US pop juggernaut Lady Gaga is bursting on to Australian stages this week. The much hyped tour began in Sydney last night with the first of 13 all but sold-out concerts.
The 24-year-old New Yorker, christened Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, has sold eight million albums. While she’s here, we’ll hear all about how she’s avant-garde. Cutting edge. Risque. Experimental. Transgressive.
But Lady Gaga isn’t pushing boundaries. She’s a conformist. This is demonstrated in the nine-minute video clip for her new hit single, Telephone. It’s revered by frenzied Gaga lovers across the globe as the next Thriller. Popular blogger Mia Freedman, recently lamenting the sexualisation of girls, “adores” it. It’s filed under “cool clips” on her blog.
But the clip endorses and entrenches some of the worst stereotypes about women and sexuality. And littering the film with a range of brands suggests Gaga and the media moguls who run her empire are more about profit than art.
Her clip, viewed millions of times since last week’s release, is set in a women’s prison filled with prostitute-styled nasty girls. As one yells: “Gonna make you swim outta here in your own blood!” (how adorable), Gaga is thrown into a cell by two tough female guards and stripped. Naked, she throws herself against the cell bars. Her barely pixilated genitals and breasts are freeze-framed. Her boyfriend calls but she tells him she’s “kinda busy right now”, then cavorts with her sexy inmates in skimpy bra and knickers. Some argue this is the radical bit. She wants to be herself and have “fun with the girls” and not be bothered by a man.
This fun includes watching two jailbirds fight, one kicking in the other’s head with her stilettos and punching her in the face as inmates cheer. It includes being submissive to a heavily tattooed butch lesbian (I hate to spoil the surprise, but she’s in leather) in the prison yard, who touches Gaga up while pulling a mobile out of her pants. Cue lingering camera shot on Virginmobile.
If Gaga is so radically different, why is her clip one big advertisement? Virginmobile, Polaroid, LG, Diet Coke, some kind of fast-food something. Pro-Gaga cultural analysts respond that this is an ironic take on the power of capitalism and advertising. “Give us more irony!” say the corporations.
Our heroine is then bailed out (by Beyonce, no less) who tells her: “You’ve been a bad bad girl, Gaga.” Did you get the S & M reference? How daring.
They then go on a mass poisoning spree (Beyonce’s breasts make a special appearance) before driving off Thelma and Louise style, although T and L didn’t have “Pussy Wagon” sprayed across the back of their car, a yellow Chevrolet Silverado SS borrowed from Kill Bill: Volume 1. That’s where all the cool Quentin Tarantino references come in. It really is one big Macy’s parade mess of Midnight Express meets Kill Bill meets Thelma and Louise meets Zoo magazine meets Pulp Fiction meets Martha Stewart on crack. All these pop-culture references make it a masterpiece, apparently.
The clip is just one more thing catering to pornographic male fantasies, part of a broader cultural story being read by young people forming their understanding of relationships and sexuality.
Women, aka bitches, love being violent to other bitches. Girl-on-girl action, lesbian cliches. Nakedness. Voyerism. Exhibitionism. Objectification. It’s a carnival of spread legs and pubes shaved to within an inch of the performer’s life and inanimate objects as phallic symbols. Because, as we know, women can’t help sucking things that have any distant resemblance to the male organ. And what’s so counter-cultural about groin-emphasising costumes, shredded fishnet stockings and a leopard-skin body suit? That has never been done before?
This is not about being edgy. It’s about playing to sex industry-inspired scripts. Fetishising sexual violence isn’t all that imaginative. It’s standard fare.
The film ends with the feminist symbol. Now this is audacious. In attaching this liberation symbol to her video, the film sends a deceptive message about what feminism is. Is not answering the phone to be seen as some radically defiant act? Does feminism mean violence is so democratised that women are free to hurt each other and men as well? Is baring your body the way you strike a blow for women? Is taking a ride on a disco stick a sign of true womanhood?
That’s what some women think the film is about. One wrote in an online forum about the clip: “What’s wrong with a girl having her boobs out in a confident and completely sexy, self-assured way?” And another wrote: “Gaga’s clip shouts girl power with its nakedness.”
