Why Don't You Love Me? -- Because I'm GAY! Duh!

I, along with many others in this world, love two particular people very dearly. I smile when they're happy, I furrow my brow when they're angry, I hold back tears when they're distressed or sad. And it seems, right now that they are both in some form of distress. They are Beyonce and Lady Gaga.

These two ladies, while occupying very different spaces in pop culture media space, have been linked in recent history through mutually successful artistic endeavors that they have launched together. The "Phone"-nomenon has been proclaimed as an exemplar of future entertainment consumption models: the high production value, the low-brow content and medium, the cross-genre intra-industry collaboration, the insane build of anticipation, the necessitation of online consumption, the hedging of social internet landscapes to market the product (as evidenced by all this talk). If the Phones are the first step towards a heightening of new media production value, the ladies did well in at least choosing pieces that portrayed a forthright sense of aggression befitting of the medium's novelty. Both Video Phone and Telephone artistically portray a feminine spirit of confrontation; with B and LG "shooting back" at would-be assailants to their sense of privacy, and sharply entreating their significant others to "STOP CALLING!", respectively observed in the two videos. Interestingly, the ladies' subsequent forays into multi-media artistic production depict a very different feeling and emotional range that seems to be problematic for this new medium. The music videos in question are Beyonce's "Why Don't You Love Me?" and Lady Gaga's "Alejandro". The emotion they both construe can be summed up as: "Why won't other people love me?" And the problem is that the internet just doesn't seem to want you to test the boundaries of feminine authenticity given the critical reaction to these two new videos.



Both B and LG seem to be expressing this feeling - why won't other people love me? - very strongly, albeit on different levels. For B, the emotion is the subject. It's front and center; a slightly varied iteration of the sentiment is the very title of the song: "Why Don't You Love Me?" The song is both a self-examination and a criticism, specifically directed at an invisible, anonymous other (significant or not), but most obviously the question is directed at us. LG's conception of this emotion is more subtle. LG has said of working on "Alejandro" that, "The video is about the purity of my friendships with my gay friends and how I’ve been unable to find that with a straight man in my life. It’s a celebration and an admiration of gay love – it confesses my envy of the courage and bravery they require to be together. In the video I’m pining for the love of my gay friends – but they just don’t want me.”

The criticism that I've encountered both privately and publicly seems to boil down to the fact that both pieces are derivative and are busy reiterating an unoriginal point of view. Moreover, this causes an inherent weakening of their artistic posture. There is nothing new here, so not only is it not worthwhile but it is a step backwards, and even worse, it's boring! Fair enough. But what if that's exactly the point?



So there it is, in all its glory. I've got to say, I loved this song right off the bat. Loved the 70's-soul beat, and personally the lyrics pretty much constitute a pitch-perfect anthem to my life. I mean, it's pretty straightforward: Beyonce, like many of us, just want to know why you don't like her when she does so much to make herself appealing, attractive, uncomplicated, and generally complicit and accommodating to your whims and desires. Ok, so problem #1 right away: B is subsisting in that post-second wave feminism space that women since Betty Draper have gotten lost in where she is defining herself solely by a man's standards and a man's values. If she is "making" herself anything it is necessarily for the sake of someone else, someone other than herself. In this, the song shows that all of B's positive attributes and by extension her self-identified reality is fake, an inauthentic performance. Moreover that she is being forced to realize the fundamental falsity of her roles, and the song essentially lists a constellation of attributes that forms a limit and boundary around her selfhood, within which she wrongly corrals herself. Blaming someone for not being enough gives that someone credit for who you are, and I don't think anyone should put B in that corner. Not that they could if they tried. The song, I think, has very definite shades of self-awareness; it redeems itself by book-ending the central lament - "love me!" - with a simple nod to B's agency. She is addressing that man, she is giving him a choice by way of mutual ultimatum. She has a choice, too, that's not something that he can ever take credit for creating, and in the end whoever made her qualities - regardless of the value of those qualities - they are hers, and no one can take them away.

