another reading of Bad Romance, to supliment Steve Halle's (link courtesy of Johannes).
This one starts near the end, or my idea of it does, with Gaga in the bedroom with a the guy on the bed, obscured by her advancing, dragging a train of polar bear fir behind her. She disrobes, and fire engulfs the bed (and presumably the guy), then the shot cuts to Gaga in profile, emenating power and glory, her head sillioetted against the rising flames.
My immediate thought:
Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
(Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus")
And then a line earlier, which resonates with the posthuman construction that is (my conception of) Gaga:
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----
And Gaga's continual mantra of the competing pultions "I want your love ... I want your revenge" and "I don't want to be friends" ... If i may be permitted to project myself, this is the lack of self - the desire for complete posthuman trancenence of the "I", to become-other, reach out and touch the body without organs. "friends" is not enough, love has to be augmented with "revenge", "ugly", "dis(-)ease" (not that the negative aesthectic is neccessary in this specular world of fashion, striptease, etc - the oversize eyes of Gaga's 'baby' incarnation, the reptilian spine, the masks.... it is the excessive hypersaturation that is neccessary here - the symbolic regime of the Real must fall, and the "I" must be deterritorialized into a specular multiplicity (though that may be the Triazalam speaking - cures for one ailment (insomnia) cause others (hysteria in the writing of critical prose(and paretheses in parentheses in parentheses)))).
And with the continual statement of the specular, there is always the spectacle, and the image, and the concentration on the Gaze. And the Audience. The "peanut crunching crowd". Us.
(I've (still, I think) got an essay I wrote on Plath's LL for a 100 level paper - with a rewrite, I might post it here. What do y'all think?)
GREIL MARCUS ~
9 hours ago
3 comments:
Yes, post it. I'll write something about Lady Lazarus on my blog when I get some time. It was a very influential poem for me when my friend Seng read it to me in 11th grade. And, to refer back to Steve Halle's piece, I know she was an influence on Aase despite the guidance of her Surrealist group. Aase's second book, Dark Matter, is in some ways I think a rewrite of Lady Lazarus - the b-movies, the snails, the violence. Especially the rocked-shut shell: Dark Matter keeps going back to that image (as an image of drug-induced state) but in Berg's book there's a snail in there. Complications ensue.
I added a link to this on my blog, in the latest Lady Gaga post.
I did not do another post because my blog is turning into a Lady Gaga blog.
Also, Gaga mentions Sylvia in "Dance in the Dark" (and Marilyn Monroe).
I totally thought of this when I first saw the video! But then I forgot. I'm glad you did this read.
I think I may do more on Plath, use that essay as a starting point. I think I need to think more about plath's politicality, the Sibylline and hyteric as textual weaponisation. She attacks, rather retreating into indeterminacy or exposion of subjectivity.
but then I want to write on pop stars too.
you could take a break and write on Nico and Lydia Lunch....
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