I recently read Chuck Palahniuk’s 1999 novel Invisible Monsters for a third time and it reminded me uncannily of the plight of pop star Lady Gaga. Invisible Monsters tells the tale of fashion model Shannon McFarland who gets her jaw shot off by a rifle. After her disfigurement and a series of painful letdowns, Shannon has to find a way to feel beautiful and happy. Author Palahniuk uses colorful language to personify objects and objectify people, all in a beautifully grotesque way. Palahniuk makes a person’s large hands seem monstrous or a person’s “Plumbago lips” intimidating. A human being can be grotesque in mental and physical ways. Lady Gaga’s second album The Fame Monster is a struggle between herself and the physical world, that physical world where ugliness and old age make people feel like monsters. Having an out-of-shape body is called ugly. A long nose is called ugly. Wrinkles and gray hair are called ugly. This is why no one wants to be ugly, old or both. All of the songs on Monster express Gaga’s internal feelings about self-esteem, physical beauty, sex and love. Her internal feelings are grotesque like monsters because they’re scary and fatal if they overtake Gaga. As the fairy godmother of sorts pre-op transsexual Brandy Alexander advises in Invisible Monsters, “Do the things that scare you the most.” By way of avant-garde dance-pop, Gaga documents her mission to face her fears on The Fame Monster.
Half of Monster is a highly carnal affair. It’s an album that’s very in touch with the body. Generally, beauty is an expensive and plastic ambition, especially in America. Plastic surgeons mutilate people in the name of beauty, slicing and dicing their bones and skin and molding it into something disgusting and artificial. In Invisible Monsters, fashion model Shannon states how knowledge of plastic surgery altered her perspective. “It’s scary, but now when I see somebody blush, my reaction isn’t: oh, how cute. A blush only reminds me how blood is just under the surface of everything.” Going under the knife for cosmetic reasons is risky because death is possible. Even if a person survives their plastic surgery, for several days or months they have to stay wrapped up in bandages like mummies and who knows what person will emerge from the bandages. The first words Gaga speaks on “Dance in the Dark” are “Silicone, saline, poison, inject me,” which are plastic surgery in a nutshell. “Dark” is a gloomy zombie waltz that plays as a sort of electronic version of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” “Dark” is sad and tragic, but somehow hopeful. The more you hear that chorus “baby there’s a dance in the dark/’cuz when he’s looking she falls apart/baby there’s a dance, there’s a dance in the dark,” the more it sounds like a mantra. “Dark” solicits visions of mummies and Frankensteins lurching around. The legendary monster Frankenstein is particularly apropos for the song because plastic surgery patients are like Frankenstein because they’re made of assorted parts. “Dark” also reminds one of hard, plastic mannequins with frozen expressions and poses. You can just feel the chilly, wintry air emitted from the industrial sound of the instrumentation. Gaga resurrects a few famous dead stars. She controls these celebs with a force that is Gaga’s fight to escape the dark tunnel to get to the light. Gaga wants the glitz and glamour of supreme confidence instead of the gloom and doom of insecurity. The famous zombies that Gaga brings back to life include movie stars Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland, poet Sylvia Plath, musician Liberace, Princess Diana and 6-year-old child beauty pageant queen JonBenet Ramsey. All of the celebrities Gaga mentions on the spoken-word interlude are known for their camp value. Marilyn and Judy and JonBenet were examples of hyper-femininity characterized by pounds of makeup and big hair; this made Marilyn and Judy popular inspirations for drag queens around the world, which drag queens exaggerated. Sylvia Plath’s relevance is just overwhelming despair. The mention of JonBenet is unexpected, but it oddly fits with the macabre weirdness of “Dance in the Dark.” JonBenet’s life on earth was grotesque because she dressed like an adult Barbie doll full of hair extensions, wigs and makeup, which made JonBenet look grotesque. She was pretty, but never cute because she looked artificial. She was a living doll who was defined by garishness and ultimately horror. Princess Diana was pure classy glamour in the vein of Jackie O. In many ways, Lady Gaga is a pastiche of all the stars she namedrops. She dresses in the sparkly, garish costumes of Liberace, the blond haired glamour of Marilyn, JonBenet and Diana and the melancholy voice and brown eyes of Judy Garland. All of the celebs are icons (JonBenet was an icon of the media’s devastating power), and Gaga has become an icon in her own right. Let’s just hope that she never reaches a tragic end like the stars she mentions.
