[Smithy]

Originally Posted by Shaun

Alejandro rips off about 4 different Madonna videos. She's more talented than Madonna, yes, but she can't even get near to replicating the impact Madonna's had.

She doesn't rip them off people just point out the most stupid things to detract from her achievements

Spoiler:

Lady GaGa, a known provocateur, has done it again. She became an icon through her music, fashion, and videos, but what many fail to realize and what few succeed in seeing is the artistic vision and the impacting message behind her every move. Spawning from Just Dance to Love Game to Paparazzi and now to Alejandro, each of her videos has an underlying message that people, for whatever reason, only feign to realize once its been told to them. While she was quoted for dedicating her newest video, Alejandro, to the gay community, it surprised me to see that it was less of a cursory nod and was instead a ritualistic tribute to the culture we live in today; tying in government, religion, and the social stigma still deeply embedded into the gay culture.

The video begins provocatively with a man in heels and fishnets - a foreshadowing technique to show what the video is ultimately about. It should be noted that as the soldiers first enter, their stance is powerful, demanding, and intimidating. There are even robust allusions to the Nazi regime. It then begins to establish the roles of a woman and the roles of a man as defined by classic interpretations of gender: GaGa playing the role of a forlorn woman preceding a coffin, men playing the role of soldiers - perhaps the most masculine occupation in the world. But slowly, through the progression of events, the roles are flipped. Gender becomes erroneous and subsidiary to the idea that we are defined by our soul, not by our body.

Unisexuality becomes ubiquitous marked most especially by the bowl haircut, a fashion that both men and women can equally sport. And it is through this vision of unisexuality comes the idea of uniformity and egalitarianism in a world where, while we claim to have modernized, is still addled by the conflicts of gender issues. GaGa uses this ideal of an equal and shared society by placing women in the seat of power, and dressing men in high heels, fishnet stockings, and spanks yet still portraying them as an Adonis figure.

Later on in the video GaGa is seen with a bra fashioned out of machine gun shafts, and while it seems like a healthy nod to Madonna’s cone bra in Vogue, there are more powerful and obvious themes: a tool of masculinity only made to support a woman. Then, in a sequence where GaGa sports a pant suit, the men come marching out with dignity in every stride like the beginning, but this time with a feminine flair, as if they were on a runway. Juxtaposing that with their original entrance begins to unfold this degradation of the idea of what is male and what is female. And in that light, it comically satirizes the fact that military groups haze homosexuals, and were even targeted and killed by Nazi hands. It’s this twisted play on gender and sexuality that makes Alejandro a social message to the masses.

But essentially, where could these thoughts of sexuality and gender even spawn from? Our world is so deeply rooted in dogmatic traditions, that sometimes we fail to realize that it is in religion, most especially Catholicism, where these conflicts first begin. Adam, as the first man made, was fashioned and molded in the image of God, which ultimately leads us, as followers of the holy word, to believe that God is man. And as a MAN of power, he is the alpha. He is the omega. Signifying that anything less than a man, for example a homosexual or a woman, is immediately cast away as irrevocably useless. This idea of religion imposing its ideals and controlling us is exemplified clearly within the first minute of the video where you see a soldier with a golden gun surrounded by wires; an obvious and perhaps blatant message that we are all just puppets of God.

Lady GaGa, however, can’t leave it at just that. While her first sentence may establish the tone of God and religion, gender and sex, she, as a visionary of our generation, toys with this idea, plays with it, and essentially comes out with this subtle, yet brilliant message.

She sets up multiple characters in the video, each one with a purpose: a tyrant, a widow, a nun, a priest, a rebel, and finally, and most importantly, a human being. As mentioned before, the tyrant represents government, politics, and modern society. The widow is the tragic, mourning woman, perhaps a simple glance to the realities of war. However, it’s through the other four symbols does her story and her sermon come to life. A nun is a quintessential figure of maternity, sacrificing ones womb and God-given ability to create life for a devout following and birthing of religion. She is shown praying and then symbolically swallowing a rosary into her throat. While this can be interpreted many ways, I think we can all agree that it’s really quite simple: she is swallowing religion, her beliefs, and what she was raised to be in order to liberate herself and her mind to a more global way of thinking. By swallowing one’s religion it is not a blasphemous act of shutting religion away, but rather accepting it into one’s heart and internalizing the purest message. Allowing our body to sift through the inequities and inevitably yielding the most virgin of attitudes and preaching only of what is truly important: love. The Bible may say being gay is wrong, but isn’t its ultimate message it preaches love? Love which transcends the borders of time constriction unlike the medieval thought of sexuality.

They are then seen stripping and disrobing GaGa dressed as a cardinal priest with red being the only prevalent color in the entire video. This action of pulling apart and eradicating her clothing to expose her to the world serves many purposes and to choose just one is ignorant. Perhaps it’s a message to reveal yourself to the world, to make yourself vulnerable to the thought and philosophy of others. Perhaps it’s a violent urge to accept yourself as you are and that there is nothing inherently wrong with you. Perhaps it’s another message about religion, and that by stripping it and tearing it apart, you are left more holy than when you began. Perhaps it’s all of it and none of it. But the fact that she is covered by the hands of, well, let’s face it, obvious homosexuals, is enough of a message for me.

There is a sequence within the video that I first claimed to be disjointed and completely irrelevant upon first watching it. You can definitely quote me now that although musically lacking, this clip is important in the overall plot. She repeats the chorus “Alejandro” over and over again in a hypnotic fashion and is seen wearing a leather jacket. This is the rebel. This chant of “Alejandro” is like a call to arms, and then showing clips of revolt and terror only fortifies her message that as a society we must fight for change. We must fight for equality, because even though it may seem as if we have changed, there’s still a large majority within the world with archaic points of view.

Which leaves us finally with GaGa as a human being. In this look, she is androgynous. She is neither male, nor female. Her message of equality has transcended and morphed into simply being, existing, living.

Regardless, there’s so much more that I could extend on, and dig even deeper, but it seems that doing so would essentially destroy the entire piece of art. We may try to excavate, discover, and understand, but perhaps it’s
best to simply allow it to exist and keep the meaning to ourselves. Because no matter how far you go, I wouldn’t doubt that GaGa has gone further.