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Lady Gaga, I love you.

Jill

I mean, how could you not?

I especially love the nods to MJ and Madonna. Lady Gaga is just so weird — and, yeah, she’s half naked, but I like a lady who makes a video that is visually striking, incredibly creative and totally bizarre over just plain hot n sexy. There’s lots of booty, but at least it’s highly-stylized booty. If I were a pop star, this is what I would want to do — just whateverthefuck I want. “I would like people in white latex to crawl out of futuristic coffins and imitate Thriller.” “I would like to dilate my pupils and wear shoes that make no sense.” “I would like a really pointy hat.” “I somehow want to bring in one of those creepy hairless cats.” “I would like to dress up like a giant sparkly broccoli lobster.” “I would like to wear a bearskin rug as a dress and then set things on fire.” “I would like my whole butt on screen now please.”

It’s truly amazing. And I love that she features her Great Dane in every video she does.

59 thoughts on Lady Gaga, I love you.

  1. Thank you. This is actually my first exposure to Lady Gaga besides as that person who wears ridiculous outfits, and a lot of people make fun of. I was really suprised to find that I loved it…and confused…and unsure of really why…or who to express this confusion with…. I mean, I knew I liked the booty…but there was something else….

  4. I love how much she looks like Tricia Helfer in the right light, because it pleases me even more to think that she’s a Cylon. I don’t know, something about an eternal and immortal network of this level of WTF pleases me.

  7. I think she said she doesn’t need to be a feminist because Barack Obama is president or something nutty like that which hahaha sob is even more ironic/sad/crazymaking considering the past few weeks.

    She is due for a political awakening. In the meantime I enjoy her.

  10. I don’t like Lady Gaga’s music, but as a person, I don’t care, though I’d say the same for any musician who isn’t expressing a view I highly disagree with…

  13. I’m disappointed to see that this video was brought up without any suggestion of REALLY problematic messages in her work overall and in this video. I myself have a very conflicted relationship with Lady Gaga’s music, because I find her beats irresistible but her performances riddled with misogyny and ableism. Let’s expand this conversation. She’s complex, and so are her feminist audiences.

    Also, one or more of the comments on this post used some ableist language that could use some kindly unpacking. Anyone? Bueller?

  14. I think those red outfits are an homage to Bob Mackey. They look like something Cher rejected for “If I Could Turn Back Time”.

    I’m not really taken with Lady Gaga as a performer or a musician, but the woman has a style all her own.

  15. Politically she might be semi-conscious, musically she might be lacking, but goddamn if I’m not happy that theres someone so utterly bizarre merrily invading the mainstream.

  16. Her other videos had me convinced that she, or her fashion designers, watched nothing but “Liquid Sky” and “Blade Runner” for years and years. This one certainly is a Cremaster homage….

  17. Give me a break. The most interesting thing an ostensible experimental female artist can do is wear skimpy clothes and dance in front of a bunch of scrutinizing dudes? Real revolutionary. The visual style is interesting, but the weirdness is basically a catwalk parody with some random imagery thrown in. Nothing approaching the sophistication and depth of Mathew Barney. A pointless, commercialized version of experimental filmmaking. And the music is wretched!

  18. I love Lady Gaga. I love her style, I love her music, and I’d be at one of her concerts dressed ten times wackier if I just had the money for tickets!

  19. This video has a human trafficking angle. And the vodka featured in it is by my favourite brand, Nemiroff (I prefer their honey pepper line, but that wouldn’t have gone well with the video, so LEX it was, I guess).

    Oh, and all hail Gaga and her pop weirdness. šŸ™‚

  20. Lauren,

    I’m always looking for a learning experience, so perhaps you can help me. I’ve read through the comments a couple of times, but I don’t see any ableist language (Unless it got deleted before I read it).

  21. I think what is challenging about this kind of pop is that it is high camp and — I think — self aware enough that it is able to use fucked up tropes to make sales while still critiquing them.

