Gaga Turns Her Personal Fears into a B-movie Horror Show

Lady Gaga decided the best way to interpret her fears of life that concern love, sex, addiction, beauty and the importance of the truth is by reimagining her fears as archetypical monsters on her second album The Fame Monster (Interscope). The result is a collection of catchy hook-filled pop songs that are concurrently macabre and funny, and play like a 1950s B-movie replete with theatrics and gimmicks.

In horror master Stephen King’s nonfiction book, Danse Macabre he splits the archetypical monsters of the horror genre into three categories, which originate from three novels: the vampire (from Dracula), the werewolf (from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) and The Thing without a Name (from Frankenstein). Two additional archetypes include the Ghost (from The Turn of the Screw) and the zombie. King also classifies the horror genre into three levels: terror, horror and revulsion. He says “terror” is the strongest element of the three. The terror gives rise to the suspense a person feels before a monster is revealed. “Horror” the moment at which a person sees the monster and “revulsion” is an over-the-top, gross-out visual of a monster.

The Thing or the unknowable Other is the archetype of choice on The Fame Monster’s opening song, “Bad Romance.” Gaga herself said that “Bad Romance” is about being in love with your best friend. She portrays her “best friend” as an ultra-masculine leather daddy who cruises S&M Leather bars. Lyrics like “I want your leather-studded kiss in the sand…’cuz you’re a criminal as long as your mine” suggest the S&M image. This best friend sounds like he could easily be one of the extras from the 1980 Al Pacino thriller Cruising. The men who went to Leather bars in the late 1970s into the 1980s were homosexual and the homosexual is a prime example of The Other, the mysterious outsider of society. Gaga defines herself as an outsider who’s different in her approach on most things, and was an outsider in high school. The sound scape of “Bad Romance” fits the aesthetic of the song that is driven by the main theme of the Other, that is a darkly hopeful tribute to 1980s dark wave music with sprinkles of 1990s house/trance music. The leather-studded Other of the song is a person that is seemingly sinister, but Gaga says that this Other is a best friend that she can have sick, dark fun with. In the process of paying homage to the horror/suspense films of director Alfred Hitchcock Gaga exhibits a clever play on words twisting Hitchcock’s classic films into sex jokes (“I want your Psycho, your Vertigo shtick/while you in my Rear Window, baby you’re sick”). When she sings these plays on words it’s almost as if she’s sharing inside jokes with her best friend. The main message to take out of “Bad Romance” is that regardless of quirks, sexual orientation, gender, race or religion, love is something that is beyond the physical body and the physical world.
The fear that lies within “Bad Romance” is Gaga’s fear that someone else won’t accept her as freely as she accepts them.

While “Bad Romance” was about Gaga’s yearning for a love separate from sex and all things carnal the song “Monster” is all about sex. The archetype at the center of “Monster” is the Werewolf, which pertains to the Beast within all human beings that is just waiting to be unleashed. Gaga gives the song a narrative format, in which she casts herself as a club girl partying with friends, and her night is interrupted when a sexy guy catches her eye. Like most movies that feature werewolves, like 1981’s The Howling, Gaga notes in the lyrics that she vaguely remembers the sexual encounter she’s had with the sexy guy while he was in werewolf form, in monster form (“We might’ve fucked, not really sure, don’t quite recall/but something tells me that I’ve seen him, yeah”). By having a vague memory of her sexual encounter with the guy she makes clear that she sees something familiar in the man, despite having her most memorable experience with him as a hairy, massive werewolf. She looks into the “evil eyes” of the man and sees the familiar, alluding to the classic phrase “the eyes are the windows to the soul”; she can see the beast within in the man. The fear at hand on “Monster” is Gaga’s fear that her intense, sexual attraction to a bad boy with a “monster” in his pants will become nothing more than just sex. Gaga wrote “Bad Romance” as a love letter to her best friend who she loves, but with whom she doesn’t necessarily have a sexual relationship. On “Bad Romance” she actually sings that she doesn’t “wanna be friends,” that she wants to take the strong friendship to another level. On “Monster,” Gaga wants love and friendship, so she can get the chance to get to know the bad boy; so that he’s more than a sex object. Following the narrative of the song, Gaga’s fear becomes reality when the bad boy not only beds her, but sinks his teeth into her flesh, mixing their blood together. At this point in the song the bad boy transforms from bad boy into vampire who is cannibalistic (“He tore my clothes right off/he ate my heart and then he ate my brain”). It’s in the hypnotic chorus that Gaga is a zombie stomping around repeating monotonously “he ate my heart.” Gaga’s producer RedOne plays the bad boy “monster” by providing the male part during the chorus “I love that girl…wanna talk to her, she’s hot as hell.” His voice has a deep, menacing and mysterious tone to it. Before the zombie-like parts of the chorus, Gaga sings with her signature gusto “that boy is a monster” repeatedly atop RedOne’s midtempo production that sounds as if it was inspired by the warm, lush euphoria of early ‘80s Italo-Disco music. Her inner thoughts, presumably coming from her emotionally-driven heart, respond to the carnal statement “that boy is a monster” with the question “could I love him?” It’s this simple question that sums up the meaning of “Monster”: Is it just really good, kinky sex or could Gaga actually love this man?

