Quote:
Originally posted by wanderlust
she is the master of fame. but she clearly has no identity of her own. one day she's lana del rey, next she's anti bullying, an hour later she makes jabs of nicki minaj or whoeveer it was on some award show and deleting the messages later cuz she's too impulsive or has no backbone. who the **** knows.. she acts more like a confused teenager to me who wants to get attention or seem important by trying to appear "deep". she reminds me of some people talking about one subject to impress other people when they just learnt about it the night before on a second rate Arte (that is a channel on tv, by the way)
and to the monsters ready to attack me blindly: i actually grew to like her a bit more. her songs are decent. some of them more than that. she's a good vocalist but still the worst dancer i've ever known. but i'm not gonna pretend im an idiot and ignore the obvious. ive felt this way about her the first time i saw some of her videos and interviews. she acts like a student to me who doesnt know who she really is yet. you say she's changing her image but i say she hasnt found her real identity yet. and if you think that's "hate talk" well then that's your problem.
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I addressed some of these criticisms in my post on the previous page. I understand why someone would say she has no "identity" of her own as an artist because pretty much her whole image is built on references, but I disagree and believe the sum total of those cultural references produces something new.
That being said, I don't really know how any of your examples of her being "all over the place" really demonstrate that. When has Gaga been "Lana Del Rey"? Cuz she dyed her hair brown, lol? Lana could be distilled down to "21st Century Nancy Sinatra + Hipster/Indie styling), if you wanna go that route. And how does being anti-bullying conflict with any of the other things? And Gaga's been an outspoken advocate of gay rights from the start, it's not something she just glommed on to for BTW. I'm not sure what you're referring to w/ the Nicki/awards show thing, I must have missed that.
It seems like you're approaching the issue of self-identity from a categorical perspective - like you can't truly possess an identity unless you fit into one certain box in a neat, consistent fashion. The ironic thing is that, if anything, it's the people who've modified their behavior/style in order to fit in with a particular group/have an easily discernible category who compromise their personal identity.
And of course she wants attention - she's a pop star, lol. I get the "tries to be deep" criticism, but she's spent no small amount of time also talking about how important artifice and the superficiality of image is to the pop/fame game. I understand why people hear her talk or ascribe some "meaningful" explanation to her seemingly superficial music, but for anyone that follows she is constantly contradicting herself when it comes to that.
Gaga's prone to provide a different interpretation for a song/video on different occasions when she's asked. This is one of my favorite things about her because I think she has a really underrated, dry sense of humor that comes out when she deadpans about Telephone being about the fear of suffocation or w/e. It's like so out-there but she rattles it off in deadpan style. This is where all the "she's so self-serious" accusations come from, I just see it differently.
But her refusal to commit to one, singularly consistent interpretation of her work (so postmodern oh la la) is, I think, a large part of what's so entertaining/interesting about her. I think it's great when you can approach the same piece of work in a variety of different ways so that it results in different potential meanings, but I feel like I'm in the minority in thinking the importance of authorial intent is overstated, anyway.
When you read a song's lyrics you come away with one reading of it, that can change when you hear the actual song and how it's delivered, it can change again when its video comes out, and it can change even more (even if only by a slight measure) through its performances - which Gaga's done all the time.