Camp Revealed in Pop Culture Icon Lady Gaga
Camp Revealed in Pop Culture Icon Lady Gaga
Camp Revealed in Pop Culture Icon Lady Gaga
José M. Yebra
University of Zaragoza
Abstract Keywords
This article addresses the ultimate pop icon Lady Gaga; in particular I will analyse Lady Gaga
how camp sensibility informs her gender and sex discourses as well as her acts pop camp
of transgression and commodification. Using as a framework Pamela Robertson’s queer camp
feminist camp in the 1990s and its revision by Helen Shugart and Catherine feminist camp
Waggoner in the 2000s, it is my main contention that Gaga problematizes camp monstrousness
and its subversive potential yet again. Thus, drawing on and contesting J. Jack transgression
Halberstam’s queer reading of the artist in Gaga Feminism, this article proves
how her campy outfits and her videos ‘Born this Way’ and ‘Telephone’ open femi- 1. The research carried out
for writing this article
nist camp to new concerns, especially through her affective engagement with her is part of a project
fans, which converts the artist into a hypermodern product. In featuring herself financed by the Spanish
Ministry of Economy
as ‘Mother Monster’ followed by her ‘little monsters’, she updates Haraway’s and Competitiveness
Cyborg Manifesto (Haraway 2004) to revamp Otherness and belongness as (MINECO) (code
culturally significant concepts.
39
José M. Yebra
for access to the dominant culture’ (Robertson 1996: 129). As a stylistic appro-
priation of ‘authentic’ camp, Shugart and Waggoner argue (drawing on Booth
[1983], Robertson [1996], Ross [1999] and Sontag [1964]), pop camp is ‘devoid
of resistive potential’ (2008: 21). As for queer camp, it draws on queer theory
as a site of resistance, contestation and anti-essentialism. Hence, in opposition
to camp Lite, it ‘emphasizes the other side – camp’s ability to signal difference
and alienation from the dominant’ (Robertson 1996: 129). Pop camp appropri-
ates dominant cultural issues, as it is appropriated by mainstream culture; by
contrast, queer camp is not parasitic as it draws on its own subculturalism to
be transgressive.
An article in February 1993 in the New Yorker claimed: ‘Camp is dead,
thanks to Madonna’ (in Robertson 1996: 118). In a similar vein, Daniel
D’Addario argues that Spielberg-produced television series Smash (2012–
2013) ‘does for camp what Schindler’s List did for the camps: it simplifies it,
flattens it out and repackages it for mass consumption’ (2012: n.pag.). In other
words, when camp turns pop or Lite, it betrays itself and ‘the thrill is gone’
(D’Addario 2012). In the critic’s view, Lady Gaga’s camp is redundant because
she ‘name-checks Liberace and dresses like a drag king […] but she’s more
popular than just about any pop star […] and she’s too controlled, too calcu-
lating, too self-aware to be camp’ (D’Addario 2012). Does it mean then that,
in the era of postmodern (self)consciousness, camp is no longer feasible? If
queer camp is no longer viable, why do critics like Horn (2010, 2012) and very
especially Halberstam (2012) still claim cultural products like Gaga to be sites
of camp transgression? Are artists like Lady Gaga a proof of the commodifica-
tion of the very act of transgression threatening with normalizing queer camp
not as a positive development of de-stigmatizing Otherness, but as a reflec-
tion of late capitalism?
