by Eddie McCaffray & Meghan Vicks
1. Military and Totalitarian Uniforms
Eddie McCaffray: Clearly this is one of the video's most immediately recognizable aesthetics. Dancers throughout sport leather trench-coats with wide lapels, peaked military-style caps, trousers, boots, and assault rifles. Even their hair color and physical appearance are uniform. The significances of this attire are two-fold and mutually-reinforcing. The men (and Lady Gaga) are part of a group - an army - united by bonds forged in conflict, and that results not only in a deep and powerful bond of brother(mostly)hood but also in an intensification of the alienation and ostrification such a militant union might originally have come together to oppose. By finding its voice, by forging a coherent identity, such an army perversely makes itself easier to target. Lady Gaga and her dancers came together to defend themselves and perhaps even fight against a world that rejected and victimized them, but the more effectively they strengthen themselves and their relationship to one another through mutual struggle and hardship (to say nothing of sexy uniforms or powerful weapons), the more they actually make themselves different - and easier to discriminate against.
2. Gay Army
Meghan Vicks: In a recent interview, Gaga explained that the "Alejandro" video is about the “purity of my friendships with my gay friends. And how I’ve been unable to find that with a straight man in my life. It’s a celebration and an admiration of gay love – it confesses my envy of the courage and bravery they require to be together. In the video I’m pining for the love of my gay friends – but they just don’t want me.” One of the main ways that the "gay love" is expressed in the video is through a hyperbolized brotherhood that closely resembles an army, even drawing from the stylings of 1920s Germany. "Gay Love" is therefore militarized, likely out of necessity: society is constantly blacklisting, condemning, and persecuting the gay community. The only way they can exist as a group is to band together and fight back. I think this is why Gaga represents this community as militaristic: they need to be brandishing semi-automatics if they intend to walk around with fishnets and stilettos. They need to be disciplined and trained as a fighting machine if they want to dance together and throw one another on the floor. So we see this in the video: their dancing is simultaneously erotic and combative, combining sexual advances with punches and throws. Their costuming is also both militaristic and feminine and/or sexual: combat boots or stilettos, studded helmets, skin-tight shorts.
However, I can't help but be worried by the implications of this concept, as the costuming and mise-en-scene of the video are highly reminiscent of Weimer Germany, and many films that represent it (think Cabaret, Metropolis). Which makes me wonder: is there something dark and sinister about this community that is born by a survival imperative, by the necessity to combat homophobia and gay discrimination and hatred? Gaga herself feels like they "just don't want me."
Eddie: There's something dark and sinister about every community because every community is driven - hell, even constituted - by its survival imperative. Every organization has bodies in the foundations, including both the contradictions which underlie all ideologies and literal mass graves. That's one of the most basic thrusts of modern and post-modern philosophy: that a society or organization's strength rests in its ability to other, and the application of the ability to other creates and then victimizes its object. Just as modern thinking teaches man that the essence of his humanity is his grammatical existence as a subject, it reveals the horror that comes to life whenever man is moved to the wrong side of the verb. That's what Lady Gaga is lamenting - that this power any society requires in the most fundamental way has created a rift between her and her gay friends. It has made that rift in two ways simultaneously: by othering these people into an enemy to attack and by forcing them to accept and advance that very project of othering in order to survive. That's the truly horrifying and perverse revelation: that even those organizations we admire and we love to be a part of, that give us a beautiful feeling of belonging and comrade-ship, that even those require sacrificial lambs. The Gay Army is a wonderful thing, a shield and a home to those who need one most of all. But like any coherent group, it carries inside its nature the potential for new discrimination.
Fascism gets its name from the Italian fasci, a bundle of sticks embodying how the strength of the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. You'll find a very similar symbol on a US quarter.
3. Reflecting Madonna, but with a twist
Meghan: In many ways "Alejandro" reflects various Madonna videos from the 90s. There seem to be visual quotes and cues at least from "Vogue," "Express Yourself," "Human Nature," and Evita. Gaga's reflecting of Madonna is in keeping with her general aesthetic, which Kathryn Leedom beautifully discusses in the most recent article on Gaga Stigmata. Leedom argues that Gaga's aesthetic is a "reflective performance," and points out that, "Considering the reflective aspects of her fashion and music combined, a certain paradox begins to emerge in which Lady Gaga is extremely unique and yet reminiscent of many various people." In "Alejandro," Gaga resurrects and reflects the Madonna of the 90s, however with one important twist: Gaga doesn't actually bed any of these men. In Madonna's "Express Yourself," whose dance sequence with men push-up-ing and lunging seems to be the predecessor for the choreography in "Alejandro," one of those men leaves his comrades to bed Madonna. In contrast, Gaga can "fake bed" the men, but they won't actually give into her. She remains un-bedded, and they remain a closed group. It doesn't matter what position Gaga tries, and our lithe and acrobatic pop star indeed tries them all - she can't be included in their gay love, and the performance and enactment of them flipping and doggy-thrusting on the bed only enhances the image of them "faking, but not making it."
It's as if Gaga's rewritten "Express Yourself" and "Vogue," but it's not heterosexual sexuality that's fulfilled (as it is especially in "Express Yourself"), no matter how or what position Gaga tries.
4. Religious Imagery
Meghan: A lot of the religious imagery in the video employs the cross or the garments of a nun's habit in such a way that they actually enforce celibacy, or a physical hindering of the body. The cross literally covers Gaga's crotch, as a sort of chastity belt; her hands are tangled in the rosary similar to the way ropes tangle bodies on the bed; and whenever she's draped in a type of nun's habit, her body is mostly immobile. Think of Gaga lying completely still on the bed, standing motionless, or even being tossed around and lifted by the Gay Army as though she's a rag doll - when Gaga doesn't move, or is limp, she's wearing religious clothing. As if her body is literally restricted by the religious insignia. Probably the most beautiful image of this is Gaga swallowing the the rosary, which hinders her voice.
In contrast, Gaga is most mobile when the religious imagery is absent.
Eddie: The rosary not only stifles her voice but invades her body. The religious costume in the video definitely seems to contribute to the themes of totalitarianism. The Gay Army dances, marches, and trains around Gaga as she stands dressed like a nun or bishop. Behind her, images of war and violence play on a giant screen. The fanaticism inspired, extorted, or sought by totalitarian or fascist regimes is often linked to religious fervor. The evocation of such fanaticism emphases not only the militancy of Lady Gaga and her dancers, but the all-powerful influence of the masternarratives which have facilitated and actively created the rift Lady Gaga laments in this video.
6. Gaga's Frozen Heart on a Pillow & The Funeral Procession
Eddie: This is definitely a neat little icon. For a video that is explicitly intended as an expression of love, loss, and insurmountable difference, Lady Gaga being forced to carry her own frozen heart at the head of a funeral procession seems very appropriate. In a real way, this video is one of mourning for a lost, impossible closeness. It also reinforces the idea that man is an artificial, porous creation of his own imagining, sustained by his inventions and his pretense far more essentially than by anything "natural" or immanent. He might excise this or that problematic organ (I'm looking at you, the appendix*), modify himself with drugs, or even survive otherwise-mortal wounds.
Meghan: I think it's also significant that the shot of the frozen heart is filmed in such a way as to position the heart where Gaga's crotch should be. As if to reinforce that the type of love she's burying is sexual love for Alejandro.
7. Cyborgs
Eddie: There's a lot of cyborg imagery in the video, mainly puppet strings and gigantic metal frames attached to human bodies in disturbing fashion. It is possible to imagine optimistic - even beautiful - technological modifications to the human body. But the intersection of machines and bodies taking place in this video is intended to be as disturbing and worrisome as possible. Even beyond this basic pessimism, all the cyborg implants and machines revolve around control and restraint. This fear, that the progress of civilization and technology will only provide more and more powerful means to curb the freedoms it supposedly engenders, is embodied by the puppet strings attached to limbs and eye-lids and by huge metal braces bolted directly into human flesh. The effects of these devices are not left to the the imagination either: many scenes involve robotic dancing or marching, while Lady Gaga and others lie inert under their harsh nylon strings. This also serves to further reveal the powerful hand modern society and technology have in creating people on an individual and very real level. The connection that Lady Gaga feels is impossible for her to share with her gay friends - the subject of the video - is one that has been cut off by the strict genders created by modern discursive power, and this cyborg imagery is just another example of that. If man's inventions are artificial, than man is himself artificial. He makes himself.
Meghan Vicks: In a recent interview, Gaga explained that the "Alejandro" video is about the “purity of my friendships with my gay friends. And how I’ve been unable to find that with a straight man in my life. It’s a celebration and an admiration of gay love – it confesses my envy of the courage and bravery they require to be together. In the video I’m pining for the love of my gay friends – but they just don’t want me.” One of the main ways that the "gay love" is expressed in the video is through a hyperbolized brotherhood that closely resembles an army, even drawing from the stylings of 1920s Germany. "Gay Love" is therefore militarized, likely out of necessity: society is constantly blacklisting, condemning, and persecuting the gay community. The only way they can exist as a group is to band together and fight back. I think this is why Gaga represents this community as militaristic: they need to be brandishing semi-automatics if they intend to walk around with fishnets and stilettos. They need to be disciplined and trained as a fighting machine if they want to dance together and throw one another on the floor. So we see this in the video: their dancing is simultaneously erotic and combative, combining sexual advances with punches and throws. Their costuming is also both militaristic and feminine and/or sexual: combat boots or stilettos, studded helmets, skin-tight shorts.
However, I can't help but be worried by the implications of this concept, as the costuming and mise-en-scene of the video are highly reminiscent of Weimer Germany, and many films that represent it (think Cabaret, Metropolis). Which makes me wonder: is there something dark and sinister about this community that is born by a survival imperative, by the necessity to combat homophobia and gay discrimination and hatred? Gaga herself feels like they "just don't want me."
