Anyone else have June 8th marked on their calendars? June 8, 2010 Jill IT’S HERE: Well hello Madonna.
I love how unbelievably homoerotic this video is! Plus, I feel like there is a really interesting play on traditional femininity and masculinity throughout the performance.
I like aspects of the video. And a lot of the styling. The homoeroticism, as aj points out, is pretty cool. Also, I appreciate her making visible what appears to be consensual kink. That being said. Two things in particular are really discomfiting to me(and thanks to a couple of folks on Tumblr, isabel and brownfemipower for helping me clarify this): 1) The glamorization of the militarization of South American states. Like, military-occupied Argentina was not really sexy. Having her gyrate in a machine-gun bra among people dressed in military uniforms is…pretty problematic. 2) More generally, the exotification of Latino men is pretty awkward and gross. Especially when the video is entirely made up of people who can really easily be coded white. (I mean, I know there are very light-skinned Latin@ people out there. And some of the backup dancers may, in fact, be such! But a lot of people are going to watch and see what appears to be…a bunch of white folks). The styling really is great, though. And I appreciate the sort of dark mood the video has.
Well hello exoticization of Latino culture/men combined with a cast that can be easily read as 100% white (like pretty much all her videos except Telephone which… let’s not even go there). Fetishizing people of color while keeping the focus squarely on whites: how extremely transgressive! At least when Madonna did her sketchy-ass Latino fetishizing, she made sure to actually include them in her videos, sometimes to the extent that she was the only white person in her video.
Overall I found this video pretty boring. I agree with the above posts in both that the video does some cool tings with homoeroticism and reversals of traditional gender roles in sexuality. One particularly interesting reversal is the machine-gun bra. Although we cannot overlook what Dorian notes about the glamorization of militarization in South American states, there is a strong tradition of linking the phallus with violence, weaponry (most often guns), and power. It is cool to see the reversal here. That being said, the exoticizing Latino men and glorifying militarization in South American, as the commenters above have mentioned, is problematic.
Yes, yes, probably the back up dancers were not of Latino or Hispanic origins. But I’m getting tired of explaining this over and over again. Latinos/Hispanics are of different races, Latinos can be white, indigenous , of african descent, asian, or of any multiracial background imaginable. Latinos/ Hispanics are bounded by language and cultural similarities which by the way vary slightly from country to country. Now the main reason that Latinos are viewed mostly as people of color is because the majority (not all though) has a multiracial background.
The video might be Madonna, but that song is straight up Ace of Base. “Don’t call my name?” More like ‘Don’t Turn Around’!
GC – a fair point, and one I appreciate you bringing it up as it is a pet peeve of mine actually (to the extent that, ha, sometimes I forget it is not a pet peeve of everyone’s), since I am indeed both Latino and white; & I should have made it explicit. Still, I find it problematic that a video for a song, again, exoticizing Latino “themes” I guess, lends itself (in US culture) to being read as pretty much lacking in actual Latinos (and given the fact that many Latinos are of multiracial descent you could argue that even if they were somehow clearly white Latinos, that would still be problematic as it would still be making a white-centric video for a song exoticizing a not-majority-white culture).
Lady Gaga is the Barack Obama of the music world. She’s a testimony of the ability of advertising and slick PR to delude people into thinking her schtick isn’t just more of the same soulless corporate bullshit. It’s hip to like her among zombified young women. Anytime her name is mentioned: “OMG LADY GAGA, I LOOOOOOVE HER.” Whatever.
Steve, I don’t get why associating the feminine with violence and guns *is* cool just because it’s a reversal. I could do without it, thanks.
