women’s performances and the female body. As Lady Gaga is a strong supporter for stopping bullying and an advocate of LGBT rights, Lady Gaga’s fans regard her as an inspiration and are not ashamed to dress like her. With her eccentric and bold exertion of her body in her music, it is no surprise that this daring playing with her body comes with much criticism. Regardless of the critical acclaim and criticism, the female body plays such an important role in Lady Gaga’s music that I regard her music as a version of écriture
féminine. In this chapter, I will analyze Lady Gaga’s song lyrics to demonstrate how she
represents the idea of écriture féminine. Also, as there is a change in Lady Gaga’s music and style since her second album The Fame Monster, I will discuss the significance of such transformation along with my textual analysis.
Practicing É criture Féminine in Lady Gaga’s Song Lyrics
Up to 2012, Lady Gaga has released three self-authored albums, The Fame, The Fame
Monster, and Born This Way. These three albums mark her effort to write from her body
and deconstruct the social norms. Ann Rosalind Jones’s description of écriture féminine can best characterize Lady Gaga and her music: “to the extent that the female body is seen as a direct source of female writing, a powerful alternate discourse seems possible: to write from the body is to recreate the world” (252). To write from the body, as Cixous notes, is to explore the undiscovered and the repressed, “about their eroticization, sudden turn-ons of a certain miniscule-immense area of their bodies” (“The Laugh of the Medusa” 256). To assert the link between Lady Gaga and écriture féminine, however, does not suggest that she engages the practice of writing from the body in all three albums. While the first album
involves both her struggle against patriarchy and the beginning of her self-discovery, Lady Gaga makes the process of self-discovery and the practice of écriture féminine most explicit in the following two albums.
The Fame, released in 2008, is Lady Gaga’s first album and explicitly explores sexuality, love, violence, and power. According to Lady Gaga herself, this album, embellished in dance pop, “is about how anyone can feel famous… Pop culture is art. It doesn’t make you cool to hate pop culture, so I embraced it and you hear it all over The Fame.
But it’s a sharable fame: I want to invite you all to the party, I want people to feel a part of this lifestyle” (qtd. in Herbert 91). Aside from this claim, The Fame, in an actual fact, represents Lady Gaga’s interrogation of the phases where a woman expresses the ambiguity toward her sexuality and patriarchy, and where she comes to liberation and celebration of the female power. These can be perceived, if we pay attention to the lyrics.
While The Fame celebrates being famous and clubbing, Lady Gaga manifests the conflicts between female submissiveness and the assertion of female empowerment in the lyrics of this album. For instance, “LoveGame,” released as the album’s third single, well reflects this conflict; it expresses both a woman’s obedience to a man and active female sexuality. Addressing the issues of love, sex, and desire in a provocative way, this song is reflective of pop music which features sex and desire within phallocentric contexts. In this song, the first-person “I,” while associating love and sex with games, repeatedly declares, “I wanna take a ride on your disco stick” (2). It is evident that this “disco stick” symbolizes a penis, as Lady Gaga herself states that it is “a metaphor for a cock” (qtd. in Herbert 84). In one regard, this declaration implies a woman’s sexual need. As the lyrics of “LoveGame”
carry sexual connotations and the title suggests an interrelation between love, sex, fun, and man, it appears that women rely on men to enjoy fun and even pleasure. Hence in an interview with a Norwegian journalist in 2009, it is reported that Lady Gaga made a
statement, “I’m not a feminist. I hail men, I love men” (qtd. in Woodruff 28).10 This statement shows not only her need of men but also the stereotypical association of feminism with hated for men, as she seems to distance herself from feminism. Other lines of
“LoveGame” lyrics also indicate a woman’s passivity in sexuality; for instance, the “I”
announces, “Got my ass squeezed by sexy Cupid/ Guess he wants to play/ Wants to play/ A LOVEGAME” (9-12). While the passive sentence structure suggests the “I” is in a passive condition, to put “love” and “game” together means that the man takes a frivolous attitude toward love and regards women as playthings and possessions. This woman’s passiveness in relation to men is further enhanced:
You’ve indicated your interest I’m educated in sex, yes And now I want it bad Want it bad
A LOVEGAME
A LOVEGAME. (29-34)
Seen in this light, Lady Gaga’s “LoveGame” conveys the messages of women’s sexuality and pleasure revolving around men and the phallic symbol, and their submission to and
dependency on men, which echo Luce Irigaray’s notion that “[f]emale sexuality has always been theorized within masculine parameters” (“This Sex Which Is Not One” 99).
