In light of Gaga's latest album beeing released, I think it is time for me to give you my latest academic turn on Gaga. In this essay I will show that Lady Gaga is a huge identity construct that shows that she is not the usual pop star we expect her to be. So I hope you can enjoy the read.
Structure
- From Warhol’s Theories of Perception and Grotesque, out of this World Couture to constant Gender Blur and a Fight for LGBT IQA Rights – Welcome to the Multi Layered World of Lady Gaga
- The Theory of Plural Identities and Identity as a Construct
- Camp – [Former] prison for an illegal minority, now […] a holiday for consenting adults (Core, 80)
- Queer and Queer Theory – Deconstruction as an Enterprise
- “A unicorn, [a] giant vagina, a meat couch, homoerotic dancing & screaming monsters. U won’t see that sh*t at a Bieber concert. #BornThisWayBall” (@VEVO) – Lady Gaga and the Art of Grotesque
- A Pop Star and a Message – Why Lady Gaga is able to Spread her Agenda
- Stripper Boots and Female Empowerment – Lady Gaga as a feminist (?)
- Joe Calderone, Yüyi the mermaid and a sexualized body – Lady Gaga’s relation to Gender, Sex and Drag
- Fashion Forward, Fashion Fatale, Fashion(able)? – Lady Gaga and “la mode”
- The Beauty and the Beast – Monster Like or a Real Lady? – Beauty & Lady Gaga
- In Shape and in Style – Lady Gaga and the Body
- Mother Monster and her Little Monsters – Lady Gaga and her Fans
- Lady GayGay thanks “God and the Gays” – Gaga and LGBT Activism
- Violence, Sex and Tabloids – Lady Gaga and the Unholy Trinity of Celebrity Culture
- Lady Gaga – A Multitude of Identity Parts
- List of Works Cited
1. From Warhol’s Theories of Perception and Grotesque, out of this World Couture to constant Gender Blur and a Fight for LGBT IQA Rights – Welcome to the Multi Layered World of Lady Gaga
[Lady Gaga:] When you watch each image and you watch each thing come out, they might not look exactly the same. I’m not defined by the same designer or defined by the same hair cut or defined by the same icon. The statement is that I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions. (Iredale)
As Lady Gaga makes a visually stunning, theatrical and artistic complex comeback to the music scene she constantly reminds the ever scandal hungry public that she is more than what obviously meets the eye. Behind the glamorous and outrageous fashion choices, shocking and fascinating performances, disturbing and mesmerizing music videos there are many different layers at work, all the time. Lady Gaga is more than a flat character, more than a single identity, or as she puts it in the quote: “I’m every icon.” What meets the academic interest here is that this pop star gives us a view behind the curtain. Lady Gaga apparently is a well thought, multi layered, ambiguous and controversial construct nourished by the possibilities offered by a queer world reading, camp and grotesque aestheticism and an anti – heteronormative identity and gender performance.
In this essay I will give a reading of the identity construct of Lady Gaga. Theoretically I will center my analysis on Amartya Sen’s theory of identities as constructs of plural affiliations and I will prove that multi layered identity constructs are not contradictory. Ongoing, I will explain the functions and mode of operations of queer, camp and explain the importance of grotesque for this essay. As I have laid out the theoretical basics I will go on and dissect the most important and prominent features of the constructed identity that is Lady Gaga and provide this identity autopsy with examples of the oeuvre of the artist. Alongside I will show why her body of work has such an impact on popular culture and why her disturbing attempts to change the world one sequin at a time are so successful.
2. The Theory of Plural Identities and Identity as a Construct
The economic theorist and essayist Amartya Sen is widely famous for his book Die Identitätsfalle – Warum es keinen Krieg der Kulturen gibt. In this book he not only explains his ideas of multiculturalism and cultures and oppression but also his theory of identity as a construct. Sen begins his argumentation with the notion that every “realer Mensch […] vielen verschiedenen Gruppen angehört […]” (Sen, 35 ) and that being part of numerous different categories simultaneously is very important (Sen, 33). He exemplifies this argument by giving the reader a short display of some of the groups he belongs to:
Was mich betrifft, so kann ich mich zur gleichen Zeit bezeichnen als Asiaten, Bürger Indiens, Bengalen mit bangladeschischen Vorfahren, Einwohner der Vereinigten Staaten oder Englands, Ökonomen, Dilettanten auf philosophischem Gebiet, Autor, Sanskritisten, Mann, Feministen, Heterosexuellen, Verfechter der Rechte von Schwulen und Lesben, Mensch mit einem areligiösen Lebensstil und hinduistischer Vorgeschichte […] [bezeichnen]. (Sen, 33-34)
Each and every part of these groups is ranked in a hierarchical system and case by case one has to decide which one of this identity parts takes which priority (Sen, 34). As to be observed are the following two rules: Erstens die Einsicht, das[s] Identitäten entschieden plural sind und das die Wichtigkeit einer Identität nicht die Wichtigkeit einer anderen [zunichtemachen] mu[ss]. Zweitens mu[ss] man […] entscheiden, welche relative Bedeutung man in einem bestimmten Kontext den unterschiedlichen Loyalitäten und Prioritäten beimi[ss]t, die möglicherweise miteinander um Vorrang konkurrieren. (Sen, 34)
The idea that all the given identiy parts are plural and can coexist is further emphasized by Sen when he explains that „[j]eder von uns hat in seinem Leben in unterschiedlichen Kontexten an Identitäten vielfältiger Art teil, […] und jedes diese Kollektive kann einem Menschen eine potentiell bedeutsame Identität vermitteln.“ (Sen, 38). His argumentation comes to a closure by the following statement: Im normalen Leben verstehen wir uns als Mitglieder einer Vielzahl von Gruppen, denen allen wir angehören. Staatsangehörigkeit, Wohnort, geografische Herkunft, Geschlecht, Klassenzugehörigkeit, […], Musikgeschmack, soziale Engagements usw. – das alles macht uns zu Mitgliedern einer Vielzahl von Gruppen. Jedes diese Kollektive, denen ein Mensch gleichzeitig angehört, verleiht ihm eine bestimmte Identität. Keine seiner Identitäten darf als seine einzige Identität […] verstanden werden. (Sen, 20)
All the examples Sen has provided, his argumentation, that identity is a construct of smaller identity parts which are plural in their nature, but not exclusive nor contradictory in their connection and coexistence, paints the picture of identity as a multi layered concept applicable to any human being, regardless of age, gender and sex. No identity part might be understood as the individual’s single identity. The identity theory he presents is based on two primary sources: the plurality of the identity parts and their changing priority due to the change of context.
3. Camp – [Former] prison for an illegal minority, now […] a holiday for consenting adults (Core, 80)
Since its first emerge in the Stonewall era camp has come a long way and transcended into mainstream culture making it a “disguise that fails” (Core, 80). What Core wants to express is that camp emerged in the time of the 1960’s and 70’s as a matter of “passing”. In her essay, From Interiority to Gender Performatives, Judith Butler not only explains how gender is constructed, and how the heteronormative discourse keeps its power, but also the reason why camp emerged: “[Camp emerged] as a strategy of survival within compulsory systems, [since] gender is a performance with clearly punitive consequences. […] we regularly punish those who fail to do their gender right.” (Butler, 366). What Butler expresses is that camp emerged as a disguise for homosexuals. But what makes it more special than a normal disguise is that camp is a disguise constituted to fail (Core, 80). Core explains his poetical description of camp as follows: “There are only two things essential to camp: a secret within the personality which one ironically wishes to conceal and to exploit; and a peculiar way of seeing things, […], but strong enough to impose itself on others trough acts or creations.” (Core, 82), which brings us to the understanding that “CAMP is in the eye of the beholder, especially if the beholder is camp.” (Core, 81). This means that the disguise of camp only fails if the recipient is aware of camp and its workings. Further it is understood as a parodic device characterized by irony, aestheticism, theatricality and humor (Horn, 87). Therefore camp relies on its audience’s ability to “find” it, a characteristic that it shares with irony and its discursive community.
Even though camp emerged in the homosexual community one does not necessarily need to be homosexual to be, understand or create with camp (Core, 80). But, as I said before, “It takes one to know one.” (Core, 80). A remarkable ability of camp is that, due to its nature, it is able to operate at the heart of popular culture without generally being perceived as criticizing it at the same time. “The “normal” man remains comfortable with camp because it amuses him.” (Core, 85) and to add: there might be a good possibility he might not understand what camp is about. Camp resides on people’s desire to be entertained (Core, 85). To ensure its survival and multiply its abilities and space to work within “[…] camp has taunted the media to concentrate on excess, any excess […]”, because camp works best in the realm of its four basics: theatricality, aestheticism, irony and humor. Excess and over the top aesthetics offer the best possibilities for an effective use of camp, which explains why Lady Gaga can be seen as camp, because no other pop star is as excessive in her existence as she is.
One could easily question: Why this excess? Why the aesthetic sweets buffet? With the help of camp it is possible to criticize. In his essay Warhol’s Camp Matthew Tinkom put it as follows: “[I]n camp we witness viewing practices which do insist on reading […] popular culture for [it’s] limits and contradictions” (Tinkom, 348). Hence, it is perfect for this criticism since one must know of the workings of camp or either would not perceive a campy work as such. Which brings us another glimpse of Core who named gave the most striking line about camp: “CAMP is a lie that tells the truth.” (Core, 81). If a campy work is placed in the center of the discourse it criticizes, it alleges conformity but is placed publicly for all camp insiders to see. “CAMP is gender without genitals” (Core, 83) explains camps over the top nature as exaggerating gender and ironizing it to a point where camp is gender fluid and gender mocking.
Another important characteristic of camp, and especially of Andy Warhol and therefore of Lady Gaga’s camp, is it’s appreciation of glamour (Tinkom, 349). Warhol as an artist always sought out to iconize and ironize everyday products by sheer endless repetition. When he turned to film he “[…] sought to use the materials of Hollywood in order to critique it.” (Tinkom, 348). Warhol, as Lady Gaga, used Hollywood glamour and ironized it to a point where it reached such an over the top point from where it was constructed that it ultimately was only to be perceived as constructed. Tinkom showed the way of Warhol’s camp by stating: “Remembering Warhol’s comment that he wanted $ 1.000.000 from Hollywood to make a movie, I can only hazard that the final product might have looked like Terminator II with RuPaul playing the hero.” (Tinkom, 351).
