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?