Robertson, Shugart and Waggoner argue for a feminist camp; one that,
unlike gay camp, does not appropriate female stars and feminine aesthetics,
but ‘offers feminists a model for critiques of gender and sex roles’ (Robertson
1996: 6). The engagement between camp and feminism has obvious implica-
tions. Feminist camp relies on masquerade, or double mimesis, rather than on
drag parody, as gay male camp does (Shugart and Waggoner 2008: 18). On
the other hand, feminist camp goes beyond Moe Meyer’s conception of queer
camp, which he reduces to gay and lesbian (1994: 1–22), and endorses Doty’s
understanding of camp as a queer discourse ‘in opposition to or at variance
with the dominant, straight, symbolic order’ (Robertson 1996: 9). Thus, feminist
criticism surpasses the counter-cultural potential of camp drag, which ‘reveals
the performance of gender identity, but […] cannot effectively dismantle
gender identity’ (Robertson 1996: 11). Transgression as an act of resistance to
(Gramsci’s) Hegemony occurs when female masquerade takes the poetics of
carnival and transgender to the extreme. When the female masquerades femi-
ninity, the (ironic) distance between imitator and imitated, appropriator and
appropriated collapses and the transgressive act puts to the fore the very logic
of mainstream culture, particularly common sense (Hebdige 1979: 11). When
pop artists like Mae West, Joan Crawford and Madonna masquerade, they do
not operate in the way Bakhtinian carnival does. That is, in transgressing the
status quo and the logic of Hegemony and common sense, carnival purports
a transient and elusive act of resistance. Yet, ‘the carnival fails to fundamen-
tally change official culture’s hierarchical distinctions’ (Foust 2013: 9). The
feminist camp the artists below embody constitutes, however, a cutting-edge
performance (Russo 1986; Lockford 1996; Hanke 1998; Tseelon 2001) since it
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José M. Yebra
to Madonna as a camp predecessor of Lady Gaga. Next, I will draw on how, 2. I discard Macy Gray
from the analysis
according to Shugart and Waggoner, transgressive camp is articulated in because her campness
female pop celebrities like Gwen Stefani as a forebear to Gaga.2 is not as related to
Robertson approaches Madonna as a problematic phenomenon, a sign of Gaga as Stefani’s is.
sexual liberation, but also of mass consumption and commodification, and a
galvanizer of feminist issues such as sex, gender, pornography and fashion. Be
it as it were, the star is, ‘especially in her Boy Toy and material Girl incarnations
[…] the epitome of the newly defined camp style, embracing crass consumer,
like pop, and updating it through new media forms’ (Robertson 1996: 123).
More than anybody before, Madonna represented the chameleon that shifts
gender roles and imagery for the sake of transgression and/or late-capitalist
overconsumption. Thus, she has played the role of the ultimate simulacrum
to a long list of ‘queerable’ women and signs, becoming ‘a semiotic montage’
(Coombe 2006: 728). For example, when impersonating Marilyn Monroe as a
material girl in her eponymous clip, Madonna is ironically distancing herself
from the stereotype of the Boy Toy. Besides, rewriting the naïveté of Monroe’s
impersonation bestows the actress a sense of control and irony from the stere-
otype she performed (Robertson 1996: 126). Madonna’s gender bending in
videos like ‘Justify my Love’ (1991) or ‘Erotica’ (1992) – where she ‘identifies
herself with a wide range of sex and gender roles’ (Robertson 1996: 130) – and
her meta-masquerade in ‘Vogue’ – drawing on ‘gay subcultures, Hollywood
stars, and feminist camp’ (Robertson 1996: 131) – make up the artist’s rheto-
rics of control and power. Indeed, for this same reason, the actual transgres-
siveness of Madonna’s camp has also been questioned. Her transgressive
discourse has often been considered ‘an appropriation of style rather than a
substantive politics’ (Robertson 1996: 133). In other words, her practices do
not discard the Hegemonic system. They simply reverse the structure of power
relations in Patriarchy (Robertson 1996: 134). Thus, being well-wrapped into
the recognizable format of an MTV video-clip, Madonna turned out a palat-
able post-modern good for a wide audience. All in all, the artist puts forward
the strength and weakness of camp when it becomes (or is appropriated by)
mainstream or has access to (or appropriates) the mainstream. In short, the
original marginality of camp as a site of resistance is put to the fore, turning
instead into a site of ambivalence.