However, instead of sexual passivity, I believe through her songs Lady Gaga attests to active female sexuality which contradicts the passiveness in “LoveGame.” As discussed above, the declaration “I wanna take a ride on your disco stick” expresses her desire of a man’s penis, but it also shows the woman’s dominance over the man. While she boldly demands sex, the verb “ride,” referring to the position of a woman on top during intercourse,
10 As Abbie Woodruff points out in her dissertation, Lady Gaga, Social Media, and Performing An Identity, this statement has been quoted quite often on the Internet, but the interview video on YOUTUBE was removed and the original video is nowhere to be found (28).
can be interpreted how she treats the penis as an object and relocates the dichotomy between the male and the female, activeness and passiveness. The pre-choruses are indicative of Lady Gaga’s active sexuality as well: “Hold me and love me/ Just wanna touch for a minute/
Maybe three seconds is enough for my heart to quit it” (14-16). Usually, an imperative sentence situates the announcer in a position of authority, which hints that the “I” in
“LoveGame” does not subject to any men. Nor is she a man’s possession because three seconds is enough for her to quit; even if she is playing a game, she declares her
independence and active attitude toward her sexuality. In this sense, the outspokenness and autonomy of female sexuality, as well as the submission to the male, not only in “LoveGame”
but the whole album form a stark ambiguity explaining Lady Gaga’s conflicts about women and feminism.
Aside from “LoveGame,” Lady Gaga also presents the patriarchal scheme of female passivity in “Paparazzi,” the last single of the debut album which focuses upon Lady Gaga’s struggles about love and fame. The word “paparazzi” is of Italian origin and usually describes photographers who stalk celebrities and prominent people so as to take photos of them and reveal them to the public for personal profits, and thus the paparazzi and their targets form a relation between the chaser and the chased, the gazer and the gazed. In Lady Gaga’s song, the word “paparazzi” works as a two-fold metaphor; as this song is about love and fame, “paparazzi,” on the one hand, sticks with the literal meaning, and on the other hand is metaphorized as Lady Gaga herself. Suggested by the theme of The Fame, “Paparazzi”
articulates Lady Gaga’s desire for fame, which contributes to her craving for love from paparazzi, i.e. the attention. On the whole, paparazzi play a pivotal and necessary role within the celebrity culture, because to be stalked means you are a celebrity. Therefore, Lady Gaga attempts to win the attention from paparazzi to become famous by staging herself
“to satisfy our exaggerated expectation of human greatness” (Boorstin 58). To put it in Lady Gaga’s words, the central idea is “the media-whoring” (qtd. in Herbert 164).
It is noteworthy to point out that while Lady Gaga longs for the attention of paparazzi, i.e. to be followed and watched by paparazzi, she assumes the role of the gazed and paparazzi represent the male gaze. Notably paparazzi are almost always men and the male gaze is inherent in their photographs, which mirror a form of patriarchal scopophilia. Laura Mulvey elaborates upon the male gaze and scopophilia in her article, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” and proposes the oppositions “between active/male and passive/female”
(19). According to her, behind the camera are always heterosexual men who project their fantasies onto women. Hence, through the male gaze, women epitome men’s desire and their bodies are displayed as sexual objects. In this sense, Lady Gaga’s desire to be gazed by paparazzi exemplifies Mulvey’s explanation of how the male gaze presents the female figure erotically to satisfy patriarchy’s pleasure in looking. Moreover, as Lady Gaga uses the word “media-whoring” to depict her way of luring paparazzi, which corresponds to Daniel Boorstin’s notion of celebrity,11 it implies women’s subjugation to the male gaze and further reinforces the notion of the female body as the means to fulfill men’s fantasies, for
“whoring” suggests prostitution and depreciation of women to an extreme extent.