“The person you love and the person who loves you are never, ever the same person,” says fashion model Shannon McFarland in Invisible Monsters. The person who loves someone who doesn’t love them back is practicing unconditional love. Unconditional love is never asking the person you love to love you back, through the good and bad. Lady Gaga proclaims that she’ll be loyal through the bad. She desires a “bad romance.” Gaga says she will accept the things about a person that society deems freakish or inappropriate. She’ll accept the grotesque things that her proposed companion hates about himself. Gaga uses the leadoff single, “Bad Romance” as her vow to provide a sanctuary for whomever it may concern. Gaga sets her vows to a soundtrack constructed by Swedish producer/songwriter RedOne (the man behind Gaga’s past hit singles like the ride-off-into-the-sunset-on-horseback triumph of “Poker Face”). RedOne frames Gaga’s fervent vocals and catchy hooks with sinister synths for this techno pop opus. Whether having a “disease” (homosexuality, bisexuality or anything not accepted by society that society thinks will infect society) or the “ugly” of person because beauty is all in the eye of the beholder, she accepts them. On The Fame Monster, Gaga constantly seeks freedom from society’s trap full of restricting social norms and conformities. Hence, Gaga’s mantra “I’m a free bitch” that pops up on a few songs on Monster. By freeing herself from society’s trappings, Gaga is also free from the hate that restriction and oppression breed. The “lover’s revenge” that Gaga sings of on the chorus of “Bad Romance” is the emotional baggage that getting hurt creates. Most people say they don’t want to be in a relationship with someone, who has emotional baggage or stuck in the past, but Gaga wants it all. Since being truly free is all about being truthful, Gaga wants for her companion to rip themselves open and spill their blood and guts out to her. She wants no illusions. It’s the villains who want to destroy in order to rebuild a society. As Brandy Alexander says, “Our real discoveries come from chaos.” Lady Gaga wants a “criminal” who’s willing to destroy and rebuild in order make a better, more free world.
A pulsing, throbbing phallus that’s ready to attack. It’s a monstrosity. RedOne’s 1980s Italo-Disco beat buttresses some of Lady Gaga’s most striking hooks after “Bad Romance" on the song "Monster." The electronic sounds breathe and groan like digital creatures, with a strange urgency. The groans of the synths as the man and his “monster” equipment start to thrust. Aggressive in its danceability, “Monster” moves like an animal that’s dangerous, yet irresistible. As the beautiful Brandy Alexander says, “Do the things that scare you the most” and Gaga does this, by experiencing sex. It might be masochistic to seek a phallus that is too gigantic and could potentially hurt her physically, but Gaga is a free woman who wants her heart and brain eaten. Carnality is another way to free yourself by finding the truth, embracing the beast inside. Sexual penetration is like knowing someone’s darkest secrets. Vampires penetrate the human flesh to taste the substance that runs through the gamut of the human body, which is none other than blood, burgundy blood. Gaga wants to get to a point where she can write the truth in blood on the wall telling her story and everyone else can follow suit. She says “the truth is sexy” and is her “religion” on the song “Teeth.” The truth is the blood that keeps her heart beating. “Teeth” is at once tribal with its primal background voices and rousing energy, especially the rousing chant “help, need a man, now show me your fangs.” Since the truth is sexy, the truth is sex. It’s carnal as much as it is religious. There’s always a very thin line between carnality and religion.
The song “Speechless” involves the absence of talking, the absence of speech. “Speechless” is a tribute to a parent. Parents are like God to their children because the parents created them, as Shannon McFarland points out in Invisible Monsters. If one had their jaw missing as Shannon does then speaking verbally would be difficult. She doesn’t have lips to shape the words she wants to say. Lady Gaga wrote “Speechless” as a way to convince her father to undergo open-heart surgery because of his bad heart, who at one point refused to get the surgery. Faced with the threat of death, Gaga had no words to speak, so she used music to say the words she couldn’t speak. “Speechless” is the rare piano ballad (aside from Gaga’s frequent acoustic performances) that has Gaga in full Elton John mode circa 197 with a big, wistful chorus. Gaga’s vocal phrasing is pure Freddie Mercury of Queen. She pays tribute to her father by also paying homage to rock stars of the Arena Rock genre.
