supergalaxy quest: forever defending
also, what wouldn’t be considered behaving in response to the male gaze? would she have to don turtlenecks, tattoos, unwashed hair? this isn’t meant to polarize, i really am sincerely asking.
I really like Kasia Galazka’s entire response to my Liz Phair-Lana Del Rey SPIN post from this morning, because there’s obviously a whole lot I don’t understand about Del Rey’s appeal (and her anti-appeal). To me it’s always been a matter of confusion about why this particular person was generating so much praise (and hate). I really don’t get it, not even for “Video Games,” though I can see how at least that song is catchy and distinctive, which are both much rarer qualities than you might think in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, I obviously enjoy discussing her as much as the next person, but I’m still not sure what about her music made her so worthy of discussion in the first place.
I’m especially intrigued when Kasia says she doesn’t expect men to like Lana Del Rey, because for me it’s always been the opposite: I’ve been surprised so many of her fans seem to be women! The first person I heard about her from, outside of the Internet, was a man. And we all know how heavily male-tilted the indie critic-o-sphere can unfortunately tend to be. So I thought maybe a bit of her appeal was that here was this pop singer presenting herself as a sexual object in the current hipster kind of way: a pin-up girl for a generation of young men who came up being told Kanye West is a brilliant artist.
But obviously that’s not the case. She speaks to something more than that, at least for Kasia, and presumably for other women who love her music.
The only part of Kasia’s post I feel knowledgeable enough to quibble with, though, is the bit I’ve quoted above. The argument against Del Rey doesn’t seem to be that she’s “behaving in response to the male gaze,” as Kasia says here; in fact, as I put it in my post, the argument I’ve seen against her seems to be that “she’s existing only as an object of desire, completely in thrall to the male gaze.” Surely we can acknowledge that any female pop star has to deal with the reality of our GoDaddy.com-ad society without having to say that all must be completely in thrall to it, right?
Judy Berman, maybe you can help me out here? On the other hand, totally understand if everybody is just exhausted of this subject and wants me to move on.
I think the idea that all women artists are, to some extent, responding to the male gaze is an important one — and one best expressed by Ellen Willis in an essay on Janis Joplin:
A woman is usually aware, on some level, that men do not allow her to be her “real self,” and worse, that the acceptable masks represent men’s fantasies, not her own. She can choose the most interesting image available, present it dramatically, individualize it with small elaborations, undercut it with irony. But ultimately she much serve some male fantasy to be loved — and then it will be only the fantasy that is loved anyway. The female celebrity is confronted with this dilemma in its starkest form.
I believe that this is as true as it was 40 years ago, and that it’s an enormous and terrible obstacle that women artists have to contend with. (I also wonder how hetero and queer women’s experience with male fantasy is different; I’d love to see a lesbian artist write about this.)
But here’s where I feel LDR is different and (to me) offensive: Janis Joplin and Patti Smith and Adele and Nicki Minaj and Madonna, etc., seem to have an identity and an artistic agenda outside playing into male fantasy. LDR does not. She strikes me as a thin character poorly played by someone who is thinking harder about what is sexy than about herself as an artist with something to say. That’s why I agree with Marc when he takes issue with Liz Phair’s claim that LDR is writing herself into existence. This character was written into existence decades — or, more likely, centuries — ago, generally by men who have particular ideas about what is desirable in a woman. LDR, to me, is this woman singing in first person, but with no real insight into or tension with her position as the object of desire.
Then again, and I have been entertaining this idea for a while, what if LDR is pure feminist performance art? What if Lizzy Grant’s real project is to make us keep having these discussions about women in art? Sometimes she seems to veer towards subversiveness, so while I think it’s unlikely, I don’t know that it’s entirely out of the question…