4. Queer and Queer Theory – Deconstruction as an Enterprise
In academic context queer has often been described as “[…] the most inclusive term available for the expression of erotically marginal perspectives […].” (Cooper, 21). However, correctly one might quote that “it would seem that queer is and has always been at odds with normal and supposedly “natural” behavior”, that “[…] queer bespeaks a displeasing oddity, perversity and twistedness […]” (Taylor, 13) and that queer can be “[…] a political or ethical approach, an aesthetic quality, a model of interpretation or way of seeing, a perspective or orientation or way of desiring, identifying or disidentifying.” (Taylor, 14-15). Additionally queer also represents a mode of analyzing discourses and constructs. “[…][Q]ueer is not a singular oppositional position but rather evokes a broad range of radical critical responses, which are constantly questioning the dominant discourses that produce ever-shifting logics of social and cultural normativity and non-normativity.” (Taylor, 29). Taylor explains that queer is questioning the dominant discourse also inclosing that queer “[…] instigates its challenge around the structuration of any action or identity as natural or normal.” (Taylor, 29). Accessorily queer has been identified as a “[…] twisting, lampooning and dismantling of hegemonic culture. […] queerness is always mutable, contentious and quite often contradictory.” (Taylor, 38).
But apart from all that, queer also engages, not only in critically questioning the dominant discourse and its manifestations, but also in deconstructing it. Quoting Gamson, Taylor writes: “[…] [Q]ueer studies is a largely deconstructive enterprise […].” (Taylor, 26). She continues her argumentation and reveals that queer and queer theory seek to “[…] expose the false truths that have [been] constructed [and have constructed] boundaries of centrality and marginality.” (Taylor, 30). Mentioning binaries one needs to understand that one of the biggest “tasks” of queer studies is to question binaries. At large queer perceives binaries as a reduction of diversity. “[Im Zentrum von Queer steht] die Pluralität […][,] die Vielfalt und Vielfältigkeit von Menschen […].“ (Axenkopf, 69). To add would be that queer does not accept the classical binary of sex and understands genders as different cultural constructions of gender (Axenkopf, 22).
By virtue of being a deconstructive enterprise and a critical questioner of the dominant discourse “Queer theory [also] represents a deliberate move away from the divisiveness of the politics of identity.” (Cooper, 24). Speaking of identity, I want to reach back to Amartaya Sen’s theory of identities with plural affiliations. He described identities as constructs and explains how identity parts work together. One can therefor find that Sen and queer theory have something in common. They both argue from the point that identities are constructs, influenced by society and environment. There are no natural identities. Since queer and queer theory use deconstruction it is obvious that:
Queer Theory […] has a deconstructive relation to the politics of identity. This deconstructive relationship is not a politically threatening gesture that does away with identity, but rather, as Judith Butler states; the deconstruction of identity […] establishes as political the very terms through which identity is articulated [and makes them accessible for critique] […]. (Cooper, 24-25)
Queer Theory tries to deconstruct identities and make the terms, by which identity is articulated and therefore constructed, political. This thesis is supported by Foucault whom Taylor quoted. She recited that “[…] identities are generated by discourses […].” (Taylor, 26). This quote underlines the deconstructive direction queer theory takes on identity. Axenkopf takes this statement to the explanatory level when he shows the “power of the discourse” by explaining that: “[Durch den Diskurs werden] gebilligte Praktiken gefördert, erlaubte Praktiken geduldet und tabuisierte Praktiken bestraft und stigmatisier.” The Oxford dictionary describes discourse as „the use of language in speech and writing in order to produce meaning” (Oxford, 432). That shows that the dominat discourse gives us the margins in within dominant culture and socially “normal” actions happen and generally are understood. But “Queer Theorien eröffnen die Chance, das enge Korsett eines dichotomen Verständnisses von Geschlecht, Identität und Identitätspolitik abzulegen [und damit den Diskurs als solchen zu brechen und kritisieren] […].“ (Axenkopf, 69). Axenkopf even furthers his definition of queer by explaining:
Queer fasziniert mit der Magie der Offenheit, Unbestimmtheit und raschen Veränderung. Mit der Ablehnung von Hierarchien, Abhängigkeitsverhältnissen, Bevorteilungen und Benachteiligungen von Menschen stellt queer eine Theorie dar, die zu einer radikalen Gesellschaftskritik taugt. Gleichzeitig kritisiert [und dekonstruiert] Queer Theorie kollektive Identitäten. (Axenkopf, 68)
Briefly outlined, queer questions existing structures and deconstructs them. As a result hierarchies are questioned. Taylor has stated that “[…] queer theory seeks to disrupt or trouble all boundaries and identities […].” (Taylor, 30) Additionally she sums it up by saying that “Queer theory undermines the binary logic that constructs identities as oppositional and exclusionary, and seeks as its primary strategy the decentralization of identity categories […].” (Taylor 34). All of the criticism queer theory is capable of, is constantly to be viewed in Lady Gaga’s body of work.
5. “A unicorn, [a] giant vagina, a meat couch, homoerotic dancing & screaming monsters. U won’t see that sh*t at a Bieber concert. #BornThisWayBall” (@VEVO) – Lady Gaga and the Art of Grotesque
Lady Gaga is very well known for her disturbing performances and appearance over the last few years. Her style of performance has often been described as queer, campy and grotesque. The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary defines grotesque as “strange in a way that is unpleasant or offensive [and] extremely ugly in a strange way that is often frightening or amusing” (Oxford, 685). Grotesque can also have the meaning of repulsive and humorous as well as not befitting the beauty ideal. In her essay Abject Criticism, Deborah Caslav Covina sets grotesque into relation to women, performer and the female body. She explains that “A grotesque performer […] practices philobatism [….] [and due to being] ugly and aberrant according to conventional culture, refuses the imperative [to] stay beautiful and domesticated, and seeks the heights of self-fashioning with reference to a body that does not obey prescribed limits” (Covina). Covina gives to understand that the performer uses his or her own body in order to willingly alienate the way it is perceived through the use of grotesque. This convention breaking is a direct rejection of conventional culture and its expressions. Further she sets the grotesque body in relation to society.
[…] the grotesque body is always a social body, [which] is identif[ied] [...] with […] the lower bodily stratum and its associations with degradation, filth, death, and rebirth.[…] traditional aesthetics has devalued the grotesque body, preferring the classical body, which is […] identified with the 'high' or official culture of the Renaissance […] (Covina)
Thereby, being a social body, grotesque, like camp, offers the performer a possibility to criticize society from its center, not as an outsider, even though society has marked the appearance of grotesque as lower and degraded. For a female performer, such as Lady Gaga, the definition of grotesque as degraded fits perfectly with the margins of her criticism of degradation of women in pop culture and society. But putting on this grotesque image Lady Gaga risks her artistic career since her work, now assigned to ugly and low brow culture, might be rejected by mainstream culture, which would classify her as a philobatist performer. “By contrast […] the grotesque body […] is identified as "open, protruding, irregular, secreting, multiple, and changing," [and associated] with the social rebirth and reformation called for by "the non-official 'low' culture or the carnivalesque.” (Covina). Following this furthering of definition-criteria of grotesque, one might notice that all of them befit the artistic oeuvre of Gaga, hence one can assign using grotesque to the identity of Lady Gaga.
Now I will engage in the analysis of the most prominent identity parts of Lady Gaga. But in resemblance with David Annandale stating: “[T]he sheer number of influences turns Lady Gaga into a pop culture legion. There is no longer one stable identity.” (Annandale, 148). I have to note that Lady Gaga is not only very referential in all that she does, but has a huge interconnectivity between her works. Therefore the analysis will be split up and focused on one topic at a time with befitting examples. The factor of interconnectivity between her own identity parts will be mentioned, but won’t be the main transitive in the approach, since it then would exaggerate the frame of the given essay.
6. A Pop Star and a Message – Why Lady Gaga is able to Spread her Agenda
As she has risen to the status of the new queen of pop, the question of why Lady Gaga is able to criticize gender politics, support feminism and work towards equality, certainly is essential to an analysis of her identity construct. First and foremost, Lady Gaga is a musician and maybe even a performance artist. Her music and her performance are what made her famous, not her activism. So one needs to ask how a pop musician is able to make such critical notions about sensitive topics. Jodie Taylor, the authoress of the book Playing it Queer, has engaged in the question why music, and especially popular music, is able to do so. At first, she explains that music, as one knows it, is much more than just a song or an album. She displays it as follows:
Popular music in particular [is an] intricate [system] of social practice and process usually accompanied by lyrics, dance, fashion, video and other media texts, and thus popular music, necessarily incorporates all of these and acknowledges that it is not only sonic, but also visual, kinetic and visual modes of signification that make it such an appealing – and complex – social phenomenon.” (Taylor, 42)
Taylor not only acknowledges that music, and especially popular music, is a whole complex of productions but she also excels its definition and makes it a complex social practice. Lady Gaga’s body of work perfectly befits the definition. Her musical work always is accompanied by a lavish visual arrangement in the form of fashion, video and performance, culminating even in excessive fan reproduction. Gaga is able to transmit her message through music due to the fact that music serves as “a resource for utopian images, for alternative worlds and institutions” (Taylor, 41). Her choice of media thereby works as a vessel for her created imaginative and narrative. Popular music also draws its power from being, indeed, queer. It is able to speak of what is lying beyond the normal (Taylor, 45). Therefore music has often been identified as “a dangerous substance, an agent of moral ambiguity always in danger of bestowing deviant status upon its practitioner.” (Taylor, 47). This power of the potentially queer performer threatens common notions of identification patterns. And in the case of Lady Gaga I will give prove that she can be considered as such queer performer.
Indeed, spectacular musicalized manifestations of peculiar, strange, queer embodied obscenities like [Marilyn] Manson and Gaga are considered especially dangerous, distributing and subversive because they pre-empt, perform and circulate a range of new identificatory and dis[-]identificatory possibilities that lie outside of the given codes of gender an sexual identity and pleasure – codes upon which society relies on for the maintenance of order and power. (Taylor, 48)
This quotation shows that Lady Gaga is considered a performer of new identification and dis-identification patterns which make her, due to her pop cultural central status, a “threat” to the heteronormative discourse of power. Her power thereby relies on the fact that on whichever way one encounters music, as a performer or consumer, it contributes to one’s identity work (Taylor, 43). The spread of her message and its impact thereby depend on her “camp-esque” position in culture, the power of music as an identificatory pattern and critique possibilities. Due to this, one can align the second identity part to Lady Gaga: “creating identificatory and dis-idenificatory patterns”.
