“The Witch’s Dorothy”: On Gaga’s conflation of hero, villain, and witch

By Sarah Cook

In which I get one step closer to articulating Gaga’s intriguing use of failure, if we can equate failure with evil (i.e. witchery). If failure can be the same thing as a bad witch. If a bad witch can be good for certain things.

These notes are in response to Gaga’s performance of “Applause” (Applau-Oz) on Good Morning America, 9 September 2013.

1. That Gaga hovers somewhere between witch, villain and monster. That this hovering is the crucial source of her difference, i.e. her creativity, her power.

Audre Lorde: “Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic…Within the interdependence of mutual (nondominant) differences lies that security which enables us to descend into the chaos of knowledge and return with true visions of our future, along with the concomitant power to effect those changes which can bring that future into being. Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged.”*

1.2. Gaga embraces various differences – between her repeated incorporation of disability, multiple sexualities, the burqa, & her invitation to those who are “broke or evergreen…black, white, beige, [of] chola descent,” or Othered in any variety of ways – is this her endorsement of the creative power of difference? Does Gaga herself descend “into the chaos of knowledge,” the chaos of identity?

And can a rich white female ever invoke the power of Others in a way that is not problematic?

2. Gaga’s monstrosity has perhaps been established since The Fame Monster, sometimes occurring with a cyborg twist à la “Born This Way,” sometimes as manifesto (think of those haunting images that accompany the “Manifesto of Little Monsters” video done with Nick Knight). But with the inauguration of the ARTPOP era, I think we are seeing a new extension of Gaga’s monstrosity, one that harnesses magic and transformation – the bubbling cauldron and colored smoke in the “Applause” video – along with the multiplicity of stage presences that have occurred during each of her recent live performances. A magical, playful monstrosity. And now, with the incarnation of Oz, we see the previously clear distinction of the hero/villain binary made messy – or perhaps made articulate, specific – through the conflation of wizard/witch/Dorothy.

3. The Wizard isn’t the real villain of the story, we know that. His innocent folly and simple-minded desire for the mask of power – layered upon his own desire simply to go home – is ultimately dismissed: the true villain, the Wicked Witch, is rightfully killed and the Wizard actually provides Dorothy and her friends with what they need. With Gaga’s manifestation of all three of these figures on the stage – good, somewhat evil, more evil – she is therefore complicating our distinctions between the good figure and the bad one. How do we distinguish maniac from evil sorceress from small-town girl when they’re all showing up within and hovering so closely to the same body?

#throwback – Lady Gaga’s Disease: Jo Calderone and the Pathology of the Image’s Virulent Body

By Roland Betancourt

Note: This essay was presented at the Northeastern Popular Culture Association’s Annual Conference at Western Connecticut State University on 12 November 2011. This paper – which addresses the crucial aspects of image virality, Jo Calderone, and Pierrot – has not been altered in any fashion since it was written back in 2011. The original draft from which this derived was written before the “You and I” video and before Jo Calderone’s manifestation at the 2011 VMA; as such this essay bears witness to the coherent unfolding of Lady Gaga’s project over these subsequent years in a salient manner – particularly given the role that the figure of Pierrot played within this very argument, a figure who has recently come to the forefront of Gaga’s work in “Applause.”

“Applause” Series Recap

Gaga Pierrot: Something of a Devoted Jester
By Roland Betancourt

The first sustained analysis on the Pierrot imagery Gaga employs for the “Applause” cover art, and how this relates to her Manifesto of Little Monsters and its “devoted jester.”

CODA: Lady Gaga is Over
By Roland Betancourt

Roland analyzes Lady Gaga’s filming of her lyric video for “Applause,” where she films drag queens performing her. He also analyzes the new Haus video “Lady Gaga is Over” in relation to the queer art of failure.

A Pop Music Emergency: From Pallor to Applause
By Laurence Ross and Meghan Vicks

What happens when Lady Gaga declares a pop music emergency? (What is a pop music emergency, anyway?) The jester Gaga-Pierrot steps in, saying: You dismissed me as a joke again and again; now I’ve come to save you precisely as the joke you dismissed. How Gaga employs the trope of the fool in its various manifestations (e.g. Shakespearian, Holy Fool, Pierrot) in “Applause.”

Iconography in Motion: In Preparation for the Chromatomachy
By Roland Betancourt

On the connection between the “Applause” cover art and David Bowie.

The Chromatomachy: Demeter’s Salvation of Persephone, and other Chromatic Myths

By Roland Betancourt

Roland is the first to point out the similarities between “Applause” and Disney’s Fantasia and The Little Mermaid. He also analyzes the battle of colors – the chromatomachy – present in the video, as well as the video’s nods to Greek mythology and the work of Koons.

Gaga Apotheosis

By Edmund McCaffray

On the intersection of the “Applause” video and the “Marry the Night” video. Gaga wearing her own shadow. Gaga as Persephone.

THE SINGER AND THE SPECTACLE: Applause for Lady Gaga

By Devin O’Neill

Lady Gaga just clearly wants your attention…

“Transforming as Magic”: on Gaga’s GMA appearance and official video release for “Applause” (a partially ekphrastic set of working notes)

By Sarah Cook

On watching the launch of “Applause” on Good Morning America. Notes on the jester, failure, and the meaning of the mirrored eye.

Dance, Dance, Dance, With My Hands, Hands, Hands: Gaga-Pierrot, Repetition, and the Total Artwork in “Applause”

By Ayah Rifai

Musicologist Ayah Rifai analyzes how the music of “Applause” performs in sound the figure Pierrot, and how Gaga, once again, creates a “total artwork.”