Eddie: There's something dark and sinister about every community because every community is driven - hell, even constituted - by its survival imperative. Every organization has bodies in the foundations, including both the contradictions which underlie all ideologies and literal mass graves. That's one of the most basic thrusts of modern and post-modern philosophy: that a society or organization's strength rests in its ability to other, and the application of the ability to other creates and then victimizes its object. Just as modern thinking teaches man that the essence of his humanity is his grammatical existence as a subject, it reveals the horror that comes to life whenever man is moved to the wrong side of the verb. That's what Lady Gaga is lamenting - that this power any society requires in the most fundamental way has created a rift between her and her gay friends. It has made that rift in two ways simultaneously: by othering these people into an enemy to attack and by forcing them to accept and advance that very project of othering in order to survive. That's the truly horrifying and perverse revelation: that even those organizations we admire and we love to be a part of, that give us a beautiful feeling of belonging and comrade-ship, that even those require sacrificial lambs. The Gay Army is a wonderful thing, a shield and a home to those who need one most of all. But like any coherent group, it carries inside its nature the potential for new discrimination.
Fascism gets its name from the Italian fasci, a bundle of sticks embodying how the strength of the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. You'll find a very similar symbol on a US quarter.
3. Reflecting Madonna, but with a twist
Meghan: In many ways "Alejandro" reflects various Madonna videos from the 90s. There seem to be visual quotes and cues at least from "Vogue," "Express Yourself," "Human Nature," and Evita. Gaga's reflecting of Madonna is in keeping with her general aesthetic, which Kathryn Leedom beautifully discusses in the most recent article on Gaga Stigmata. Leedom argues that Gaga's aesthetic is a "reflective performance," and points out that, "Considering the reflective aspects of her fashion and music combined, a certain paradox begins to emerge in which Lady Gaga is extremely unique and yet reminiscent of many various people." In "Alejandro," Gaga resurrects and reflects the Madonna of the 90s, however with one important twist: Gaga doesn't actually bed any of these men. In Madonna's "Express Yourself," whose dance sequence with men push-up-ing and lunging seems to be the predecessor for the choreography in "Alejandro," one of those men leaves his comrades to bed Madonna. In contrast, Gaga can "fake bed" the men, but they won't actually give into her. She remains un-bedded, and they remain a closed group. It doesn't matter what position Gaga tries, and our lithe and acrobatic pop star indeed tries them all - she can't be included in their gay love, and the performance and enactment of them flipping and doggy-thrusting on the bed only enhances the image of them "faking, but not making it."
It's as if Gaga's rewritten "Express Yourself" and "Vogue," but it's not heterosexual sexuality that's fulfilled (as it is especially in "Express Yourself"), no matter how or what position Gaga tries.
4. Religious Imagery
Meghan: A lot of the religious imagery in the video employs the cross or the garments of a nun's habit in such a way that they actually enforce celibacy, or a physical hindering of the body. The cross literally covers Gaga's crotch, as a sort of chastity belt; her hands are tangled in the rosary similar to the way ropes tangle bodies on the bed; and whenever she's draped in a type of nun's habit, her body is mostly immobile. Think of Gaga lying completely still on the bed, standing motionless, or even being tossed around and lifted by the Gay Army as though she's a rag doll - when Gaga doesn't move, or is limp, she's wearing religious clothing. As if her body is literally restricted by the religious insignia. Probably the most beautiful image of this is Gaga swallowing the the rosary, which hinders her voice.
In contrast, Gaga is most mobile when the religious imagery is absent.
Eddie: The rosary not only stifles her voice but invades her body. The religious costume in the video definitely seems to contribute to the themes of totalitarianism. The Gay Army dances, marches, and trains around Gaga as she stands dressed like a nun or bishop. Behind her, images of war and violence play on a giant screen. The fanaticism inspired, extorted, or sought by totalitarian or fascist regimes is often linked to religious fervor. The evocation of such fanaticism emphases not only the militancy of Lady Gaga and her dancers, but the all-powerful influence of the masternarratives which have facilitated and actively created the rift Lady Gaga laments in this video.
6. Gaga's Frozen Heart on a Pillow & The Funeral Procession
Eddie: This is definitely a neat little icon. For a video that is explicitly intended as an expression of love, loss, and insurmountable difference, Lady Gaga being forced to carry her own frozen heart at the head of a funeral procession seems very appropriate. In a real way, this video is one of mourning for a lost, impossible closeness. It also reinforces the idea that man is an artificial, porous creation of his own imagining, sustained by his inventions and his pretense far more essentially than by anything "natural" or immanent. He might excise this or that problematic organ (I'm looking at you, the appendix*), modify himself with drugs, or even survive otherwise-mortal wounds.
Meghan: I think it's also significant that the shot of the frozen heart is filmed in such a way as to position the heart where Gaga's crotch should be. As if to reinforce that the type of love she's burying is sexual love for Alejandro.
7. Cyborgs
Eddie: There's a lot of cyborg imagery in the video, mainly puppet strings and gigantic metal frames attached to human bodies in disturbing fashion. It is possible to imagine optimistic - even beautiful - technological modifications to the human body. But the intersection of machines and bodies taking place in this video is intended to be as disturbing and worrisome as possible. Even beyond this basic pessimism, all the cyborg implants and machines revolve around control and restraint. This fear, that the progress of civilization and technology will only provide more and more powerful means to curb the freedoms it supposedly engenders, is embodied by the puppet strings attached to limbs and eye-lids and by huge metal braces bolted directly into human flesh. The effects of these devices are not left to the the imagination either: many scenes involve robotic dancing or marching, while Lady Gaga and others lie inert under their harsh nylon strings. This also serves to further reveal the powerful hand modern society and technology have in creating people on an individual and very real level. The connection that Lady Gaga feels is impossible for her to share with her gay friends - the subject of the video - is one that has been cut off by the strict genders created by modern discursive power, and this cyborg imagery is just another example of that. If man's inventions are artificial, than man is himself artificial. He makes himself.
8. Gun Bra
Meghan: Gaga's bra that not only lifts, but also functions as two guns, is a fashionable declaration of Gaga's enlisting in the gay army as a woman; she's not fighting for her own rights, but for the rights of the gay community. She turns her feminine assets into a weapon for their cause. This multitasking brassiere is moreover a descendant of Madonna's famous cone bra, which was widely understood as an "in-your-face" (literally!) symbol of her feminine pride and power. Gaga adopts Madonna's famous symbol of feminine pride, and refashions it into a feminine weapon fighting alongside the gay community.
Eddie: Also, to get a little symbolic with it, Lady Gaga is playing with androgyny again. She stuck big phalluses on her breasts. Bam.
Meghan: So her boobs are now two dicks. Upside-down, trickster aesthetic again. To put it crudely, it's like finding an ass where a mouth should be - very carnivalesque. Gaga is once again challenging strict binary oppositions, confusing the borders that construct our knowable world.
Other things to discuss:
- Snow Imagery: What's the point of putting snow in the video? A sort of cold war, or dystopian aesthetic?
- Gaga's face melts away at the end - Why?
- Contrast between the song (very summery, warm, fun, sun-soaked Mexico) and the video (incredibly dark, cold, dreary, perhaps German).
- Stonewall Riots? Any connection?
- Connections to earlier videos? Or important contrasts? Comparisons?
*This article's appendix has been removed.
Dear Readers! Please leave your comments and your own interpretations, thoughts about the video, questions, things we left out, etc. Feel free to leave links to your own reviews of the video as well. Let's make a discussion, Little Monsters!
i am so glad there's already a post about this! one thing i'd like to throw in, re: yr questions at the end, is that i don't think the song is happy/summery at all. it does have that poppy ace of base-type melody, but the lyrics are really quite sad and expressing ideas of loss/fear: "she's not broken/she's just a baby/but her boyfriend's like a dad" being a specific example. and something in gaga's voice- there is this pining and wanting and confusion (wanting/not wanting/holding onto something as a type of avoidance) throughout. so it does make sense to me that the video is dark and heavy as well, though, as always, i am surprised (& excited) by the direction she took that heaviness. xo
ReplyDeleteWhat's up with race and ethnicity in this video? I'm trying to understand the song and her use of Latino names and appropriation of Spanish words. Would love thoughts on that.
ReplyDeletein the recent interview with larry king gaga was talking about the telephone spoof soldiers in iraq made and she said she loved the video but was hesitant to post the video on twitter to her fans because of the reaction some other soldiers might have because of it. with the military imagery she addressed the issue she was having before and made an army of all gay men. and she just said "Men are men, are men. A soldier is a soldier"
ReplyDelete(not exactly an analysis just something to point out)
My impressions took me in a very different direction: I started seeing more references to the Holocaust, and the Church's silent complicity with it. I associated the strange contraptions in the beginning of the video with the star of David, and their mechanical/robotic movements as a reference to Nazi military's obsession with perfection and uniformity.
ReplyDeleteI'm still working on using this impression to create a cohesive narrative (or rather as a convergence of several narratives) for the video, but one other thing that really struck me were the fishnets. In "Telephone" we see the prisoners in bikinis and fishnets; but here we see the guards and military themselves in bikinis and fishnets, suggesting that soldiers were 'perpetrators' of the very 'crimes' that victims of the Holocaust were imprisoned of (homosexuality, for one).
Following above comment, might be interesting to draw references to the film "The Night Porter" starring Charlotte Rampling.
ReplyDeleteto what you said about Weimer Germany movies such as cabaret, gagas outfit and dancing starting around 5:38 reminded me a lot of liza minnelli in cabaret.
ReplyDeleteim kind of confused by the lyrics of the song and the actual video, they seem to contradict. the lyrics seem to be about a boy, or boys, fawning over her and she wants them to go away. in the video she is fawning over the gay men and they want her to go away.
what makes him so special?
ReplyDeletehttp://gagadaily.com/photos/displayimage.php?album=110&pos=297
One of the first things I noticed after watching this video was the complete (and outstandingly eerie) lack of humor. In each of her previous videos Gaga has incorporated bits of humor; she humps blow-up pool toys in Just Dance, falls over drunk in Beautiful, Dirty, Rich, strikes a "fuck you" mug-shot pose in Paparazzi and gives prison guards the "A-Ok" and a Michael Jackson shuffle while being bailed out of prison in Telephone. Instead of evoking laughter in Alejandro she evokes gasps and open-mouthed (perhaps horrified) stares from viewers. She is, and always has been, a fervent advocate for gay rights and I think the complete absence of humor in Alejandro speaks volumes about her deep and undying dedication to the issue.
