Representation Determined By Power

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

An analyze on her representation determined by power, spectacle and memory within contemporary mediated culture.

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, known by her stage name as Lady Gaga, is one of the most powerful artists and influential people at this moment. According to Forbes magazine [1] , Lady Gaga is ranked five in the world's most powerful celebrities, fourteen in the world's most powerful woman, first in press and social networking and third in the TV/radio top. Her earnings are being estimated to $52.0 millions and Ben Cardew (Music Week News Editor) sustains that she adorns "a lot of the money she makes into touring and you could call that a fundamental business strategy because it's essentially making a better product".

According to Foucault, discourse is created and developed by those who have power and the means of communication. Those in control decide who we are by what we discuss. The fact that Lady Gaga is so high rated in all these media platforms is just an example of the real power and influence she has on people. He also sustains that being within a particular discourse(master/slave), the understanding will be found only in terms that this discourse allows.

Her first album released in 2008 'The Fame' was a succes and with her international number-one singles 'Just Dance' and 'Poker Face', Lady Gaga succeed into the top charts around the world.

The next movement was 'The Fame Ball Tour' followed by releasing the album 'The Fame Monster' ,which became famous for it hits that spread worldwide like ' Bad Romance', 'Telephone', 'Alejandro' and signed her for a eighteen-month long 'Monster Ball Tour' which later, according to The Guardian [2] , became one of the highest-grossing concert tours of all time.

Lady Gaga is often recognized by her diverse, showy and eccentric contributions to the music industry, through her fashionable performances and music videos and this helped her selling an estimated 23 million albums and 64 million singles worldwide and according to Guinness World Records [3] , her digital music sales broke world records with 1.1 million copies in its first week.

The superstar grew fast into a global phenomenon, claiming the top spot in Forbes magazine's annual Celebrity 100 list in just three years after her first US number one single. Her achievements include five Grammy Awards, thirteen MTV Video Music Awards and she was named one of the most influential people in the world by Time magazine [4] . George Ergatoudis (head of Music Radio 1) sustains in an article [5] published by BBC that this happened because the artist use all the current social networking sites to attract fans through her fashionable apparitions: "Every time she goes out the door she's looking different, she's getting photographed, she's aware of that and she's using it by updating herself literally on a daily basis".

The annual report published by Nielsen Soundscan in 2011 names Lady Gaga the 4th best selling digital artists of all time in the U.S. and according to The Official Charts Company [6] she is number 5 ranked in the top of the best selling female single artist in U.K.

Despite the fact that Lady Gaga is supported by millions of fans worldwide, she represents a controversy for people and their beliefs through what she represents and the messages she transmits through her music and videos and according to The Guardian [7] , Christian groups protest against the superstar to prevent her from influencing young people.

The symbolism exposed by Lady Gaga is so clamant that one may wonder if is all a bad joke. She is a tribute to mind control and she influence her fans to think that being mindless, tongue-tied and disconnected is a fashionable thing .

According to The Guardian [8] , Lady Gaga canceled her performance last year in Malaysia because her single 'Born this way' was promoting homosexuality, matter that is illegal there and punishable.

Protests took place in Philippines too where Christians groups claimed that Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way' tour mocked Jesus Christ and God: "This protest is not against Lady Gaga as a person but on her music and on how she declares distorted views about the Lord Jesus Christ," declared on CNN [9] , Reuben Abante, bishop of Lighthouse Bible Baptist Church and secretary-general of Biblemode Youth.

Channel24 [10] recently wrote that The South African Council of Churches will continue to take action against the superstar's destructive influence on people, influence that could increase the extent of Satanism in South Africa. Christians organized in November a protest march to the departement of Arts and Culture in Pretoria, where they signed petitions against Lady Gaga performing in S.A.

The power she has on population is extraordinaire. Foucault describes power as "permanent, repetitious, inert, and self-reproducing", "not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society." [11] 

Move-making and movie-viewing are being analyzed as voyeuristic practices. The term is a synonym for scopophilia ('love of watching') which, in Freudian analysis, is associated with the stage of psychosexual development. Usually the subject observe the activities of people on a screen in a dark medium who is unaware of being watched back as well. Horror films are very voyeuristic through which the viewers are characteristically identified with the point of view of the monster. Lady Gaga's videos contain strange, horror and shocking scenes where she does irrational, malefic and uncommon things that might give a wrong perspective to its viewers.

Her fans love what she does, her eccentric videos, her fancy style, her odd personality and the fact that she seems to be special through all these extravagant things. But with every apparition of her in public or every music and video she and her team produce, Lady Gaga seems to expose more and more obvious symbolistic messages that are meant to harm the population and manipulate them through brainwash.