From a different but more straightforward perspective, “Paparazzi” also discusses Lady Gaga’s love for a man and she compares the relationship between her and her lover to that between paparazzi and celebrities. Just like in the first-person narrator in “LoveGame,” the
“I” in “Paparazzi” shows her love for her lover and hopes to be loved in return in the first verse, 12 as she says, “Got my flash on, it’s true/ Need that picture of you/ It’s so magical/
11 In The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America, Daniel Boorstin compares the celebrity with the classic hero and contends that celebrity is “known for his well-knownness” (57). He argues that because of the Graphic Revolution in the media, the greatness that characterizes the hero has come to be replaced by
shallowness. That is, today the celebrity does not have significant qualities and the fame is built on an illusion;
the media is both made and unmade by the media. The span of the celebrity’s fame is quite short; as Boorstin states, “the celebrity even in his lifetime becomes passé” (63). Hence, to be famous is to keep the media interested in you, the newspaper, magazines, television, etc. Boostin’s explanation of the celebrity reflects how nowadays people will do anything to become a celebrity, even to pose nude, like Kim Kardashian, and thus echos Lady Gaga’s usage of “media whoring.”
12 A verse is the part that is prior to the chorus, and typically, there are two verses in a song.
We’d be so fantastic” (3-6). Paparazzi being a metaphor of Lady Gaga, the “picture”
thereby represents the lover’s love returned to Lady Gaga since to take revealing photographs is the primary goal for paparazzi. In fact, the metaphor of Lady Gaga as paparazzi
presupposes that she reverses Mulvey’s idea of the dichotomy of male/active and
female/passive in the media. When Lady Gaga assumes the role of paparazzi to follow her lover, she is not passive anymore; she appropriates the position of the gazer, the chaser, and significantly transforms the male gaze to a form of female gaze. However, although she asserts the female gaze, Lady Gaga falls short to construct her female subjectivity as her female gaze identifies with masculinity: “I’m your biggest fan/ I’ll follow until you love me/
Papa,/ Paparazzi” (13-16). The chorus of “Paparazzi” evidently demonstrates the female figure’s submissiveness to her male lover. Additionally, Lady Gaga’s activeness revolves around the want of a man’s love, which diminishes her individuality. What is more significant is that she repeats the word “papa” several times throughout the song. Kevin Gaffney suggests that she is singing to her father: “I will not stop until you love me, papa (her real dad)” (31). The “papa” can also mean that her boyfriend represents a paternal figure.
Whether it means her father or her boyfriend, “Paparazzi” reflects a kind of fixation on paternal love. Seen in this regard, whether “paparazzi” refers to Lady Gaga or the stalking photographers, the song “Paparazzi” is still composed within the masculine parameters.
As argued earlier, The Fame symbolizes Lady Gaga’s self-discovery; she continues the conflicts in patriarchal societies in another song from the album, “Poker Face,” where her exploration of female sexuality is communicated. Generally speaking, poker face means a person void of emotions on the face and represents a shield. Lady Gaga employs the word as a shield of her sexuality against patriarchy. Like other songs from The Fame, in the narrative discourse of “Poker Face” lies her struggle with respect to a man, and the lyrics of this song show a sadomasochistic relationship between Lady Gaga and her lover. In the first verse, the singer sings, “Fold em’ let em’ hit me raise it baby stay with me/ (I love it)” (4-5).
This description of a violent sex can also be discovered in the second verse, “And baby when it’s love if it’s not rough it isn’t fun, fun” (28). Apparently, the sadomasochistic love and banality of the lyrics reflect the woman’s shallowness; yet, the chorus provides an important subtext of this song, “Can’t read my,/ Can’t read my/ No he can’t read my POKER FACE/
(She’s got me like nobody)” (12-15). Although the lyrics in both verses express a female figure’s masochistic tendency toward men, the chorus suggests that Lady Gaga’s sexuality is more complicated and goes on to critique how women are censored by patriarchy only based on the surface, in which case the poker face is her protection from the patriarchal norms.
Moreover, the chorus hints at Lady Gaga’s love for a woman, because “she’s got me like nobody.” Lady Gaga’s bisexuality can also be detected in other lines of the lyrics as well,
“’Cause I’m bluffing my muffing” (35). “My muffin” can be understood as her female lover, and “bluffing my muffin” will thusly be having coitus with her. In addition, “muffin” can refer to her vagina and is indicative of female autoeroticism. As Emily Herbert puts it, Lady Gaga explained to her fans that “this song is actually about a woman who is with a man, but fantasizes about being with a woman—hence the man has to read her ‘poker face’” (83). In this regard, the poker face is what Lady Gaga adopts to disguise her bisexuality, which explains why the verses and chorus from a contrast and indicates her struggle about her sexuality.