ReplyDeleteThe juxtaposition of the "light bodied" song and incredibly "heavy bodied" video is GENIUS and contributes amazingly to the overall shock value. Also, I know Gaga is a big fan of Inglorious Basterds. Perhaps this explains some of the German references? More Tarantino influence like we saw in Telephone?
Once again, great review! I so enjoy reading and participating in these discussions.
Great insight.Ironic.I feel so alone being bi sexual..no support, i feel like an outsider,,like a freak. The fourth paragraph explains how I feel.My gay friends cannot accept me for who I am.Some hate me.Eddie writes exactly how the lesbian/gay community treat bi sexuals like me..this paragraph brings to light a quiet/dark shame some of us feel.Gay/Lesbian community creates the application to"the other" (bi sexuals) and then victimizes its object.I experienced this myself personally.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI think Gaga's tweet about "Men are men, are men. A soldier is a soldier." Is a blatant objection to DADT. The sexual orientation of a soldier does not affect his/her ability to fight for freedom.
ReplyDeleteA person on IMDb gave a good interpretation of this video
ReplyDeleteFirst, it's important to recognize three different GaGas as three different people. Three different women.
-The Queen/Political figurehead (State)
-The Religious Official (Church)
-The GaGa wearing the black pants and shirt ~normal GaGa~ (Society)
The video starts off in a room of half clothed men. As explained by Gaga in interviews, the men are a tribute to homosexuality and the gay community. So, it's safe to say that the men symbolize homosexuality/the gay community.
The men begin some sort of military march...or a rebellion.
The state Gaga is seen wearing two black shades over her eyes. Representing the government's blindness to the rights of gays. Yet, she still mourns over gays and attends one's funeral...thus representing the injustice/hypocrasy of the government. Things like, "You can get married...but you really can't..." type of philosophy...
Next, we see her watching the chaos she has begun.
Next, we see the religious one saying, "STOP PLEASE!"
As in reference to stop fighting. Start peace. She then eats a crucifix. The symbolism.
The church is eating themselves. They're killing themselves. By being so intollerant, they are damaging their own public image and killing their tradition. They're hypocrytes. The church is destroying itself. Destroung its own morality.
We see another Gaga (same as the church)...strapping men to their beds and treating them like animals. Saying about the church? They treat the gays like animals.
Now this part may be more of a stretch, but, stay with me. Gaga is seen getting frisky with the gays. This could possibly reference the hypocrasy of the church, that shuns homosexuals, yet still has members who secretly engage in homosexual activity.
The final Gaga is the official religious one. Possibly representing the Pope or Catholicism (Gaga was born & raised a Catholic and is angry at the Church's intollerance of gays).
We transition to the normal clothes GaGa (society).
Who fights and dances among her gays. She represents the reformed society. The new generation...accepting, brave, and willing to fight along side gays for their rights.
In the end, the gays swarm Religion and defeat her. They cause her to burn. They overpower her. Gaga is expressing hopes that one day, the gay community will overpower the words of the church and gain their rights. In turn, the church is killing itself by depriving gays of their rights and being intollerant.
Other symbolism:
-Bowl Cuts
They represent the Natives of South America (who adorned the bowl cut).
They were oppressed and abused by the Christian missionaries (Religion!) who ventured to SAMERICA.
Thus, one day the underdogs will in turn rebel unless things change.
-Crucifix
Represents the church and the morality it stresses. Gaga eats it...the church is eating/killing its own goodness. They're killing themselves.
-Black shades
Politics is wearing black curtain like shades over her eyes, represting the government's blindness to the gay community.
Note: NO product placement in this video, unlike Telephone. She really was trying to make a statement with the product placement in Telephone.
ReplyDeleteThis is the first video by Lady Gaga that lacks a dog, and as with all art, it is as much what is not there as what is there. Dogs are obvious symbols of loyalty, protection, and friendship and the glaring aspect of a dog (even in the case of military attack dogs) represents an under-surface betrayal theme for the video.
ReplyDeleteAt the beginning, Gaga is sitting in a monarchical pose reminiscent of Bad Romance while she watches men dance for her. By the end though, she is the one whose agency is being controlled by these same men. Betrayal seems to be a heavy part of the theme: Gaga tries to join the Gay Army and makes her boobs into guns, but she knows that she will never be REALLY, fully accepted. She knows she is an outsider to the group, she gives everything and is denied at the end when she lies in bed with the mystery man with a gun over his crotch, trapped in a chaste nun's habit, untouched.
She melts away, I think, because it shows her death after being denied. She dies without ever truly being part of the Gay Army, without ever having her love and passion truly reciprocated.
I watched the video several times earlier today, and I must say I took a different approach to understanding it. As I said to Dewj as we watched it, I saw it as a video of signifiers alone, as it was left to you to "bring your own text." That's been my perspective on what happens in Alejandro.
ReplyDeleteI definitely can see what Gaga may have been going for with her ideas about the gay community and her relationship with her gay friends, but it's honestly not an interpretation I am entirely comfortable with. To me, it just seems a little too ... simple I guess I'd say, to sum something like Alejandro up as being about anything. Once you have any sort of interpretative framework like that, it just seems like you've limited yourself to a narrow band of what strikes me as an incredible bit of art that offers an engaging depth of meanings.
I really don't want to say anything about what all you've outlined here, because it's obvious a lot of thought has gone into it, and I think insofar as Alejandro is about something, Lady Gaga's statements about her intent offer a good framework to try to make sense of the images. My personal perspective just did not lean toward trying to find any sort of narrative logic or cultural message to the video, and I ended up reveling in the incredible imagery of the video and trying to trace the full breadth of the Madonna homage that permeated the whole thing.
For me, Alejandro wasn't about trying to say anything, but creating an evocative text that presented a strong sense of feeling. I was reading about Un Chien Andalou again the other night, and I think that Alejandro may succeed in similar ways. Both are extremely oneiric, and I think recognizing the underlying dream-logic is likely key to coming away with anything better than confusion. If you go into Un Chien Andalou looking for a solid narrative thread, you will only find it maddening. But even if you cannot understand in any waking-logic, literal sense what is "happening," you still know what Un Chien Andalou is "about." The emotional resonance of the work is just so perfectly expressed that, like coming out of a bad dream you can't even remember, you find yourself experiencing emotions you can't possibly explain.
That, to me, is what Alejandro is. I just cannot bring myself to look at it and say "this is about gay men," even if that may be a very large and important component, because like a dream there is just so much going on that seems to have no simple and literal interpretation but which still moves us in profound ways. I just can't express that, and any attempts to peel away the layers of it and try and figure out what makes it tick, to me that just threatens to ruin my relationship with the video.
The other major point of comparison for me is to Mulholland Drive, another film which I feel is so powerful because it is inscrutable. Any attempt to understand it, to parse it out, to approach it the same way we approach other films, to me that just dilutes it. The leading interpretation I have seen to explain Mulholland Drive is the theory that the first half of the film is all a dream. It's a perspective that certainly makes a fair amount of sense, but I feel it also cheapens the film, not only because it evokes such a hackneyed device, but also because it inherently makes the judgement that one half of the fill is "real" and another is not.
I am going to go ahead and end this comment, because I am beginning to suspect I no longer know exactly what point I was trying to make, and I think that if I do not cut myself off I could go on like this indefinitely. This seems appropriate, however. I cannot wholly articulate what it is that Alejandro makes me feel, all I am left with is a large number of referents and the memories of other works that have similarly so evocatively inscrutable.
That's definitely a response to various art I've had before. "Evocatively" and "inscrutable" are just the words I'd use - I can't believe I haven't used them when talking about this before, as a matter of fact. If you've ever heard me mumble incoherently about something being a "tone poem" (and if anyone has, it's you), this is what I was trying to get at.
ReplyDeleteI was actually thinking about all the authorial intent talk that came after the "Telephone" pieces, and it made me feel a little odd to base this entry so much on a comment from Lady Gaga after arguing so voraciously that authorial intent wasn't definitive. But it IS something one can use to read a text. One tool among many. Because a text is by nature infinitely complex, redundant, ambiguous, multi-vocal, and redundant, no reading will ever be the final explanatory or aesthetic word.
This outlook, which engenders not only both our responses to "Alejandro" on their own but also side-by-side, encourages creativity in two ways. The first is simply that: there is space for multiple readings, even mutually contradictory ones (in this case, our reading and your anti-reading). The second is more exciting, both because it's more active and because it provides an exciting opportunity to explain why, despite how many times in the past I've taken just your position against someone in my current one, in this case I've done the opposite of that!
God that was confusing. Moving along!
We have this idea that the meaning of a text is just "there", inert, limp, flaccid, like some natural resources that just has to be surveyed and mined. That's why a reading seems too "simple" or too rigid, because we've all been taught that the "right" interpretation will have this magical feeling of wholeness. Sorry kids, it won't. That's the price for postmodern liberation: you have to build your own reading, and like it because it's yours.
The main implication of this is that one can produce a reading. I've recently come to think that adopting a reading BEFORE you find it convincing is an incredibly productive way to think and learn and read and shit. Engaging with a text, fighting with it, stretching it, stretching your reading, stretching your thinking, that's how you really learn. It's like working out. Working out is tearing your muscles, so your body secretes a poison to make you stop. But people don't stop, because despite the fact that WORKING OUT IS TEARING YOUR MUSCLES SO YOUR BODY SECRETES A POISON TO MAKE YOU STOP people belief this is a healthy thing to do. I haven't bought that yet, but I'm sure convinced by my very similar idea of healthy thinking!
Thanks your your sweet comment Nick. I miss you!
I have the say that the first thing that I thought of when watching this video was Cavani's Night Porter (1974).
