Lady GaGa Atomic Erotic Symphonic Bi-Sonic Genius! (Part FIVE of FIVE)
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.
Frank
Talk
with
Lady
GaGa
By Ann Powers
____December 13th, 2009
Los Angeles Times
LATIMES.COM
____Part FIVE of FIVE
____Links are in GREEN
On fantasy island
In Gaga‘s movie,
In Gaga‘s movie,
she is both Andy and the Superstar.
Warhol supported and exploited a
coterie of outsiders who likely would
never have emerged from their corners
without his help.
Gaga takes control but also
shows herself losing it;
she blurs the lines between
self-realization and self-objectification,
courting the dangers of full exposure
for a generation of kids born with
camcorders in their hands.
Though she talks
nonstop about liberation,
Gaga‘s work abounds with images
of violation and entrapment.
In the 1980s,
Madonna employed
bondage imagery,
and it felt sexual.
Gaga does it,
and it looks like it hurts.
She says she wants her fans to feel
safe in expressing their imperfections.
.
.
.
“I want women —
and men —
to feel empowered by
a deeper and more
psychotic part
of themselves. “
“The part they’re
always trying
desperately to hide.”
“I want that to
become something
that they cherish.”
But what is this freakishness,
which she hopes to nurture?
In songs like “Poker Face”
and the new “Speechless,”
Gaga focuses on women
as unreliable narrators,
misunderstood or even
unable to speak.
When she presents herself as
a cartoon character or a space alien,
she explores old questions
about gender,
artifice and “reality” using the new
language of social media,
body modification and
transgender sexuality.
These deep issues are her tools,
as important to her art as the glitter
and latex in which she shrouds herself.
“If you’re on an island,
stranded,
and all you have is sticks
and leaves and
pineapples,
you’re gonna make
a boat out of sticks
and leaves and
pineapples,”
she said.
“I view glamour
and celebrity life and
these plastic assumptions
as the pineapples.”
“And I spend my
career harvesting
pineapples,
and making pies
and outfits and lipsticks
that will free my fans
from their
stranded islands.”
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