eye candy, brain candy

I'm too accustomed to good vids to really be able to watch music videos -- music videos are almost always either too literal or too randomly-pasted together, and they rarely tell stories, use any metaphors, or allow for any analysis. Viewer-side thinking just means frustration. Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" vid was the first music video I ever considered art -- more than yet another love story, the video tells the story of a star's relationship with the media. It's intricately put together, pieces of this and that, random snapshots coming together to form a coherent whole; even the randomness is meaningful under my interpretation. Since that vid, I've seen Lady Gaga as an artist rather than just another pop star.

So when people started trashing the new "Alejandro" video, I had to go take a look. It's gorgeous, beautiful eye candy -- and I do too spy a point in the vid. It's an argument about the relationship between repressed sexuality, the military, and the Church.

Snapshot themes:

• Individuals are trapped by a net of religion and militancy that denies their sexuality to them on their own terms.
• "Stripped" religion is only allowed out in as much as it serves militant needs; it will deny your love and your sexuality. Pure religion is utterly impotent (and getting more impotent).
• People have some control over their fate; they are fucked by this situation because they have bought into it and clamor for it. However, we're all essentially puppets of larger forces in the end.
  

Embedded for your pleasure, though watching it in a larger viewer is recommended:



Looking just at the gender/sexual representation through the middle part of the vid (e.g., 4:20), it's clear that gender isn't the salient characteristic here. Men are in fishnets or heels; their waists are taken in by corset-like bands that erase their genitals. Women (that is, Gaga) are visually equivalent to the men in costume (white top, black bar) and in dance moves.

Without clear gendering to lean on, the vid is able to occupy a nebulous ground in the haunts of gender and sexuality, in which "feminine" can mean something else. It makes most sense if "female" represents "gay male" -- though I'd usually be disturbed by this, I'm willing to take it here. Taking this "female => male" frame of reference, certain aspects of the song turn on their heads: in the lyrics of the song, "she" is he; Gaga's female "I" voice is actually male (except when it is religion itself disowning you (5:18)); Gaga physically is one of the boys, a sexual being and target like any other.

Alejandro, Fernando, Roberto are all interchangeable "you"s -- this situation repeats endlessly. Any of these relationships are kept from each other because of the sexual repression imposed by the net of the military and religion.

The men in the vid are caught between identities: on the ground they're in boots (military men), in bed they are in heels (gay men), around Latex Gaga they're entranced (religious men). In the "sex" scenes, these men all emulate the man + Gaga (3:50) -- they all want the (gay) sex too, but most are left to nothing but an empty, invisible partner. The tragedy is that everyone else wants exactly the same thing, sitting in the same room, but no one engages with anyone else.

At the same time, pure religion (in the form of Gaga in the full vinyl suit) is trapped, impotent (e.g., 3:41). A version of religion is involved in the outside world, but it's a stripped version (5:00), by turns exalted by and abused by the military (esp. at 7:53). It's even beaten up when it tries to assert itself and fight back (7:05). This version of religion is willing to fuck the men over, but only since they are clamoring for it to happen; the men are their own downfall (8:08).

Eventually we see the military men and religion in clear relief as the puppets they are (8:23). We'd suspected the man as the puppet from the beginning, and the vid supported that premise, but the end message is that religion is just as impotent to change the circumstances as the men themselves are -- and "true" religion is dying and decomposing. Ouch, depressing message.




Plus, the "Vogue" references are really neat.

And omg, Lady Gaga vids = total eye candy.