This past Tuesday, I spoke on a panel for an event called The Politics of Lady Gaga, hosted by Columbia's Political Union.  I thought I'd share my short speech with you all:

When I was asked to be on this panel, I started thinking about the different definitions of politics—definitions that have to do with the operation of the government and definitions that have to do with social relations of power. In thinking about Lady Gaga’s politics, I want to focus on the latter definition and look at the implications of Gaga’s use of violence in her videos. Specifically, I want to problemitize Gaga’s combination of sexuality, violence and power.

In a blog on Gaga, girl’s aggression expert Rachel Simmons notices that Gaga seems to derive power from a “union of sex and aggression.” This manifests itself in a variety of ways: for example, on the micro-level, Gaga punches the air and snarls in her dance moves, and on the macro-level, Gaga kills boyfriends and then commits mass homicide in the “Telephone” video. Gaga perpetrates this violence all while presenting a sexual image of herself, whether she is engaged in sexual activity, displaying her nude or semi-nude body, or just dancing.

In the blog piece I mentioned, Simmons wonders if, with this combination of sexuality and aggression, Gaga tries to claim a uniquely female kind of power. Gaga seems to use violent sexuality—or sexualized violence—as a tool to strike down male antagonists. Gaga’s aggression is also seemingly symbolic. It’s addressed towards a society that both idolizes and demonizes fame and constructs rigid norms regarding gender and sexuality. It seems that her violent acts help her transgress because they present a shocking departure from the way in which women are generally supposed to handle conflict. In this way, Gaga twists sexuality away from the male gaze and then uses it to challenge that gaze. Yet I wonder, what is Gaga saying about violence in these videos by perpetrating it?

Interestingly, Gaga doesn’t seem to be literally saying much at all about violence. In all the interviews and quotes I’ve read from her, Gaga never mentions the strategic and continual placement of violence in her videos. She openly fights homophobia and misogyny in the music industry, and yet doesn’t seem to explicitly mention sexual assault as one of her “causes.” This seems strange, considering that the “Papparazzi” video more or less starts with Gaga’s boyfriend assaulting her, ends with Gaga killing her boyfriend, and leads to the “Telephone” video in which violence is depicted both within the “prison for bitches” between the inmates and then at the end with the mass homicide. In other words, Gaga’s videos tell the story of a survivor of assault taking revenge by completing and continuing a disturbing cycle of violence.

So do Gaga’s violent fantasies call for violence? Is she asserting, in a Franz Fanon circa Wretched of the Earth kind of way, that the only way to overcome violence—and symbolically overthrow or deconstruct hegemonic society and social norms--is with the radical violence of the oppressed? Is she saying that freedom comes from and comes after violence?

I would like to think that Gaga is actually trying to critique the violence her character perpetrates. On some level, her videos could serve as a vision and a cautionary tale for society. Gaga might be critiquing the lengths to which the oppressed go to find freedom and therefore critiquing our social constraints.

However, Gaga’s lack of discussion about violence and her depiction of sexualized, glamorized, and stylized violence signal that she is not criticizing violence at all. Instead, she uses violence as a tool instead of calling it out as a problem. She performs violence like she performs her gender and sexuality—it’s a kind of radical drag, designed to make a radical statement. To me, this move is troubling. Because violence, and in particular domestic violence and sexual assault, are problems in our society, and they will continue to be problems until we create space to openly discuss and question their prevalence, especially in the media.

Image thanks to: http://static.angryape.com/img/reviews/200x200/lady-gaga-the-fame-130109.jpg