Bah! I wasn’t impressed. Firstly, for a song that is bascially the Vengaboys with knobs on, it’s really stretching to make such a moody monchrome video for it. It just does not fit the song Also, it wears it’s influences far too openly. The heart funeral is Amy Winehouse ‘Back to Black’, the dancers and costumes is all ‘Express Yourself’ era … See moreMadonna, the slicked back hair and big sunglasses is 80’s Annie Lennox and the blonde bob, black flares is majorly ripping off Rafaella Cara in this piece of awesomeness: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZXcRqFmFa8
In many of Gaga’s videos, it appears that the video is unconnected to the song. Bad Romance, a song which I interpreted to be about falling in love with your best friend, has a video about slave trafficking, in Telephone, despite the song being set in a club there is no club to be found in the video. Therefore I don’t find the lack of representation of the Latino men that the song is about too much of a problem. The song and the video seem to be about completely separate things – the song appears to me to be about a breakup, the video is about gay men in the military (I will admit that the men in the video could have been more racially diverse, but most media has this problem). In answer to ‘Alejandro’, we love her because she loves us, and makes amazing music. Apparently she broke down into tears after finding out she ignored a fan amongst a swarm of paparazzi.
The video might be Madonna, but that song is straight up Ace of Base. It reminds me of Ace of Base too. I also think it sounds a lot like Abba. Basically, the song is rather unoriginal- it brings to mind much pop music that has come before.
Wait, where was the great dane? Did she finally not put it in a video or did I just miss it? I thought Alejandro was the weakest song on The Fame Monster, and I think the video did a great job turning a goofy Abba/Ace of Base riff into something that is properly weird. I say it’s worthwhile to have this kind of boundary-pushing stuff in the mainstream, problematic or not. (Just, I guess, as it’s worthwhile to have people point out the problematic moments that are there.)
I don’t really know what to think about this. I love Gaga, but Alejandro is one of my least favorite of her songs, and the video really didn’t do anything for me. I’m sure there are interesting things going on but they went over my head, and it was kind of boring.
ok, so the homoerotic was… ok. realy more bierotic, wich might be more of an envelope pushing. but really, she grinds on men more than the men grind on each other, and yeah they’re scanily clad (which was pleasing eyecandy wise) but there’s almost no interaction between the men. the kink was kinda cool. but wtf was up with the gangbang at the end? omfg?!?! that just sqicked me hard.
As with all of Lady Gaga’s MVs, I think this one showcases her amazing ability to create videos that are so ridiculous, they are given a meaning by her broad fanbase (so as to rationalise their love of her?). I have a hard time believing she’s spreading any message to the mainstream, but you could argue she’s softening it up for an ACTUAL change in the way the mainstream works, I guess.
Wow, I didn’t catch any of the Latino thing because, well, mostly I was trying to figure out wtf was going on. Having said that, I’m all in favor of hot men regardless of, well, anything, really. Well,most thing. There are a couple of big, obvious exceptions. Actually, what this video reminded me most of was NPH in Starship Troopers. Again, not a bad thing. I found myself both amused by the wtf?!-ery and confused by the sex acts (though like most others, loved the homoerotica). I like it. I think. Large parts of it, anyway. It seemed very…derivative, however. Hello, Madonna, indeed. Along with Ace of Base (just typing that makes me feel old). Must watch again.
I have to say, until about halfway through the video, I was reading the men more as Nazis … the leather jackets, the helmets. “Every girl loves a fascist” and all that. Was I the only one? I guess the name “Alejandro” maybe should have been a clue….
The video might be Madonna, but that song is straight up Ace of Base. “Don’t call my name?” More like ‘Don’t Turn Around’! THAT’S what that song reminded me of! This was my least favorite song on the album. As far as the video is concerned, I thought it was really fun to watch, and I love the dark, symmetrical sort of aesthetic vibe it has. As others have mentioned, I also really appreciate the implied homo-eroticism, and am uncomfortable with the glamorization of South American militarization. All in all, I really like it, if I don’t think about it too much.
I would love to comment on this video but I can’t. There is no transcript, or even a summary. There is no title or artist or any information on this whatsoever. And we shouldn’t have to keep asking for this.