    This song/video makes me think of good ol’ Britney’s “I’m a Slave 4 U” — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuZKbXNGDs4 — which is less violent but way more seductive. It’s funny because they both use the big pack of girls, for example, only in Lady Gaga’s video there is actually an audience portrayed and defined — the robot dudes drinking vodka — whereas Britney is dancing just for us.

    I think the robot dudes drinking vodka and generally speaking the sense of surveillance and violence in Lady Gaga make it a way more interesting statement than something less aggressively out there. I don’t think it is unproblematic to show that kind of violence but I think because it is so stylized and over the top it is actually v thought provoking.

  22. Lady Gaga? Really? I’ll stick to Angelspit and Porcelain and the Tramps for dance music with actual semi-feminist messages… thanks.

  23. There’s nothing new here. It’s just pop music industry assimilating stuff that has been done more interestingly elsewhere.

    It’s a little depressing that I’m the first one to mention the fact that she’s a transphobic asshole.

  24. I really don’t like her songs. I’m not into the club music type stuff at all. But when I watch her videos I do like the songs. With the exception, I think, of Paparazzi (’cause I thought that video was FULL of problems). I love her artsy style, and while I think dressing up like a Slim Jim for music video awards is not something I would EVER do, I gotta give her props for doing her style like she does.

    Also, I can’t tell it’s Lady Gaga when she’s got normal hair and semi-normal clothes, lol. Half the video I was like “… is that still her? I can’t tell without the outrageous outfits.” Which makes it funnier because I recognize her better when her face is half covered by a costume, lol.

  25. Egnu,

    I was wondering the same thing and had to go back and re-read the comments. I can’t speak for Lauren but I think she may have been referring to a commenter above who said that Lady Gaga said “something nutty.”

  26. Agree with lauren and others!

    wtf?

    The Bad Romance video “features Lady Gaga being held prisoner & auctioned off to a group of men in a Russian bath house”

    I don’t care if she dusts him in the end. So much for challenging gender – or (given the product placement) anything else really.

  27. As a nutty person, I just want to throw this out there:

    I personally do not think of words like “nutty” and “crazy” and “psycho” as de facto ableist.

    I understand that plenty of people do disagree and have good reason for doing so. And respect their position.

    /de-rail

    The product placement? Is awesome. If this gets more people drinking Nemiroff, I will be a happy girl.

  28. The Bad Romance video ā€œfeatures Lady Gaga being held prisoner & auctioned off to a group of men in a Russian bath houseā€

    I donā€™t care if she dusts him in the end. So much for challenging gender ā€“ or (given the product placement) anything else really.

    Hm. I can only speak for myself, but I strongly relate to such videos. I particularly like how the guy who gets her looks like someone who could have stumbled out of any halfway decent club in Kiev (well, our version of halfway decent clubs). The vicious Slavic angle makes the entire thing that much cooler. And the crystals she wears reminded me of Soviet-era chandeliers.

  30. The Bad Romance video ā€œfeatures Lady Gaga being held prisoner & auctioned off to a group of men in a Russian bath houseā€

    Is that what’s supposed to be happening? I’m not sure I would have figured that out, distracted as I was by the truly ridiculous quantities of white patent leather.

  31. Natalia- I agree with you. I have no problem with words like “crazy” or “nutty.” I also have a history of mental illness and have had various treatments for it, so as a member of this community I feel I have the right to say those words. But I also have no problem with other people saying them. I think policing people’s language, especially with such culturally ubiquitous words as “crazy”, often goes too far. I didn’t find any of these comments ableist.

  33. I love, love, love me some Lady Gaga. I may or may not have worn an amazing Ms. Gaga Halloween costume and may or may not be wearing it to her concert in two weeks.. *ahem*

    But I’m also a shameless lover of dance/pop music. And music videos! And let’s at least give her credit for making a decent music video when we’re so often stuck with the same generic videos over and over. Music videos are like an after-thought for most artists now and when you see this and the Paparazzi video? Art, I say!