Gaga is contributing to the distorted, one-dimensional cultural script about girls and women that is spread with zeal under a veneer of liberation. It not only constricts their freedom but takes the focus off what needs to happen for true freedom to be realised.
Published in 
Melinda Tankard Reist is editor of Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls and a founder of Collective Shout: for a world free of s*xploitation (www.collectiveshout.org).
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March 18th, 2010 at 10:47 am
“Women, aka bitches, love being violent to other bitches. Girl-on-girl action, lesbian cliches…. as we know, women can’t help sucking things that have any distant resemblance to the male organ.” … Thank you for summing up the clip so well Melinda. Obviously Lady GaGa is an inspiration.
March 18th, 2010 at 11:35 am
Chesterton summed it up well,
“When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything.”
and this one:
When you believe in nothing, you’ll fall for anything.”
I just can’t believe how quickly this kind of meaningless culture is being taken up as a code.
March 18th, 2010 at 11:45 am
Thanks for this fantastic article Melinda. You’re right, she is a conformist. It’s been done before and it will be done again.
March 18th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Call me crazy, but this clip doesn’t offend me. It actually makes me laugh and think “Good on her!” I don’t necessarily like some of the themes in the film clip and the product placement annoys me, but hey, so does Beyonce. It’s all pretty tongue in cheek.
For a long time now, Lady Gaga has had to put up with rumours that she’s a man and has a dick, that she’s an hermaphrodite and men have been saying utterly vile things about her. They’ve made out she is unattractive and a freak and a weirdo. That can’t have been easy for her, as a woman, to deal with.
I think she has addressed the rumours of her sexuality very cleverly in this clip. I love a girl with a bit of spunk who isn’t afraid to stand up for herself and in my opinion, this a very clever, cheeky F*** you to all those who were bullying her. The same can be said of Pink, especially in her “Stupid Girl” film clip.
This clip portrays Gaga as a confident, sexy woman (I wonder how confused all the males who put her down will be feeling now… suddenly this so called freak is hot). The scene in the jail could have been taken out of any Hollywood movie except that it’s usually men doing the fighting, ripped, sweating bodies and no shirts. Nobody bats an eyelid when it’s men doing it.
If you recall, the “Pussy Wagon” guy in Kill Bill was killed after sexually abusing his female patients. The use of the “Pussy Wagon” in this clip, to me, represents women taking back their power. The women are now in control and it’s very well met with the Thelma and Louise story line… again, two women escaping the abuse and control of men.
I think Gaga is very smart to use all these elaborate costumes to create a character. And that’s the point… Lady Gaga is a CHARACTER. None of us know the real Stefani. Very rarely do you see her without a face full of makeup or without her face half covered. If I were in the lime light all the time, I’d want to create a mask to hide behind too. I don’t know how many of us would actually recognise her, dressed casually with no makeup on, even if we fell over her in the street.
I don’t see her as conforming at all. If anything she stands out from the crowd which is how she got her freak tag in the first place.
NB. Just a few things about the article in general here… Gaga wasn’t the submissive one in the scene with the leather clad lesbian. She actually walks into that scene more like the aggressor (Gaga has said in an interview that she is bisexual). Gaga was the one feeling up the heavily tattooed butch lesbian and taking the phone out of the pocket. Also, it’s not her boyfriend who calls it’s Beyonce (“Beyonce on the line for Gaga”) and that’s who she tells that she’s kinda busy.
March 18th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Great essay. Thanks, Melinda
March 18th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Hey Nicole,
I think the rumour about her being a hermaphrodite was in fact, *created by her* when she wore what appeared to be a strap on penis at one of her shows. The youtube clip was circulated widely. Obviously a publicity stunt that continues to serve her well.
I can’t see how she is standing out from the crowd. Is it the wild hair? meh. What about the skimpy clothing;? – it’s been done to death. As for her music, it could be sung and performed by anyone else, there is nothing particularly original about it. It is as catchy as any other dance music.