Drawing on Robertson, Shugart and Waggoner delve into the politics and
poetics of transgressive feminist camp. Their focus is on tracing how resistive
strategies ‘intersect with the aesthetic practices and sensibilities that charac-
terize the contemporary mediated context in which camp occurs’ (Shugart
and Waggoner 2008: 19). With this purpose, they explore four cultural
phenomena, two characters (Xena, from the eponymous television series, and
Karen, from the sitcom Will and Grace), and two female artists, May Gray
and Gwen Stefani. Although all four phenomena are analysed following
the same methodology, I will briefly address the case of Stefani as a singer
and forebear to Lady Gaga. After establishing the qualities and character-
istics of (feminist) ‘authentic’ camp – namely parody, irony and incongruity,
aesthetics and style as excess, performance as previous to and constitutive of
identity as agency, resistance and nostalgia – they move to pop camp as an
eminently American product. Nevertheless, the all-American products/char-
acters the critics explore conjoin both types of camp (Shugart and Waggoner
2008: 46). That is, camp dominant and resistive discourses inhabit Xena,
Karen, Gray and Stefani. And Shugart and Waggoner prove it by addressing
issues like ‘trope, spectacle […] anchor and foil’ (2008: 48). These artists and
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José M. Yebra
Gaga updates Judith Butler’s gender performativity, addressing gender as a 3. As Lieb recalls, ‘By
November 25, 2012,
mere performance without a reference (because the models she masquerades Gaga had 31,494,610
are deferred ad nauseam), as a series of acts that make social meaning through Twitter followers, and
repetition and mimicry. Gaga is to Youtube what Madonna was to the MTV 53,835,491 likes on
Facebook, staggering
because she has transformed the postmodern parody of the latter into a viral figures for each venue’
product that performs gender and sex as well as it is performed and negoti- (2013: 20).
ated by active spectators. In other words, whereas Madonna held agency over
her gender performance (although she could only re-arrange pre-established
gender discourses), Gaga’s agency is engaged with that of her fans, who help
her configure the gender tropes she performs through their intense interven-
tion on social networks.3 To assess the transgressive potential of Gaga’s camp-
ness to articulate her gender discourse in context I will first make reference to
her impersonation as Jo Calderone and her bizarre outfits. Next, I will address
two clips, ‘Telephone’ (2009b), featuring Beyoncé, and ‘Born this Way’ (2011)
because they put forward Gaga’s account of feminist camp and her opening
out of this aesthetics to post-humanism respectively.
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José M. Yebra
fashion – a semi-naked Gaga prances and poses telling little monsters not to
be drags but queens in a surrealistic scenario – it discards the political purpose
of Warner’s end of normality and Halberstam’s anarchy model.
For The Vigilant Citizen (Anon. 2009), the clip is inspired by ‘The Illuminati
Manifesto’. Other voices claim it to be the artist’s own response to cultural
anxieties. And yet, for others, it is just a banalization of these concerns to ‘sell’
more than anyone else on the net. All in all, like other Gaga’s videos, ‘Born
this way’ is rather ambivalent. In the first three minutes the artist narrates
her manifesto, namely the cosmic battle between Good and Evil. Halberstam
describes it as ‘some weird sci-fi about choosing good over evil’ (2012: 132).
