The video's director explains that the intention was not to create racy content for its own sake, but rather that "the process was to express Lady Gaga's desire to reveal her heart and bear her soul" (Kreps). The provocative imagery thus serves to challenge the viewer over whether the video expresses bad taste or high art.
Equally important to lyrics are Gaga's overall image and the discussion she generates over her interests, including avant-garde fashion and gay rights. She is known for being scantily-clad; one magazine called her appearance "bizarre," stating that her style of dress is "archly futuristic…reveals a lot of skin but is never sexy" (Callahan and Stewart). The conflict inherent in her blatant sexuality also arises when one considers the discussion that her gender once generated, as "Is Lady Gaga a man?' 'was AskJeeves.com's thirdmost-asked question of 2009" (Juzwiak). Ever the provocateur, Lady Gaga addressed the question in her Alejandro video, in which she wears what appears to be a phallus (Alejandro). She toys with her audience: Both giving them what they expect and demanding that they ask themselves why they expect it.
Pop artists...
Music in the 21st century was accused of being increasingly derivative and irrelevant. Interest in individual performers, in the era of iTunes, was being relegated to the sidelines as teens assembled their own 'mixes' rather than sought to embrace the output of an individual artist. It was said that the era of the great soloist and the great musical concept album was dead. With her first album The Fame in
American Popular Music (Lady Gaga) The question of originality in popular music is a vexed one. To choose a convenient and current example, when Justin Bieber sings about his "baby," listeners are not meant to hear any kind of deliberate allusion to the Supremes' "Baby Love" or any other previous songs which include "Baby" as part of their lyrical hook: Bieber's charming faux-naivete cannot be mistaken for anything other than a
Even Freud believed that girls have penis envy, which is only fully resolved by marrying a male and having a male child. This desperate longing to have a man as a way of finding one's identity and place in society is parodied and mocked in Pink's video "Stupid Girls." Individuals look to culture, including the media, as a way of defining themselves. A thirteen-year-old girl who is told that it
CL's "Hello Bitches" and the Post-Feminist Representation of the Body In the music video by CL entitled "Hello Bitches," CL has managed to escape the constriction of the typical K-pop girl group (sexy, innocent, seductive, chic) by asserting a more aggressive, masculine-mimicking (gagsta-rap-mimicking to be exact), hyper-sexual attitude of domineering vibes; yet, in doing so, she has fallen into another and separate trope -- not the trope of the cute/sexy K-pop
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Four Contemporary Artists That Will Likely Be Successful in the Future It is difficult to determine which artists will continue to have an impact on society and release music that appeals to audiences aesthetically and financially. Moreover, continuously changing tastes require that a recording artist create music that will stand the test of time and continue to appeal to audiences. Given the changing world of
Rihanna is certainly a controversial individual and she appears to be well-acquainted with what sells in the present. While Lady Gaga is certainly interesting, it seems that she is taking things too far and that her artistic style goes beyond music and into other spheres of influence. In contrast, Rihanna actually focuses on music in addition to selling an image involving sex, violence, rebellion, and glamour. She practically appears to
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