There are a some things in the video that made me uncomfortable (eroticizing South American militarization), and some bits that are just really bizarre (the machine gun bra – is she just fucking with us?), but also, I thought it was outrageously sexy.
The song felt kind of frivolous to me, kind of a typical catchy relationship song. It didn’t seem to have a lot to do with what was going on in the video. The video, I’m still kind of processing, but I think it has some interesting things to say about sex, violence, and religion. It hasn’t all finished crystallizing in my head yet, but I’m sure I’ll be back. I would like to hear what Gaga herself has to say about this one, as it kind of seems like there are a lot of elements that could be interpreted various ways, and I think it would be helpful to know what her intent was.
I’m so sick of people saying Gaga is “over analyzed.” It’s a lazy, shorthand version of “I don’t like it so other people shouldn’t,” for one thing. And second, nothing is over analyzed. If anything, it’s about time that this level of analysis was encouraged on a wider scale. I don’t think that Gaga intends everything that people find in her work. But since when is that necessary? Very few writers whose work is closely analyzed and picked apart by lit students consciously intend most of the meanings that readers find. But it is a particular talent to present something that engages people on that level, and there are few in the popular media who manage it.
PharaohKatt, the artist and the song title both appear in the left hand corner of the YouTube frame. There aren’t just transcripts flowing abundantly for music videos. I think it’s quite okay that it was posted sans transcript. We can watch the movie to see what it’s about.
Except. Not everyone can watch the movie to see what it’s about. Not everyone can access the left hand corner of the frame. One day, commenters on this site will stop pushing back when people quite reasonably ask to be included on the same basis as everyone else. Can we make that day now, folks?
If you don’t mind my asking, why not? Presumably watching a video is easier than reading and accessible to more not less people…
Here is a link to the song lyrics from LyricWiki: http://lyrics.wikia.com/Lady_GaGa:Alejandro I googled for a more detailed transcript but came up dry. I wouldn’t know how to describe this video, I’m sorry. Men danced, Gaga danced, there was singing and weird costumes. The total lack of consideration for people using screenreaders and similar technology to read this post sucks. It’s not like it isn’t a well-established problem with this blog. What the fuck is Feministe’s stance on transcriptions anyway? It seems like right now some contributors care and some don’t, and either way it’s a poor chance that actual transcriptions (or, hell, even a brief text description) will be provided.
Transcripts are relatively difficult and time-consuming to produce. That makes them valuable. It makes no sense to have something as valuable as a transcript be produced, used, or distributed inefficiently. There needs to be a Transcript Central website, where people can easily: -Upload or post transcripts which they have made, keyworded/tagged for easy searching; -post links to transcripts which are hosted on other sites, keyworded/tagged; -post requests for transcripts, i.e. links to existing things which are not yet transcribed; and -Set up and/or monitor group sharing in transcript production–most useful for longer transcripts, like this one, which would take a pretty long time to do. As websites go, it’s not unusually hard to set up.
@ Julie This is not about a forced choice between text or video – it’s possible to provide both. A text option does not undermine a video option, it just enhances accessibility for a variety of reasons, including the use of screenreaders (which convert text to audio, if people are not aware of that), bandwith and technology limitations that prohibit streaming video, geographically-bound sources that do not stream video outside of certain countries (I’m looking at you, Hulu and Comedy Network), technology or situation limitations that prohibit audio or audible volume, sensory perception issues which make video/audio incomprehensible, and I’m sure I’m missing some other ones too – those are just the first ones that came to mind. I’m sure having a transcript may also aid in translation between source documents into other languages. So, no, watching a video is not necessarily easier or more accessible. And, again, have a transcript does not void the use of video. Kind of the opposite.
Not again! I previewed Fame Monster and decided against buying Alejandro because it didn’t do anything for me but now I’ve seen the video it’s stuck in my head and I kinda want to buy it. Which is precisely how she hooked me in the first place! Dammit, Gaga.