What will be Lady Gaga’s next act? That is the question. As much as she reveals some of her personal struggles and revealing the truth, she is still a mystery. With her elaborate costumes and headdresses, Gaga is a “sphinx, a mystery…indefinable” as Brandy Alexander described disfigured fashion model Shannon McFarland. Gaga has become the glamorous person she’s always wanted to be. She transformed from a brunette in frumpy clothes to a blond entity of pop music. She’s come back from the dark depths of addiction, listening to dreary New Wave of The Cure alone in her apartment while using heroine. Gaga survived all of that to become the person she’s always wanted to be, the creature she was always meant to be, as the Pet Shop Boys proclaimed on their exquisite 1990 single, “Being Boring.” The main message of both The Fame Monster and the novel Invisible Monsters is to “rip yourself open,” but make sure to “sew yourself shut.”
Half of Monster is a highly carnal affair. It’s an album that’s very in touch with the body. Generally, beauty is an expensive and plastic ambition, especially in America. Plastic surgeons mutilate people in the name of beauty, slicing and dicing their bones and skin and molding it into something disgusting and artificial. In Invisible Monsters, fashion model Shannon states how knowledge of plastic surgery altered her perspective. “It’s scary, but now when I see somebody blush, my reaction isn’t: oh, how cute. A blush only reminds me how blood is just under the surface of everything.” Going under the knife for cosmetic reasons is risky because death is possible. Even if a person survives their plastic surgery, for several days or months they have to stay wrapped up in bandages like mummies and who knows what person will emerge from the bandages. The first words Gaga speaks on “Dance in the Dark” are “Silicone, saline, poison, inject me,” which are plastic surgery in a nutshell. “Dark” is a gloomy zombie waltz that plays as a sort of electronic version of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” “Dark” is sad and tragic, but somehow hopeful. The more you hear that chorus “baby there’s a dance in the dark/’cuz when he’s looking she falls apart/baby there’s a dance, there’s a dance in the dark,” the more it sounds like a mantra. “Dark” solicits visions of mummies and Frankensteins lurching around. The legendary monster Frankenstein is particularly apropos for the song because plastic surgery patients are like Frankenstein because they’re made of assorted parts. “Dark” also reminds one of hard, plastic mannequins with frozen expressions and poses. You can just feel the chilly, wintry air emitted from the industrial sound of the instrumentation. Gaga resurrects a few famous dead stars. She controls these celebs with a force that is Gaga’s fight to escape the dark tunnel to get to the light. Gaga wants the glitz and glamour of supreme confidence instead of the gloom and doom of insecurity. The famous zombies that Gaga brings back to life include movie stars Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland, poet Sylvia Plath, musician Liberace, Princess Diana and 6-year-old child beauty pageant queen JonBenet Ramsey. All of the celebrities Gaga mentions on the spoken-word interlude are known for their camp value. Marilyn and Judy and JonBenet were examples of hyper-femininity characterized by pounds of makeup and big hair; this made Marilyn and Judy popular inspirations for drag queens around the world, which drag queens exaggerated. Sylvia Plath’s relevance is just overwhelming despair. The mention of JonBenet is unexpected, but it oddly fits with the macabre weirdness of “Dance in the Dark.” JonBenet’s life on earth was grotesque because she dressed like an adult Barbie doll full of hair extensions, wigs and makeup, which made JonBenet look grotesque. She was pretty, but never cute because she looked artificial. She was a living doll who was defined by garishness and ultimately horror. Princess Diana was pure classy glamour in the vein of Jackie O. In many ways, Lady Gaga is a pastiche of all the stars she namedrops. She dresses in the sparkly, garish costumes of Liberace, the blond haired glamour of Marilyn, JonBenet and Diana and the melancholy voice and brown eyes of Judy Garland. All of the celebs are icons (JonBenet was an icon of the media’s devastating power), and Gaga has become an icon in her own right. Let’s just hope that she never reaches a tragic end like the stars she mentions.