7. Stripper Boots and Female Empowerment – Lady Gaga as a feminist (?)
With her revealing clothing, sexually explicit lyrics and her sexualized performance the question, whether Lady Gaga is a feminist or not, is understandable. She herself has changed her opinion towards that question several times. At first she stated “I’m not a feminist. I hail men, I love men. I celebrate American male culture, beer, and bars, and muscle cars.” (Deflem, 30). In a later interview she described herself as a little bit feminist (Deflem, 30). If one has a look at a song entitled Scheiße from her second studio album Born This Way and her performance of the song during Born This Way Ball Tour one will see that Lady Gaga sure can be understood as a feminist. The song, lyrically seen, is about female self-empowerment, self-determination and independence. She sings:
[…] I'll take you out tonight / say whatever you like / Scheiße-Scheiße be mine / Scheiße be mine / Scheiße be mine / Put on a show tonight / Do whatever you like / […] When I'm on a mission / I rebuke my condition / If you're a strong female / You don't need permission / […] Love is objectified by what men say is right / […] / Blonde high heeled feminist enlisting femmes for this / Express your woman kind / Fight for your rights / […] (Gaga, “Scheiße”)
She expresses the construction of women kind through the definitions of men, explains the objectification of women through men. By describing herself as “[b]londe high heeled feminist enlisting femmes for this”, she displays the ambiguity of being a female. She makes herself a female fighter for feminism and still appears to be perceived sexually attractive within the margins of dominant culture. Supplementary the performance at the Born This Way Ball includes her in a “tuxedo-ish” outfit underlining the notion that feminism is not a rejection of “male-culture”, but rather an attempt to “equal out” the levels. She as a feminist is wearing, stereotypical, men clothing, high heels, displaying her bra, engaging in a very strong and rather hard, therefore perceived as masculine, dance routine. To be noted as well: Lady Gaga is the leading act of the tour and thus the person in control which usually, stereotypically seen, is a man. She is surrounded by all male dancers and appears in a position of lead. Basically Gaga offers a third wave interpretation of her as a feminist.
As Deflem puts it: “Lady Gaga exposes conventional femininity “as a sham”. […] [She] criticizes the role of the conventional female in society by showing […] that conventional […] feminine sexuality is a social construct […].” (Deflem, 30). This very notion of femininity as a construct is best shown in Gaga’s usage of fashion, to which I will come at a later point in the analysis. Finally, I can only concur to Deflem who said “[…] she is not a feminist activist per se, [but] Lady Gaga’s work functions as a critique of how society views and values women.” (Deflem, 30). By this means one can say that, through her work and self-identification as such, Lady Gaga can be seen as a feminist. Hence, one other identity part is feminism.
8. Joe Calderone, Yüyi the mermaid and a sexualized body – Lady Gaga’s relation to Gender, Sex and Drag
Biologically seen Lady Gaga is a woman. Her gender performance, however, is extremely exaggerated but simultaneously fluid. This fluidity already shines through in Gaga’s 2009 public relations gag during the Glastonbury Music Festival. There she used a dildo, put it between her legs and wore a short, red, very revealing latex dress during her performance. Only hours later, tabloids and half the internet was all over this alleged display of prove that Lady Gaga is a “hermaphrodite”. This creative and by all means controversial public relations gag shows that the categories of gender, sex and the performance of gender are just one big game to Lady Gaga, sometimes strategically used to make headlines. As I have already pointed out, Gaga uses pop music and performance to question and blur the binary of gender definition of the dominant discourse. She herself uses drag as an artistic possibility to incorporate “genderfuck” and “gender bending” at their highest, and probably most visual level. Most prominent is her drag male alter ego Joe Calderone which starred in her video for Yoü and I alongside another famous, asexual, drag performance of Yüyi the mermaid. Heather Duerre Humann has stated that Gaga “[…] suggests [with] the (male) persona Jo[e] Calderone that gender is more fluid than popular perceptions about it might indicate.” (Humann, 74). She also adds that drag, as a gender performative, takes on a different tone if the drag performer biologically is female (Humann, 78). It ultimately leads to the assumption that the female body works from a, socially constructed, “lower” position then its male counterpart. Hence Lady Gaga in drag, performing the persona of Joe Calderone gives a political, a gender political statement. She appeared as Joe Calderone at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards and opened the show performing her song Yoü and I. The reaction of the audience was interesting as one can see that various celebrities seemed very confused during the eight minute performance with Brian May from Queen. This shows how “easy” it is to blur the perception of gender by the use of make-up and clothing. Her gender in this manner is fluid since her performance is filled with male stereotype actions. Her performance can be labeled as queer, since it challenges the gender construction of the dominant discourse. Additionally, the character allows her to talk about herself from an outsider position, and exposing her extreme wardrobe choices and ever-changing hair and make-up as an artificial construct. She uses male drag to politically challenge the gender construction of both: men and women. This deconstruction is to be considered as queer.
The character of Yüyi the mermaid is interesting because it is a “genderless” performance of drag. The mermaids appearance in the so called “fashion film”, accompanying the video, is important. In the “film” one see’s Gaga as Yüyi with the mermaid prosthetic fish-tale and gills. First and foremost, Gaga challenges our perception of a mermaid as beautiful since this portrayal rather is anatomically correct, and rather ugly then conventionally beautiful and thus grotesque. Further, this gender less creature sits in a director’s chair which is an object aligned with power, especially male power. But still, through her breasts, we perceive the mermaid to be somewhat female. That androgynous play even more displays the constructive nature of gender, which marks this performance as queer.
As Gaga’s performance continently displays a fluidity of gender, a disturbance of gender identification and a ridicule and lampooning of gender stereotypes by so overly performing them that they appear as “fake”. So another part to add to the identity of Lady Gaga is: gender fluid and androgynous.
9. Fashion Forward, Fashion Fatale, Fashion(able)? – Lady Gaga and “la mode”
When it comes to the fashion choices of Lady Gaga, one must be very thoughtful to not run out of superlatives. An appropriate description of her the fashion would probably fill an encyclopedia, since she uses it constantly to give statements and changes more than once a day. Annandale gives it as follows: “Her clothing is outrageous to the point that “over the top” is a sadly inadequate descriptor.” (Annandale, 142). With Lady Gaga we have seen it all: a dress made out of raw meat, a blood bomb in a white bra, a machine gun bra, a bubble dress and a lobster hat accompanying a white see-through latex dress with x-taped nipples. But not only her best known fashion choices display that Lady Gaga’s wardrobe is more then, lace, leather and fabric. In 2011 she appeared on American Idol mentoring the final four contestants and her outfit was concluded by a pair of high heels, where the word heel might be replaced with dildo, since they actually were dildo heels. Besides, the fact that the dildo can be read as an allegory of heels as a phallic symbol, the heels might be a comment. A comment on the fact that high heels were invented by men, and as many women will confirm, are not very comfortable. A rather campy choice of fashion, since high heels are at the heart of fashion culture, and at the same time very grotesque since it is quite alienating to see a dildo on a shoe.
“She is such an exaggeration that it becomes impossible to not see the objectification of women in high heeled, sexualized displays. […] Gaga takes the female stereotype to the point of self-destruction. It can no longer function as a signifier for […] woman […].” (Annandale, 157). Her dresses and shoes at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, despite her meat dress, were so dysfunctional that she could barely walk in them. As she accepted her second award of the night, she wore a black leather dress by Armani combined with heel-less high heels. The dress was so heavy and big that she needed the help of her bodyguards to get up from her seat and walk up the stage. On stage, she acknowledged: “I didn’t quite think through all the wins, so this outfit is too heavy to walk in. […] Fashion road kill, that’s okay!” (Lady Gaga VMA’s 2010). One can see that fashion takes on the form of an “obstacle” she has to overcome. The typical, light flowing and glamorous, stereotype of a woman in a dress is exaggerated to the point where the constructed femininity, that functions as it basement, is deconstructed. Lady Gaga’s fashion consequently is more than just attention grabbing, it is transporting an interpretational possibility. A possibility for criticism of the very thing she so exaggeratedly displays. This displays a queer and grotesque nature. So we might add to her identity: uses fashion in multiple interpretational possibilities.
10. The Beauty and the Beast – Monster Like or a Real Lady? – Beauty & Lady Gaga
The world of pop music is a world of conventional, constructed and “discourse approved” beauty. Lady Gaga, as the first superstar of the digitally connected age, is at the center of the discourse creating “machinery”. But her beauty is not a conventional one rather grotesque and campy. At first one has to mention that Gaga blurs the line between her body and her clothing and beauty regiment. Her appearance shapes her as less of a female but more of a sexualized body (Annandale, 148). Beauty is a reference of the dominant discourse to the typical female stereotype as feminine, fragile and beautiful. If one looks at her album cover for Born This Way one can see her as a hybrid of motorcycle and woman. Besides the fact that she channels the ideas attached to a motorcycle, she displays the idea of her as endlessly transformative in a grotesque and monstrous way. Adding to the monstrosity is her face make-up which is completed by horn and shoulder prosthetics that display monstrosity. Her beauty is “[…] both a warning sign and a revelation. [It is] identified [as] the monstrum […] [:] a visual and horrific revelation of the truth […].” (Torrusio, 160). But at the same time her video and single artwork for Born This Way are both “sexy” and “attractive” in a conventional way. Not only is she barely clothed in both works but also channels typical definitions of erotic and attractive. “Gaga does make the sexual monstrous, but she also makes the monstrous sexual and desirable.” (Annandale, 156).
Gaga as well parades the image of beauty as constructed. During her Emmy award winning, DVD recorded, performance of The Monster Ball, Gaga wears a yellow wig which loses its perfect curly, and obviously tediously styled, shape. Since blonde is a stereotype for women, and is only perceived as beautiful when it has no yellow shadow, Gaga turns this notion upside down. Her wig is completely yellow, mocking colorfully and campy dominant perceptions of blonde. Further the hair losing its style throughout the performance, from the very first song Dance in the Dark to Born This Way where it is nearly flat, marks a comment of beauty as constructed. A very literal example. an example of decay and the grotesque nature of Lady Gaga’s beauty. And, setting the cherry on top, Gaga once explained: “I reject wholeheartedly the way we […] perceive women. The beauty of women, how women should act or behave. Women are strong and fragile […] [,] beautiful and ugly […] [,] soft spoken and loud, all at once.” (Woolston, 110). Her appreciation of the camp, monstrous and grotesque aesthetics and politics sets her in the very position to simultaneously celebrate, mock and critique our society’s beauty ideals. Another part of her identity is thereby added to the list.
