An Overview of the Thesis
This thesis is mainly divided into four chapters. The first chapter tries to theorize the idea of écriture féminine and briefly discuss the three transgressive female figures, Mae West, Madonna, and Lady Gaga. Even since Lady Gaga launched her career, the accusation of her imitating Madonna and the thinking of her as another Mae West have never stopped. These three figures indeed share distinguishing similarities; they are credited with the endeavor to confront the male-dominated society, and the female body plays a pivotal role in their art works. However, one cannot conclude that they all embody the theme of écriture féminine.
Unlike West and Madonna, Lady Gaga showcases more aggressive sexual politics and how she represents her female body in her artistry is also fiercer. I will come back to the comparison of the three women at the end of the thesis in order to argue that the ways in which Lady Gaga is the most subversive of them all.
The second chapter will offer a textual analysis of Lady Gaga’s song lyrics. I will elaborate on the relation between Lady Gaga’s sexuality and speech to the practice of écriture
féminine. It is noteworthy that Lady Gaga not only writes or co-writes every single song of
hers, but brings her body into full play. In this sense, when writing her songs, she involves her bodily experiences in the lyrics, and manifests her enjoyment toward writing herself.
Therefore, to delve into her lyrics will give an understanding of the textualization of her lived experiences and the inscription of the body in the text.
The third chapter centers on the representations of the female body in Lady Gaga’s music videos, her costumes in terms of the grotesque with regard to the female body, and her performances. I will analyze the narratives in her music videos and examine the ways in which she employs the female body as a vehicle to circumvent the masculinist discourse and empower others. Since it is evident that Lady Gaga goes through some changes in her
music, I will also inspect her transformation from a pop star to Mother Monster, the
significance behind this transformation, along with its relation to écriture féminine. Then the focus of this chapter will turn to her costumes. Usually, people are used to pinning women shots down to the image of a Barbie, who has a curvaceous figure and always dresses like a princess, and they tend to judge a female singer first by her appearance rather than her talent. Lady Gaga, being aware of this stereotype placed on women, always shows up in formless and outrageous costumes to upset how we should dress. Whilst people detect nothing but oddity, Lady Gaga’s costumes are in fact a practice of the grotesque and serve to counteract the masculine dualism and views on women’s bodies. In addition, Lady Gaga’
female body in grotesque costumes presents a new form of femininity that cannot be defined in accordance with social norms. Furthermore, since Lady Gaga claims herself as Mother Monster and her fans Little Monsters, I want to link the notion of monstrosity with the grotesque. In other words, Lady Gaga’s recourse to the monstrosity makes the female body not only a monstrous body but also a grotesque one, which is protrusive, plural and always changing. The significance of the grotesque body therefore corresponds to the idea of
écriture féminine.
Also, I will elaborate on what grotesque is before presenting a close reading of significance embedded in her costumes, since critics are at odds with the definition of the grotesque. For example, Noel Carroll argues that to define the grotesque, “a structural account” should be taken into consideration before the “functional account” (295). Contrary to Carroll, Wolfgang Kayser claims that the experience of the grotesque occurs to the
observer when our sense of the world is transformed and defamiliarized by abysmal farces.
That is to say, he stresses the importance of the “act of reception” (180). Seen in the light, the grotesque costumes and Lady Gaga’s female body are powerful entities, through which she deconstructs our perception about the connection among identity, social roles, and costumes as embodied in the caricature of femininity envisioned by patriarchy.
As Lady Gaga always wears eccentric and tantalizing costumes during her
performances, the last part of the third chapter will be the analysis of performative acts. As is known to all, Lady Gaga never disguises her stance as a supporter of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual rights, and aside from her songs, she delivers this message in relation to the sex issues in her music videos and during her live performances. To be more specific, Lady Gaga’s artistry reflects her sexual politics. As Judith Halberstam contends in an interview with Jeffrey Williams, Lady Gaga’s sexual politics is quite open; when people suspect whether she is a hermaphrodite, she chose to remain silent and tactically directed their attention to gay rights (William 379-80). What further overwhelms the public is her refiguring Jo Calderone performing her song at VMAs 2011. This highlights her playing with the sexual boundaries to mock patriarchy and praising the polymorphous female body.
The impact of Lady Gaga’s sexual politics will be inspected in like manner.
The final chapter will offer a comparison and contrast among Mae West, Madonna and Lady Gaga to explain why Lady Gaga employs the strategy of writing about the female body that goes much further than West and Madonna do, hence representing the idea of écriture