    As for her anti-feminism, she did say in an interview that she is not a feminist because “she loves American male culture”, which to me, means that she at least GETS what feminism is about, which is that it’s not anti-male but anti-male culture. And so even though she’s not publicly down with the cause, I at least respect that she knows what the freakin’ cause is about!

    Plus, she may not call herself a feminist but for generic, mainstream music, it’s a lot better than what is out there. Not to mention her very public support of the queer community.

    /End Gaga love fest.

  34. I feel like I’m in seventh grade and “the weird girl” just walked by. “I hear she worships men! I hear she’s transphobic! I heard she hates feminism! Haha, she hates feminism?! I bet someday she’ll learn how WRONG she is and then she’ll be HURT and I’ll be satisfied! God, if she only conformed to everything we do, we wouldn’t have to stand in the corner and laugh at her!!”

    I believe it is extremely possible any person is transphobic. But before I chuck someone under the bus as a bigot, a slight bit of proof would be nice. Same for the other accusations.

    There are plenty of comments here who focus on the problematic nature of her music and videos, especially the fact she’s an enthusiastic participant in the Beauty Privilege Culture. And that’s fine, that’s valid. But the rest of it really is kind of gross.

  35. i’m interested in her, but not exactly a fan. so i’d like to know where she said anything transphobic ?

    just curious.

  37. Chally- I do not believe that talking about feminist issues, such as ableism within blog commetns and pop music, is derailing a thread. I found your comment to be dismissive, I am aware that people disagree with me about the word “crazy.” But as I have said before, as a part of that community I have a right to say it and I have yet to hear an argument convincing me to stop.

    Can someone please give me an example of Gaga being transphobic? I am a huge fan but also a strong critic of her work because of some of the oppressions I have observed her perpetuating. But I have never heard about her being transphobic.

  39. I assume it’s this sort of thing that gets her labeled transphobic:

    “I really am a lady!” says Lady GaGa insisting that she isn’t a transsexual, as previously being speculated by various media. “I’m not quite as outrageous as I look – underneath all this I am deeply moral and actually a really nice girl,”

    It would be good if she didn’t suck in her response to it, but I note that she is also a victim of transphobia (and phobia of intersex people and misogyny, etc). An example of people questioning her gender and her sex, from Questioning Transphobia:

    hat did happen is that Lady Gaga opted not to wear underwear and when getting off of a motorcycle resulted in a quick flash, it suddenly became okay for footage of her genitals to be circulated, presumably without her consent under titles like ā€œLady Gaga has a penis? Lady Gaga is a man?ā€, ā€œProof!! LADY GAGA is a MAN!ā€, or ā€œBreaking news: Lady GaGa is actually a MAN!ā€ and marked with pop-ups encouraging us to view ā€œsome of the funniest drunken shamingsā€ on the internet. Thatā€™s not coming out. Thatā€™s exploitation, predicated on the belief that womenā€™s and genitals that are ā€œabnormalā€ or unexpected in any way are public property.

    If she is intersex and chooses to come out as such, that would be great. If was assigned female at birth and chooses to come out as a woman with a large labia, awesome. If she was assigned male at birth and wants to share that with us, more power to her. But it was never the publicā€™s business and it is shameful that footage of her crotch is the way sheā€™s going to come out.

    Lady Gagaā€™s history is not public property.

    That’s actually all I’d ever heard of about this performer before reading this post.

  40. I dropped in a comment explaining some of the transphobia-related stuff I’ve read re: Lady Gaga in the past. It’s got links, so it’s not coming through automatically. To sum up: she’s been targeted with transphobic speculation that attempts to question her sex and her gender. She repsonded to this speculation in a transphobic way, indicating “I really am a lady!” and that she’s “deeply moral and actually a really nice girl.” Trans women are, of course, really ladies and can be deeply moral and actually really nice girls, so her insinuation that she can’t be trans because she is these things is transphobic. However, it’s also transphobic (and misogynist, etc) for people to be targetting her with questions about “is she really a man?” or discussing her genitals and trying to figure out whether she’s intersex. As Questioning Transphobia indicates, these matters are private unless she decides to make them public, and “her history is not public property.”