11. In Shape and in Style – Lady Gaga and the Body
“Just killed back to back spin classes. Eating a salad dreaming of a cheeseburger #PopSingersDontEat #IWasBornThisWay” (@LadyGaga) – This tweet Lady Gaga tweeted on April 2012 was highly discussed by a various number websites. Many of them stated that it was a negative example for anorexic’s, set wrong beauty ideals and was anti-feminist. But re-thinking that tweet and including the position in which Gaga is, it actually is a critique of how we perceive the body, especially the female (pop star) body. With this tweet she has broken the taboo of, especially the entertainment industry taboo, to let the perfect body appear flaw- and effortless. Of course she plays along to the expectations of being a thin pop star, but the hash tag that possibly could conclude her tweet would be like: #StupidPopStarRulesAndSocietyPressure. Lady Gaga thereby gives an insight in the shaping and constructing processes of the socially promoted female body. In September 2012 Lady Gaga posted pictures of herself, in only a bra and slip, on her social media platform Little Monsters. One of them was entitled as “Bulimia and anorexia since I was 15.” (Gaga, “Bulimia and anorexia”). Of course, the body one see’s is the body of a pop star, nearly perfect. Nevertheless the idea to release the body from its sociological oppression as perfect enables her to criticize the pressure society unloads on the body, especially the female. One can align Lady Gaga with the identity part of blurring body images and using mainstream body structures to critique the social construction of the body. Very queer, Lady!
12. Mother Monster and her Little Monsters – Lady Gaga and her Fans
During her Madison Square Garden performance of her Monster Ball Tour she laid down on the stage, in the fog and gave the following speech:
You know, I am kind of like Tinker Bell. You know how Tinker Bell will die if you don’t clap for her? (Audience starts clapping and screaming.) Do you want me to die? (Gaga starts screaming.) Scream for me! (Screaming and clapping from the Audience.) Some people would like me to die. (She starts singing.) But I am not going anywhere. (Gaga, The Monster Ball Tour)
She compares herself to the fictional character of Tinker Bell from Peter Pan. The little fairy is only able to exist if she is believed in, or otherwise she will stop existing. Lady Gaga unveils one of the most essential parts of her identity performance: a pop star is a construct, she is constructed, through fans. The name Lady Gaga has grown its power from its likability and fame through fan admiration. “[T]he body [of Stefani Germanotta] gains its meaning within the discourse only in the context of power relations.” (Humann, 78). Not only can one see the queer nature of this deconstruction but also the campy reference to a children movie, to hide the deeper meaning behind, and to use the magic of a modern fairytale like Peter Pan. Her latest song Applause from her third studio album ARTPOP gives a further prove that Gaga knows her identity as a construct of her fans. In the song she sings:
I stand here waiting for you to bang the gong / To crash the critic saying, "is it right or is it wrong?" / If only fame had an I.V., baby could I bear / Being away from you, I found the vein, put it in here / I live for the applause […] / Live for the way that cheer and scream for me / […] / Give me that thing that I love / Turn the lights on / Put your hands up, make 'em touch / Make it real loud (Gaga, Applause)
“Lady Gaga is a fantasy, but a physical one, a bodily conduit for the music, a being in service of the collectivity of the Little Monsters.” (Annandale, 147). She is not only constructed via her fan’s admiration, and therefore her “star power”, but is a direct construct of them. Two of her fans have documented in a video how they were promoting her new single in Sydney, Australia. The video not only shows them handing out flyers, talking to strangers and (illegally) covering the city in posters with QR codes for the single, but also taking the promotion and star construction to a level of “warholian” appreciation. They created labels for Campbell soup cans, and glued them onto actual soup cans in a super market. This straightens the notion that “Gaga and her fans […] [are] not construct[ing] a monologic narrative together, but rather a polyphonic fantasy of meanings, that speak for the specific need of the individuals that the multitude create.” (Annandale, 147).
For her fans Lady Gaga is more than pop star. “Little Monsters can project the images of their liberated desire, until, through the unending [repetition and exaggeration], [the] image becomes reality.” (Annandale, 158). Through the sheer notion of the relation between star and fan she queers the boundary between them and is able to queer the notion of fame and stardom. The critique she offers is that the times of stars as unreachable and effortlessly perfect is over. In one of her interlude videos of her Monster Ball Tour she holds the following speech in grotesque, Disney themed and S&M inspired, outfits which mock again the very notion of the star as innocently perfect:
This is the manifesto of Little Monsters. There is something heroic about the way my fans operate their cameras, so precisely, so intricately and so proudly. Like kings writing the history of their people. It is their prolific nature that both creates and procures what will later be perceive as the kingdom. So, the real truth about Lady Gaga fans, my Little Monsters, lies in this sentiment: They are the kings. They are the queens. They write the history of their kingdom. And I am something of a devoted gesture. […] When you are lonely, I will be lonely too. And this is the Fame. (Manifesto of Little Monsters)
She blurs the lines between grotesque performance and a queer reading of her identity construction by directly addressing her fans as the kings and queens of her fame, hence her star power as Lady Gaga. One can conclude that queering the relation between star and fan and deconstructing the image of an unreachable star are parts of her identity.
13. Lady GayGay thanks “God and the Gays” – Gaga and LGBT Activism
From the beginning of her career Lady Gaga has always been labeled as a “gay artist”. And truth be told: the gay scene made her famous.Up till today Lady Gaga has been an outspoken supporter of LGBT IQA rights, gay marriage and equality all around the world. This agenda has not only been on display by her campy use of fashion and her queer gender deconstruction, but also by taking direct action. When in 2009 she gave a speech in Washington D.C. at the National Equality march she declared that:
As a woman in pop music, as a woman with the most beautiful gay fans in the whole world, to do my part, I refuse to accept any misogynistic and homophobic behavior in music, lyrics or actions in the music industry. […] And I will continue to fight for full equality for all. […] Bless God and bless the gays! (National Equality March)
Gaga, as a queer performer, declares that she is actively refusing homophobic behavior in the music industry in order to support the LGBT community. She has proven herself as she canceled an exclusive sales deal for her album Born This Way with Target, as a result of the company donating money to possible LGBT unfriendly organizations. Economically though Gaga breaks the business rules, since this deal would have resulted in an extreme lucrative outcome. Her disapproval questions the commercialist side of the music business in favor of LGBT rights. It is to be understood as a queer deconstruction of discriminative political and economic actions. She thereby, and through her medial visibility, gives voice to a community. And this ability to give voice is essential to her identity and performance. (Annandale, 79).
Gaga uses her media position and celebrity power to point out grievances of our society and acts as a queer performer, since the criticism she shows is countering the dominant heteronormative and hegemonic discourse. As she has put it herself in 2011, attending the Europride in Rome:
I am often questioned: Why so much gay [speech]? I am often questioned: How gay are you, Lady Gaga? Why is this question, why is this issue so important? “My answer is: I am a child of diversity. I am one with my generation. [I have] a moral obligation as a woman, or a man, to exercise my revolutionary potential and make the world a better place. And, on a gay scale, from 1 to ten, I am Judy Garland fucking 42.” (Lady Gaga for Gay Right).
Gaga displays herself, not as a person fighting for gay rights, but as a vessel through which people fight for their rights. She makes herself a reference, which is in a “warholian” and ironizing sense campy. She becomes a campy work of art to hide meaning behind. One can say: Lady Gaga is an LGBT activist and activist vessel for the yearnings of those she supports.
14. Violence, Sex and Tabloids – Lady Gaga and the Unholy Trinity of Celebrity Culture
Violence, power relations, sex and the fame whoring system are constant topics in Lady Gaga’s artistic output. Most prominently one might quote her music videos for Paparazzi and Telephone since they directly deal with this topic. But also her perfume Fame and the commercial for it are vivid texts for interpretation. The packaging describes the perfume as: “First of its kind, this perfume is an innovation in fluid technology. It’s black like the soul of fame, but invisible once airborne.” (Lady Gaga: FAME) She aligns fame with darkness, which is associated with the grotesque scary, ugly and frightening. But generally, fame is perceived to be achieved, which is best proven by the fact that casting shows, promising fame through modeling or singing, grow huge audiences worldwide. Lady Gaga alienates a fragrance, something quite common for pop stars these days, by making it black and naming it FAME. Its smells sweet and seductive while the message is that fame is like a predator to be enjoyed with care. Even the ingredients surround the idea of fame and FAME with a dark and grotesque twist. “Compounded By Lady Gaga / Tears of Belladonna / Crushed Heart of Tiger Orchidea / With a Black Veil of Incense / Pulverized Apricot / And the Combinative Essences of Saffron and Honey Drops / From The Haus Laboratories In Paris” (Lady Gaga FAME)
This listing sounds more of an elaborate magic potion then of perfume. The word “compounded” adds to the grotesque image the perfume creates. Even the package warning signs are grotesque. They feature a claw, a heart in an x, a mouth displaying teeth as if it was growling and a warning not to drink the perfume. The packaging is completed by a skull with a pony tail resembling Gaga’s performance in her music video Born This Way. All these signs appear very glamorous at first, since they are golden, but their message reminds one, in a scary and ugly way, that fame is to be taken with care. Even the flacon of the perfume is a reminder of fame as a predator. The body is clear, displaying the black fluid, but the lock is a golden three fingered claw. This is total deconstruction of fame as dangerous thing, giving the idea that famous people must have a dangerous tie-up with their stardom. To take a mainstream product and turn it into a grotesque comment on fame and the fame whoring system itself is to be considered a campy and deconstructive, hence queer, move. Her commercial film for the fragrance begins with a display of the word “WARNING” and the first sound one hears is painful screaming with images mirrored on a black fluid. The whole five minte long video is music wise (she used parts of her song Scheiße), fashion wise, performance wise and theme wise centered around fetishism, violence against the body and power relations. These are possible side effects of being famous. In the video she apparently kills men, is killed by a huge oiled version of herself and devours dead bodies covered in black blood. Not only does she make references between fame, fetishism and violence but also between fame and horror. She deludes the position of fame to a scenery of pure horror. One might even go as far as to call the film a soft pornographic feature due to its sexually explicit undertone. In a very disturbing and monstrous way she offers a deconstruction of the downsides of fame. Her appearance in the whole video is very androgynous and can be read as prove that fame destroys gender identity. She does all that from the very center of her selling a product that is central to conventional beauty, very campy. But she never would have been able to spread that message if it was not for her fame. The last identity part one can align to Lady Gaga is celebrating and mocking celebrity culture, criticizing fame and deconstructing it while profiting from the possibilities it offers.
15. Lady Gaga – A Multitude of Identity Parts
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta might not be a big shot when it comes to being known. But her artist name, Lady Gaga, and its identity construct are well known all over the planet. As I have analyzed her identity from eight different “angles” a number of identity parts have come up. So now I will lay out the identity of Lady Gaga, as Sen did with his identity in his book Die Identitätsfalle – Warum es keinen Krieg der Kulturen gibt.
