Lady Gaga during an interview--"I'm not a feminist-I hail men, I love men. I celebrate American male culture, and beer, and bars, and muscle cars." The contradictions and stereotypes in that sentence make pinning down her beliefs difficult. She appears to be a strong woman who writes her own songs and commands her own career. She's landed five number one hits and sings about equality, gay rights, being bullied, and loving yourself.
These admirable sentiments are cloaked (or uncloaked, really) in highly sexual costumes, and videos which contradict both the costumes and lyrics.
In Bad Romance, the lyrics suggest that she wants a bad romance with some masochistic tendencies,
"I want your horror, I want your design, Cause you're a criminal as long as you're re mine." "I want your love and I want your revenge, I want your love and I don't wanna be friends."There is another line about "want your vertical stick, want you in my rear window, baby you're sick" where the meaning is obvious. Urrk. The choruses are addictive variations on "Rah, rah, ooh,ah, ah, Ro ma, ro ma ma, want your bad romance."
Okay, this suggests that Gaga wants a bad boy love, not an unusual song topic. The video is something entirely else. After a baffling beginning, Gaga is abducted from her bathtub, then dressed seductively and forced to dance before men who are bidding on her. She slowly comes to the man who bought her, wearing a white (wedding?) dress with a polar bear skin as its train. (Why?)She goes to the bed, and the scene changes--The bed is totally charred and she is lying next to his skeleton. Gaga says that the song is a commentary on human trafficking. So what does she want, a bad romance, or the opportunity to kill her abductor? Feminist or anti-feminist?I think little girls singing this are going to remember the music and words.
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