  41. Ash: As a disabled feminist, I don’t think talking about disability or feminist issues is out of line, either. I didn’t say that you didn’t have a right to say it, and that is not something I’d ever tell someone with a history of mental illness. What I was saying is that, now that it has been established that potentially problematic language had been used, we can get back to talking about Lady Gaga (including ableism in her work!). There are plenty of dedicated threads to discuss the important topic of lanugage, like this thread here at Feministe or this thread at FWD/Forward. And I don’t like to have ableist language or reclamation or whatever be a side issue in any thread, as it would be here.

  42. How could I not love a misogynistic video showcasing an incredibly bad song?

    Pretty easily, actually. I don’t think the highly stylized imagery redeems it. What isn’t highly stylized nowadays?

    The song isn’t catchy the way, say, Beyonce’s Single Ladies is. The imagery- fully clothed men watching barely clothed women dance for them; two women ripping another woman’s clothes off and forcing a drink down her throat, (again, in front of a fully clothed male audience) is highly disturbing. The blatant sex slave aspect is far worse.

    The suspended crystal shot was kinda cool. That’s pretty much the only thing I saw in this that wasn’t flat out awful.

    I don’t know enough about Lady Gaga to feel one way or another about her, but this video? Ugh.

  43. The song isnā€™t catchy the way, say, Beyonceā€™s Single Ladies is.

    God, I detest that song. I can understand why people like it, but to still makes me stabby. I think if we’re holding out for a revolution of any kind from pop music, we’ll be waiting a while. Single Ladies might be catchier, but it’s not winning any points in the progressive categories.

  45. Lady Gaga isn’t doing anything new and she certainly isn’t shocking anyone with her “I’m a bi exhibitionist” cr@p. We’ve seen it all before.

    The only reason I can think of for some people thinking she’s a feminist, despite the fact she says she isn’t and all the misogynistic messages in her videos, is that she’s not very attractive looking.

  46. Regarding Lady Gaga, I think I’ll put her in the same category as a fair amount of my sexuality: kinda hot, kinda silly, probably problematic, but enjoyable enough that I’ll stick around nonetheless. :p

    And yeah, I loved pretty much every bit of that video, even though a fair amount of my enjoyment was exclamations like “what the hell?” and “omg, she did *not* just do a cheesy Moulin Rouge (sp?) shout-out and then light a guy on fire.” I gotta admit, I really liked how she kind of owned the f’ed-up-ness of it all. No one is going to mistake the stuff in that video for healthy loving behaviors, and that reduces the problematic nature of it somewhat, I believe. She isn’t trying to normalize this stuff or make it seem completely natural and fine.

  47. The song isnā€™t catchy

    I’m not going to say it is a *quality* song because I have no taste in music, and have been known to listen to crap like Fall Out Boy all day long, but it really is pretty catchy. I was humming it in lab all day today, and kept having to awkwardly stop when I passed people who I want to respect me in the hall. šŸ˜€ (I occasionally alternated it with “Womanizer” btw, for full disclosure. Yeeeah. :p)

  48. …is that sheā€™s not very attractive looking.

    There’s no accounting for taste, but… but… BLASPHEMY.

    The blatant sex slave aspect is far worse.

    I think that pop music has every right to engage sexual slavery. After all, it’s very much part of the fabric of society, virtually any society, and it won’t be just academics or human rights activists commenting on it, or serious writers using aspects of it. And the oddity and brutality of this video makes it stand out (not that I think all art should be odd and brutal in this respect, but plenty of people play the sex slave aspect up just for titillation).

