Our Tale of Two Cities by two manhattan kids: catherine & rachel

March 2, 2011

Weird?  Yes, but what did you expect?  I think it’s awesome.  Thank you Lady Gaga for bringing back the music video.  I’d been missing these grandiose manifestations of music’s visual identity.  

‘Born This Way’ is the ultimate anthem of individuality.  This was evident before Gaga released the ‘Born This Way’ music video.  With the video, however, Gaga intellectualizes the song in a way that would never have resonated by hearing it on the radio.  The video commences with a pink outlined triangle (upside down triangles have traditionally been a symbol for gay rights but are also used to symbolize female power as the triangle is evocative of female parts).  I am not sure if this was the intended effect, but the image calls to mind Judy Chicago’s ‘Dinner Party’ (which the Brooklyn museum website calls “an important icon of 1970s feminist art and a milestone in twentieth-century art”).  Much of the ‘Born This Way’ video’s introduction, which Gaga narrates, reminds me of the aesthetic evoked by Chicago’s famous piece.  Was this intentional?  There are certainly parallels between what Chicago was trying to convey and what Gaga purports to be advocating: it is a celebration of the marginalized that elevates everyone in the process.  

The narrated portion of the video is set against music from Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ (Gaga has cited the master of psychological thrillers as an inspiration and she even dedicates an entire verse of ‘Bad Romance’ to naming his films…Vertigo among them).  She weaves a plethora of other artistic influences together throughout the video as well, each of them poignant and none of them gratuitous.  [If you are interested in learning about more of the nods Gaga gives in her ‘Born This Way’ video, I’d suggest reading this piece published in The Atlantic.]

I hesitate to give her too much credit, but Gaga’s shtick about being an artist is pretty legitimate in my opinion.  Having studied art history and pored over the influences and messages that great artists of our past worked tirelessly to incorporate into their work, I can say that Gaga is no different.  While her work may be cheapened by the backdrop of Hollywood that it is inevitably set against, her ability to synthesize influences and weave messages together makes her a true talent.  And she’s smart.  I appreciate this fact about her a lot because so many famous people are not intelligent.  

The ‘Born This Way’ video makes me like the song (I was a little bit disappointed initially) a lot more than I did before.  And Gaga looks gaga…hello ripped abs.  Could touring and boozing be the new fitness and diet goldmine?

-R