Has anyone managed to find a link that actually works outside of the U.S.? Because I’m not able to watch the video – “This video not available in your country.” I’m in Germany. I seem to be failing at finding a version. *frustrating*
clare g – you’re not the only one – there are definitely some Nazi things going on, especially at the beginning, with the “KLEIN”, and then the men are carrying something that looks like a star of David. I’m guessing there was supposed to be some connection made between Nazi-fascism and S.A. militarization. I still don’t know how I feel about the video – need to watch it again and process it a bit more…
@Clare G: I also read it as Nazi – pre-WWII. I thought of Cabaret and Marilyn Manson’s “Golden Age of Grotesque” era. But, yeah, then when everyone mentioned South America and the name I thought “oh, that makes sense.”
…geographically-bound sources that do not stream video outside of certain countries (I’m looking at you, Hulu and Comedy Network)… These companies don’t stream to non-U.S. markets not because they don’t like you, but because they have not been granted the rights to do so. Other companies hold broadcast rights for that content in different countries, and they often choose not to use those rights to stream to the Web. Just FYI.
So, watching it again, I see that the man in front on the left of the screen when she’s dancing with the machine gun bra actually looks like a darker skinned latino. Of course, that’s only one, but they’re not *all* white-presenting.
@Sprout I think “Klein” is a reference to the director, fashion photographer Steven Klein (who has his own issues with race…he infamously shot Lara Stone in blackface last year for French Vogue). @everyone: I found this synopsis of the video, on what is–warning’s fair–a completely biased website. You’re not going to get much critical engagement with the material, but it’s a pretty thorough description. It is true though that ideally I would not have had to provide it.
Ah, I did not know the director’s name. To me, “Klein” instantly translates as German “little” – so I read it as “little Alejandro” Ha!
@Sprout At the beginning, the men are wearing wooden things in a bunch of different shapes. One guy has a circle, another a triangle, and I think what you are interpreting as the star of David looks to me more of a pyramid. So I don’t think that allusion was intentional, though I did kinda see some other WWII imagery, so I could be wrong.
re: intent – should you choose to take her at her word, this is what she told a reporter about it (source: The video is about the “purity of my friendships with my gay friends”, Gaga had explained, earlier. “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.
Thanks for mansplaining, Tom Foolery. I’m sure Jadey is pleased to learn that Hulu doesn’t have a personal vendetta against her. Even if finding/creating a description of the whole video is too difficult, would it be too hard if the post at least said that this is Lady Gaga’s Alejandro video? On my computer, all I see is “IT’S HERE! [Big White Space] Well hello, Madonna.” Made. No. Sense.
Dorian 6.9.2010 at 11:49 am I found this synopsis of the video… It is true though that ideally I would not have had to provide it. Why not? I’m not trying to be snarky by the question: isn’t it possible for a blog to take into account the contributions of its larger community, in which some of the additional work of providing transcripts is borne by someone other than the people who are writing and managing the blog? It seems to happen all the time in blogs, in many contexts: commenters link to supporting facts, or provide context, or fill in gaps in the post, or link to transcripts, or create their own transcripts, etc. In this instance and the other recent one in which this came up, a link to the transcript was posted quite soon after the initial post, in both cases by someone other than the post author. What (if anything) makes that process unacceptable?
Syndella, people are obviously that big companies don’t do things because they don’t like you? His post was condesending.
@Sailorman It’s reasonable to expect community members to bring their own perspectives, provide context they are aware of, and so forth. To expect them to enrich the discussion, in other words. But expecting them to provide core content is problematic. Ideally, a post should be at the very least comprehensible, able to be read/understood. Without the commentariat having to serve as an interpreter. And when transcripts aren’t provided, that test has been failed for a not-insignificant subset of the audience.
