Lady GaGa is famous in large part because she wears provocative clothing in public. It is part of her persona, and her occupation is her persona. She is not just a singer and songwriter. She is a performer, who is “on” all the time, whose very life is a sort of “performance art.”

For instance, here she is at Heathrow airport:

And here she is taking in a major league baseball game:

Ms. GaGa won some kind of award at the Empty V awards on Sunday night, and accepted in a dress made of meat.  Here is the dress she wore:

Ha, ha. That’s just Ms. GaGa being Ms. GaGa. Wearing an unusual outfit in order to generate attention for herself. And, of course, to be provocative. To push the envelope. Because that’s what Lady GaGa does. She provokes not only with her music, but with her very existence, and she clearly doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her.

Except. Well, she doesn’t want to offend vegans. Apparently after the Empty V awards, she was interviewed by Ellen DeGeneres, who is a vegan herself, but otherwise seems alright. Ms. DeGeneres asked Ms. GaGa about her meat dress. Ms. GaGa then pulled aside the meat curtains of her mind, and offered an explanation as to why she was wearing it:

The positively squeamish DeGeneres, who is vegan, prefaced by saying, “I get most of your outfits,” just not this one.

“It’s certainly no disrespect to anyone that’s vegan or vegetarian,” Gaga told the host. “As you know I’m the most judgment-free human being on the Earth. It has many interpretations, but for me this evening it’s [saying] if we don’t stand up for what we believe in, if we don’t fight for our rights, pretty soon we’re going to have as much rights as the meat on our bones.”

Oh, so Ms. GaGa, who made a video in which she appeared as a nun who dances half naked on a bed, or something, whatever it was (I have already forgotten about Alejandro), is worried about possibly offending vegans? Vegans, the most humorless group of people on earth? Vegans, who are more shrill and more prone to judgment and proselytizing  even than christians, muslims, recyclers, and ex-smokers? It’s vegans that Ms. GaGa doesn’t want to offend?

All along it was all a ruse. All along Ms. GaGa was just trying to generate publicity for herself in order to *SELL*MORE*GAGA! This is the Lady GaGa who once said,

“I have the right to choose whether or not I want to be a celebrity, and I don’t want to be one… I’d much rather people write about what I wear and what I’m singing and what I do in my videos than about who I’m f*cking. I mean, that, for me, is the kiss of death.”

Supposedly, she wants people to write about what she’s wearing. Unless they’re writing the wrong thing. Then she feels a need to step in and explain herself. Yet, by telling us what her dress means, she is removing any reason to write about it. And what we’re left with is, “Who is Lady GaGa f*cking now?” Ms. GaGa has committed authorial trespass against her own dress. But it’s worse than that, because she apparently did it again, telling Ms. DeGeneres:

She then dished up a second interpretation, saying it’s meant to say that she’s “not a piece of meat.”

Ms. GaGa, in what universe are you “not a piece of meat”? You have turned  yourself into a piece of meat. You are a tool of the record company that helped create you. You are a victim of your own fame. Ms. GaGa, you are even a victim of your own persona, as you yourself have admitted:

“When I wake up in the morning, I feel just like any other insecure 24-year old girl. Then I say, ‘Bitch, you’re Lady Gaga, you get up and walk the walk today.’”

You have put yourself in a position of having to “walk the walk.” Every single day. And sadly, there are times when you (literally) can’t walk it, and you (literally) fall on your face:

Ms. DeGeneres has made Ms. GaGa look more foolish, more falling-on-her-face pathetic, than any trip and fall at an airport ever could. Ms. GaGa doesn’t even “get” herself. She can’t think of a way to justify the very clothes she wears? That is a fundamental part of her persona, and she can’t get her story straight. We’ve got to fight for our rights! I am not a piece of meat!

Ms. GaGa should not have answered Ms. DeGeneres’s question. “I wear what I wear,” she should have said, “and you can decide for yourself what it means.” By attempting to explain the dress, she has exposed herself as a shallow fame- and money-obsessed, insecure 24 year-old girl, who cannot walk the walk.

Once an artist turns his/her vision loose on the world, it belongs to everyone. The readers or listeners or viewers should be allowed to make up their own minds about what they’re taking in. For Ms. GaGa, that includes the very outfits she wears, as they’re a fundamental part of her persona.

Too many people assume that “the artist” has some kind of magical power over his/her own work, and any opinion they have on that work is THE UNDISPUTABLE TRUTH. In fact, the artist’s opinion should matter only while s/he is creating the work in question. For instance, when J K Rowling revealed, a year after the last Harry Potter novel had been completed, that one of the characters in those books was gay, well, then, that character was gay.

The question was: Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?

JKR: My truthful answer to you… I always thought of Dumbledore as gay. [ovation.] … Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent? But, he met someone as brilliant as he was, and rather like Bellatrix he was very drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him. Yeah, that’s how i always saw Dumbledore. In fact, recently I was in a script read through for the sixth film, and they had Dumbledore saying a line to Harry early in the script saying I knew a girl once, whose hair… [laughter]. I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, “Dumbledore’s gay!” [laughter] “If I’d known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!”