Nicole have you seen the youtube clips of Stefani Germanotta singing at a piano and at a club? She’s a great singer indeed, very talented.
I would argue that her success in mainstream pop music depended on her ability to conform to an exaggerated version of the standard sexualised female image so common in pop music today. Madonna, Britney, Christina and now Lady Gaga. It wasn’t dependent on her talent at all as clearly she was talented before she threw away her pants, went nuts with a bottle of bleach and applied her make up with a trowel.
I would hazard a guess that she had very little to do with the creation of this “character.” This was created for her by industry executives who saw a gap in the market that needed filling and a young girl willing to do what it takes to be famous.
Vanessa Amerossi said in an interview once that the reason she dropped out of the music scene for some years is because she was required to get her gear off. This is the way it works for women in the music industry “Oh you don’t want to take your clothes off?…..NEXT!”
Amerossi was representing what it really means to “take back power” she refused to compromise and did not conform. We need to see more of this type of action and less pixelated bodies gyrating on screen.
March 18th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Great article, if only there were a way to make sure Gaga read this
March 18th, 2010 at 2:26 pm
Thank you, Melinda, for so eloquently articulating the distaste I felt watching the ‘Telephone’ clip. Distaste, which was followed by the bitter tang of an internet full of young women and men gushing about how ‘daring’ and ‘empowered’ the clip is, something us wowsers apparently are too old or too boring to understand.
Seriously? This is the same generation you posted about in the last couple of days, who think the Columbine massacre wasn’t that big a deal and death by a gun to the head as less than brutal. The assault of porn and violence is stripping away our defenses and leaving us grotesquely numb. Like hard drugs or alcohol, we need bigger doses and harder hits to arouse our excitements.
I think of my baby son, sleeping in the next room. What is he in for? What will I need to teach him in order to defend his mind and shape a man who does not view women as objects for the taking? Video Hits is definitely going to be off the menu…
March 18th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
Gaga has been performing and writing songs most of her life. She was indeed very talented before her recent success. The Wiki article about her makes for some very interesting reading. She was dressing up and doing burlesque before she became a pop star.
I’m not sure about the hermaphrodite rumour coming from her. I listened to an interview when they asked her about the rumours and she was quite irritated and said it was too “low brow” for her to even comment on. I will investigate further!
Gaga has always been “eccentric”. A quote from the lady herself (taken from Wiki)
She described herself in high school as “very dedicated, very studious, very disciplined” but also “a bit insecure” as she told in a interview, “I used to get made fun of for being either too provocative or too eccentric, so I started to tone it down. I didn’t fit in, and I felt like a freak.”
I doubt the muso execs really had to do much convincing. Ever stop to think that maybe she does have a brain of her own and this was her idea and that she likes it? Just because she’s sexual, doesn’t mean some guy put her up to it. It really irks me that people assume women only sex themselves up at the insistence of men and not of their own free will. It assumes women are stupid and weak and easily manipulated.
Madonna is a classic example of a smart business woman. She is probably the most sexual pop artist there ever was, but it was all her doing. If you’ve ever listened to that woman speak, you’d know how dedicated and strong she is and how smart she is. She won’t be messed with and will happily tell anybody to F off and do what she wants, her way. She is not a person who can be told what to do.
You can’t just assume that a woman is only sexual because of outside influences. Some women like to sex it up, other’s don’t. I don’t doubt that there is HUGE pressure out there on performers to look and behave a certain way, but they’re not all pushovers. Amerossi went her own way because she’s a strong woman too.
I think Gaga stands out because she’s not your typical little bimbo. The way she dresses, the way she throws it in your face and makes no apologies separates her from the masses of teenage twits making cow eyes at the screen and singing about things they have no idea about. Gaga is a performer, not just another industry puppet.
I don’t like most of the music and performers that are around these days, so it takes something special to get my attention. I hate the bitch/ho attitude of it all and the utter disrespect these little punks sprout off, but somehow, Gaga stands out among them all along with Pink, at least for me. She’s the Cindi Lauper of today.