Thanks for mansplaining, Tom Foolery. I’m sure Jadey is pleased to learn that Hulu doesn’t have a personal vendetta against her. Thanks for galucidating, Marle.
Sailorman @49 You seem to think that transcripts are some kind of add-on as with filling in gaps, but transcripts are essential to access for many people, as Dorian points out. Also, I think it’s frankly unfair to expect readers to provide transcripts, do that work essential to the blog, for free when we at Feministe get paid for our time, however little.
Galucidating! I love it! But let me get this straight, dismissing someone’s remarks as mansplaining=Okay explaining why hulu’s videos aren’t viewable in any other countries=zomg condescension!
Yeah, I’m aware that there are reasons for localized streaming videos, and I did use a rhetorical device (i.e., “I’m looking at you”) that may have been mildly confusing to someone not paying attention to the rest of my comment, which provided more than adequate context for my point. Using a video-sharing service not accessible to everyone in one’s audience without providing a transcript, for whatever that reason is, does not promote accessibility. My point had nothing to do with whether specific video services were accessible to me (it’s a given that some are and some are not), and everything to do with why transcripts should be available on a site *that professes to care about accessibility*.
It seems to me that the more a blog offers, the more readers it has, the more its readers demand of it, the more that readers (as a community) can bear. I can see the argument “people should be able to access this post.” I’m not arguing about access in general. I’m just talking about the fact that there seems to be a moralistic claim to the way in which that access is provided, and I’m not getting that part. I’m raising that point because the view here strongly supports the “irrelevant intent” concept. So if there’s a laserlike focus on the issue “is there reasonable access?” with intent irrelevant, and the answer is “yes, there is” why is it horrible for that reasonable access to arise in manner A rather than manner B? I don’t think the answer is as simple as you are making it out to be.
@Sailorman Think of a blog as being a job, because in many cases it quite literally is. A person who runs a business has an obligation to their customers. A person who runs a blog has an obligation to their readers. In both cases, one of these obligations is making sure people can access the services provided. Expecting the commentariat to provide transcripts is like expecting, I don’t know, customers at a grocery store to run the cash register for each other, since the staff is all off doing something else. It’s a matter of essential access, and one should be able to count on the people whose job it is to provide that access, rather than relying on the goodwill of fellow commenters/customers.
Yeah, I’m aware that there are reasons for localized streaming videos, and I did use a rhetorical device (i.e., “I’m looking at you”) that may have been mildly confusing to someone not paying attention to the rest of my comment, which provided more than adequate context for my point. I apologize for my confusion. Just trying to add to the collective knowledge, here.
A person who runs a business has an obligation to their customers. In point of fact, you are not a customer of Feministe — its various advertisers are. You’re actually the commodity!
@Tom Thanks for that. Truly. But I was analogizing somewhat, as it happens, which is why rather than follow up that line with “so Feministe should…” [which would be presumptive of me in any case], I talked about how a person who runs a blog also has an obligation to their readers. I suppose my phrasing was a bit ambiguous, for which I accept culpability, but I do think the point was…fairly evident nonetheless, right? And I mean, if you disagree that a blog should strive to make itself as accessible as possible to readers, and indeed does have that obligation, the actual disagreement might be nicer to see than a bit of point-obscuring sophistry. In my opinion.