When Lady Gaga release her second album, The Fame Monster,13 the focus shifts; the struggles with patriarchy and her self-identification which fuel the first album give way to the realization of empowering female subjectivity via writing the female body, thusly a form of
écriture féminine. The Fame Monster champions the female body as plural and fluid to
challenge patriarchy and re-inscribes the feminine discourse in the masculine social-cultural economy. Also, given the title, the second album can be viewed as a response to The Fame.
13 The Fame Monster was released as a deluxe album that contains eight new songs and the first album The Fame. It might be regarded as an extended play of the first album, but in this thesis, I consider it to be Lady Gaga ‘s second album.
Suggested by the title, The Fame Monster, monstrosity is an important theme in this album. During an interview with Ann Powers from the Los Angeles Times, Lady Gaga states, “Celebrity life and media culture are probably the most overbearing pop-cultural conditions that we as young people have to deal with because it forces us to judge ourselves.
I guess what I am trying to do is take the monster and turn the monster into a fairy tale”
(“Frank Talk with Lady Gaga”). Victor Corona, in his essay “Memory, Monster, and Lady Gaga,” comments on Lady Gaga’s association of monsters with her artistry:
By celebrating the “monster,” the “freak,” or the “misfit” in multiple
expressions—not “fitting in” at school or being gay— she is able to build a sense of subcultural membership among fans while the catch-all liveliness of her music works to sustain appeal. (2)
Hence, the concept of Lady Gaga’s monstrosity not only entails the celebration of difference, otherness, nonconformity, but also insinuates the female powerfulness to circumvent
patriarchy.
The most straightforward elaboration on the monster concept in The Fame Monster is the song titled “Monster” which, told from a woman’s point of view, describes the brutal, sadistic side of her love interest, and compares him to a monster. On the whole, the monstrous, always connected with vampires, demons, werewolves, and alike, refers to the deformed and the abnormal that do not fit the standards of societies. As Margrit Shildrick argues, “monsters can signify both the binary opposition between the natural and the non-natural, where the primary term confers value, and also the disruption within that destabilizes the standard of the same. In other words, they speak to both the radical
otherness that constitutes an outside and to the difference that inhabits identity itself” (11).
Following this lead, it can be inferred that the monster in Lady Gaga’s “Monster”
embodies this concept of the monstrous. In this song, the man appears to be violent and abusive, and the woman voices his animalistic demeanors and his control over her: “That boy
is bad, and honesty/ He’s a wolf in disguise” (10-11), and “He tore my clothes right off” (46).
Hence, she metaphorically employs the monster to describe him: “That boy is a monster”
(18), and “He ate my heart then he ate my brain” (47). Notwithstanding this brutality, the woman still shows her fascination with him by declaring “But I can’t stop staring in those evil eyes” (13). It is ostensible that “Monster” illustrates men’s manipulation of women, and accordingly Brigitta Abrahamsson maintains that the concept of the monster in Lady Gaga’s music works is ambiguous because the woman in this song is depicted as passive and submissive (15). However, she fails to examine the lyrics in its entirety. I argue that
“Monster” is actually Lady Gaga’s way to criticize patriarchy. Notice that the first lines of
“Monster” lyrics are “Don’t call me Gaga/ I’ve never seen one like that before” (1-2), which means Lady Gaga distances her authorship from the first-person woman narrator in this song.
Doing so allows her to be an observer and objectively present how men coerce women and dominate their bodies and sexuality. What’s more, to compare a man to a monster helps to reverse women’s status in societies. Since women have long been positioned as the other by patriarchy and monsters are also considered to be the other, the monstrous metaphor
significantly other-izes men; the man is dehumanized and turned into a complete otherness, implying a ridicule of the male-centered standards.
Whilst for Lady Gaga the monster in the song “Monster” refers to a man, the image of monsters is generally associated with women. In patriarchal societies based on dichotomy, women are forced to take the position of the other, which is akin to monsters that represent
Whilst for Lady Gaga the monster in the song “Monster” refers to a man, the image of monsters is generally associated with women. In patriarchal societies based on dichotomy, women are forced to take the position of the other, which is akin to monsters that represent