Dance, Dance, Dance, With My Hands, Hands, Hands: Gaga-Pierrot, Repetition, and the Total Artwork in “Applause”

By Ayah Rifai

Mother Monster is miffed. Following a succession of tweets calling for an end to fan wars, excessive gossip, and blogger criticisms after leaks of her new single, “Applause,” surfaced on the Internet, Gaga implores us to change our ways and enter into a post-critical age of pop music so that artists may do what they’re best at: entertaining us.

In my previous contribution to Gaga Stigmata, I argue that what distinguishes Gaga from other pop artists in the music scene today is her contemporary realization of a Gesamtkunstwerk, a “total artwork” that synthesizes music, drama, poetry, the material arts, choreography, and technology into a unified project. Now that the era of ARTPOP is upon us, Gaga does not disappoint: she remains true to her aesthetic with the release of “Applause.”

What is the Location of Pop? Part II: Professional Fangirling – On Tyler Oakley, Metadata, and Conspicuous Signification

By Roland Betancourt

fangirling (v.): the reaction a fangirl has to any mention or sighting of the object of her “affection.” These reactions include shortness of breath, fainting, high-pitched noises, shaking, fierce head shaking as if in the midst of a seizure, wet panties, endless blog posts, etc.

What is the location of pop? Or, what is popular culture today?

“Transforming as Magic”: on Gaga’s GMA appearance and official video release for “Applause” (a partially ekphrastic set of working notes)

By Sarah Cook

1. “I live for making you happy.”

Interview and official video premier on Good Morning America, August 19th, 2013.

The dynamics of fame, of fandom and obsession – an “obsession with transforming” – the expectations of hundreds of thousands of thousands of fans:

“obsessed, obsessed, obsessed about the music.”

When, and where, does failure come in? There will always be failure when so many people are counting on you; that’s fame. But there seems to be another type of failure at play in Gaga’s work: failure as a method; failure as queer – failure as allowing the unsayable to be said. To quote John Pluecker, “I’ve been thinking about how best to fail in this piece. And in failing come to say this thing that I haven’t been able to say.”

Gaga Apotheosis

By Edmund McCaffray

One of the first things that stood out to me from the “Applause” video was the “freak-out” that comes at the song’s climax. The camera shakes, as though either it or perhaps the world can’t contain Lady Gaga in those moments. And for good reason: Lady Gaga herself explodes through a stuttering rush of fast-cuts, appearing in several forms, triumphant and ecstatic.

THE SINGER AND THE SPECTACLE: Applause for Lady Gaga

By Devin O’Neill

Lady Gaga clearly just wants attention.

How does this still manage to be a controversial statement? But it is, it is. It looks so benign, but it hides a number of terrifying realities inside its apparently innocent body, just like she does.

The Chromatomachy: Demeter’s Salvation of Persephone, and other Chromatic Myths

By Roland Betancourt

The other day, I defined chromatomachy – from the Greek chromata (colors) and machia (battle) – as a battle of color on the proportions of the mythic Ancient Greek war of the giants, the gigantomachy, or the war of the Amazons, the Amazonomachy. Lady Gaga’s music video for “Applause” did not fail to manifest precisely this notion of a chromatomachy articulated specifically through the language of Greek myth. The video unfolds like a grotesque burlesque show at the bottom of a minimalist hellscape. The carnivalesque scene is replete with human-animal hybrids, dancers, our familiar Pierrot, a giant magician’s hat, and a colored-smoke emitting cauldron. While the video does not narratively stage a battle between color and black-and-white (as Gaga’s earlier statements might suggest), it certainly constructs a cyclical push-and-pull between the two – like the passing and return of seasons.

The video blatantly stages a modern day riff on the Disney classic Fantasia (1940), a fantasy of music, color, magic, and myth with a playful, at times absurd, humor. Gaga appears in a variety of guises that allude to mythic figures: for example, she emerges out of a giant hat like a magician’s rabbit, yet the figure she embodies is reminiscent more of a Satyr, with her disco-ball pants and perky fiber-optic tail, than a rabbit.

Iconography in Motion: In Preparation for the Chromatomachy

By Roland Betancourt

On 18 August 2011, Lady Gaga uploaded on YouTube a “Pop Video Countdown” of her favorite music videos that changed the landscape of pop culture. Among these she listed David Bowie’s “Life on Mars?,” which she hails for its simplicity and effectiveness, going on to say, “and that makeup, you can never forget it.”

A Pop Music Emergency: From Pallor to Applause

By Laurence Ross and Meghan Vicks

The voice is one akin to the automated airline intercom telling you to secure the mask to your face and breathe normally in order to begin the flow of oxygen. “Thank you for your cooperation during this pop music emergency,” she posts.

This voice is admittedly calmer than the one a mere seven hours before: “A POP MUSIC EMERGENCY IS UNDERWAY 911,” and “911 SUMMON THE MONSTER TROUPES.” Or her post on Saturday: “Wanna grab some shovels and fuck up some hackers?”

Applause: (from the Latin applaudere, to strike upon, clap), primarily the expression of approval by clapping of hands; generally any expression of approval.

What exactly is a state of emergency, let alone a “pop music emergency”?

A state of emergency is a period when the exception to the rule takes over – the state of exception. Normal order is suspended, and what is usually outlawed takes control precisely in order to save the system that is under attack or corrupted, that is under unbearable tension or friction. It turns out (as it often does) that the system is dependent upon that which it normally excludes, outlaws, taboos.

Lady Gaga announces a state of emergency on 12 August 2013, and there emerges “Applause,” accompanied by the jester Gaga-Pierrot. “Applause” and Gaga-Pierrot are thus positioned as the exception to the rule that has come to rule, as the exclusion-from-the-system that is necessary to restore the system, as the outlaw that has come to save us from a corrupted rule.

The questions arise: what is this system that we need saving from? What has caused this state of emergency?