And I mean, if you disagree that a blog should strive to make itself as accessible as possible to readers, and indeed does have that obligation, the actual disagreement might be nicer to see than a bit of point-obscuring sophistry. I don’t know what “sophistry” means, so I really don’t think you’ve done all you can to make this comment accessible to me. But that’s OK, I’m willing to overlook that. I was making the point that your analogy is foolish. Businesses have obligations to their customers because their customers are providing something — money — in return to a good or a service. You and I are providing nothing to Feministe, other than our attention, which is not especially valuable on its own (only in aggregate), and our comments — and I think you’ll agree that my comments aren’t really worthwhile, and I certainly think your comments are ill-informed and valueless, so let’s compromise and say nothing either of us have to say is worth anything. So the bottom line is, Jill and her fellow writers really don’t owe us anything. We make a decision to read this blog based on its merits, and they don’t charge us anything. No obligation is produced. That said, Jill and her fellow writers do what they can to make the site easy to read. But how far does that go? Transcripts can add a lot of time and energy to a post, but the consensus seems to be they’re a must. But there are other accessibility issues. Jill’s certainly not olibigated to, for example, pay my Time Warner broadband bill if I lose my job and can no longer read the site? Should Jill print out and mail me her posts if my computer is repo’d? Should Jill translate this post into French Creole because it’s a language I’m more comfortable with? Obviously not. The result of insisting, without exception, on time and energy being invested into universal accessibility is a decrease in the available content to anyone. I’ve certainly noticed fewer videos being posted on this site. I wonder why that might be!
Feministe’s comment policy specifically indicates that ableist comments are not to be tolerated here. The constant dismissing of requests for transcripts by people with disabilities is ableism. People have repeatedly been asked by the moderators to stop arguing against transcripts and stop arguing that transcript requests are unwarranted or too demanding. A moderator of this blog has said in this comment thread that transcripts are necessary. The last time we had this chat, three moderators of this blog restated that transcripts were necessary, that asking for transcripts was not “trolling”, and that Feministe had a commitment to providing transcripts. And yet, here we are. Again. If you cannot respect accessibility concerns, be polite enough to respect the moderators of this blog who have stated explicitly that transcripts are something they are committed to providing, and transcript requests are not problems that the commentators need to argue about.
I don’t have a ton of time today to get into this, but as the person who posted the video without a transcript/description, I apologize. When we post other videos with dialogue I include transcripts; this was an honest mistake, because I hadn’t realized that people would want a transcript for a music video, since there isn’t really dialogue and it’s just a song with people dancing. Now that I know, I’ll post lyrics in the future.
@Tom, enough with the facetious crap. So, as Jill says, she doesn’t have time today to get into this. So you have me! Here is what’s going to happen now. I am going to be deleting further comments that try to worm their way around the necessity of Feministe providing transcripts, because I am not inclined to deal kindly with this ableist bullshit! I will also be working on making this site more accessible in ways which will become apparent soon! Fun times for all. (Psst, Jill, descriptions are needed as well as lyrics :).)
(Psst, Jill, descriptions are needed as well as lyrics :).) Yes yes! I meant descriptions as well as lyrics. Argh, typing fast.
I saw a lot of Duran Duran in this video as well as all the other influences above, specifically Wild Boys and New Moon on Monday. The military-esque parts are very reminiscent of NMoM, and the hairstyle and clothes of the guy that is the focus in that part of the video is very old-school Duran Duran. But, maybe I’m imagining it. Must agree with those above that mentioned it was one of their least favorite songs on the album. The only thing that kept me from always pressing next when it came on was the reference to Fernando, my love for ABBA being strong enough to listen to anything that’s homaging them. But damn this has turned into an ear worm since it became a single. The Ace of Baseness (how could I have missed that before? It’s so obvious, musically and lyrically) explains a lot.
So is war inevitable between the militaristic police states of Lady Gaga’s and M.I.A.’s recent overlong videos?
I will say now that I have not seen the video yet as I have dial up at home and youtube hulu, and many other video sites do not work on my internet. But I would like to point out that none of gaga’s videos are identical to the songs for a reason. She talked about that when her video for papparazi came out. the video mathces the song, but it’s not all about that. As for the influences that you see in the songs from this cd, gaga also said that she did this album as a tribute to the singers who have influenced her (madonna and abba clearly come through in her song) also from the small clips of the video that I have seen it seems like she is playing and criticizing the virgin/whore dicotomy. I have also heard that she once again fools with gender roles and puts the men in heels. Those of you who have seen it can feel free to correct me if I’m wrong there