Lady Gaga is a musician that uses the techniques of camp, queer and grotesque. She creates new identificatory and dis-identificatory patters through pop music as a complex social practice. She is a feminist, although not a feminist activist per se. Her gender performance is fluid and androgynous, which she accomplishes by the use of e.g. drag. Gaga uses fashion in multiple interpretational possibilities to give statements. She mocks and critiques society’s beauty ideals and blurs the body image. She uses socially constructed body structures to critique this constructionism by society. Lady Gaga is a star queering the relationship between herself and her fans, and is deconstructing the idea of a celebrity as unreachable and effortlessly flawless. She is an LGBT IQA activist and as such she is a vessel for the yearnings of those whom she supports. Gaga is a celebrity that simultaneously celebrates and mocks celebrity culture. She is actively criticizing the fame whoring system, laying bare the workings and dangers of fame and deconstructing them. But she still profits from the possibilities these two offer. She challenges the heteronormative discourse and its social constructs by being at its very heart, hiding all her critique behind the veil of a cultural performance as a whole.
As it is obviously to be seen, the Identity of Lady Gaga is more complex then to be expected. This identity definition above is only to be seen as a quick view into the depths of this identity since the categories of gender, feminism, sex, drag, beauty, fashion, body, fan relations, activism and celebrity status, fame and the fame whoring system are just the most present categories in which one could analyze the singer. This dissection of her identity has shown the potential of queer, grotesque and camp as critique possibilities, political agendas and their aestheticism as a form of art. Sen’s theory of identities as constructs with plural affiliations has been proven true, since none of the identity parts I have presented can be understood as the single identity of Gaga, nor are these parts contradictory. Of course one has to mention that all the possibilities, that the identity of Lady Gaga has, are is limited by the discourse, as is everything else. But she might have been right with her statement that she is not defined by a single look. “The statement is that I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.” (Iredale) If she ultimately will succeed with this idea will be proven by time, but it is clear that Lady Gaga is every icon. Why? Sen said so.
16. List of Works Cited
Annandale, David. Rebelaise Meets Vogue: The Construction of Carnival, Beauty and Grotesque. The Performance Identities of Lady Gaga – Critical Essays. Ed: Richard J. Gray II. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2012. 142-159. Print.
Applause. Dir.: Inez & Vinoodh. 2013. Music Video.
Axenkopf, Volker. Queer In – Gender Out – Ein Ausweg aus dem binären Geschlechterdenken? Hamburg, Diplomatica © Verlag GmbH, 2011. Print
Born This Way. Dir.: Nick Knight. 2011. Music Video.
Butler, Judith. From Interiority to Gender Performatives. Camp: Aesthetics and the Performing Subject – A Reader. Ed: Fabio Cleto. Edinburgh: Edinburg UP, 2008: 361-367. Print.
Cleto, Fabio. Camp: Aesthetics and the Performing Subject – A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburg UP, 2008. Print.
Core, Philip. From Camp: The lie that tells truth. Camp: Aesthetics and the Performing Subject – A Reader. Ed: Fabio Cleto. Edinburgh: Edinburg UP, 2008: 80-86. Print.
Cooper, Sarah. Editor: Peter Collier. Relating to Queer Theory – Rereading Sexual Self-Definition with Irigaray, Kristeva, Witting and Cixous. Bern, Peter Lang, European Academic Publishers, 2000. Print.
Covina, Deborah Caslav. “Abject Criticism”. Genders. Genders 32. 2000.n.pag. Web. Date of Access: 22.08.2013.
Deflem, Mathieu. The Sex of Lady Gaga. The Performance Identities of Lady Gaga – Critical Essays. Ed: Richard J. Gray II. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2012. 19-32. Print.
“discourse”. Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010. Print.
Gaga, Lady. Born This Way. Streamline/Interscope/Kon Live, 2011.CD.
---. “Applause”. ARTPOP. Streamline/Interscope, 2013. MP3.
---. “Born This Way”. Born This Way (Single). Streamline/Interscope/KonLive, 2011.CD.
---. “Bulemia and anorexia since I was 15.” 2011. JPEG Photography.
---. “Scheiße.” Born This Way. Streamline/Interscope/Kon Live, 2011.CD.
Gray II, Richard J. The Performance Identities of Lady Gaga – Critical Essays. Ed: Richard J. Gray II. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2012. Print.
“grotesque.” Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010. Print.
Haus of Yoü ft. Yüyi. Dir.: Inez & Vinoodh. 2011. Fashion Film.
Horn, Katrin. Follow the Glitter Way – Lady Gaga and Camp. The Performance Identities of Lady Gaga – Critical Essays. Ed: Richard J. Gray II. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2012. 85-106. Print.
Humann, Heather Duerre. What a Drag – Lady Gaga, Joe Calderone and the Politics of Representation. The Performance Identities of Lady Gaga – Critical Essays. Ed: Richard J. Gray II. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2012. 74-84. Print.
Iredale, Jessica. Lady Gaga: “I’m Every Icon”. wwd.com. N.p. 28.06.2013. Web. Date of Access: 18.08.2013.
Lady Gaga for Gay Right – Europride Rome 2011. GAYinTelevision, 2011. YouTube. Date of Access: 22.08.2013
Lady Gaga: FAME. Coty. 2012. Perfume.
LADY GAGA FAME – A FILM BY STEVEN KLEIN. Dir.: Steven Klein. 2012. Short Film.
Lady Gaga, Glastobury Festival 2009 2/4. Alex Brown. 2012. YouTube. Date of Access: 22.08.2013
Lady Gaga Presents The Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden. Dir.: Laurieann Gibson. Perf.: Lady Gaga. Mermaid Films/HBO Entertainment/ Media Blaster. 2011. DVD.
Lady Gaga: The Born This Way Ball at Montreal. CraazyUnicorn, 2013. YouTube. Date of Access: 22.08.2013
Lady Gaga VMA’s 2010. Nicky Darkparis, 2011. YouTube. Date of Access: 22.08.2013
Manifesto of Little Monsters – Interlude film for Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball Tour. Dir.: Nick Knight & Ruth Hogben. SHOWstudio. 2011. YouTube. Date of Access: 22.08.2013
“National Equality March Ralley: Lady Gaga speaks”. Inlookingout, 2009. YouTube. Date of Access: 22.08.2013
OPERATION APPLAUSE. Erfaan Arif, 2013. YouTube. Date of Access: 22.08.2013
Sen, Amartya. Die Identitätsfalle – Warum es keinen Krieg der Kulturen gibt. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2007. Print.
Taylor, Jodie. Playing it Queer – Popular Music, Identity and Queer World-making. Bern, Peter Lang, 2012. Print.
Tinkom, Matthew. Warhol’s Camp. Camp: Aesthetics and the Performing Subject – A Reader. Ed: Fabio Cleto. Edinburgh: Edinburg UP, 2008: 344-353. Print
Torrusio, Ann T. The Fame Monster: The Monstrous Construction of Lady Gaga. The Performance Identities of Lady Gaga – Critical Essays. Ed: Richard J. Gray II. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2012. 160-172. Print.
Woolston, Jennifer M. Lady Gaga and the Wolf: “Little Red Riding Hood,” The Fame Monster and Female Sexuality. The Performance Identities of Lady Gaga – Critical Essays. Ed: Richard J. Gray II. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2012. 107-121. Print.
Yoü and I. Dir.: Lauriann Gibson. 2011. Music Video.
@LadyGaga. “Just killed back to back spin classes. Eating a salad dreaming of a cheeseburger #PopSingersDontEat #IWasBornThisWay”. 10.04.2012, 4:18 PM. Tweet. Date of Access: 22.08.2013.
@VEVO. “A unicorn, giant vagina, a meat couch, homoerotic dancing & screaming monsters. U won’t see that sh*t at a Bieber concert. #BornThisWayBall.” 21.01.2013, 6:45 AM. Tweet. Date of Access: 22.08.2013
Lady Gaga is very well known for her disturbing performances and appearance over the last few years. Her style of performance has often been described as queer, campy and grotesque. The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary defines grotesque as “strange in a way that is unpleasant or offensive [and] extremely ugly in a strange way that is often frightening or amusing” (Oxford, 685). Grotesque can also have the meaning of repulsive and humorous as well as not befitting the beauty ideal. In her essay Abject Criticism, Deborah Caslav Covina sets grotesque into relation to women, performer and the female body. She explains that “A grotesque performer […] practices philobatism [….] [and due to being] ugly and aberrant according to conventional culture, refuses the imperative [to] stay beautiful and domesticated, and seeks the heights of self-fashioning with reference to a body that does not obey prescribed limits” (Covina). Covina gives to understand that the performer uses his or her own body in order to willingly alienate the way it is perceived through the use of grotesque. This convention breaking is a direct rejection of conventional culture and its expressions. Further she sets the grotesque body in relation to society.
[…] the grotesque body is always a social body, [which] is identif[ied] [...] with […] the lower bodily stratum and its associations with degradation, filth, death, and rebirth.[…] traditional aesthetics has devalued the grotesque body, preferring the classical body, which is […] identified with the 'high' or official culture of the Renaissance […] (Covina)
Thereby, being a social body, grotesque, like camp, offers the performer a possibility to criticize society from its center, not as an outsider, even though society has marked the appearance of grotesque as lower and degraded. For a female performer, such as Lady Gaga, the definition of grotesque as degraded fits perfectly with the margins of her criticism of degradation of women in pop culture and society. But putting on this grotesque image Lady Gaga risks her artistic career since her work, now assigned to ugly and low brow culture, might be rejected by mainstream culture, which would classify her as a philobatist performer. “By contrast […] the grotesque body […] is identified as "open, protruding, irregular, secreting, multiple, and changing," [and associated] with the social rebirth and reformation called for by "the non-official 'low' culture or the carnivalesque.” (Covina). Following this furthering of definition-criteria of grotesque, one might notice that all of them befit the artistic oeuvre of Gaga, hence one can assign using grotesque to the identity of Lady Gaga.
Now I will engage in the analysis of the most prominent identity parts of Lady Gaga. But in resemblance with David Annandale stating: “[T]he sheer number of influences turns Lady Gaga into a pop culture legion. There is no longer one stable identity.” (Annandale, 148). I have to note that Lady Gaga is not only very referential in all that she does, but has a huge interconnectivity between her works. Therefore the analysis will be split up and focused on one topic at a time with befitting examples. The factor of interconnectivity between her own identity parts will be mentioned, but won’t be the main transitive in the approach, since it then would exaggerate the frame of the given essay.