ReplyDeleteIndeed, it was the only thing I could think of while watching it for the first time. Lady Gaga has referenced Night Porter before (LoveGame's last costume) and the dance sequence in the beds seems entirely drawn from the Night Porter. If one removes the latin bits from the song itself, it could easily be applied to the internal struggle of Charlotte Rampling (Atherton).
i'm actually considering submitting an essay in more detail about this, but i wanted to raise the point that this is the first video since paparazzi that does not feature the trademark use of poison. the only image of consumption is the swallowing of the rosary. upon swallowing the rosary, gaga presumably dies. maybe this is an obvious suggestion, but the symbolic incorporation of religion (and, specifically, the central hegemonic need to exercise power and authority) causes her death. unlike her personae in past videos, she is not immune to its effects.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteJust to add to the homage to Tarantino. At the end where Gaga's face disintegrates mirrors the end of Inglorious Basterds where the film house is burned down and the screen burns with the woman's face projected on it. In the movie, the Nazis are being burned and in Alejandro religion is being burned...both very powerful oppressors.
ReplyDelete~Alejandro is a metaphor for all the gay men in the world Who have to act straight for the nazis and catholics as they detest it.
ReplyDelete~The Beds are a metaphor for their world, their lives and how they are constricted to it.
~The military men represent all the gays, transgendered and Bisexuals who are 'expected' to be agressive and masculine completely.
~Nazism and Catholic Imagery is shown because Gays are not appreciated by any 1 of them. They both think Homosexuals are a shame to mankind.
~Gaga is not the focus of the video.Shes a medium which shows how religion and beliefs can affect the life of gays.
~Gaga is simply a symbol for how conflicting religion becomes when a gay man has to emotionally deal with accepting that he’s ‘gay’ when his religion tells him that it’s a sin.
~This also shows all the gays and transgendered can freely show their true self (not being aggressive and masculine) @ night which explains the grayscale clips here and there.
~ A few scenes are increasingly sexual in order to show the massive, heated underlying sexual conflict that gay men experience within themselves.
~The ‘nazi costumes’ are symbols that we are so bound to fulfill gender roles assigned by society to the point where we are psychologically placed into internment camps.
~Gaga is a symbol of how mainstream Christianity and Catholicism religions see the LGBT community.
~The ‘funeral’ represents the LGBT community ‘killing’ those mainstream biased gender roles.
~The continuous emphasis on showing that one man as ‘Alejandro’ with a scene of a riot playing behind him represents how, despite his throbbing sexuality – he must fulfill his role as a ‘man’ by staying silent as he listens to riots break out surrounding the tension around his sexuality.
My Rating for the video
Storyline
3.5/5
Choreography
4/5
Costumes
4/5
The Act
4/5
The Song (the video version)
4/5
The Dancers
4/5
Final Rating: 3.8 stars
Thanks for this preliminary discussion. I played with some of these ideas in my own commentary, here: http://winterdryad.blogspot.com/2010/06/alejandro-alterior-relations.html
ReplyDeleteHopefully this will add to the conversation!
One thing I hadn't seen ANYWHERE mentioned until sara n almost touched on it is Aztec imagery.
ReplyDeleteYes, Aztec - put together the connections with Mexico/Alejandro, the bowl haircuts (some people have just connected the haircuts with the director's work, but it's more than a cheap self-copy I think), the body-less heart, the religious (really, specifically Catholic) oppression elements, and finally the opening soundstage, whose angles seem to heavily recall, to me, the playing field of the Mesoamerican ballgame.
I think we see Lady Gaga relating sadomasochistic sex with Aztec-fascist Catholic imagery, turning herself into a sort of Maleficent dirty-ice cyborg queen, and both her breasts and vulva her are turned into phalluses (the guns, the red cross).
Trying to put this together, I think the video sees the coldness of pure desire (the men tossing her around) and technology (the film burning at the end, the cyborg glasses, the "pixel-ish" images near the end) killing the innocence of love (see the man with the pistol between his legs next to Gaga like a nun in red - and NOT like a priest/pope in the other religious imagery) via the Aztec-Nazi-Catholic mode of violence.
Or maybe not. At any rate, I just wanted to say two things: notice the Aztec imagery, and also 4:39-4:42 - wow!
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ReplyDelete(BTW, "her vulva," not "vulva her". Also, while I think this is an really evocative video, I gape that so much went into what I think is a rather mediocre song, especially in comparison to "Bad Romance." It's growing on me, though... and anyway, I've never been a huge fan of her music, I merely saw the video and wanted to comment somewhere intelligently.
ReplyDeleteAnd whatever she says -- and while I'm sure she is genuinely grateful for support from the gay community -- I think any comment she makes saying that this video is "about" homosexuality or gay rights or something similar in particular is BS. Either that, or she thinks S&M = queer = gay, which would a sign of really simplistic or even "heterocentrist" thinking.)
Apparently, the last shot of her laying dead on the bed with the man holding the gun is taken from the closing shot of the film "Two Lane Blacktop."
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen the film, but was wondering if anyone else has and if they can make any connections with themes in the film and themes in Alejandro?
Snow falls, it identifies winter, the end, the final season of the cycle and indeed Alejandro is the final video of the Fame trilogy. Maybe this is even the last video from the Fame Monster CD
ReplyDeleteLooking through black lace, a symbol of mourning, a pessimistic view, alternatively opening and closing the optics, looking at reality from different perspectives, finally looking with both green eyes uncovered, seeing things as they are, without the black lace
Winter is time of rest, preparation and reflection, all done in here, Gaga observes her army, as a queen of the damned (crown and vampire teeth), a trainer, a general, strategist (the pipe), she is thinking up new projects, strategies …
Soldiers in the first marching scene wear frame objects, a Star of David, triangles, circles (of barbed wire, the thorn crown?) all signs of differentiation and suffering carried proudly and also burdening the soldier.
The references to gay culture are strong, she gives a drag performance, being the drag king Bono/Falco at the club where the officers hang out. Even thou the video references gays, it may be a broader representation of all her little monsters, who are minorities, the damned, freaks.
She is an albino here, all white, so different, from a different place, she can teach gays how to fight, brings them a different element, a ray of white, light, hope as opposed to their darkness. She is observing her army in midst of training, this will make them stronger, she leads them in her flamenco steps, followed by marching soldiers in runway, extremely feminine fashion.
Scene in the bed, all strings, may be the norms of society, she may be the bride of the man, who will never sleep with her, and she'll remain a nun, protecting her gay husband (he, with the golden gun as a symbol of glorification and praise for the phallus) by their fake marriage. The helmet is protection, advocacy of safe sex maybe?
The real heart can act as a symbol of physical, bodily, love that she is buried, her decision to stay in celibacy, it’s a sacrifice of her heart for a higher purpose
In the group scenes she offers herself as the sacrifice, she is staying single to devote time to her cause, she bares her breast, gives her all. She is the role model, the leader, the sacrifice.
In the bed she prays to be freed from the constrains, finally she is. The picture melts, as opposed to all the snow and winter, so this is the end, new beginnings await, she is free again.
What does this mean? Should all the frozen things melt? Should old grudges, paradigms burn away? Should the gay community free themselves from the past? Will she no longer be the silent virgin wife? Will she stop fighting? In Telephone she freed the women, in Alejandro she works with gay men, who will she free next? Will she look for other monsters to protect and fight for?
I sort of imagined that Gaga's face melting away is a statement about being a celebrity and supporting a cause. Often, celebrities are attached to some sort of cause that they feel their FAME can have some impact on. We get so caught up in the celebrity that we lose sight of the cause itself. I think Gaga may be trying to say that this fight...this message is not about Gaga herself, it's about the cause.
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw the first screencap here in the video I thought it looked like GaGa had her chest strapped down and the red stripe on her cross looked phallic, as if after longingly watching the men touching each other from her window, she had to don masculine attire to be exalted by them.
ReplyDeletei just thought it would be relevant to note that judging the song to be warm and summery is very subjective. reviewers have called it 'melancholy' and it should also be noted that it is written in a minor (as opposed to a major) key. i am sure some people hear a warm, summery song, but many others hear something quite cold and wistful.
ReplyDeleteA few random thoughts:
ReplyDelete- On the contrast between the light lyrics vs. dark video alluded to above: There seems to be an arc to the story about gay liberation/shattering the closet that provides a redemptive value. I think the turning point happens when she bares the gun-bra and then you see fires blazing in an urban setting and a stern/defiant man standing in the fore(dramatized Stonewall allusion)- notice once she takes to the mic to sing there are flashbacks of scenes that have already taken place.
- Up until that point, the gay men's sexuality is controlled and channeled into aggressive military posturing (start of the video) and the closest they come to touching each others nakedness can only take place under the guise of wrestling or implied violence.
- The beds the men are chained to are not just what you find in military barracks but also what you find in asylums (homosexuality being treated as a mental disorder well into the 1960s). When she is not symbolically dominating him, there are attempts by the man to ravage her, but the look on his face and body language is off and out of sync with her.
- Once the turning point happens, you get the first glimpse of the men being openly gay (a close up of a hand caressing another man's chest)
- Gaga (in the nun's/monk's outfit) being tossed around by the men is both a rejection of heterosexual norm that was imposed on them earlier and the religious system that imposed this order in the first place.
-During this dance and as she stripped, Gaga as the female still has a role in the gay community, but now as a hag rather than a forced wife. This leads to the death and disintegration of the forced wife archtype in the last scene
- If the above is true, the funeral taking place seems to stand for both the symbolic death and thwarting of gay love as well as the physical and literal death wrought by the AIDS epidemic during those decades.
- As she leads the funeral procession, Is Gaga as the forced wife mourning the death of her beloved gay man, but tragically unaware in her own complicity?
I am so happy to see this critical discussion and deconstruction of Alejandro up so quickly. And I love some of the points which have been made / observed, especially on the military nature which the gay community must, at times, embody. However, I think it is also important to point out that, historically, fighting units and army bands have always been hot-beds (so-to-say) for intense male bonding. When your life depends upon the man next to you, a tremendous amount of trust is placed upon that person. Before sexuality and certain sex acts became stigmatized, it would not be hard to imagine men engaging in sexual acts which, again, involve immense levels of trust. This type of relationship goes back to the Spartans, and spans the globe to Japan and Samurai culture.