“The person you love and the person who loves you are never, ever the same person,” says fashion model Shannon McFarland in Invisible Monsters. The person who loves someone who doesn’t love them back is practicing unconditional love. Unconditional love is never asking the person you love to love you back, through the good and bad. Lady Gaga proclaims that she’ll be loyal through the bad. She desires a “bad romance.” Gaga says she will accept the things about a person that society deems freakish or inappropriate. She’ll accept the grotesque things that her proposed companion hates about himself. Gaga uses the leadoff single, “Bad Romance” as her vow to provide a sanctuary for whomever it may concern. Gaga sets her vows to a soundtrack constructed by Swedish producer/songwriter RedOne (the man behind Gaga’s past hit singles like the ride-off-into-the-sunset-on-horseback triumph of “Poker Face”). RedOne frames Gaga’s fervent vocals and catchy hooks with sinister synths for this techno pop opus. Whether having a “disease” (homosexuality, bisexuality or anything not accepted by society that society thinks will infect society) or the “ugly” of person because beauty is all in the eye of the beholder, she accepts them. On The Fame Monster, Gaga constantly seeks freedom from society’s trap full of restricting social norms and conformities. Hence, Gaga’s mantra “I’m a free bitch” that pops up on a few songs on Monster. By freeing herself from society’s trappings, Gaga is also free from the hate that restriction and oppression breed. The “lover’s revenge” that Gaga sings of on the chorus of “Bad Romance” is the emotional baggage that getting hurt creates. Most people say they don’t want to be in a relationship with someone, who has emotional baggage or stuck in the past, but Gaga wants it all. Since being truly free is all about being truthful, Gaga wants for her companion to rip themselves open and spill their blood and guts out to her. She wants no illusions. It’s the villains who want to destroy in order to rebuild a society. As Brandy Alexander says, “Our real discoveries come from chaos.” Lady Gaga wants a “criminal” who’s willing to destroy and rebuild in order make a better, more free world.
A pulsing, throbbing phallus that’s ready to attack. It’s a monstrosity. RedOne’s 1980s Italo-Disco beat buttresses some of Lady Gaga’s most striking hooks after “Bad Romance" on the song "Monster." The electronic sounds breathe and groan like digital creatures, with a strange urgency. The groans of the synths as the man and his “monster” equipment start to thrust. Aggressive in its danceability, “Monster” moves like an animal that’s dangerous, yet irresistible. As the beautiful Brandy Alexander says, “Do the things that scare you the most” and Gaga does this, by experiencing sex. It might be masochistic to seek a phallus that is too gigantic and could potentially hurt her physically, but Gaga is a free woman who wants her heart and brain eaten. Carnality is another way to free yourself by finding the truth, embracing the beast inside. Sexual penetration is like knowing someone’s darkest secrets. Vampires penetrate the human flesh to taste the substance that runs through the gamut of the human body, which is none other than blood, burgundy blood. Gaga wants to get to a point where she can write the truth in blood on the wall telling her story and everyone else can follow suit. She says “the truth is sexy” and is her “religion” on the song “Teeth.” The truth is the blood that keeps her heart beating. “Teeth” is at once tribal with its primal background voices and rousing energy, especially the rousing chant “help, need a man, now show me your fangs.” Since the truth is sexy, the truth is sex. It’s carnal as much as it is religious. There’s always a very thin line between carnality and religion.
The song “Speechless” involves the absence of talking, the absence of speech. “Speechless” is a tribute to a parent. Parents are like God to their children because the parents created them, as Shannon McFarland points out in Invisible Monsters. If one had their jaw missing as Shannon does then speaking verbally would be difficult. She doesn’t have lips to shape the words she wants to say. Lady Gaga wrote “Speechless” as a way to convince her father to undergo open-heart surgery because of his bad heart, who at one point refused to get the surgery. Faced with the threat of death, Gaga had no words to speak, so she used music to say the words she couldn’t speak. “Speechless” is the rare piano ballad (aside from Gaga’s frequent acoustic performances) that has Gaga in full Elton John mode circa 197 with a big, wistful chorus. Gaga’s vocal phrasing is pure Freddie Mercury of Queen. She pays tribute to her father by also paying homage to rock stars of the Arena Rock genre.
What will be Lady Gaga’s next act? That is the question. As much as she reveals some of her personal struggles and revealing the truth, she is still a mystery. With her elaborate costumes and headdresses, Gaga is a “sphinx, a mystery…indefinable” as Brandy Alexander described disfigured fashion model Shannon McFarland. Gaga has become the glamorous person she’s always wanted to be. She transformed from a brunette in frumpy clothes to a blond entity of pop music. She’s come back from the dark depths of addiction, listening to dreary New Wave of The Cure alone in her apartment while using heroine. Gaga survived all of that to become the person she’s always wanted to be, the creature she was always meant to be, as the Pet Shop Boys proclaimed on their exquisite 1990 single, “Being Boring.” The main message of both The Fame Monster and the novel Invisible Monsters is to “rip yourself open,” but make sure to “sew yourself shut.”
