Lana Del Rey has finally come up again in the media landscape after she has been in hiding for several months, except for here and there announcing the release of "Tropico" And as it finally dropped on December 5th she announced her new album "Ultraviolet".
It all started out with her single "Ride" that then and there I really got into thinking that Lana Del Rey as a figure, character and songtress embodies something purely American: the essence of America itsself (Well, at least of how she imagines it.) "Ride", a melancholic retroperspective on the great American myth, the frontier, the dream and the shattered promise of success, all mixed in with one of Americas central aspects: freedom. Lana seems to be what America has been, is and never will be again. Her oveure is filled with almost mythological refernces to the American dream and icons of Hollywoods golden era. She exploits, praises, criticizes and honores them simultaneously. But other then her contemporaries, like Rihanna and or Lady Gaga, she positions herself very differently towards these icons. For Gaga Marilyn might be and inspirtion, idol and predecessor, but for Lana Marilyn is a contemporary, because she highly references the iconic aura stars as Monroe, Elvis and Bettie Davis create. Lana is Hollywood back in the days, and not big blockbuster L.A.
Remarkable as well is that her work, the work of a true romantic in the literature theory sense of the word, deals with the question of the female identity in this world she creates. The representation of women. the standarts of their perception, American macho culture and masculitity stereotypes as body exposure, romaticizeation and men that are almost animalistic in their gender perception and performance are constants in her work. But as these men she shows are violently animalistic they as well disply a strong protective and very soft side. The roughest men seem the softest, the most innocent and most unexpected in their actions in difference towards our perception and expectations of their bestiality. The constrcut of the classical American man has always been at question and in the world of Lana finally is thrown overboard as they curl her hair in "Ride".
All of this is directly linked to aspects of America and it's possibilities arousing from its mythology. Del Rey's America is not a country, nor the idea of the American Dream, but rather a great concept of existing out of common societies safety net that promises a notion of freedom that is not free in the eyes of Lana. Del Rey's freedom and America is a place where categories of common sense and notion as well as perception are no longer necessary, no longer of any importance. Life is today, and tomorrow is the big unknown to hug as a friend, not to prepare for today and then to face. All this seems pretty romanticized, out of date and like Lana herself is so fake and unknown to most of us that we feel it to be hyper-real.
With all that said we should get on track to "Tropico", Lana's latest effort. Visual wise "Tropico" is Lana Del Rey at her most "Lana-esque" she has ever been. We get super eight camera style 30 minutes of dreaming in smushed and beautifully smeared Technicolor reminescent pictures. Blurred colors and lens flares blend in perfectly to create that atmosphere of loss, happyness, sadness and melancholy at once, so that you ultimately feel: This is the crazy world of Lana Del Rey, and I am a mere spectator. Cause aint no one as melodramatic as her. Cut short we might say that "Tropico" is a story of paradise life, growing bored of it, getting kicked out of it, lhaving to live in the human created hell on earth, the beauty and pain in this hell and the possible slavation and redemption. (Well, plus or minus a joint.)
But the big question raising rather is: What in Lana Del Rey's world and work is real subtext and what is pure fantasy? Is there even a distinction between those two as the realmin which we look at them is so romanticized, so fake an hyper-real that they maybe are the same?