ReplyDeleteI do believe I remember reading / hearing in a recent interview, GaGa explaining a bit more about Alejandro. Not only is the video about her love for the gay community, but also a true expression of herself, her heart. I find this relative in two instances during the video. Perhaps the most emblematic is GaGa caring her (or is it Alejandro’s? there seems to be an ‘A’ on it) own heart in the funeral precession (foreshadowing the final scene). GaGa is constantly saying in interviews that she has never been truly in love, and that she does not want it. What is the quote? “My music is never gonna wake up one day and leave me.” She has cast love aside. She has cast aside her heart.
I think this “true expression of the self” is also helpful in understanding some parts of the cyborg imagery, which we see. I’ve often read critics complain about her…detached-ness. She sings about sex, and drugs, and fame…but very little about love. And very often, even though she has a very fine singing voice, she uses autotune to give an almost robotic quality to her lyrics. She is the heartless, vampire, ice-queen. She watches her lovely and loyal subjects dance to her music, make love to her music, and praise her unendingly. And yet she must stay separate, she must maintain her mystery. Could this be symbolic of those eye-pieces attached to her head wear?
Lastly, before I turn to other points, I think this “expression of self” may also be why there are no ad-placements in this video. If anything, GaGa is the ad-placement, and through her placement, she endorses the gay community.
(Part 1)
~Sparrow
(Part 2)
ReplyDeleteThere has been a lot of talk about the iconographic military representations, but I think the mark has been missed (or at least I think is has been) on the importance of the bowl-cuts. I read this, in line with the nun-outfit and priestess robes, as iconographic representations of monks. This is a religious monastery, in which sex is one of the primary rites. There are elements of ritual and sacred space within the male dancers choreography. When they grab each other by the arms and turn around in a circle, and afterwards engage in combat. Again, there is something historically significant about this I find. Something about the competition and battle seems to bring men together.
Also, and I’m surprised this was missed, but while the cross may be covering her private parts, it has been inverted, and now resembles a rather large phallus. This, again, is poking fun at the idea of GaGa having a penis. But I think it is also emblematic of worship of the phallus that occurs within gay culture. And yet, also, it is GaGa saying “if only I had a penis, they would love me.”
However, it is GaGa who occupies the place as “High Priestess” of the ceremony. She stands center in the circle, she wears the robes, and she is the one whom becomes the sexual object at the end. her final fantasy finally fulfilled, but only within the time and space of the ritual, and only when it looks like she has a big dick.
I don’t think GaGa was slamming the Catholic Church in this video. GaGa has studied art history, and is well versed in the power of icons and symbols. That is the reason she’s using these symbols, because of the meanings attached to them, and the resonance they give the piece. The director said that they focused less on the story, and more on powerful, iconic, images.
Love the site; hope to contribute one day!!!!
~Sparrow
Oh, and one last thing.
ReplyDeleteIn her last 3 music video, GaGa has killed other people / boyfriends.
This time, she takes her own life.
Is there a meaning to this?
Love love love that y'all are so on top of this already. I think this is one of the sharpest questions you posed, Meghan:
ReplyDeleteIs there something dark and sinister about this community that is born by a survival imperative, by the necessity to combat homophobia and gay discrimination and hatred? Gaga herself feels like they "just don't want me."
This video is extremely dark, obviously. It is cold (the use of snow probably symbolizing the frigid tundra that is unrequited love) and metallic and militaristic and you can almost hear how hollow everything is. I sort of imagine stepping into a church constructed entirely of stone - if you yell or sing a note, it echoes back at you forever. It's sort of comforting, but it's also eerie, and disconcerting...
... just like a relationship a straight woman has with a gay man, which I think is partially what this video is describing. Sure, it's definitely about the struggle for gay rights, Gaga's role as the savior of the gays, her sacrificing herself in the name of her "religion," which is essentially using her art to free people - but more microscopically, it's about her relationship with one man, named Alejandro, who she loves desperately but who will never love her back because he's not only gay, he's the leader of the gay army. He is her antithesis.
Gaga's heart is frozen, she appears dead (her makeup is so white, and her eyes are so sunken), she is at her own funeral - all because her love for this man has killed her. The love of a gay man is so enticing because it seems so fulfilling, but once the layers are stripped away - when we see her dancing nearly nude on the beds with gay men - it becomes very apparent that the relationship is one-sided. Someone is always fucking (or, as the case may be) not fucking someone else. Gaga is drawn into the gay lifestyle - symbolized by her being bounced around by her gaggle of gay soldiers - but once in it, she falls in love, and that love is not returned, and it destroys her.
The video cannot be viewed chronologically. The beginning is really the end, and the middle is really the beginning of the journey. We see her pursuits with gay men, how they worship and support her but, ultimately, reject her. Then we see her turn to her religion, her art, to try unsuccessfully to save herself. We see her funeral. Her dead heart. Then we see her burning up at the end, lying on a bed with a gay man holding a golden gun - like Cupid's arrow, but deadly - literally burned alive by her undying love for Alejandro. Not to mention this is a reference to the Bad Romance video, where she burned a straight man alive - now it's her turn.
She ends up nothing, a pile of ash, because she gave so much of herself and got nothing in return. I would like to see the positive message in the video, but in this case I don't think Mother Monster is standing up for anyone, except for herself. This may be the first time we've seen Gaga legitimately and honestly express her own pain in her art by dedicating an entire music video to it.
So, yeah, it's sinister.
I see a lot in this video -- its mirror-image of Bad Romance, in particular, black switched in for white and those weaponized breasts. That throat-blocking rosary, to me, strongly echoes the black ropes we see in the dormitory. (Gaga looks a bit tangled up there; intentional?) Both videos read to me as being to a great degree about different forms of a male gaze, and neither gaze is particularly friendly.
ReplyDeleteBut what I do not see, exactly, is a straight woman among gay men. Lady Gaga is out as bisexual, and I think that's important here. What I see is a bisexual woman in a highly disciplined and exclusive gay men's community -- a certain Mapplethorpish ideal of The Gay Community.
We're not a big happy family, us LGBTs; as a bisexual woman myself, I'd say that some of the bodies in the foundation of gay culture are ours. Biphobia tends, in my experience, to teach us ambivalence and envy if not outright cynicism. It can sometimes offer us the chance to be bi tokens in a gay community, if we work our little hearts out and accept our marginality. Being bisexual in a bi-hating gay/lesbian community is like having half your heart wrapped in barbed wire.
A clued-in bisexual has a choice: do you throw in your lot with people who disdain you? That would be an easy "No!" if the choice weren't complicated by homophobia and deep injustice toward gay people. So, the choice becomes something more like: are you going to make a sacrifice of your own wholeheartedness for the sake of justice?
There's always a tension between individual soul and identity politics, and I see Gaga as caught between them here. Gaga has consciously thrown in her lot with the troops of Gay Nation, machine-gun breasts at the ready -- that's pure love on her part.
But it's clear that the troops love the symbol, not the woman. They don't want to bed her, but look at how fiercely they engage with those black ropes. They handle her roughly; they don't mind destroying her. As hard as she's working for it, she's still a token queen. Another Garbo/Liza/Madonna/Gaga will always come along, after all. She is, in the end, as commodified and disposable as she is in the world of straight men. It's only the use they put her to that's different.
i thought the frozen heart she was carrying wasnt hers, but alejandro's because it had an A on it?
ReplyDeleteThe thing I find so compelling about this video (even more than the extent to which this is present in other videos) is the way in which the piles and piles of references she makes make it possible for this one music video to open up whole worlds of art, literature, film and other cultural artifacts that were probably completely unknown to majority of her fans. I look at this video and I see The Night Porter, for sure, but I also see Kiss of the Spider Woman, even The Thief's Journal, on top of the more pop-oriented, well-known references like Madonna. If she's said that this video is about calling attention to gay men's issues, then it's important that she can do that while drawing on such diverse, high and low elements of a gay [male] cultural heritage.
ReplyDeleteWithout wishing to be too saccharine, I have to say that any gay kid who gets to see this is really, really lucky. I wish Gaga'd been around back when I was a tentatively queer teenager. All I had was Ellen and an enduring love of David Bowie, and (while Ellen's importance is inestimable in a visibility sense), only one of those two really opened up further avenues of intellectual investigation for me - and still, it's not like my peers had any idea what I was talking about when I said "Ziggy Stardust" or, later, "Klaus Nomi." Bloody everyone knows Gaga, and it warms the cockles of my frozen adult heart to think that some people, by knowing Gaga, will get to know more.
Also (that was a bit of a diversion), I've seen it suggested elsewhere (Autostraddle, I think) that the frozen heart with the A, and its accompanying funeral procession, is a visual double-entendre referring to both the fictional Alejandro and the real, late Alexander McQueen. Anyone else think so? It's a compelling and touching idea, for sure.
An association I made with the symbol of the cross on her genitals is one of how much female sexuality is focused upon in many religions and cultures (male sexuality is a major focus in religion/culture also). A woman's chasteness is highly valued and of supreme importance in many religions and cultures. Whether or not a woman remains a virgin until she is married is a big deal all over the world, so much so that women are even killed for not remaining chaste. When I noticed the cross on her genital area, I also noticed that all the men in the group were abusive by tossing her in the air and pushing her around, rendering her helpless and scared. Cultural and religious mores on female sexuality oppresses women emotionally and physically. This part of the scene may be partly interpreted as demonstrating that.
ReplyDeleteLoved the clip, Gaga would be well aware of her use of red for a nun (cardinals are red)... So much in this clip exposes female and gay prejudice existing in society still. It is confronting to those still holding these views but not really offensive if you are paying attention. This is nothing like Madonna's" Like a prayer" for instance.
ReplyDeleteIf this clip confuses you, think of the temptations and fantasies of those living monastic lives, such as priests and nuns. That is what this clip is, it exposes it beautifully. Alejandro the song was a good choice in highlighting one of these conflicts within.
Lady Gaga wants us to let go of those prejudices that lead from fear and fantasy within ourselves. She dislikes those in authority suppressing others through it. The church is a big target.
Personally she can relax a while with this clip, the message is loud and clear. Hope the next one is purely playful.
I love this blog!
ReplyDeleteAt 2:27 she has silver fangs... I wonder what those are about?