Now, while this third-wavey feminism is implied in the song, it's hard to find. But it's close by. I think the main threat that people see in the song's message is that B is not breaking the cycle, and that her empowerment comes from that fact that she will choose to run into the arms of another man when she breaks up with this one, and that she will not end the cycle and start to define her value for herself. I'm not sure I see this threat explicitly implied, but yes it's there as it always is in real life. This threat is reinforced in many ways by the video aspect of the piece, which I have to say I absolutely LOVE in that gorgeous, modernist, Mad Men aesthetic vein. In it we have a parade of sexually idealized, '60's superwoman housewife fantasies all done to the extreme, highlighted by the stylization of the video medium itself. Yes, it's pretty, and cute, and we get it...this is the way men like women to be, pin ups, twisting sexily and with the bangs. This is an idealized woman in an idealized time period, a period pointedly at the cusp of its own feminist movement. The mirroring stresses the cyclical nature of the periodicity, how a new mode of freedom comes and is replaced by a new mode of domination. We loved seeing women do their complacent, sexy thing then, and we love seeing women do their complacent, sexy thing now. And it is a very grave threat to woman's agency and freedom.

In the video, the idea of freedom is doubly ironic. Not only does the retro-styling underscore the ridiculousness of trying to conform to a set of gendered stereotypes, but the video highlights the fact that B sucks at executing the stereotypical housewifey behaviors. B. B. Homemaker spends all day just failing; she makes no headway in fixing the car, gets side-tracked often while performing basic chores, plays with plastic snakes instead of gardening, burns a pot roast (like literally it goes up in flames), and generally half-asses most of her other activities with a wink and smile. And that isn't meant as a criticism; who wants to dust that many Grammys, good lord, that's a lot of work. But what it does say is that, men don't even want you to be some timeless model of feminine perfection, but they want you to fail at it.

The lament of the video is not just "why don't you love me when I make me so damn easy to love?" but "why do we still perceive women as things that we just can't love?" No matter what we do, no matter how we mock weird archetypical ideals, they are still seeded in mindsets that are quite contemporary and that we have not really let go. The video offers no concrete answer, no clear defiant statement to the monstrous, insidious, and recurring oppression it depicts; in this there is an understandable reactionary need to criticize "Why Don't You Love Me?" as being too derivative and unoriginal. The gaze is necessarily male and grossly stereotypical with no means of redemption. Coupled with the subtlety of B's muted agency, we are left with a feeling of despair. We, like B. B. Homemaker, come undone; what recourse do we have but to wallow, sloshing back martinis, chain-smoking in bed, and smearing mascara across our flawless, smooth cheek? The answer, I think, comes in what is oddly the least flamboyant identity B. B. Homemaker puts on - the one that is not of the home, without any swagger, an internal, subconscious ego outside of the materialistic, value and quality driven personae dominated by men - the dominatrix. She, and no one else, offers the last defiant breath of the song, as the lights fade out. In the video she is shown alone, a lone spotlight frames her against a blank, hollow backdrop. She is B. B. Homemaker only by virtue of the telltale skin-tone, her makeup and hair. This space is within her, and dominatrix B. B. only speaks to herself: Why don't I love me, when I make me so damn easy to love? While at the end, the song asks the man if he is dumb for not being able to recognize the qualities of value that he himself has appraised, the video turns the question back to B. B. saying, "You were complicit in this, too."

And that is profoundly uncomfortable. And also very BDSM at its core. We are all hurting each other and ourselves, and it feels good, and therefore we are all complicit in it. Which brings me to Gaga, and the entire subaltern BDSM culture where she now roosts as queen. "Alejandro" like "Why Don't You Love Me?" was a song that I just loved from the very beginning. It's my fourth favorite LG song ever after Bad Romance, So Happy I Could Die, and Just Dance. Which, I mean, is weird of me. It's a boring song, it's very early 90's or something, I don't know, I wasn't really alive then, and it's generally very repetitive. But it is awesome! In the same way that "Why Don't You Love Me?" on a personal level expresses to an unsettling degree life-phases that I happen to find myself, "Alejandro" also offers tidbits of poetic verisimilitude that I empathize with. Let's see, there's "She hides true love en su bolsillo" and "She's not broken, she's just a baby." Good God, Gaga, stop reading my diary! But beyond that, the song is a complete mystery to me. What is she singing about? Who is singing? Who is Alejandro? Who are Fernando and Roberto? Are we at a gay orgy with masks (Don't call my name!)? Is it a Cinco de Mayo parade (Hot like Mexico, rejoice!)? Look, all I know is that LG seems to be in some sort of distress and some guy(s) ain't doing what she's asking of them. "Don't wanna kiss, don't wanna touch / Just smoke one cigarette and hush." Uh-oh, ok.