6. A Pop Star and a Message – Why Lady Gaga is able to Spread her Agenda
As she has risen to the status of the new queen of pop, the question of why Lady Gaga is able to criticize gender politics, support feminism and work towards equality, certainly is essential to an analysis of her identity construct. First and foremost, Lady Gaga is a musician and maybe even a performance artist. Her music and her performance are what made her famous, not her activism. So one needs to ask how a pop musician is able to make such critical notions about sensitive topics. Jodie Taylor, the authoress of the book Playing it Queer, has engaged in the question why music, and especially popular music, is able to do so. At first, she explains that music, as one knows it, is much more than just a song or an album. She displays it as follows:
Popular music in particular [is an] intricate [system] of social practice and process usually accompanied by lyrics, dance, fashion, video and other media texts, and thus popular music, necessarily incorporates all of these and acknowledges that it is not only sonic, but also visual, kinetic and visual modes of signification that make it such an appealing – and complex – social phenomenon.” (Taylor, 42)
Taylor not only acknowledges that music, and especially popular music, is a whole complex of productions but she also excels its definition and makes it a complex social practice. Lady Gaga’s body of work perfectly befits the definition. Her musical work always is accompanied by a lavish visual arrangement in the form of fashion, video and performance, culminating even in excessive fan reproduction. Gaga is able to transmit her message through music due to the fact that music serves as “a resource for utopian images, for alternative worlds and institutions” (Taylor, 41). Her choice of media thereby works as a vessel for her created imaginative and narrative. Popular music also draws its power from being, indeed, queer. It is able to speak of what is lying beyond the normal (Taylor, 45). Therefore music has often been identified as “a dangerous substance, an agent of moral ambiguity always in danger of bestowing deviant status upon its practitioner.” (Taylor, 47). This power of the potentially queer performer threatens common notions of identification patterns. And in the case of Lady Gaga I will give prove that she can be considered as such queer performer.
Indeed, spectacular musicalized manifestations of peculiar, strange, queer embodied obscenities like [Marilyn] Manson and Gaga are considered especially dangerous, distributing and subversive because they pre-empt, perform and circulate a range of new identificatory and dis[-]identificatory possibilities that lie outside of the given codes of gender an sexual identity and pleasure – codes upon which society relies on for the maintenance of order and power. (Taylor, 48)
This quotation shows that Lady Gaga is considered a performer of new identification and dis-identification patterns which make her, due to her pop cultural central status, a “threat” to the heteronormative discourse of power. Her power thereby relies on the fact that on whichever way one encounters music, as a performer or consumer, it contributes to one’s identity work (Taylor, 43). The spread of her message and its impact thereby depend on her “camp-esque” position in culture, the power of music as an identificatory pattern and critique possibilities. Due to this, one can align the second identity part to Lady Gaga: “creating identificatory and dis-idenificatory patterns”.
7. Stripper Boots and Female Empowerment – Lady Gaga as a feminist (?)
With her revealing clothing, sexually explicit lyrics and her sexualized performance the question, whether Lady Gaga is a feminist or not, is understandable. She herself has changed her opinion towards that question several times. At first she stated “I’m not a feminist. I hail men, I love men. I celebrate American male culture, beer, and bars, and muscle cars.” (Deflem, 30). In a later interview she described herself as a little bit feminist (Deflem, 30). If one has a look at a song entitled Scheiße from her second studio album Born This Way and her performance of the song during Born This Way Ball Tour one will see that Lady Gaga sure can be understood as a feminist. The song, lyrically seen, is about female self-empowerment, self-determination and independence. She sings:
[…] I'll take you out tonight / say whatever you like / Scheiße-Scheiße be mine / Scheiße be mine / Scheiße be mine / Put on a show tonight / Do whatever you like / […] When I'm on a mission / I rebuke my condition / If you're a strong female / You don't need permission / […] Love is objectified by what men say is right / […] / Blonde high heeled feminist enlisting femmes for this / Express your woman kind / Fight for your rights / […] (Gaga, “Scheiße”)
She expresses the construction of women kind through the definitions of men, explains the objectification of women through men. By describing herself as “[b]londe high heeled feminist enlisting femmes for this”, she displays the ambiguity of being a female. She makes herself a female fighter for feminism and still appears to be perceived sexually attractive within the margins of dominant culture. Supplementary the performance at the Born This Way Ball includes her in a “tuxedo-ish” outfit underlining the notion that feminism is not a rejection of “male-culture”, but rather an attempt to “equal out” the levels. She as a feminist is wearing, stereotypical, men clothing, high heels, displaying her bra, engaging in a very strong and rather hard, therefore perceived as masculine, dance routine. To be noted as well: Lady Gaga is the leading act of the tour and thus the person in control which usually, stereotypically seen, is a man. She is surrounded by all male dancers and appears in a position of lead. Basically Gaga offers a third wave interpretation of her as a feminist.
As Deflem puts it: “Lady Gaga exposes conventional femininity “as a sham”. […] [She] criticizes the role of the conventional female in society by showing […] that conventional […] feminine sexuality is a social construct […].” (Deflem, 30). This very notion of femininity as a construct is best shown in Gaga’s usage of fashion, to which I will come at a later point in the analysis. Finally, I can only concur to Deflem who said “[…] she is not a feminist activist per se, [but] Lady Gaga’s work functions as a critique of how society views and values women.” (Deflem, 30). By this means one can say that, through her work and self-identification as such, Lady Gaga can be seen as a feminist. Hence, one other identity part is feminism.
8. Joe Calderone, Yüyi the mermaid and a sexualized body – Lady Gaga’s relation to Gender, Sex and Drag
Biologically seen Lady Gaga is a woman. Her gender performance, however, is extremely exaggerated but simultaneously fluid. This fluidity already shines through in Gaga’s 2009 public relations gag during the Glastonbury Music Festival. There she used a dildo, put it between her legs and wore a short, red, very revealing latex dress during her performance. Only hours later, tabloids and half the internet was all over this alleged display of prove that Lady Gaga is a “hermaphrodite”. This creative and by all means controversial public relations gag shows that the categories of gender, sex and the performance of gender are just one big game to Lady Gaga, sometimes strategically used to make headlines. As I have already pointed out, Gaga uses pop music and performance to question and blur the binary of gender definition of the dominant discourse. She herself uses drag as an artistic possibility to incorporate “genderfuck” and “gender bending” at their highest, and probably most visual level. Most prominent is her drag male alter ego Joe Calderone which starred in her video for Yoü and I alongside another famous, asexual, drag performance of Yüyi the mermaid. Heather Duerre Humann has stated that Gaga “[…] suggests [with] the (male) persona Jo[e] Calderone that gender is more fluid than popular perceptions about it might indicate.” (Humann, 74). She also adds that drag, as a gender performative, takes on a different tone if the drag performer biologically is female (Humann, 78). It ultimately leads to the assumption that the female body works from a, socially constructed, “lower” position then its male counterpart. Hence Lady Gaga in drag, performing the persona of Joe Calderone gives a political, a gender political statement. She appeared as Joe Calderone at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards and opened the show performing her song Yoü and I. The reaction of the audience was interesting as one can see that various celebrities seemed very confused during the eight minute performance with Brian May from Queen. This shows how “easy” it is to blur the perception of gender by the use of make-up and clothing. Her gender in this manner is fluid since her performance is filled with male stereotype actions. Her performance can be labeled as queer, since it challenges the gender construction of the dominant discourse. Additionally, the character allows her to talk about herself from an outsider position, and exposing her extreme wardrobe choices and ever-changing hair and make-up as an artificial construct. She uses male drag to politically challenge the gender construction of both: men and women. This deconstruction is to be considered as queer.
The character of Yüyi the mermaid is interesting because it is a “genderless” performance of drag. The mermaids appearance in the so called “fashion film”, accompanying the video, is important. In the “film” one see’s Gaga as Yüyi with the mermaid prosthetic fish-tale and gills. First and foremost, Gaga challenges our perception of a mermaid as beautiful since this portrayal rather is anatomically correct, and rather ugly then conventionally beautiful and thus grotesque. Further, this gender less creature sits in a director’s chair which is an object aligned with power, especially male power. But still, through her breasts, we perceive the mermaid to be somewhat female. That androgynous play even more displays the constructive nature of gender, which marks this performance as queer.
As Gaga’s performance continently displays a fluidity of gender, a disturbance of gender identification and a ridicule and lampooning of gender stereotypes by so overly performing them that they appear as “fake”. So another part to add to the identity of Lady Gaga is: gender fluid and androgynous.
9. Fashion Forward, Fashion Fatale, Fashion(able)? – Lady Gaga and “la mode”
When it comes to the fashion choices of Lady Gaga, one must be very thoughtful to not run out of superlatives. An appropriate description of her the fashion would probably fill an encyclopedia, since she uses it constantly to give statements and changes more than once a day. Annandale gives it as follows: “Her clothing is outrageous to the point that “over the top” is a sadly inadequate descriptor.” (Annandale, 142). With Lady Gaga we have seen it all: a dress made out of raw meat, a blood bomb in a white bra, a machine gun bra, a bubble dress and a lobster hat accompanying a white see-through latex dress with x-taped nipples. But not only her best known fashion choices display that Lady Gaga’s wardrobe is more then, lace, leather and fabric. In 2011 she appeared on American Idol mentoring the final four contestants and her outfit was concluded by a pair of high heels, where the word heel might be replaced with dildo, since they actually were dildo heels. Besides, the fact that the dildo can be read as an allegory of heels as a phallic symbol, the heels might be a comment. A comment on the fact that high heels were invented by men, and as many women will confirm, are not very comfortable. A rather campy choice of fashion, since high heels are at the heart of fashion culture, and at the same time very grotesque since it is quite alienating to see a dildo on a shoe.
“She is such an exaggeration that it becomes impossible to not see the objectification of women in high heeled, sexualized displays. […] Gaga takes the female stereotype to the point of self-destruction. It can no longer function as a signifier for […] woman […].” (Annandale, 157). Her dresses and shoes at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, despite her meat dress, were so dysfunctional that she could barely walk in them. As she accepted her second award of the night, she wore a black leather dress by Armani combined with heel-less high heels. The dress was so heavy and big that she needed the help of her bodyguards to get up from her seat and walk up the stage. On stage, she acknowledged: “I didn’t quite think through all the wins, so this outfit is too heavy to walk in. […] Fashion road kill, that’s okay!” (Lady Gaga VMA’s 2010). One can see that fashion takes on the form of an “obstacle” she has to overcome. The typical, light flowing and glamorous, stereotype of a woman in a dress is exaggerated to the point where the constructed femininity, that functions as it basement, is deconstructed. Lady Gaga’s fashion consequently is more than just attention grabbing, it is transporting an interpretational possibility. A possibility for criticism of the very thing she so exaggeratedly displays. This displays a queer and grotesque nature. So we might add to her identity: uses fashion in multiple interpretational possibilities.