Pt 1: The first time I watched the video the most dominant theme to me was the Nazi/gestapo military reference, followed by the religious references. My preliminary interpretation was that the military/Gestapo reference symbolizes (multiple things really) but ultimately the oppression of the gay community. Mtv said in a review of the video Gaga+Klein create an oppressive world but really I think they are trying to reflect the oppressive world we live in- particularly towards gays, emphasizing this fascist oppression with military (and church) images, the two institutions most directly oppressing gays today. The Nazi influence also, as someone noted, evokes the holocaust, in which homosexuals were persecuted. Gaga in recent interviews, in particular the Larry King one, is becoming much more outspoken about her politics and feminism, particularly her opposition to don’t ask don’t tell—a movement which of course has experienced groundswell lately. So yes the military references are definitely a statement against don’t ask don’t tell, with the ‘soldiers’ marching, then dancing (tango?) together, then wrestling. Like others have noted the military represents male bonding and closeness, the soldiers are also lovers. Very much like the Spartans, which the wrestling and marching (and hair sometimes) reminded me of…The oppression can also more generally represent gender and sexual norms, which is what I think the s&m references address. I disagree that she is so ignorant to equate gay sex and s&m. I also tend to disagree that this video is primarily about expressing a frustration with her gay male friends though and think it’s more an expression of a tension in her own personal relationships with men in general... more on that later.
ReplyDeleteOk the religious symbolism I think is definitely directed towards the Catholic Church, mainly because of the gay persecution theme, but also rosaries are a Catholic symbol as well as the heart, which with the barbed A wrapped around it resembles the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Gaga, like me, attended an all-girls Catholic high school with Sacred Heart in the name). However, some people have noticed the upside down crosses represent phalluses (yes, interesting…) but they also to me look like coffins in the long part of the cross (and she does sport vampire fangs; those two aspects as well as the monk imagery remind me of the novel The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Then again Gaga just likes vampires and vampire imagery).
Another aspect of the religious imagery, particularly the nun costume that others haven’t touched upon is the desire (which I have always heard in the song as well) for celibacy. I think this hasn’t really been explored more because of a misinterpretation of the song itself, which I would disagree with some and say is not fun-in-the-sun or ‘happy’ as others have noted. From the initial violins in the song (which are stretched out in the video) and the “oh-uh-uh-oh-oh-oh-oh—oh-oh-oh-uh-oh” vocals it’s a sad, mournful song. And then the chorus says it all. This is a song about (to put it in Gaga’s words from an interview with Fuse music channel) “saying goodbye to all my past lovers” and that it represents her “fear-of-sex-monster.” However, I do not interpret this as her feeling unrequited love and so must farewell her lover. Alejandro is about those lovers that are just too greedy (sexually but perhaps in other ways as well) that they suck you dry. And in this sense I think this song particularly is about lovers that she feels were creatively sucking her dry—and from what is publicly known about Gaga’s personal relationships, this seems possible (as someone on twitter pointed out, Roberto=Robert Fusari? Fernando=Fernando Garibay? both producers she worked with, the first of which she had a relationship with for a number of years). So in this way sex, represented by Alejandro, is a monster that sucks her creativity dry so she takes the vow of celibacy to maintain creative purity.
Pt 2: However, and I’m somewhat surprised no one has made this connection—Gaga is Joan of Arc in this video—the hair, she’s with the male soldiers, accepted as one of their group, she’s a nun—it all makes sense (I also think she may have let this slip in the interview that came out a few weeks ago “Come party with Gaga”--?--from the UK Times). Again I see this as connected to the need to “bury” her past lovers. The funeral possession I think is a metaphor for burying the former lovers, and yes I do think the A on the heart signifies (in the ‘storyline’ of the video) it is Alejandro’s heart (don’t think it’s meant to be Gaga’s—don’t think this song mourns love at all—it says “go away and let me smoke my ciggie, I’m not your fuckin babe!”) and I do think it could be an homage to Alexander McQueen or at least a nod to the impact his death had on Gaga—and presumably Klein.
ReplyDeleteThe heart of the video though, which I think many here have made amazing observations that I didn’t make initially but none of them kinda hit the mark for me, is about her relationships with men, and specifically, the tension between her relationships with gay men and her relationships with straight men. In this respect I think the group of men in the video represent different sides of this, just like Gaga takes on multiple different roles or personas in the video, Joan of Arc being one, the drag Bono thing being another, as someone else said the state, church and society. The men at times represent a tenuous relationship with straight men, including both a desire for them as well as repugnance perhaps for their needy sexual demands—“don’t wanna kiss, don’t wanna touch” when she says these lyrics we see the angry-Gaga face like when she’s says “I’m kinda busy” in the jail scene in telephone. The ‘straight men’ are those scenes where she is being dominated, tossed about, and greedily chased after by the group, their hands and bodies groping and grasping for her, and she allows them to ogle her. The representations of gay men and tranny images I think is her homage to gay culture, particularly drag culture. I don’t think this video is as conflicted about gay men as people have interpreted, I think she has very clearly expressed her absolute adoration and admiration for her gay friends, particularly men and this video is about celebrating that. The gay themes included within the military themes represent both a respect for gay men’s courage (again from the King interview) as well as a political statement towards DADT. However, yes there is the element, and again this is where the tension lies between her relationships with gay and straight men, that the gay men do not want her sexually. Perhaps this is why each man is tied to his own bunk in most of the dorm scenes, tethering them to their beds so they cannot touch each other, but also using those ties to dominate them and play sex games. So Gaga doesn’t fit well with straight men—their greediness in terms of her creativity and how she is made vulnerable through mixing sexual/personal and creative/business relationships. But she also doesn’t fit well with gay men. She has also said recently she identifies more with men, so again it’s about feeling an insiderness but being outside.
Pt 3:I thought the analysis about bisexual women was RIGHT ON! As a bisexual woman myself this resonates with me but I also think it’s a particular statement about the lack of progression in bi identity. She talks about this in the Fuse interview also. This is particular to bisexual women because men are considered brave by the GLBT community for coming out as bi but often when women do it is doubted many times as “fake lesbian” or “doing it for attention” or in Gaga’s case publicity, and as such, if you are a bisexual woman that tends to be in relationships with men more or at any given time, there is a stigma attached to that in the LGBT community. And in this respect I think the commentary people have made about the emphasis on othering in the video has been great. Ultimately I think Gaga is possibly arguing for more fluidity to gender, love and sexuality at a time when, because of political/civil rights struggles there is more emphasis on labeling and defining, militance, community/insider-outsider etc.
ReplyDeleteThis video, like all Gaga’s art, is intentionally made to have multiple readings and interpretations. This is certainly her most serious video by far, yet I still feel it is purposefully made to be interpreted in multiple ways and there are multiple elements to each character and symbol. So in that way I agree with other commentators about readings being subjective, classic Gaga po-mo style. We complete the art with our commentary etc.
Finally to respond to one early commentator who asked about race and ethnicity in this video. I find it particularly striking there are no black men in this video, in fact everyone appears white, although I know her one star dancer is a native Hawaiian… anyway before I start getting nit-picky about raceðnicity it is striking there are no black men because her black dancers are a long-time feature of Gaga videos and performances (as well as her closest friends, like Posh for example, on the road). I think the lack of any people of color may be in keeping with the Weimer Germany/Nazi theme and it may be aesthetic as there’s such an emphasis on uniformity of the men. However, I think most likely it is to emphasize the community/insider-outsider/othering themes in the video, by limiting any other difference, the gender and sexuality juxtapositions the focus. I think this again might be a statement on othering and the rigidity of identity-community politics. It is interesting that there aren’t more Latin visual references in the video considering there are in the song (and I would point out that the references in the song is probably why people say it sounds “sunny” because they equate Latin references with hot and sunny places—sorry I’m a human geographer, it’s always gotta be about place). What do I think of her appropriation of Latin references/language in the song? “Hot like Mexico” sounds like teenage lingo, something you’d hear coming out of an 19y.o. girl’s mouth “did you see that boy he is hot like Mexico!” (again stereotypical connections hardwired into our brains between Mexico/Latin America and fun-in-the-sun vacation images, as problematic as that is). The phrase she says in Spanish in the first verse is “en su bolsillo” translates to “in your pocket” so I see that as just playing with lyrics. Overall I think the source of the Latin references lyrically is a conscious decision to use the trope of the Latin lover, stereotyped as the greedy, hungry, passionate lover who is machismo, demanding, again linking back to why I think the song is about a greedy lover. The Latin themes I get from the video are the Catholic references, especially the Sacred Heart (Latin America known for being strongly Catholic), the black lace (which just from the sound of the song and Gaga’s style I knew would make an appearance), and possibly the bowl cuts, it does overall have a fascist Argentine feel to it though doesn’t it? More thoughts on this would be interesting
That’s it—thanks for everyone for giving me so much to think and write about. I LOVE THIS BLOG!
This video feels like German expressionism and dada works come to life. Many works of the survivors of WW1 have mechanical parts, missing limbs, and hearts on the outside. While Germany is home to Protestantism, it still has a large population of Catholics in country. Gaga's hair sort of reminds of me of a 20's bob cut, similar to a photo of Lotte Lenya, with the composer of A Threepenny Opera, a German Marxist.
ReplyDeleteAlso I see Francis Bacon's Study After Velasquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X and Head Surrounded by Sides of Meat in the distressed Catholic imagery.
Tying the Latin American side to the video, we have Frida imagery, again with the heart outside, and of course the Catholic tie in of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which is an elementary school i attended. Mentioned by several people, we have the bowl cuts and the "Aztec" stylization of Catholic symbols.