The symbolistic messages that Lady Gaga communicates are strongly linking to a covert CIA mind-control and chemical interrogation research program, run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence coded as project MKULTRA [12] . The published evidence indicates the furtive use of different types of drugs, as well as other methods, in order to modify individual's brain function and mental states.

Project MKULTRA outgrew unofficially as "Project Monarch" [13] . Michael Barkun, a professor emeritus of political science, says in his book intitled 'A culture of conspiracy' that this project seems to be an extension of MKULTRA [14] .

The "Project Monarch" is a technique through which the subjects were exposed to a very violent trauma that creates dissociations within the their mind. In this way the brain is compartmentalized and a new personality is born, which is modeled and reeducated by manipulators. In their reeducation, individuals are being exposed to symbols like spider webs, trees, masks, butterflies, etc. and movies like 'The Wizard of Oz' and many Disney ones. The same technique is used by mass media to conduct a scale mind control project, according to ZIMBO [15] .

In an essay intitled "The Uncanny" , Freud describes the factors of silence, solitude and darkness as " elements in the production of the infantile anxiety from which the majority of human beings have never become quite free". [16] 

In both videos that Lady Gaga made, 'Paparazzi' [17] and 'Telephone' [18] , the singers wear Mickey Mouse sunglasses, while they are programmed to execute poisonings. Because Disney films were known to be involved in MK programming, Mickey Mouse designs are often linking to mind control.

Ron Patton, Professor of Control and Intelligent Systems Engineering, sustains in an article [19] that "the name MONARCH is not necessarily defined within the context of royal nobility, but rather refers to the monarch butterfly". He explains that through undergoing trauma induced by electroshocking a person, a sensation of light-head-ness is evidenced like "floating or fluttering like a butterfly".

Another symbolic representation of the butterfly relating to the transformation (or metamorphosis) is that this insect is transforming from a caterpillar to a cocoon (inaction,quiescence), to a butterfly (new creation) which will finally turn back to its origin point.

According to Barbara G. Walker, in occult the term 'Psyche' means both 'soul' and 'butterfly' and it comes from the belief that the butterflies are human souls searching for a new reincarnation [20] .

Marshall Cavendish sustains that Gnostics and others ancient mystical groups perceived the butterfly as a symbol of corrupt flesh [21] . In Gnostic art, the "Angel of Death" was represented crushing a butterfly.

Ron Patton (mentioned above) describes the "Project Monarch" as "a form of structured dissociation and occultism integration" that makes victims compartmentalize their mind into multiple personalities using a "Systematic framework".

In her video of 'The Monster Ball Tour' called "Manifesto of little Monsters", Lady Gaga simulates a scene that seems to be an electroshocking session [22] .

According to The Vigilant Citizen [23] , many of Lady Gaga videos describe the fall and rise to the top of the star who went through a metamorphosis during the process.

For example,"Paparazzi" video starts with Lady Gaga and her boyfriend having fun. They go outside on the balcony were later cameras start picturing them from everywhere. The guy starts acting violent and finally pushes Gaga off the balcony. While falling down, the background of Lady Gaga becomes a swirling pattern, often associated with hypnotism. She falls "stylishly", pointing to the fact that "this descent is not physical". Next thing she enters a mansion and she walks with the help of crutches, scene that can be interpreted as her reeducation. The fact that she is dressed like a robot is hinting to 'Maria' character from 'Metropolis' movie [24] . On the next scene she sits next to the guy who pushed her earlier, wearing Mickey Mouse clothes and behaving in a robotic way, like she would be controlled by someone. Her transformation is now complete and she shows this poisoning the guy and smiling very weird.

As well as "Paparazzi", "Marry the Night" and "Bad romance" tells the story of Lady Gaga, her rise into the entertainment industry mixed with deep symbolism, creative fashion, her odd shocking presence rolled up in a great big music industry. She is a great spectacle every time she gets out the world and as Guy Debord sustains, that spectacle is "composed of signs of the dominant organization of production signs which are at the same time the ultimate end products of that organization." [25] 

Another aspect of Lady Gaga's videos and style that raised controversial issues among population is the inverted cross that is illustrated by the star in her robs and videos. In Christian faith, the cross represents Jesus Christ and his sacrifice and resurrection and the inverted cross represents the "Cross of St. Peter" [26] who requested to be crucified upside down to avoid to die like Jesus Christ, as he felt unworthy.

According to Vigilant Citizen [27] 'Bad romance' is a description of the steps that one must take tin order to become part of this 'mega-pop-star machine'. It does so through submissions, control, initiation, negotiations, secrecy and embracing the dark forces. The video actually offers a chilling description like the 'Bad romance' of this industry.

