a mental exercise

[pastwatcher]

Think of all these things in their most stereotypical forms, as portrayed in American movies:

--Main character in prison, complete with humiliating entrance, fight, and bailout
--A roadtrip
--Main character and partner in action movie
--A diner/bar
--Car-chase
--Sexy women
--Murder/crime
--A date
--Cheezy endings
--Dangerous sexual encounters

Then watch this.

Where are the words?


It's very weird. When I first saw it, I was thoroughly confused, and I had no idea what it had to do with the song. I still don't really see the connection; I think of listening to Lady Gaga's music and watching her videos as very different activities. Sometimes her video obviously completes the song, as with "Paparazzi", but other times I think I must be missing something, as the video and lyrics are both thematic collections that come together in a way I seem to intuit before understanding. Apparently this video is about challenging American culture, and, well it turns nearly everything it does upside-down! I like Beyoncé in it too; apparently they're not going to work together again anytime soon, but they make an amazing team.

So yeah. This is why I like Lady Gaga (in particular 0:50-1:10, 2:40-3:10, and 5:06-5:48). Once I saw that interview by chance, I was convinced enough to suspend my distrust of all things popular and watch her videos, live performances etc. etc. I found that she is a great singer, good pianist, very interesting musician. Mostly, though, whatever I think of her various purposes, I admire her complete dedication to it. She always stresses how much she is focused on the show; she is always asked about her completely exotic choice of clothes. There's a recent interview (with someone who managed to upset her last year, I think, judging by that interview) where she says she would rather die than be seen without heels, and when the interviewer presses her ("don't you ever roll out of bed and pull on sweatpants?") she gets annoyed and says "do I have to wear that? No!" This is apparently because she wants to construct a different notion of fame. I'm more on board with the purpose of creating space for people to be different. But I hear she even spends all her money on her show, and I found her saying that here (6:58-7:15). I suppose I should also throw in the interview I find hilarious because she shoots down several stupid questions. I also like the fact that she uses a range of styles and topics in her music.

So when it comes to Lady Gaga, I'm eternally confused, but somehow always happy. I am especially amused and warmed that some of the other first-years, though perplexed by my sudden attachment to her performances, have also started listening more to Lady Gaga recently and blame this on me.

Comments

????

[khyros.livejournal.com]

I do plan on looking at the interview clips you linked, but, responding just to the video for now --

No matter how good a singer she is, she's singing about someone calling her who she wishes she wouldn't and the lyrics are pretty vapid. Now, I'm not saying this isn't true in a very fair amount of popular music...

The sexy women in prison is Chicago. The women on a murderous rampage revenge you've got Thelma and Louise. Nothing about the date sequence was especially turned upside down. Poison is always a woman's weapon and that kind of casual disrespect is always the shorthands for a guy being a horrible person. The Pussy Wagon is a direct shoutout to Tarantino's Kill Bill, where the bride (also named Bea, if not Honey B) takes it from the first person she kills after awakening from her coma in the hospital. Kill Bill also did a better job with the inversion since the bride never poisons anyone, choosing more masculine/straightforward methodologies for their deaths.

As far as challenging american culture, I really don't see it at all. It's a hodgepodge of various archetype pseudo-inversions that have been done before, and the callouts are explicit. I suppose there is the question "How many times can you invert a trope before the inversion takes on a life of it's own and becomes part of the culture?"

From where I'm sitting it's a vapid dance song (something GaGa seems to do well enough, but did better in Just Dance) with a video that has tries to be all postmodern and meaningful and symbolic, but in the end is a vapid pop song with beautiful scantily clad women featuring prominently.

What's more compliant to American culture than that?

Re: ????

[pastwatcher]

That's actually why I think it's weird. It makes some inversions (perhaps it is simply that I've not seen Chicago, so only know of it what I've seen in the Noteables mostly, nor have I seen the other things to which you refer) while preserving other types, like the sexy women and the poison (which also appears in Paparazzi). But if you think the inversions are nearly so common as to be part of our culture, I think you're way off: I don't know how much people are familiar with the examples you cite, but inversions aren't something that should just be done once with Chicago and then left for people either to forget or to associate with a different time period. The stereotypes are still far and away predominant; thus they can still be challenged.

I know Lady Gaga is challenging people's ideas of gender and sexuality, howeer, because otherwise there wouldn't have been such a longstanding rumor (perhaps quashed by this video?) of her being transsexual, which puzzled me at first. People think she looks like a drag queen or something, and/or they think she dances in an androgynous way; transsexual rumors aside I don't know how people react to her displayed bisexuality (which I also find odd since she said herself that she didn't want to do it just to be edgy). She doesn't have to take it all the way and be exactly like a man in her actions, though, in order to challenge stereotypes; she can have a man's roles and a woman's standard-sexiness. I may not like women's beauty standards and so on, but I still admire her art.

I think it's not relevant to your comment, but I only recommended about 2.5 extra minutes of film in my comments on her; why did you respond before watching that but after a ten-minute video?