What struck me most however was the BDSM element. Unlike some other pop star, it was used convey the message of constraint, rather than just to shock the audience. Examples include the leather and skin tight nun's habit, Catholic "role-play," strip of fabric to control the man in bed, military "role-playing", forced fantasy, etc. What is more striking is Gaga hasn't used the traditional big boobs, blond hair, vanilla sex image to make her mark on the pop scene, but has taken the traditional blond and gone for more of a platinum blond color, sometimes with her dark roots showing. Her clothing choices sometimes are fetish wear, rather than low cut and high hemlines of more traditional pop stars such as Brittany Spears. I plan to write more looking at this breakdown of the "good girl" pop image and the rise of the "bad girl"
The intro of Alejandro.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Csárdás
I'm still unpacking the video mentally, so I only offer one fragmentary observation for now. The cyborg-like glasses--which Gaga robotically flips open and closed--have a distinctly Gilliam-esque feel and seemed plucked straight from Brazil. Given that the film focuses on the lone man's subjugation to--and eventual destruction by--technology and an inflexibly regimented society, the comparison is apt.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that if I watch the video a few more times, I can find some Kubrickian allusions to heighten this comparison, though I must confess to a disturbingly overwhelming desire to have Gaga bear my children.
carolyn, I love the point you made about there being no colored soldiers. Because it's an important element in the LGBT community, in that it is an extremely segregated community. To be African-American gay is an extremely stigmatizing identity to hold, with few-to-none visual representations in the active gay community, and usually shunned by the African-American community as well.
ReplyDeleteCould GaGa be exposing this facet of the gay community?
The thing I love about GaGa is that she's not looking to pass judgments. Her style isn't moralistic, she's not saying "we should change this, and we should change it to this." Or even that anything should be changed. She's just poking at these societal norms and conventions and seeing what comes up. She's commenting, and starting a discussion.
However, carolyn, I must disagree with the assessment concerning DADT. I do not think the intention of the video was specifically to address that. The director, Klein, said that this was not the purpose, nor the intent. I think GaGa knows best to keep her politics and her art separate.
And lastly, I also agree bisexual woman critic. However, I would like to say that bi-sexual men are met with no more acceptance or open-arms than bi-women. While women who claim to be bi-sexual might be targeted as attention seekers, men who claim an identity of bi are eternally under the suspicion of actually being 'gay,' and it being a 'transition phase.'
So I would agree that GaGa is pushing for a more fluid spectrum of sexuality.
The Lone Woman - Someone mentioned 'Cabaret,' but in the costuming and choreography, I also see "Ain't There Anyone Here for Love?" Jane Russell's hilarious number in 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.' Of course, there's nothing funny about being the lone woman in "Alejandro."
ReplyDeleteThe scenes in the dormitory/asylum are striking for a number of reasons that have already been discussed. I have to say, though, that the thing that stood out most to me was that Gaga's body doesn't "fit" with the men around her. When they're on a bed together, their bodies don't physically fit together - parts don't line up, parts are "missing," rhythms are off - and when the company dances together, Gaga's pale-underwear costume seems to highlight her femaleness. Thoughts, desires, and fantasies aside: her female body is enough to make her an outsider (make her dysfunctional?).
This is also the first of Gaga's videos in which she is the only woman present.
Latin Names - While it's possible that the names in the song are autobiographical details, I take them as representing machismo. She is rejecting a particular, stereotypical masculinity. Don't call my name, Alejandro...because I'm not going to put up with your patriarchal, homophobic bullshit any more.
The Heart - The barbed-wire 'A' nailed to the frozen heart certainly stands for "Alejandro" (and perhaps also for Alexander McQueen). It could also be for "Adultery," as in 'The Scarlet Letter.' In this world of gay armies and a different kind of homonormativity - not the assimilation of heteronormative ideals into [male] homosexual identity, but the position that [male] homosexuality is the normal sexual orientation - a woman who desires a man is a criminal. Her desire is unlawful, her thoughts make her an adulteress.
The End - The end of the video is reminiscent of the end of the "Bad Romance" video, and yet, very different. Whereas in "Bad Romance," Gaga destroys a man with fire, leaving only charred remains behind, in "Alejandro," she is the one who burns. Or, rather, her image burns. The video itself seems to disintegrate, taking the symbol of the chaste, passive femininity with it.
Just watched a second time - some things I saw worth noting/asking -
ReplyDelete- When we first see Gaga in the robe, there is an obvious allusion to Madonna's "Like A Prayer"- with the fire blazing behind her, etc. ANd both films clearly have religious themes.
- Said fire is actually a film projected onto a screen - a fire burning behind a car - anyone know what that is from?
- The riot clips - perhaps from Stonewall?
First, I want to say that this blog/journal is a refreshing and much-needed discussion in academia and pop culture. Nice work. Secondly, your analysis allows me to work through a lot of the uneasiness I feel toward this video. I'm troubled by the narrative of the lyrics with the implied signs of the video (fascist Germany?). Also, the lyrics not only evoke Mexico, but an ethnic, Latin male "other" that is the narrator's desired object (i.e. "Fernando," "Alejandro," "Roberto.") How are we to know who these identities are by the video's images? These identities, although very common names, become completely erased in the video, even though she evokes them in the lyrics. And to follow up on Noelle's comment above, why should only Spanish names exemplify machismo? The Spanish names displace the setting from a presumed fascist Germany to being read as previously fascist Spain (Franco, 1939-76) or the Dominican Republic (1930s-1960). The names work can serve as different signifiers to different viewers based on this video.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, I am not completely convinced by this video as demonstrative of Gaga's exclusion from a community that doesn't want her. However, I do think it's extremely provocative that this video emerges at the same time as Obama works to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." I would like to argue that this video works through some of the underlying, unspoken (sexual) tensions of "allowing" open homosexuality in the military, but the scrambling of signs and signifiers in the video with the lyrics just don't give me the support to do so.
"Why should only Spanish names exemplify machismo?" It's not that only Spanish names do this, though they do have a linguistic connection to the word "machismo" itself. What I mean to suggest is that Gaga is evoking a caricature of masculinity in the lyrics based on stereotypes: the Mexican "macho" man, the "Latin lover." That's what I get from the song, on its own. And I'm not sure it fits neatly into the video, on this particular point. I don't really understand how the two come together - except that they don't ("hot like Mexico" while it's snowing outside"), and that, somehow, is part of the thesis of the video. I'm actually quite lost on this point.
ReplyDeleteMeghan, the riot clips definitely seem like archival footage, but it's nothing I recognize immediately. Stonewall was my first guess, but I'd love to know what it is.
Hmm interesting thoughts.
ReplyDeleteKara-I don't think, if you read what I wrote earlier Alejandro is the object of desire, rather she is pushing him away. The fact that she offers three names seems to point to the subject of the song not being about love but about needing to escape from the needy lover.
I thought Noelle's comments explain the Latin lover theme better. Fascist Spain I didn't get; however the video has a fascist Argentine feel, evoking as others have said Evita.
The riot clips don't exactly make me think Stonewall they more seem in fitting with the military/WWII theme, remember when the Nazis set out it was a blitzkreig and most European cities were burning, in chaos, etc.
Hmmm Sparrow I am surprised you are convinced it's not about DADT. While I do not think this is necessarily the intent of the video, I think it's a strong theme. I also think it might be presumptuous to think Gaga would know "best to keep politics separate from her art" indeed how is any art separated from politics? Furthermore, and this again really draws from recent interviews, Gaga has been quite political lately with DADT, gay rights and her feminism and clearly says she wants to be taken seriously. I see the video very clearly saying "men are soldiers, strong, masculine, but also gay, feminine, cross-dressers", the reality that gay men DO serve in the military, they are both "fags" and "soldiers". However, I didn't expect Klein to come out, or Gaga for that matter, and say explicitly "this is a political video" that is best left unsaid but I believe the underlying theme is certainly there.
Love this blog, love the Gaga. And Tim, we all feel the overwhelming urge to have Gaga bear our children--or something like that ;)
@CarolynFran on Twitter
CarolynFran and Noelle, thanks for the replies. I agree with Noelle that Alejandro is the *former* love object who she pushes away. And thank you, Carolyn, for clearing up the references. However, as someone who has taught Latina Studies, I'm still conflicted with the association of Peron to fascism. Peronism was not fascism, hence my apprehension. Do you mean that Evita was brought down by fascism? Because I think that would certainly also evoke a postcolonial critique. Of course, I think we're all trying to figure this out.
ReplyDeleteCarolyn-thanks for clearing up the DADT references. My only concern is the depiction of gay men in the video juxtaposed with Gaga's politics. I agree that the politics are certainly there. I am uneasy about how the message is received. Thanks again, all.
I'm feeling the juxtaposition of weak/soft song with the strong/hard video; it really draws you in.
ReplyDeleteRe: the snow/frozen heart imagery: I read this as as a gesture at Snow White, with Gaga as both the Evil Queen and Snow White. Both characters are strongly associated with coldness or winter, and although they may be said to represent a virgin/whore pair, both also are sexually "frozen" or locked--an ice queen and a sleeping beauty. There's no prince here, only Huntsmen, who betray the one and abandon the other.
On another note, I must disagree strongly with the poster above who wrote: "all the men in the group were abusive by tossing her in the air and pushing her around, rendering her helpless and scared." When this group first appears (rising up from her feet) we cannot see Gaga's face or her reactions--but as she is more and more revealed she is neither helpless nor scared, but looks straight at the camera: she is intense, passionate, but in control.
There is no real violence in those scenes--probably because (in keeping with the BDS overtones of the video as a whole) they are Scenes. That is, it's a performance of of a performance of violence that is, in fact, intimacy. The men surrounding Gaga are intent, but their movements are gentle; when she loses the cloak/robe they are covering and protecting her.
Although this is a video with a lot of raw (maybe painful) edges, Gaga's not more helpless here than in her other works, except perhaps in that way that all we humans are helpless: in who we will love, and that we shall lose them.
This blog http://commatose.tumblr.com/post/677210680/decoding-gaga-alejandro suggests the bowl cuts are a symbol of unisex, or androgyny, in that they are characterized as being the classic hairstyle both men and women can wear, an idea I think fits with many of the themes we've been discussing, and the Joan of Arc persona.
ReplyDeleteRe: Kara-yeah I wonder as well about how the message is received, one of the problems of this type of art form... so many readings are possible.
It's interesting to read what people have put here. I must say this was the first Gaga-video where I felt myself turn away from the screen because of the harsh realities being portrayed there -- compared to the fun-loving previous videos.
