also like the indie rock! I just really like Gaga, too. And while I do lust after Gaga, I may lust after the dyke-y chick she kissed in Telephone more.
Yeah, I know she identifies as bisexual, I'm just gun shy after Madonna and Bullock and Britney and... the rest. It's easy to get prickly when you're desperate to be taken seriously. I don't mind pushing back, I just hope it goes in the right direction. I've been thinking about it a lot lately.
ReplyDeleteI guess what I'm saying is that I like her but I've become sceptical about her as well, does that make sense?
Totally. I understand the gun shy. I just don't think it's for me to question how other people label themselves. That's a dangerous road to go down. And also, it's not like those other ladies identify as anything but straight, or go around advocating for gay rights like Gaga does.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if someone is really pushing the envelope (and, ok, muscle-y dudes writhing female-like on beds in heels while being dominated by a lady is pushing it), I am happy. It can only bring much-needed dialogue.
But can a pop star be famous without showing a lot of skin?
ReplyDeleteIf she can't then we are describing essentially a rather narrow cultural environment for pop music to exist in.
But then again, it is an environment in accordance with the rest of the heterosexual culture which depicts and consumes romance and sex via almost exclusively female bodies and which tends to conflate "woman" with "particular standard of attractiveness" to such extent that different women are given little room and voice for expression in the mainstream.
Btw, very interesting piece on Lady Gaga over here: http://populardemand.wordpress.com/2010/04/25/taking-it-all-in/
ReplyDeleteThere are some really good points about her music and everything, but this is what struck me most, as it identifies my dismay over the insistence on the over-sexualized, attractive female pop star - the fact that even as she attempts to make bold and ballsy and even feminist music, she is constrained by the limitations placed on her body:
"I am not, at this juncture, making an armchair diagnosis of Lady Gaga as anorexic. But let’s just say that I’m well-attuned to the signs. I read of her recent stage collapses (dizziness, erratic heart rate) and the euphemistic phrase “nervous exhaustion”, and I wonder: how did we get to this pretty pass? Where an innumerable number of petite female celebrities will starve themselves down from borderline healthy weights to patently unhealthy weights and that’s par for the course? The epidemic prevalence of eating disorders among women globally (the notion that anorexia is a “First World”/middle-class/Western problem is, I’m afraid, a total myth) is not an issue I’m prepared to tackle in a few paragraphs of a blog post; what I want to do here is link the person Lady Gaga – as she actually, physically exists – and her refusal to take sustenance (“pop stars shouldn’t eat”) with the brilliant re-staging in her work of oral satisfaction. If Gaga can, in her body-of-work, both refuse the gendered norm of sustaining a man yet demand pleasure for herself, then I demand, of the world, that a woman pop star should be able to exist in her body with the same unapologetic appetite.
The female celebrity starves before the camera in order to better resemble her two-dimensional, photographic avatar, printed week-by-week in the magazines and sent out across the internet. It is a process that feeds on itself: as the image becomes the only thing “available” to the global gaze; as the insatiable camera eats her, so the woman retreats, starves, makes her body as unavailable as she can manage to. Which only makes her more photographic. I am convinced that anorexia is, in part, a tactic of avoidance, of attempting to render oneself invisible to the constant surveillance of patriarchy. In some perverse way then, anorexia is indeed radical, but it is not a solution. It is a desperate response to a pathological social order."
It seems like patriarchy always - always - finds a way to bind women in/through/with our bodies.
Seriously, dude. Fuck the patriarchy, it always wins. Thanks for the link.
ReplyDeleteI have thus far refused to engage with guessing about her anorexia or not or whatever, because I don't want to be that person who scrutinizes women's bodies and condemns them - for being too fat, which we consider a sickness, or being too thing, which we consider a sickness. I've found that being judge-y or even conjectures on other people's bodies or eating habits lead to greater judgments in my head about my own, and thus, I will not do it, internally or in a post. Because I know what follows any condemnation of Lady Gaga for not eating enough: that secret, desperate whisper of my BDD that I wish I could starve myself like her, too.
Also, I don't like how we focus on women's bodies rather than their art, or their messages. But I like how the post makes a greater connection about women in the patriarchy. So thank you. I like the final sentence from the quote above very, very much.
You're welcome. :)
ReplyDeleteBtw, as for the quality of Gaga's music, it was probably unfair of me to pass judgement on her music as I don't really listen to much pop music (I mean, for gods' sake, my favourite band is Explosions in the Sky :D). Although I do like Goldfrapp extreeemely very much. (And Peaches' last album is brilliant. But then, I think she is generally pretty brilliant.) (But is that even pop music? I'm not sure. I'm lousy at thinking about music. :D)
To me, the cross on her crotch looked incredibly phallic.
ReplyDeletePerhaps I was taking cues from her actions in other scenes (eg. the pegging) but the position of it made it look like a big red erect penis, with the horizontal bar as testicles.
also, Nazi-wise? Did anyone else notice the guy on the right holding a giant Star of David at the 30-second mark? Does that add any meaning? Or is just, general imagery without a specific thought-out purpose?
McK, YEAH. That hit me the first time, too, wtf with the Star of David? But I also thought the violence was very Latin American coded, there was this kinda Evita type thing, where she is sitting along and there are crowds cheering. I wondered if the star was significant? There are also some other symbols/wooden things the dudes are holding in the beginning, but I couldn't quite make them out. I wondered if there was a sense of religion always using military power to its own ends, or something.
ReplyDeleteI REALLY LIKE your read of the cross as a phallus. NICE.
The best read I can get on the other wooden things is the Deathly Hallows sigil from Harry Potter :)
ReplyDeleteBut then, in the books, that symbol was an analogue for a swastika, so it fits! Lady Gaga is totally a closet HP fan.
Feel free to moderate this comment. It might be better for my diginity
This is a very PRO-NERD BLOG. Moderate that? No way, it's golden.
ReplyDelete