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.
