I’m in London with not a lot of alone time on my hands, but I’m definitely aiming to produce another chunk of Enamorata.
In the meantime, delving into the video meme of Lady Gaga parodies, I found this. Some of it is pretty disturbing to look at if you haven’t spent much time in Southeast Asia. Don’t make too many assumptions. Lady Gaga has a global audience, and what you’re seeing is how THIS culture takes in Lady Gaga and reinterprets it. This is more homage than parody, but what is revealed in the video is the semiotics that Lady Gaga uses which transcend western social paradigms. The whole neo-fascist flavour of Alejandro is really lost to a non-European culture, and the Catholic symbolism is also very strangely interpreted. Strangest of all is the re-interpretation of the BDSM undertones. It’s always important to remember that people don’t really go in for voluntary masochism when oppression and brutality is an everyday occurrence; it’s fetishized in the absence of its quotidian reality. So this representation – subtle though it is – comes off very strangely. I hope you enjoy the journey into deeply trans-cultural kitsch.
Sorry, perhaps it would have been better if I were more familiar with the original? I saw nothing particular about that – the audio was insipid, the main character was less attractive than many, if there was symbology in use that was supposed to provoke it failed utterly… all in all a waste of 9 and a half minutes. I feel that I’ve seen and heard equally (un)interesting stuff in my god-daughter’s collection of J-pop. (Don’t ask me what it was, I haven’t a clue!)
Maybe I’m just jaded?
Steve.
I guess I should put a link to the original on the post; I made the stupid assumption that most people have seen it. And if you haven’t seen the original, then this particular homage and the ways in which it misses the mark, misinterprets symbolism and raises itself to a piece of absurdist art can’t be appreciated.
Look like a Madonna video from the 80’s.
Wha!
Fascinating…thank you. When you consider the effort/time/energy put into this, it truly is an homage. My first impression was the obvious reinterpretation of the original’s purposely conflicting and confusing iconography into their “quotidian” reality. The blond, Caucasian icon meets the local boys with catholic mythology as a bridge. As you point out the parts left out are as implicative of the cultural differences as those parts included. I see, for those who haven’t spent immersion time in Asia, that it is important to point out that the tackiness of some interpretations from the original are intentional. The backdrops could have been bigger, the lenses could have been cracked. I see the the juxtaposition of western kitsch to local reality to be the dynamic element propelling this video. In that, RG, I see it as process rather than end product. It is the process of globalization, the reaction to the pressure to homogenize and the burping up of social digestive enzymes.
I really like this video, much more than the original which I find troubling. As I do repeatedly, RG, often silently, I thank you.
geos
Lovely to read your ‘reading’ of it!
I assumed I was some kind of freak but am now reassured that I’m not the only one observing GaGa-esque homage/parody memes with interest. This one is a little disturbing, yes, perhaps because some elements of truth are leaking out somewhere…
On a more general note, thanks for bravely expressing in your writing most of the things I’m unable to talk about IRL.
x
s.