That’s a genuinely shitty thing for an artist to do. If a character is gay, then make the character gay. Don’t play coy about it in the actual novels and then announce later that the character was gay all along. And if you are playing it coy in the books (I haven’t read them so I don’t know — does this Dumbledore have a male roommate? Drink a lot of appletinis?) then certainly you had a valid artistic reason for doing so, correct? You’ve just removed part of the fun of reading, or taking in any work of art, be it watching a film or listening to a song. The discussion with others over the meaning of it all. When the artist comes out and says, “I intended this,” the discussion ends for most people. If you don’t believe me, go back and read the audience’s reaction to Ms. Rowling’s revelation.

[ovation]

Dumbledore is gay now. Mystery gone. One more reason not to read the Harry Potter books. (And for crying out loud I’m not anti-gay. I’m anti-authorial trespass.)

And then there’s Robert Redford claiming that Dan Quayle misinterpreted a film in which he starred, “The Candidate”:

Paulson: And you mention “The Candidate.” You had to be more than a little surprised to hear Dan Quayle say he modeled himself after you in that film.

Redford: That scared me for the country. I thought if he, if he — if that was his model, then he really missed the point.

Paulson: And we see so much of that. We had Bruce Springsteen having to demand that the Republicans stop using “Born in the U.S.A.” because, as he pointed out, this is not a patriotic ballad.

Redford: No.

Paulson: And there seems to be kind of a surface-level reaction from politicians, a certain art, wanting to latch on to it. And yet the message of “The Candidate” is something that no politician would embrace. I understand that, that — for those who haven’t seen it, it has to do with an idealistic young man who says what he believes in as long as he’s not likely to win. And then things change.

Redford: The fundamental theme of the movie was to take a hard look at, at how we get people elected in this country. And that was what the real point of the movie was. The other was the characters to embody that theme, and, and the, the — kind of the Faustian bargain that people make going into politics, when they think, “I can be — I can maintain my integrity. I can maintain a level of truth.” But they have no idea what happens when you enter the political system. It’s so full of compromise, and now more than ever — insidious, devious stuff to, to — rather than tell the people the truth, to keep it from the people while appearing to be truthful. So that, that kind of thing was what we were trying to say in the movie, that the only thing that matters is winning. And so — this character gets sucked into that. And it was about how we get people elected in this country, and we were answering it by saying, “Unfortunately, it’s too much by cosmetics, not enough by substance.”

Not only is Mr. Redford suggesting that there is only one way to interpret “The Candidate” (which is a great film, by the way), but that there is only one acceptable reaction to it. Why couldn’t Mr. Quayle have seen the film and been inspired to change that system the film criticizes? But okay, I don’t want to spend any more time even appearing to defend Dan Quayle of all people, so I’ll move on.

With his film “Avatar,” director James Cameron committed authorial trespass just about as often as he could. Check this from the New York Times:

Q. Have you gotten any criticism that the film might be perceived as anti-American?

A. It’s something that I’ve anticipated the possibility of because people will misinterpret things in certain ways. You can almost count on people misinterpreting things. The film is definitely not anti-American. It’s not anti-human either. My perception of the film is that the N’avi represent that sort of aspirational part of ourselves that wants to be better, that wants to respect nature. And the humans in the movie represent the more venal versions of ourselves, the banality of evil that comes with corporate decisions that are made out of remove of the consequences.

Emphasis added, because here, Mr. Cameron is stating plainly that any interpretation of the film that he made that does not comport with his own intentions is a misinterpretation. Think about that for a second. The artist is saying that if, for any reason whatsoever, you come away from a viewing of his film thinking something other than what he had in mind, you are wrong.

And that is the real problem with authorial trespass. It exposes the insecurity of the artist involved. No, the problem with your interpretation couldn’t possibly be that I didn’t convey myself in a truly meaningful way — the problem is with you, the viewer. You’re misinterpreting it! And this is James Freaking Cameron saying this. Creator of the first two “Terminator” films. “Aliens.” “True Lies.” Quite possibly the best filmmaker in the world. Certainly one of the most powerful. And even he is saying that if you just don’t get me, well, frankly, that bothers me enough that I’m going to insult you.

Do you think Christopher Nolan is going to start talking about the meaning of “Inception“? Did he ever do that with “Memento“? Does David Lynch do interviews in which he explains what he meant by the masturbation scene in “Mulholland Drive“?

Once you put your work out into the world, have enough confidence in it to let it stand or trip and fall on its own.

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Ricky Sprague

Ricky Sprague occasionally writes and/or draws things. He sometimes animates things. He has a Twitter account and he has a blog. He scripted this graphic novel about Kolchak The Night Stalker. He is really, really good at putting links in bios.

Latest posts by Ricky Sprague (Posts)

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