Anyway, the music video doesn't exactly clear up any ambiguities, but it does offer a conglomerate of pure gay iconography much in the same way as B's '60's sexy housewife stylization. This is also a doubly (perhaps triply, or quadruply) ironic co-opting of period culture that says a lot about the values we create and are complicit with by using them to our advantage in day-to-day life. The leather and general fetishism, the bondage and ropes, and especially the latent homoeroticism implied by conventionally homophobic institutions, all are on full display in "Alejandro". The juxtaposition of the erotic and the phobic is there to mainly intensify the normative ideas of "freakiness", that define our lines between mass culture and subculture.

And I get the criticism against Gaga in this context, how this is just one inch too far. I get it. Basically, LG eats subcultures like they're Sour Patch Kids, she downs that shit, since she's like an UESider and nobody from any discernible subcultures wanted to play with her because have you ever watched Gossip Girl? Those people are A-cuckoo! I mean, while she is a powerhouse culture producer, LG also feels this need to attach herself to general freakiness in a very desperate way. Don't get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the gays, and ain't no freak can tell another freak what to do, but I'm just saying there are consequences and backlashes inherent to "trying too hard", which she may or may not be doing. Criticism against LG tends to follow the corresponding trend of her own self-proclamations of authenticity. While she is like queen of crass, there are a few times when someone is able to out crass her and you can see her flinch: like when God-awful Barbara Walters asked her about her bisexuality. Yeah, you remember that bullshit. I mean, when she has to come up with a roundabout answer to the question, "Do you sleep with women?" -- after having committed to taking off the Gaga-glasses, to shooting straight, to coming clean, and to telling the truth in order to save freakiness in favor of her integrity, after a few seconds of very telling silence clearly deciding to lie about the reality of her theoretical sexuality, and after cultivating a brand of freak (nearly exclusively web-based, I might add) by maybe/maybe not having a goddamn penis -- then perhaps her crass-crown becomes just a little tarnished. Because LG's crassness is about blurring distinctions, but instead of not giving a shit about certain distinctions she's still playing into the labels of others and boxes that they have designed for her to sit nice and compactly into. And yes, we still love her, because We the Gays are starving for attention, too, and in just the exact same way.

So, yeah she keeps on subtly making us push the authenticity button, and the "is there anything that she can do that will shock us now?" mentality, but by having us keep asking that, it paints her into a corner of being a very specific type of cultural producer in which Lady Gaga is the drag and the act. She and her freakiness are always on. Her performance is never ending, and constantly demanding not just attention, but conversation, and your fear and desire, and your acceptance and for you to just spank it. You know what we call that? Love. Which, this whole thing, this whole Lady Gaga thing is asking, breathlessly, inaudibly, desperately: why don't you love me? "Alejandro" asks this question on a number of levels. As an honorary gay man, LG points the male gaze at itself. Always with the eye-wear and glasses and monocles, the cybernetic modifications, always seeing, swiveling, shifting our view to something else. The video is about man, and wanting to be man, and with man. I mean the convention is 100% gay porn, there is no other way to describe the filmed acts and behavior being artistically performed in the video. LG is the sexual aggressor, demanding sex and attention and love, she does everything but actually, literally access you. Not equipped.

In the same way, we are bombarded with what may seem like disparate motifs, but all amount to the same thing: the military, the Catholic Church, the prison, and the arena of gladiatorial athleticism - all realms inaccessible to a woman. (And believe me, the fact that they are all notoriously homophobic is no coincidence.) Ok, now here's where you say, "Oh, great but why is that cool? How is that in any way original? Did LG go for shock and just miss the mark, 'cause I gotta tell ya, I was soooooo bored! I can name eighteen Madonna videos that took those same motifs and did it better, and you know, actually made sense." Well, I don't know any Madonna videos, because I wasn't born then, so fuck off!