10. The Beauty and the Beast – Monster Like or a Real Lady? – Beauty & Lady Gaga
The world of pop music is a world of conventional, constructed and “discourse approved” beauty. Lady Gaga, as the first superstar of the digitally connected age, is at the center of the discourse creating “machinery”. But her beauty is not a conventional one rather grotesque and campy. At first one has to mention that Gaga blurs the line between her body and her clothing and beauty regiment. Her appearance shapes her as less of a female but more of a sexualized body (Annandale, 148). Beauty is a reference of the dominant discourse to the typical female stereotype as feminine, fragile and beautiful. If one looks at her album cover for Born This Way one can see her as a hybrid of motorcycle and woman. Besides the fact that she channels the ideas attached to a motorcycle, she displays the idea of her as endlessly transformative in a grotesque and monstrous way. Adding to the monstrosity is her face make-up which is completed by horn and shoulder prosthetics that display monstrosity. Her beauty is “[…] both a warning sign and a revelation. [It is] identified [as] the monstrum […] [:] a visual and horrific revelation of the truth […].” (Torrusio, 160). But at the same time her video and single artwork for Born This Way are both “sexy” and “attractive” in a conventional way. Not only is she barely clothed in both works but also channels typical definitions of erotic and attractive. “Gaga does make the sexual monstrous, but she also makes the monstrous sexual and desirable.” (Annandale, 156).
Gaga as well parades the image of beauty as constructed. During her Emmy award winning, DVD recorded, performance of The Monster Ball, Gaga wears a yellow wig which loses its perfect curly, and obviously tediously styled, shape. Since blonde is a stereotype for women, and is only perceived as beautiful when it has no yellow shadow, Gaga turns this notion upside down. Her wig is completely yellow, mocking colorfully and campy dominant perceptions of blonde. Further the hair losing its style throughout the performance, from the very first song Dance in the Dark to Born This Way where it is nearly flat, marks a comment of beauty as constructed. A very literal example. an example of decay and the grotesque nature of Lady Gaga’s beauty. And, setting the cherry on top, Gaga once explained: “I reject wholeheartedly the way we […] perceive women. The beauty of women, how women should act or behave. Women are strong and fragile […] [,] beautiful and ugly […] [,] soft spoken and loud, all at once.” (Woolston, 110). Her appreciation of the camp, monstrous and grotesque aesthetics and politics sets her in the very position to simultaneously celebrate, mock and critique our society’s beauty ideals. Another part of her identity is thereby added to the list.
11. In Shape and in Style – Lady Gaga and the Body
“Just killed back to back spin classes. Eating a salad dreaming of a cheeseburger #PopSingersDontEat #IWasBornThisWay” (@LadyGaga) – This tweet Lady Gaga tweeted on April 2012 was highly discussed by a various number websites. Many of them stated that it was a negative example for anorexic’s, set wrong beauty ideals and was anti-feminist. But re-thinking that tweet and including the position in which Gaga is, it actually is a critique of how we perceive the body, especially the female (pop star) body. With this tweet she has broken the taboo of, especially the entertainment industry taboo, to let the perfect body appear flaw- and effortless. Of course she plays along to the expectations of being a thin pop star, but the hash tag that possibly could conclude her tweet would be like: #StupidPopStarRulesAndSocietyPressure. Lady Gaga thereby gives an insight in the shaping and constructing processes of the socially promoted female body. In September 2012 Lady Gaga posted pictures of herself, in only a bra and slip, on her social media platform Little Monsters. One of them was entitled as “Bulimia and anorexia since I was 15.” (Gaga, “Bulimia and anorexia”). Of course, the body one see’s is the body of a pop star, nearly perfect. Nevertheless the idea to release the body from its sociological oppression as perfect enables her to criticize the pressure society unloads on the body, especially the female. One can align Lady Gaga with the identity part of blurring body images and using mainstream body structures to critique the social construction of the body. Very queer, Lady!
12. Mother Monster and her Little Monsters – Lady Gaga and her Fans
During her Madison Square Garden performance of her Monster Ball Tour she laid down on the stage, in the fog and gave the following speech:
You know, I am kind of like Tinker Bell. You know how Tinker Bell will die if you don’t clap for her? (Audience starts clapping and screaming.) Do you want me to die? (Gaga starts screaming.) Scream for me! (Screaming and clapping from the Audience.) Some people would like me to die. (She starts singing.) But I am not going anywhere. (Gaga, The Monster Ball Tour)
She compares herself to the fictional character of Tinker Bell from Peter Pan. The little fairy is only able to exist if she is believed in, or otherwise she will stop existing. Lady Gaga unveils one of the most essential parts of her identity performance: a pop star is a construct, she is constructed, through fans. The name Lady Gaga has grown its power from its likability and fame through fan admiration. “[T]he body [of Stefani Germanotta] gains its meaning within the discourse only in the context of power relations.” (Humann, 78). Not only can one see the queer nature of this deconstruction but also the campy reference to a children movie, to hide the deeper meaning behind, and to use the magic of a modern fairytale like Peter Pan. Her latest song Applause from her third studio album ARTPOP gives a further prove that Gaga knows her identity as a construct of her fans. In the song she sings:
I stand here waiting for you to bang the gong / To crash the critic saying, "is it right or is it wrong?" / If only fame had an I.V., baby could I bear / Being away from you, I found the vein, put it in here / I live for the applause […] / Live for the way that cheer and scream for me / […] / Give me that thing that I love / Turn the lights on / Put your hands up, make 'em touch / Make it real loud (Gaga, Applause)
“Lady Gaga is a fantasy, but a physical one, a bodily conduit for the music, a being in service of the collectivity of the Little Monsters.” (Annandale, 147). She is not only constructed via her fan’s admiration, and therefore her “star power”, but is a direct construct of them. Two of her fans have documented in a video how they were promoting her new single in Sydney, Australia. The video not only shows them handing out flyers, talking to strangers and (illegally) covering the city in posters with QR codes for the single, but also taking the promotion and star construction to a level of “warholian” appreciation. They created labels for Campbell soup cans, and glued them onto actual soup cans in a super market. This straightens the notion that “Gaga and her fans […] [are] not construct[ing] a monologic narrative together, but rather a polyphonic fantasy of meanings, that speak for the specific need of the individuals that the multitude create.” (Annandale, 147).
For her fans Lady Gaga is more than pop star. “Little Monsters can project the images of their liberated desire, until, through the unending [repetition and exaggeration], [the] image becomes reality.” (Annandale, 158). Through the sheer notion of the relation between star and fan she queers the boundary between them and is able to queer the notion of fame and stardom. The critique she offers is that the times of stars as unreachable and effortlessly perfect is over. In one of her interlude videos of her Monster Ball Tour she holds the following speech in grotesque, Disney themed and S&M inspired, outfits which mock again the very notion of the star as innocently perfect:
This is the manifesto of Little Monsters. There is something heroic about the way my fans operate their cameras, so precisely, so intricately and so proudly. Like kings writing the history of their people. It is their prolific nature that both creates and procures what will later be perceive as the kingdom. So, the real truth about Lady Gaga fans, my Little Monsters, lies in this sentiment: They are the kings. They are the queens. They write the history of their kingdom. And I am something of a devoted gesture. […] When you are lonely, I will be lonely too. And this is the Fame. (Manifesto of Little Monsters)
She blurs the lines between grotesque performance and a queer reading of her identity construction by directly addressing her fans as the kings and queens of her fame, hence her star power as Lady Gaga. One can conclude that queering the relation between star and fan and deconstructing the image of an unreachable star are parts of her identity.
13. Lady GayGay thanks “God and the Gays” – Gaga and LGBT Activism
From the beginning of her career Lady Gaga has always been labeled as a “gay artist”. And truth be told: the gay scene made her famous.Up till today Lady Gaga has been an outspoken supporter of LGBT IQA rights, gay marriage and equality all around the world. This agenda has not only been on display by her campy use of fashion and her queer gender deconstruction, but also by taking direct action. When in 2009 she gave a speech in Washington D.C. at the National Equality march she declared that:
As a woman in pop music, as a woman with the most beautiful gay fans in the whole world, to do my part, I refuse to accept any misogynistic and homophobic behavior in music, lyrics or actions in the music industry. […] And I will continue to fight for full equality for all. […] Bless God and bless the gays! (National Equality March)
Gaga, as a queer performer, declares that she is actively refusing homophobic behavior in the music industry in order to support the LGBT community. She has proven herself as she canceled an exclusive sales deal for her album Born This Way with Target, as a result of the company donating money to possible LGBT unfriendly organizations. Economically though Gaga breaks the business rules, since this deal would have resulted in an extreme lucrative outcome. Her disapproval questions the commercialist side of the music business in favor of LGBT rights. It is to be understood as a queer deconstruction of discriminative political and economic actions. She thereby, and through her medial visibility, gives voice to a community. And this ability to give voice is essential to her identity and performance. (Annandale, 79).
Gaga uses her media position and celebrity power to point out grievances of our society and acts as a queer performer, since the criticism she shows is countering the dominant heteronormative and hegemonic discourse. As she has put it herself in 2011, attending the Europride in Rome:
I am often questioned: Why so much gay [speech]? I am often questioned: How gay are you, Lady Gaga? Why is this question, why is this issue so important? “My answer is: I am a child of diversity. I am one with my generation. [I have] a moral obligation as a woman, or a man, to exercise my revolutionary potential and make the world a better place. And, on a gay scale, from 1 to ten, I am Judy Garland fucking 42.” (Lady Gaga for Gay Right).
Gaga displays herself, not as a person fighting for gay rights, but as a vessel through which people fight for their rights. She makes herself a reference, which is in a “warholian” and ironizing sense campy. She becomes a campy work of art to hide meaning behind. One can say: Lady Gaga is an LGBT activist and activist vessel for the yearnings of those she supports.