March 18th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
I really enjoyed reading this. I haven’t followed enough of Lady gaga to know what she’s about… she seems to be the ultimate role model for today’s woman, doesn’t she?
Anyway, I hope she gets to read the point about her really being the ultimate conformist!
March 18th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
I had a chuckle reading the last paragraph. The same argument is made by some feminists on the other side of the dress spectrum. The burqa shouts girl power with its cladness.
March 18th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
I dont understand how anyone can say that she is original and stand-out-from-the-crowd. She is just a Madonna clone through and through. Pity becaus ewhen you see her perform as her real self, she is actually very talented.
March 18th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Here’s Gaga before she sold out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owT0lvqtdmI
March 18th, 2010 at 5:12 pm
[...] Today’s post was about Lady Gaga’s music video for her new song Telephone. Melinda describes this as “just one more thing catering to pornographic male fantasies, part of a broader cultural story being read by young people forming their understanding of relationships and sexuality.” [...]
March 18th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Spot on, Melinda.
http://www.sherylsarkoezy.com/2010/03/girls-going-gaga/
March 18th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
Love the way you write it Melinda!
You have got it – ahhhh Gaga
March 19th, 2010 at 12:11 am
Excellent article Melinda and I do not need to repeat the innumerable stereotypes and women-hating messages you have highlighted. Lady Gaga is not reactionary or radical she is conforming to the nth degree in respect of how mainstream pornography deliberately promotes lies about women and particularly lesbian women.
We need to look beyond blaming Lady Gaga and Beyonce because they are not the ones responsible for such women-hating messages – popular culture and the male dominated and male controlled media is responsible. White heterosexual middle-class men continue to be the ones deliberately exploiting and reducing female articles to sexualised disposable commodities. How long before Lady Gaga is dismissed because another disposable female artist will be ‘discovered’ and then subjected to dismissive women-hating treatment by the male-controlled music industry.
The patriarchal system has never been static but is constantly changing and devising new methods to ensure the continuation of women-hating and male contempt for women. This video is not shocking or ‘edgy’ it is blase and yet its blaseness is hailed as ‘edgy!’
Now what would be shocking and ‘edgy’ would be if the sex of the participants were all males and it was males shown totally naked and engaged in sexually dominating and controlling other males. Not forgetting of course depicting such males in degrading stereotypical poses – but that would create a huge outcry of ‘women reduce men to sexualised commodities.’ However, reducing women to men’s sexualised commodities is now ‘empowerment’ and yes this is how male power continues to operate. By endless propaganda which given there is little alternative critiques allowed to be published within mainstream media it is not surprising so many young women are accepting such misogyny as ‘empowerment.’
Such propaganda also works to naturalise the unnatural – and that is the increasing belief that only men are human and women are non-human beings who can be divided into differing categories according to their ethnicity, but of course at the pinnacle of this hierarchy the group remains the same and that is white heterosexual powerful men. Nothing changes apart from co-opting feminism and selling men’s domination over women as ‘female empowerment!’
March 19th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
I think parents have to stop blaming everyone else for essentially their poor parenting – anyone who has watched or listened to her music can appreciate the inappropriateness of it for children. Yet another example of how parents have abrogated their responsibility, and defer to the media and music industry for the “role modelling” that they should be providing to their children. And yet another example of how we have become immune to the influences and impact of an explicitly offensive raunch culture.
March 19th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
At least some of the prison inmates are crossdressing males, which ads to the bizzare mix, but seems to explain the guards comment regarding her genitals. What concerns me most is seeing a girl of obvious talent and natural beauty (see the linked clip to her early work in the comments) reduced to hypersexual perversion with a computerised bass rythm to sell her 8 million CDs. That isn’t just marketing or ‘the industry’. Perhaps Lady Gaga is just showing us clearly where the philosophy of ‘use whatever sells the product’ leads? In some ways she is just doing an Eminem, popularising the kind of explicit celebration of criminal activity, violent response to problems and extremely abusive use of people as sexual objects we that we have seen in hard rap clips for some time. I guess that is my point. There is NOTHING new in this clip, except the fact it is very likely to be played on mainstream radio and MTV where the rap stuff isn’t.