  49. Pray, what’s that with feminists being unattractive? šŸ˜‰
    Oh, and the lady’s my favourite double-drag ever.

  51. I actually didn’t know about Gaga’s transphobic statements or ableist performances — I did know about her gay-rights activism. Although, for the record, I wasn’t putting this video up as a statement that Lady Gaga Is A Feminist. I was putting it up because, basically, oooh, shiny! (Which isn’t to say we shouldn’t discuss any history of ableism and transphobia — this isn’t an attempt to shut down discussion, just to say that it wasn’t something I was aware of. I was aware that she didn’t identify as a feminist, but that doesn’t make me take someone off my ipod).

    As for Gaga not being attractive, I do think that as much as she’s skinny and blonde, she definitely isn’t conventionally attractive — she has strong features, a big nose, etc. And she dresses oddly — she may not wear pants, but you don’t get the feeling that she’s planning her outfits because they’re simply titillating. She’s striking, but not traditionally pretty, and she doesn’t seem to try to box herself into the sexy pop star thing. She’s definitely sexual, and I think she’s smokin’, but her brand is definitely more tied to aesthetic weirdness than sex appeal. I like her in part because she seems to be acutely aware of the male gaze, and she seems to like fucking with it. I think this video is a pretty obvious example of that.

    But of course, to each their own. If you hate the video, ok.

  52. ” – The vicious Slavic angle makes the entire thing that much cooler. And the crystals she wears reminded me of Soviet-era chandeliers. -”

    aren’t crystals slavic themselves? the czechs are famous for them…

  53. @ Seize: I don’t think her support of LGBTQ rights is in response to any transphobic comments she has made in the past. She has been a longtime advocate for gay rights, as she credits the gay community with really launching her career:

    “The turning point for me was the gay community,” she said. “I’ve got so many gay fans and they’re so loyal to me and they really lifted me up. They’ll always stand by me and I’ll always stand by them. It’s not an easy thing to create a fanbase. … Being invited to play [the San Francisco Pride rally], that was a real turning point for me as an artist.”

    The whole article is here: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1610781/20090506/lady_gaga.jhtml

  54. I wish I had a source for the quote (though I have no reason to believe it might be false), but here is what she has to say about the pantslessness:

    “My grandmother is basically blind, but she can make out the lighter parts, like my skin and hair. She says, ‘I can see you, because you have no pants on.’ So Iā€™ll continue to wear no pants so that my grandma can see me.”

    It’s interesting that we can all watch the same music video and take so many different (to the point of being contradictory) things from it. I have been on the fence about Lady Gaga for a long time, but this is the video that made me like her. I think the use of color throughout the video is fascinating. And the way the dancing changes throughout the video and becomes more assured until the end where they’re in red and dancing strongly and fiercely for nobody but themselves is awesome.

  55. “Single Ladies might be catchier, but itā€™s not winning any points in the progressive categories.”

    Oh, certainly not. I can’t imagine why anyone would think that song is progressive. Have you read the lyrics–EEK!

    I didn’t even like it the first time I heard it, but the damn thing stuck in my brain and the next thing I knew I was humming it. The next time I heard it, I was singing it. Remember the you-tube of the baby dancing to it that went viral? Even babies get addicted to it!

    Someone who knows much more about music than I would have to explain how this works but that song is like the “Plop Plop, Fizz Fizz” of music. Once you’ve heard Single Ladies, it’s super hard to get it out of your head.

    That’s the only reason I used it as an example of a “catchy” song. I wasn’t commenting on the quality of it lyrically or musically or politically. I remember Jill linked to Beyonce’s video a while back so I wanted to use an example of a song/video that was presented here before.

  56. I apologise for my last comment. I haven’t got a problem with Lady Gaga so I’m not sure why I lashed out at her like I did. Maybe it’s because I was drunk and a bit of jealousy came out.

  57. Chally- sorry for the delayed response. I just wanted to thank you for your response to me, it made total sense and I understand and appreciate where you are coming from, and I have checked out those other links. I am always impressed when threads are moderated as maturely and rationally as this.

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