Manly P. Hall sustains that "in symbolism, an inverted figure always signifies a perverted power (…) Black magic is not a fundamental art; it is the misuse of an art. Therefore it has no symbols of its own. It merely takes the emblematic figures of white magic, and by inverting and reversing them signifies that it is left-handed." [28] According to Baudrillard, our current society replaced all the meaning and reality with signs and symbols and a human experience is nothing else than a simulation of reality. [29] 

'The Transhumanist and Police State Agenda in Pop Music' [30] is an article that describes the oppressive, militaristic and dark trend in music videos and how people are bombarded with militaristic imagery, sexuality, in order to create a positive subconsciousness association, desensitizing them. Guy Debord sustains that, "In a world that really has been turned on its head, truth is a moment of falsehood." [31] In 'Alejandro' [32] video is high amount of sexuality and militaristic, sinner dark trend where Gaga goes through a very deep metamorphosis, desecrating symbols of Christian faith as a sign of rejection and embracing a new form of spirituality.

Foucault notes in his volume "The History of Sexuality " that the end of the seventeen century marked the start of a inhibitory regime of banning and prudery regarding sexuality. Contrary this argument, he suggest that so much attention focused on the sexuality had never been before and the nineteen century saw the need of a big increasing of knowledge and the evolution of multiple mechanisms of control relating to sexuality [33] . Many videos of Lady Gaga show excessive sexuality embracing a sinner and chaotic attitude.

'Judas' video [34] brought the artist many issues with Christian Church and groups because she is blaspheming Jesus Christ by playing the role of Mary Magdalene who falls in love with Judas.

The portray of Mary Magdalene as Jesus mate became popular through books such as The Jesus Scroll (1972), Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982), The Da Vinci Code (2003), The Two Marys: The Hidden History of the Mother and Wife of Jesus (2007); and by films like Bloodline (2008).

Judas is a biblical character, the apostle who betrayed Jesus Christ, his divine master. He is represented in the video as a bad guy who get drunk and grab women while Jesus is shown healing people and doing good things but still, Lady Gaga is 'in love' with Judas. Judas ways not only attract and convert Gaga but also brings Jesus down. Gaga uses lyrics like "Jesus is my virtue, Judas is the demon I cling to" which are learned by youngs and interfere with their personality building process. The consequences could lead to a fake dissociated reality because according to Foucault, truth, morality and meaning are builded through discourse and every age has a dominant group of discursive elements. It is clearly that Lady Gaga represents one of the dominant groups from these days that could be harmful for population by manipulating their mind and creating new perceptions.

'Judas' summarizes a reflection of the high philosophy that masses needs to understand and the spiritual shift that humanity enters, called "The Age of Horus" [35] .

Aleister Crowley sustains in his introduction to 'The Book of the Law', a brilliant and catastrophic work penned in 1904, that people are heading to the 'age' when Horus will have supreme power and control over the masses:"Everywhere his government is taking root. Observe for yourselves the decay of the sense of sin, the growth of innocence and irresponsibility, the strange modifications of the reproductive instinct with a tendency to become bi-sexual or epicene, the childlike confidence in progress combined with a nightmare fear of catastrophe, against which we are yet half unwilling to take precautions. Consider the outcrop of dictatorships, only possible when moral growth is in its earliest stages, and the prevalence of infantile cults like Communism, Fascism, Pacifism, health crazes, occultism in nearly all its forms, religions sentimentalized to a point of practical extinction (...). Consider war, the atrocities which occur daily and leave us unmoved and hardly worried. We are children." [36] 

Most of the music videos and TV shows and movies are based on values that belong to a society based on egoism, materialism and the sexualization of everything, in other words, they are celebrating 'Judas'.

According to Study World [37] , the Western World faced a decline in religious faith, especially Christian.

This has never happened in our history, such a profound social change in such a short period of time.

There are no evidences that Lady Gaga would be directly responsible for such a drastic shift but 'Judas', through the symbols and meanings is constructed, it describes perfectly this transitional period people are going through as it seems that this society is taken to, in Crowley's terms, the 'Age of Horus'.

Lady Gaga has millions of fans worldwide despite the fact she seems to be influencing people in a wrong way. Youngs love her because she seems to be different and to understand her fans in this chaotic society, encouraging abnormalities like homosexuality, sustaining that she and her fans were " born this way", like sexual orientation is something that we inherit as if it would be multiples choices regarding this.

When it comes to spectacle, Lady Gaga presents herself as a hilarious and ridiculous character, a demon queen dancing in the dark with her odd naked friends, surrounded by brain-dead zombies, witchcraft, piercings, tattoos, distorted dances and obvious allusions to another reality speaking of homosexuality and new human race.

Regarding all mentioned above, Lady Gaga represents a contemporary mediated issue that blooms collective memory within the masses and can make a spectacle only through her presence, having an impressive power over people, especially the youngs.