ReplyDeleteNow, I have a slightly different interpritation in which Gaga-the-religious-figure represents those who are desperatly hanging on to their religion, while fighting their own 'carnal' thoughts of homosexuality, etc, and much of the rest of the video such as the S&M on the beds can be seen as the fantasies that the religious-Gaga character is having, but cannot herself by involved with -- note: be 'repressing' actually being involved in a relationsip, the fantasies have gone from traditional love-and-be-loved fantasties to darker S&M style fantasies.
I think part of Gaga's message here is that it may ultimately be impossible to match religion and desires and that by trying to match them both rather than giving in to one or the other, she ultimately destroys herself resulting in the opening funeral procession as she burries her own heart.
For many people, they may have to burry their heart or 'flesh desires' in order to meet their religious of spiratual desires.
the opening scene reminds me a lot of Cabaret. With the Nazis sitting at the tables watching the performance. The man in the fishnets could be seen as the performer they were watching. I think thats just another tie in with the Nazi Germany theme thats been discussed.
ReplyDeleteI think masculinity in the video is important. Most people think of gay men as more feminine men but in the video they are all very masculine (aside from some of the dance moves). That could go back to "a man is a man is a man. a soldier is a soldier" a commentary on DADC. And I would argue that Gaga herself is very feminine through out the video until the point where she is singing with the lone microphone with the cross behind her. What does all that mean? I dont really know, Im still trying to figure that out. Any thoughts on it?
The fact that the video is directed by madonna's video director steven klein is essential to the peice.
ReplyDeleteGaGa starts out in the video very marilyn manson esque even erotically touching her mouth in the same fasion as him.
she ends the video in the style of madonna's vouge video.
both are people who are considered oppistes to one another, complete contradictory statements.
but remmember marilyn manson got his name by combining marilyn monroe's name with charles manson's; complete opposites.
and at the same time when madonna started out in her career she was faux marilyn monroe who hung out with andy warhol.
both artist have strong views on religon and politics; modonna especially on religious views, and manson especially on gender fucking rolse; taking on a persona of a alter sexual being neither man or woman but at times both.
i think the imagery is complex and thought provoking allowing it to spread beyond the leveled meaning of a gay-like nazi millitary waging war on a traditonal viewed society. GaGa again over indulges us in cliched over used imagry, taking a personal stand in her own political views. if it were more fun and free like other videos. the peice would not be as strong.
The baby-faced guy in the tie who observes but never takes part in the dance reminded me of two cinematic Nazi youths: the blond in "Cabaret" who sang "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" and the one in "Sound of Music" who blew the whistle on the Von Trapp family as they were escaping. Unlike both of them who sided with the Nazis, this one watches with a seething blend of shock, sadness, horror, fear and hatred, ultimately casting his military cap aside. I see him as the video's conscience, disturbed by the violence and pathos around him, but refusing to participate in tyranny. He either chooses peace or takes his hat off to Gaga and the freedom fighters, possibly becoming one of them.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Mexican lyrics and Aztec imagery, I wonder if Gaga is alluding to the totalitarian immigration policy in Arizona. "Alejandro" may have been written before the law forcing people to carry and show documentation on demand was passed, but discrimination against Mexicans is nothing new in the U.S. Having worked with Migrant Workers and other Hispanic populations as an HIV educator, I know some guys oozing machismo are not averse to same-sex gratification, especially when separated from wives or girlfriends back home. So maybe the dormitory can be viewed as a migrant camp too, or any setting where men live as a group under harsh circumstances.
I love the multiple perspectives on this site and the chance to take part in such a compelling discussion. I always assumed Gaga's little monsters had large IQ's to go with our claws, and here's the proof.
Derek Vickers took issue with his fellow commenters' narrow-mindedness: "People need to open their minds and look past the obvious 'sexuality' in the video. I don't doubt that she is trying to push limits and get people talking, but that's not all she is doing! If you actually watch the video with a little openness, you'll actually see what she and the video's director are trying to relay. It's an over-the-top representation of the battle that most all religious people go through on a daily basis. Who cares if it's 'over the top.' It's music, and it's supposed to be artistic and eccentric. I really admire that she completely understands what it means to be an entertainer. She's the only one in a long time to totally embody music and art as one." This from here: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1641289/20100610/lady_gaga.jhtml is EXACTLY what I was trying to say in the comment before!
ReplyDelete"It's an over-the-top representation of the battle that most all religious people go through on a daily basis."
I have to say, the first time I watched the video (before thinking about Madonna and some of the things that are truly incorporated) I couldn't help but think about Foucault. It seems that what Gaga is playing with in this video are the central themes to Foucault's writings: pleasure vs. desire, madness, imprisonment, etc. Any thoughts?
ReplyDeleteI'm back here a day later because the ending is driving me nuts. When Gaga appears in the leather jacket at the cabaret (at 6:36), it reminds me of Jim Jones for some reason. There's no vat of poisoned kool-aid or jungle scenery, but the lighting and her posturing take me to Guyana somehow. I also wonder if that scene, which includes a rehash of images from before, represents the integration of her earlier characters. She has the dispassionate blinders of her state self, the near-nudity of her erotic self, the leather "hide" and cross of her nun self and the spotlight and charisma of her Liza self.
ReplyDeletesmall note: the golden vampire teeth in Alejandro are very reminiscent of those golden fangs white the cat barres in Bad Romance...
ReplyDeleteGaga (and her "Haus") never fail to provide a visual assault of complex imagery and symbolism. I've read through all the comments here and find them very thought provoking.
ReplyDeleteI see a great deal of gay appropriation in all of Gaga's work and I'm not certain if it's all gay-positive. I'm willing to suspend judgement until I'm able to determine whether her support of the gay community is genuine. Just because she says it doesn't make it so!
Here's a few things I've noticed that I haven't seen previously mentioned:
1. The significance of the added "sound effects," which are not part of the original studio recording. The first two occur during the first dance segment, when male dancers are thrusting their partner to the ground - very violent. The last, which I also find a bit disturbing, is what sounds like a gunshot when we re-visit the man in fishnets towards the end of the video. He looked to be dead the first time his image was presented, though there's no blood/wounds present. Any thoughts on this?
2. In the second dance sequence, which involves Gaga, has anyone else noticed that the formation of the dancers is in the shape of the Star of David? It's easy to see when the camera pans out and up.
I find it fascinating how many different readings of Alejandro there are, with Lady Gaga's intention being no more interesting than the interpretations here. (When I watch it, I see the desperate aggression of minorities in trying to fit in. Think American politicians who are vehemently anti-gay, being discovered having sex with a man in a public washroom.)
ReplyDeleteAnd just as a response to Mac, there actually is a dog hidden in the video: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_X0cNr-SAHmM/TA61YjT4ndI/AAAAAAAAFSo/H79WhhKNG6k/s1600/Picture+52.png
There's lots to deconstruct and analyze in gaga's latest mini-movie, though sadly the underlying meaning will be lost on the masses because of it's subversive nature. Perhaps the imagery will work it's way into their subconscious. Those who do not understand the meaning are those who need to understand it most of all.
ReplyDeleteWonderful blog post, what I interpreted differently was the statement around religious imagery in which you said "A lot of the religious imagery in the video employs the cross or the garments of a nun's habit in such a way that they actually enforce celibacy, or a physical hindering of the body.".
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I found the religious imagery to be some of the most hypersexualized elements of the video itself. The cross on the crotch had phallic conotations to me, and the rosary beads also became a symbol of oral penetration.
In a sense, it was playing on the fact that the intensity around celebacy is often a double-edged sword of passion; in fact often being restrained leads to a fantasic world of expression in the opposite degree.
I also think Lady Gaga’s bisexuality is important to consider. She is excluded from the Gay Army for not only one vital aspect of her identity, gender, but also for her sexual identity. She’s a fag hag who can’t connect with the army in an important aspect of their brotherhood: their sexual relationships and intimacy. Her bisexuality is the ultimate metaphor for this concept of being torn between two groups and fully belonging to neither – a dilemma that I believe many other bisexual people know and struggle with.
ReplyDeleteSo, although Lady Gaga wants to participate within the Gay Army as a fellow comrade, the closest she can possibly become is as a gay icon. This creates another struggle, one within the Gay Army. They face a problem of similarity (to their “enemies”) as opposed to Lady Gaga’s problems of difference. They worship Lady Gaga as an unreal idea, not as a fellow person, almost to the point of religion. They have also become extremely militaristic and exclusionary as an expression of the power and strength of their group identity. By excluding even their closest supporters, they have ironically become more similar to their greatest enemies, which is expressed by the religious, fascist, and militaristic imagery.
The Latin origin of the names could have been chosen because of the fact that historically, one of the first cultures to have a blossoming gay community were the Ancient Romans, from which the ulterior Latin culture derived.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Latin American men are hot and manly and sort of a symbol for what a man should look like to have drooling women all around him. By using these names in a song which has a video about gay men, Gaga is re-inventing the picture of the gay man in the heterosexist society, no longer would he been seen as efeminised or weak.
Just watched the video again, some time later, and thought I would add my two cents, for whatever it's worth. I found a link that it seems no one has remarked upon -- that between the religious imagery and the cyborg. When Gaga is dressed as a cyborg, she sits in a high castle, above the action, almost God-like, or Pope-like. I view her representation of the cyborg as being related to Mephistopheles -- the machine-man who enforces the laws of society (or in this case, the dogma of religion) unquestioningly, without thought. The cyborg, for me, represents organized religion, and possibly the Pope. The cracked glasses represent the distorted view of dogma, that only sees what it wants to see, an image cracked and untrue, far from reality, but unchanged because the viewer refuses to change the lenses, change the perspective, and instead continue investing in mindless dogma, like a mindless robot, following its programming.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot of incredible talent out there, however, talent alone isn’t enough. Being a great singer doesn’t matter if you’re not singing great songs. Having great songs won’t be obvious to record executives if they are not professionally produced. Consistently performing those songs extremely well is essential. Having an undeniable stage presence and never quit attitude are necessary requirements. Taking constructive criticism from others is required to get to the next level.
ReplyDeletehttp://themostfascinatingpeople.blogspot.com/2014/12/singersongwriterproducermodelspokespers.html