Just kidding. Ok, so there's both a lot that is unoriginal, or an homage, as we'll generously call it, both stylistically and contextually; but there is also a lot there that is saying something about right now, and how we are manipulating gender, and that's new. Yes, the boys are wearing high heels and fishnets, yawn, but there is also a whole lot of actual gay, like man on man. There's also the submission to the feminine creature. The fawning over LG in various contexts, evoking and reversing sacred / profane categories, what with the overt religious symbolism. Not to mention the gay catwalking in full military garb...hilarious! And awesome, in a DADT way. Ok, what this all amounts to is the gaze pointing straight to the big fat GAY that's right there. It's right there! The sub in subculture is just ever so slightly withering away. I mean we all react so strongly to the latex and leather, because that's all about the BDSM subculture and that reminds us that the '70's were real. That shit happened to rock the boat so that we have this sine wave function of culture / sub-culture troughs and peaks that are continuously being reversed. And good God, what decade is this? What century? What millennium? And the waves are only now subsiding. Oh yeah, all those things, we had people talking about that decades ago...well, guess what? Men in leather and heels, they're still provocative, and they're still labeled freak! And we'll keep talking about them until they aren't, or completely passé.

It has been three months since the release of the earth-shattering premiere of "Telephone: The Feature Length Musical XXX-Travaganza in 3D". Nearly nine months, if you can imagine, since we had excitedly accepted the mildly surprising announcement of B and LG's culture-making collaboration, ushered in by the less widely acclaimed "Video Phone". Within the subsequent months, Beyonce and Gaga, in respective pop culture niches, have both become this twin masthead fixture on the S.S. Internet as it sails into the uncharted waters of new New Media. To varying degrees, I think it's safe to say that right now, these two are some of the greatest media acrobats alive right now. Gaga especially, her social permeation is impenetrable and visceral. Go ahead, try looking up "Gaga Alejandro" on youtube...all those videos are just gay dudes' talking heads. You can't even find the genuine article. I just want to see naked men in fishnets and heels humping each other, damnit!

As you may have noticed based on this diatribe, I am going against the grain and am a staunch fan of "Why Don't You Love Me?" and "Alejandro" to the same degree that I'm kind of ambivalent about the "Phones", and maybe for no other reason than I want to participate in the whole internet dialoguing that these phenomenon are fueled by. But I do genuinely like them as art, and as just pure sexiness. Both videos, though, have been criticized for being problematic in the same, central way: women, specifically, still can't be shown to desire love, to seek it, to admit desperation and loneliness. It is labeled as weak, and is therefore criticized as being inauthentic, backwards looking, and unoriginal. For me, I personally think the emotional message is very real, very strong, and very transgressive. This isn't a denigration of woman's independence or strength, nor by extension, via Gagaism, the gay community's strength as a string of recurring subcultural movements. It is an expression of choice, of need, of want. B and LG are earnestly and simply saying, "I am having trouble finding these things I want: I want you, I want your love, I want your respect, and I want your dick...is that such a huge problem?"

B and LG, as artists representing individual and communal supplications for love, are performing through a medium that uniquely shows the recurrence of the painful oppressive structures that we all inherit; and that we all may or may not talk about, as is our right. The internet is about communication. We talk about things and share opinions, and this shapes how we see each other and how we create and express on a crazy exponential level we haven't really explored yet. The internet may not be implicitly oppressive, or based on real-world hegemonic structures (patriarchy!), but it is repressive. It covers and uncovers pain, or I should say it houses and festers pains like our own personal subconscious does, except on a mass scale. An entertainment medium based wholly on the internet social structure is going to necessarily reflect our neurotic tendencies: the Phones' "Stop loving me!" mentality oscillating to the "Why don't you love me?" desperation mindset and how we talk and talk and talk about those feelings. It's interesting to see which ones we're ready to uncover, and which ones we want to bury.