14. Violence, Sex and Tabloids – Lady Gaga and the Unholy Trinity of Celebrity Culture
Violence, power relations, sex and the fame whoring system are constant topics in Lady Gaga’s artistic output. Most prominently one might quote her music videos for Paparazzi and Telephone since they directly deal with this topic. But also her perfume Fame and the commercial for it are vivid texts for interpretation. The packaging describes the perfume as: “First of its kind, this perfume is an innovation in fluid technology. It’s black like the soul of fame, but invisible once airborne.” (Lady Gaga: FAME) She aligns fame with darkness, which is associated with the grotesque scary, ugly and frightening. But generally, fame is perceived to be achieved, which is best proven by the fact that casting shows, promising fame through modeling or singing, grow huge audiences worldwide. Lady Gaga alienates a fragrance, something quite common for pop stars these days, by making it black and naming it FAME. Its smells sweet and seductive while the message is that fame is like a predator to be enjoyed with care. Even the ingredients surround the idea of fame and FAME with a dark and grotesque twist. “Compounded By Lady Gaga / Tears of Belladonna / Crushed Heart of Tiger Orchidea / With a Black Veil of Incense / Pulverized Apricot / And the Combinative Essences of Saffron and Honey Drops / From The Haus Laboratories In Paris” (Lady Gaga FAME)
This listing sounds more of an elaborate magic potion then of perfume. The word “compounded” adds to the grotesque image the perfume creates. Even the package warning signs are grotesque. They feature a claw, a heart in an x, a mouth displaying teeth as if it was growling and a warning not to drink the perfume. The packaging is completed by a skull with a pony tail resembling Gaga’s performance in her music video Born This Way. All these signs appear very glamorous at first, since they are golden, but their message reminds one, in a scary and ugly way, that fame is to be taken with care. Even the flacon of the perfume is a reminder of fame as a predator. The body is clear, displaying the black fluid, but the lock is a golden three fingered claw. This is total deconstruction of fame as dangerous thing, giving the idea that famous people must have a dangerous tie-up with their stardom. To take a mainstream product and turn it into a grotesque comment on fame and the fame whoring system itself is to be considered a campy and deconstructive, hence queer, move. Her commercial film for the fragrance begins with a display of the word “WARNING” and the first sound one hears is painful screaming with images mirrored on a black fluid. The whole five minte long video is music wise (she used parts of her song Scheiße), fashion wise, performance wise and theme wise centered around fetishism, violence against the body and power relations. These are possible side effects of being famous. In the video she apparently kills men, is killed by a huge oiled version of herself and devours dead bodies covered in black blood. Not only does she make references between fame, fetishism and violence but also between fame and horror. She deludes the position of fame to a scenery of pure horror. One might even go as far as to call the film a soft pornographic feature due to its sexually explicit undertone. In a very disturbing and monstrous way she offers a deconstruction of the downsides of fame. Her appearance in the whole video is very androgynous and can be read as prove that fame destroys gender identity. She does all that from the very center of her selling a product that is central to conventional beauty, very campy. But she never would have been able to spread that message if it was not for her fame. The last identity part one can align to Lady Gaga is celebrating and mocking celebrity culture, criticizing fame and deconstructing it while profiting from the possibilities it offers.
15. Lady Gaga – A Multitude of Identity Parts
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta might not be a big shot when it comes to being known. But her artist name, Lady Gaga, and its identity construct are well known all over the planet. As I have analyzed her identity from eight different “angles” a number of identity parts have come up. So now I will lay out the identity of Lady Gaga, as Sen did with his identity in his book Die Identitätsfalle – Warum es keinen Krieg der Kulturen gibt.
Lady Gaga is a musician that uses the techniques of camp, queer and grotesque. She creates new identificatory and dis-identificatory patters through pop music as a complex social practice. She is a feminist, although not a feminist activist per se. Her gender performance is fluid and androgynous, which she accomplishes by the use of e.g. drag. Gaga uses fashion in multiple interpretational possibilities to give statements. She mocks and critiques society’s beauty ideals and blurs the body image. She uses socially constructed body structures to critique this constructionism by society. Lady Gaga is a star queering the relationship between herself and her fans, and is deconstructing the idea of a celebrity as unreachable and effortlessly flawless. She is an LGBT IQA activist and as such she is a vessel for the yearnings of those whom she supports. Gaga is a celebrity that simultaneously celebrates and mocks celebrity culture. She is actively criticizing the fame whoring system, laying bare the workings and dangers of fame and deconstructing them. But she still profits from the possibilities these two offer. She challenges the heteronormative discourse and its social constructs by being at its very heart, hiding all her critique behind the veil of a cultural performance as a whole.
As it is obviously to be seen, the Identity of Lady Gaga is more complex then to be expected. This identity definition above is only to be seen as a quick view into the depths of this identity since the categories of gender, feminism, sex, drag, beauty, fashion, body, fan relations, activism and celebrity status, fame and the fame whoring system are just the most present categories in which one could analyze the singer. This dissection of her identity has shown the potential of queer, grotesque and camp as critique possibilities, political agendas and their aestheticism as a form of art. Sen’s theory of identities as constructs with plural affiliations has been proven true, since none of the identity parts I have presented can be understood as the single identity of Gaga, nor are these parts contradictory. Of course one has to mention that all the possibilities, that the identity of Lady Gaga has, are is limited by the discourse, as is everything else. But she might have been right with her statement that she is not defined by a single look. “The statement is that I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.” (Iredale) If she ultimately will succeed with this idea will be proven by time, but it is clear that Lady Gaga is every icon. Why? Sen said so.
16. List of Works Cited
Annandale, David. Rebelaise Meets Vogue: The Construction of Carnival, Beauty and Grotesque. The Performance Identities of Lady Gaga – Critical Essays. Ed: Richard J. Gray II. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2012. 142-159. Print.
Applause. Dir.: Inez & Vinoodh. 2013. Music Video.
Axenkopf, Volker. Queer In – Gender Out – Ein Ausweg aus dem binären Geschlechterdenken? Hamburg, Diplomatica © Verlag GmbH, 2011. Print
Born This Way. Dir.: Nick Knight. 2011. Music Video.
Butler, Judith. From Interiority to Gender Performatives. Camp: Aesthetics and the Performing Subject – A Reader. Ed: Fabio Cleto. Edinburgh: Edinburg UP, 2008: 361-367. Print.
Cleto, Fabio. Camp: Aesthetics and the Performing Subject – A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburg UP, 2008. Print.
Core, Philip. From Camp: The lie that tells truth. Camp: Aesthetics and the Performing Subject – A Reader. Ed: Fabio Cleto. Edinburgh: Edinburg UP, 2008: 80-86. Print.
Cooper, Sarah. Editor: Peter Collier. Relating to Queer Theory – Rereading Sexual Self-Definition with Irigaray, Kristeva, Witting and Cixous. Bern, Peter Lang, European Academic Publishers, 2000. Print.
Covina, Deborah Caslav. “Abject Criticism”. Genders. Genders 32. 2000.n.pag. Web. Date of Access: 22.08.2013.
Deflem, Mathieu. The Sex of Lady Gaga. The Performance Identities of Lady Gaga – Critical Essays. Ed: Richard J. Gray II. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2012. 19-32. Print.
“discourse”. Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010. Print.
Gaga, Lady. Born This Way. Streamline/Interscope/Kon Live, 2011.CD.
---. “Applause”. ARTPOP. Streamline/Interscope, 2013. MP3.
---. “Born This Way”. Born This Way (Single). Streamline/Interscope/KonLive, 2011.CD.
---. “Bulemia and anorexia since I was 15.” 2011. JPEG Photography.
---. “Scheiße.” Born This Way. Streamline/Interscope/Kon Live, 2011.CD.
Gray II, Richard J. The Performance Identities of Lady Gaga – Critical Essays. Ed: Richard J. Gray II. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2012. Print.
“grotesque.” Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010. Print.
Haus of Yoü ft. Yüyi. Dir.: Inez & Vinoodh. 2011. Fashion Film.
Horn, Katrin. Follow the Glitter Way – Lady Gaga and Camp. The Performance Identities of Lady Gaga – Critical Essays. Ed: Richard J. Gray II. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2012. 85-106. Print.
Humann, Heather Duerre. What a Drag – Lady Gaga, Joe Calderone and the Politics of Representation. The Performance Identities of Lady Gaga – Critical Essays. Ed: Richard J. Gray II. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2012. 74-84. Print.
Iredale, Jessica. Lady Gaga: “I’m Every Icon”. wwd.com. N.p. 28.06.2013. Web. Date of Access: 18.08.2013.
Lady Gaga for Gay Right – Europride Rome 2011. GAYinTelevision, 2011. YouTube. Date of Access: 22.08.2013
Lady Gaga: FAME. Coty. 2012. Perfume.
LADY GAGA FAME – A FILM BY STEVEN KLEIN. Dir.: Steven Klein. 2012. Short Film.
Lady Gaga, Glastobury Festival 2009 2/4. Alex Brown. 2012. YouTube. Date of Access: 22.08.2013
Lady Gaga Presents The Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden. Dir.: Laurieann Gibson. Perf.: Lady Gaga. Mermaid Films/HBO Entertainment/ Media Blaster. 2011. DVD.
Lady Gaga: The Born This Way Ball at Montreal. CraazyUnicorn, 2013. YouTube. Date of Access: 22.08.2013
Lady Gaga VMA’s 2010. Nicky Darkparis, 2011. YouTube. Date of Access: 22.08.2013
Manifesto of Little Monsters – Interlude film for Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball Tour. Dir.: Nick Knight & Ruth Hogben. SHOWstudio. 2011. YouTube. Date of Access: 22.08.2013
“National Equality March Ralley: Lady Gaga speaks”. Inlookingout, 2009. YouTube. Date of Access: 22.08.2013
OPERATION APPLAUSE. Erfaan Arif, 2013. YouTube. Date of Access: 22.08.2013
Sen, Amartya. Die Identitätsfalle – Warum es keinen Krieg der Kulturen gibt. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2007. Print.
Taylor, Jodie. Playing it Queer – Popular Music, Identity and Queer World-making. Bern, Peter Lang, 2012. Print.
Tinkom, Matthew. Warhol’s Camp. Camp: Aesthetics and the Performing Subject – A Reader. Ed: Fabio Cleto. Edinburgh: Edinburg UP, 2008: 344-353. Print
Torrusio, Ann T. The Fame Monster: The Monstrous Construction of Lady Gaga. The Performance Identities of Lady Gaga – Critical Essays. Ed: Richard J. Gray II. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2012. 160-172. Print.
Woolston, Jennifer M. Lady Gaga and the Wolf: “Little Red Riding Hood,” The Fame Monster and Female Sexuality. The Performance Identities of Lady Gaga – Critical Essays. Ed: Richard J. Gray II. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2012. 107-121. Print.
Yoü and I. Dir.: Lauriann Gibson. 2011. Music Video.
@LadyGaga. “Just killed back to back spin classes. Eating a salad dreaming of a cheeseburger #PopSingersDontEat #IWasBornThisWay”. 10.04.2012, 4:18 PM. Tweet. Date of Access: 22.08.2013.
@VEVO. “A unicorn, giant vagina, a meat couch, homoerotic dancing & screaming monsters. U won’t see that sh*t at a Bieber concert. #BornThisWayBall.” 21.01.2013, 6:45 AM. Tweet. Date of Access: 22.08.2013
No comments:
Post a Comment