Gaga’s allegedly pseudo-religious Illuminati imagery deliberately breaks the
bounds between both forces. In fact, the ‘capital HIM’ she mentions at the
beginning of the video is, for The Vigilant Citizen, a cryptic reference to both
God and the Devil (Anon. 2009: n.pag.). Her persona and videos are the
metafictional product of ‘Haus of Gaga’, a Warholian semiotic laboratory
after Warhol. Assisted by talented counsellors, Gaga is a creator who devises
artistic pieces like ‘Born this Way’ where her alter ego (a sort of intradiegetic
demiurgos) creates life: a monstrous blasphemy itself. Drawing on Surrealism,
Francis Bacon (Zafar 2011: n.pag.), German expressionism and folk tradition,
self-proclaimed ‘Mother Monster’ works out her way into immortality. While
uttering her manifesto on Armageddon, she delivers life. In a post-apocalyptic
aquatic scenario generated by a computer, Gaga gives birth to herself in
the form of homunculi (feminculae in the video), i.e. small human beings
created through alchemy. The iconography is theatrical and ambiguous,
using ‘juxtaposition, absurdism, and elements of the unconscious to make
a case for an escape from rationalism and social/societal restrictions’ (Zafar
2011: n.pag.). It echoes and juxtaposes religious and pagan symbols in a way
that recalls her anchor Madonna’s but none of her foils’: the Virgin Mary and
Baphomet, Armageddon and renewal, Gaga mothering an ‘infinite unpreju-
diced’ race and a black-and-white (anti)-Gaga shooting a machinegun. It is
a utopic/distopic world which recalls the primordial moment of birth (notice
the uterus-like shape human figures form and live in the video), though it
really aims at regeneration, like Haraway’s cyborg world (2004: 38). After the
virtual representation of a human-like cosmic birth, Gaga’s mitosis starts
off. Her head generates new heads/homunculi in a sort of surreal lab; noth-
ing strange though, the homunculus being the little man inside the head of
the little man inside the head ad infinitum. Gaga’s mothering a new species
juxtaposes Haraway’s manifesto and Nazi’s eugenesia in a scenario that
recalls and overlaps post-human cyborgs and ‘WWII imagery’ (Zafar 2011:
n.pag.). Haraway’s words look visionary in view of ‘Born this Way’: ‘Stripped
of identity, the bastard race teaches about the power of the margins and the
importance of a mother like Malinche’ (2004: 34). The critic’s use of meta-
phors to prompt the survival of the margins from a revolutionary politics –
which claims for a monstrous world without gender – intensifies in Gaga’s
manifesto. The video primarily aims to shock a wide audience, but it mostly
demands her fans’ affiliation to articulate subalternity as both unique and
recognisable, human and post-human, pop camp and queer camp. Hence, it
is my contention that Gaga’s manifesto is not the anarchist, queer, antinor-
mative end of normal life Halberstam claims (2012: 133, 135). The clip vindi-
cates well-defined identities in a liberal humanist fashion instead.
Whether Gaga is a puppet of the Illuminati or a self-conscious artist, the
messianic message of a brand new race of unprejudiced Gagas emerging
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José M. Yebra
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Suggested citation
Yebra, J. M. (2018), ‘Camp revamped in pop culture icon Lady Gaga: The case
of “Telephone” and “Born this Way”’, European Journal of American Culture,
37:1, pp. 39–55, doi: 10.1386/ejac.37.1.39_1
Contributor details
Jose M.Yebra is a lecturer in English at the University of Zaragoza (Spain). After
finishing her Doctoral thesis on contemporary British fiction, he has published
articles and book chapters on British literature such as ‘Neo-Victorian
Biofiction and Trauma Poetics in Colm Tóibín’s The Master’ in the jour-
nal Neo-Victorian Studies and ‘“A terrible beauty”: Ethics, aesthetics and the
“Trauma of gayness” in Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty’ published by
Rodopi (NY and Amsterdam). He has also participated in conferences with
papers on postmodernism, trauma and gender studies. He has coorganized
conferences on Irish Studies and Transmodern narratives at the University of
Zaragoza in 2016 and 2017. He is also a member of a project on Transmodern
literatures in English financed by the Spanish Ministry of Education and
Competitiveness led by Dr Susana Onega.
Contact: Facultad de Ciencias Humanas y de la Educación, Despacho 100,
Calle D. Valentín Carderera, 4, 22003, Huesca, Spain.
E-mail: [email protected]
José M. Yebra has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was
submitted to Intellect Ltd.
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