March 20th, 2010 at 10:15 am
The Telephone film clip puts to bed any talk of Gaga as a feminist icon. Pop star, sure.
March 20th, 2010 at 6:44 pm
Thankyou melinda
for me it is summed up like this: is this the role model of womanhood i want for my ten year old daughter? NOOOOOOO!
My hope is that her power will come through who she is, her strengths, character, talents, interests…. rather then lewdness, sexual fetishism, provocative and oversexualised clothing and behaviors which stomp all over the real meaning of sexuality and its beauty, fragility and important role it plays in human relationships, intimacy and connection…
March 20th, 2010 at 8:31 pm
Dear Melinda,
Sex is real, and it’s part of pop culture. Lady GaGa makes pop music, don’t forget that.
She’s a revolutionist in her own right, and uses body and her music to make statements about society.
e.g. The cigarets over the eyes in the telephone video clip symbolise that people are so blinded by the desire for the drug that they can’t see what it is doing to them.
Another statement is more obvious at the fast food restaurant, where the food is poison and kills everyone, this shows the dangers of honey coated, dripping in fat, fast American food. it is certainly not an ad.
Then you have Lady GaGa’s clothes. OMG! Not only are they creative and artistic, they stand up for all the eccentrics and non-conformists in the world! Recently she’s had empty cans it her hair… I remember Andy Warhol created a picture of a Cambell’s soup can and that’s considered pop art! Why should GaGa be any different?
And finally, as a lover and connoisseur of music videos, I have to appreciate the amazing, punchy colour schemes and fast editing which fits perfectly with the dance music.
Gasp! I’m underage, female, and a fan of Lady GaGa. Though much to your surprise I do not plan on working in a brothel. I actually plan on law and politics… well I’m smart enough for law anyway.
March 22nd, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Katy
You make a good point when you point out the talent of Gaga, or at least of her very clever producers, in putting together her clips. The clips follow on from each other and contain some clever symbolism and extremely clever costumes to accentuate the point she is making. The point Melinda is making is not about the artistic quality of the work but the fact it is being marketted to impressionable young ladies and is likely to influence them to think of themselves in a way many would find regretable. In the same way I can admire the extremely clever production on Eminem’s CDs (though not so much his latest) and comment on the very effective and catchy use of pop-culture, symbolism and addictive tunes without agreeing with his core message, its likely affect on people who make it themusical backdrop of their daily life and the way in which he treats women in particular.
The tragedy of Gaga is that unlike Eminem she can really sing, but had to wear lingere, however cleverly designed, to sell. Compare her to Lily Allen, who releases songs that are FAR more explicit in lyrical content but range from deep social commentary to teenage rants against various frustrations, all without a garter or bra visible in any clip!
Actually, I’d love to see Melinda’s take on Lily Allen. Sure she’s fairly shallow on a few tracks but her songs “22″ and “The Fear” are probably as close to being an anthem for the new wave feminism as I’ve seen.
March 24th, 2010 at 1:44 am
I heard her on the Hamish and Andy show tonight and on Noa and she is fully aware of the debate and in fact considers what she has done in her recent clip as a way of empowering women to own their sexuaity etc etc … blah blah blah – ga ga ga!
March 30th, 2010 at 10:45 am
[...] plenty of discussion of Lady Gaga, whom Beyonce appears with in ‘Phone’. Some say she encourages the oppression of women with her sexualised dancing; others that she’s a clever satire of that same [...]
April 20th, 2010 at 10:53 pm
[...] Today’s post was about Lady Gaga’s music video for her new song Telephone. Melinda describes this as “just one more thing catering to pornographic male fantasies, part of a broader cultural story being read by young people forming their understanding of relationships and sexuality.” [...]
April 20th, 2010 at 10:53 pm
[...] Today’s post was about Lady Gaga’s music video for her new song Telephone. Melinda describes this as “just one more thing catering to pornographic male fantasies, part of a broader cultural story being read by young people forming their understanding of relationships and sexuality.” [...]