Track Mangoes

I was introduced to Lady Gaga, the New York honey with a degree from Tisch, by a friend of mine who is just Enamoured with her. Her ability to entrance him gave me faith. I felt that if this boy is just as if not more in love with Gaga to the extent I am in love with Madonna then maybe we have something to talk about and maybe I should watch Gaga's rise to pop-stardom. Her ability to completely consume her watchers, like my friend, with a hypnotic force seemed to override the looming fact that her work is a little tacky…and all the more wonderful for it.

The first video he showed me was "Poker Face," which I have attatched below. From the album, "The Fame," a theme of which "Poker Face" doesn't really seem to touch, departs from Gaga's usual style, but I foudn the thing entertaining, as a giddy little gay boy nonetheless.

The video opens with the lady herself rising out of a pool of dark water. She is covered in black rubber and metallics. The weather around her, a hazardous autumnal mix of lightning and thunderclouds, pathetic fallacy no doubt, casts an apocalyptic tenor to her entrance.




The beginning is an overt reference to the Greek conception of hell, and Gaga, clad in black rubber and spikey shoulder pads, is Persephone. She rises out of the depths, masked as the goddess of the underworld. The entrance is guarded by Cerebus, the three headed dog of Hades, or, in the case-Gaga, two reclining black and white great danes. Gaga as hell goddess crouches down in an animalistic squat and then, metamorphosing into the fertile goddess-daughter of Demeter, she casts off her former self, embodied through the casting off her mask.

It’s no mistake that her mask is made of mirrors or that mirrors constitute a large consitutency of the video's visual effect. A reoccurring theme in the video, and Gaga's work, is/are the eyes. Her makeup, for one, accentuates them, whether that makeup be a Smokey liner or a pearlescent shadow. But also the obstruction of eyes: Gaga is known, in this video and outside, for her ostentatious choice of sun glasses. In “Poker Face” she hints at this by gesturing toward the eyes through mirrors but also by encircling her right eye with her fingers, in an OK gesture, like a monocle. The effect is two fold: in the first place it reminds the audience that “Looks are not what they seem," but at the same time it functions a salutory wink, a naughty rejoinder, to say "Looks are not what they seem, but looks are all we have.”

The metaphor seems fitting for the story of the song: a girl who, with her romantic tomfoolery, her amorous trickery, her “Poker Face,” fools a man into loving her so that she can jump his bones (Ring a bell? “Oops I Did It Again” anybody?). Persephone was the embodiment of the Earth's fertility. Addled with sexuality, the Persephone persona seems...appropriate...for Gaga.


The video eventually cuts to Gaga actually playing poker. They metaphor has materialized At Long Last! What are they doing in this scene? They surely aren’t playing poker! The chips flying randomly, the cards falling at inappropriate intervals…what exactly is going on here? At one point Gaga, clad in a separate persona, supposedly the persona of which the lyrics make reference, the one that bites cards, eew, turns over two aces and placed them next to the five cards, two of which are the other aces. Yet, no one else has cards on the table. Regardless everyone says “Oh Gaga! You won again! How unfortunate for us!” It then becomes apparent that the crew is playing Strip Poker, the losers are stripping left and right after Gaga puts down her aces, in which case, WHY ARE THERE EVEN CHIPS ON THE TABLE TO BEGIN WITH?!

But I digress.

Gaga never goes back to where she came from, the pool, which would solidify the Persephone metaphor. Instead she ends the video dancing around in her various characters. It’s as if Persephone/Gaga has Avoided hell by confusing the man who’s got her in chains, Hades/male patriarchy. The Poker Face, then, is her method of escape, her key to the outerworld. The irony of the video, perhaps, is, contrary to her contention, we, the audience, can see right through her poker face, just as her boy-toy can (why else would he look so depressed? He knows that her affection is an empty vessel) and, in fact, her poker face works on nobody besides herself. Gaga's character deludes herself with myriad personae such that she can no longer exist in a singular locality, a material body, but rather in a multifarious, liquid, hyper-sexual, power driven, existence. Gaga is a ghost of her own fabulousness, and a hungry one, who needs to consume for fear of being consumed.

Male patriarchy is, for her, inescapeable, but so is the alternative. We can’t call her a slut, because she’s not that, we can’t call her a liberated woman, because she’s not that either, we can’t call her glamorous because she’s a little scary, she dominant, but she’s submissive, she’s free and in chains. What are we to make of you Gaga?! Are these contradictions a sign of artistry or just dumb luck? Is Gaga liberated? A slut? or Should We Even Care?

I wanted Gaga to fill Madonna's shoes, something which, I am sad to say, I doubt she will be able to do. Madonna's prowess came from a simplicity of image, a single idea, a concept that changed with the time. Gaga has many concepts which do not change one bit. Madonna and Gaga are, in effect, polar opposites, and this, I fear, forcasts Gaga's sucess in the music business. Gaga tries to straddle the line between glamour and substance, something only Madonna has since acheived, but I fear she cannot reconcile them both AND be GOOD.

Why should I care about Gaga? Because since Madonna, who has made a lot of mistakes in the recent past, pop culture is seriously missing a diva who can redefine sexual personae using the very language of sexual hegemony and hollywood. Feminist idols like Ani DiFranco have failed to rise to the level of pop stardom because they constantly combat Hollywood image tropes. "They're just masks!" these ladies say, "Empty masks! They Don't Mean Anything!" Madonna on the other hand said, "Yes, these stereotypes ARE masks, but Masks are All We Have." Some see this as ceeding, I see it as a very smart business move, something the leftish underground doesn't really hold as one its high values.

There's always more money to be made in Shit. Everyonceinawhile someone comes along and puts a gold leaf on that shit. Time will tell but, for now, my guess is that work poor miss Gaga will just be shit without the goldleaf.