In tone and in lyrical content “Dance in the Dark” is the most melancholic song on The Fame Monster, even more so than the album’s song dedicated to death, “Speechless.” Set to a 1980s Goth-dark wave musical score by pop producer Fernando Garibay, “Dance in the Dark” is the story of a girl who likes to have sex with her boyfriend with the lights off. Gaga alludes to the environment of a loud, nightclub where the lights are scarce and darkness dominates by singing lyrics like “some girls won’t dance to the beat of a track” and how the heroine of the song “kills the dance,” but it serves mostly as a metaphor of performing and moving one’s body like a “dance.” However, Gaga pointed out in a December 2009 interview that “Dark” is not just about being insecure when it comes to sex, but being insecure when it comes to everything. Gaga says that lyrics like “run, run, her kiss is a vampire grin/the moonlight’s away while she’s howlin’ at him” are meant to show how the heroine of the song is helpless without the moonlight (meaning the dark, since the moon is only at its brightest when it’s dark outside). The moonlight liberates her, but daylight and even bright artificial light paralyzes her and figuratively destroys her. Gaga says that “Dance in the Dark” speaks to “how women and some men feel innately insecure about themselves all the time. It’s not sometimes, it’s not in adolescence, it’s always.” It’s that inner voice that tells a person that they’re not worthy of attention and they end up feeling embarrassed and feel like disappearing into themselves. It concerns a fear of being seen, and ultimately judged. During a spoken-word rap-like break similar to Madonna’s spoken-word verse on 1990’s “Vogue,” Gaga pays tribute to dead icons that maybe inspired her self-image and reminded her that everyone has dark moments, even the rich, beautiful and famous. Tortured celebrities Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland are a few that are mentioned, and it’s no coincidence that Gaga mentions Marilyn and Judy who were gay icons like herself. The song says that there’s safety in the dark, and people can be anything they want in the dark, which makes me think of how alcohol can be used as a way to “dance in the dark.” Alcohol gives insecure people confidence and essentially hides their true, sober selves. The drunkenness acts as a mask. The first time I heard “Dance in the Dark,” I thought the same thing as Gaga’s explanation about perpetual insecurity before she even explained it, but I’m an insecure person and that’s how I naturally read into the song. Gaga’s explanation is really where the main purpose of “Dance in the Dark” lies: Gaga is insecure just like so many of her fans and the song is further reminder that Gaga understands her fans.

With the exception of the vampire/S&M allegory “Teeth,” the remaining songs on The Fame Monster aren’t overtly monster-like. Three out of four of them are romantic and lithe ballads. The smoldering “Alejandro” would be a slow ballad, but it’s bolstered by RedOne’s fusion of Ace of Base-like 90’s Euro-pop and the main violin melody from Italian composer Vittorio Monti’s 1904 concert piece “Csardas.” Of course the mention of “Fernando” during the lamenting chorus is clearly a nod to ABBA’s 1976 hit “Fernando.” “Alejandro” has more in common with “Fernando” than the name Fernando. Both songs share a theme about finding true love, and holding on to the hope of finding love despite failed experiences of the past. Gaga sings the names of three men, Alejandro, Fernando and Roberto: the men are examples of numerous relationships that only disappoint her. She puts the focus on Alejandro by repeating his name the most because he’s presumably her current relationship and the relationship that she desperately wants to work. She’s putting her faith in Alejandro. This interpretation of “Alejandro” as Gaga’s prospective savior exists because the lyrics during the second verse, “And all those flames that burned before him/now he’s gonna firefight, gotta cool the bad.” Alejandro is the firefighter who will save Gaga from the burning fire of failed love of the past. The monster that glides around ballet-like around “Alejandro” is the ghost of Gaga’s past relationships, as is the voice in Gaga’s head telling her that her current relationship with Alejandro will fail. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Often the worse monsters wreak havoc in a person’s psyche.

“So Happy I Could Die” follows the same slow, dreaminess of “Alejandro,” but it’s less romantic and more like an alcohol-induced mirage. “So Happy” speaks to the artificialness of drunken nights when everyone who’s been drinking seems to be “best friends” and it seems like nothing bad could happen, but sadly it’s all an illusion. I’ve experienced this and it’s a state of mind that I wish could be reality, but it just isn’t and I end up feeling intense disappointment the morning after, because it’s as much a dream, that exists in my head as a dream that I have when I go to sleep at night. The monster of “So Happy” is alcohol, and the fantasy it promises. On the dramatic torch song “Speechless” in the vein of ‘70s classic rock (think Elton John and Queen) Gaga serenades her father, as a plea for him to save his life. Gaga’s father needed an important heart surgery in order to live, and her father at one point refused to undergo surgery leaving Gaga in a world of grief, which led to her even reflecting on her own life. She’s left to face the monster that is death. She uses the word speechless as a synonym for death and lifeless because when a person is dead they can’t say anything. The theme at the heart of “Speechless” is the rugged brokenness of the human spirit and body. Gaga spends most of the song in second person describing her once-sick father through different stages of his life: as a teen who grew up in the aftermath of the rebel without a cause James Dean in the ‘60s and ’70s (“With your James Dean glossy eyes/in your tight jeans with your long hair/and your cigarette-stained lies”) and his life as a middle-aged man who consumes alcohol to deal with the disappointments of life (“I can’t believe how you slurred at me with your Johnnie Walker eyes/He’s gonna get you/and after he’s through…”)

Gaga plays with words again by simultaneously incorporating her father’s heart surgery and her friends’ disappointments in life. When she sings “Raise a glass to mend/all the broken hearts of all my wrecked up friends” she’s saying that her friends have broken hearts figuratively, and her father has a broken heart literally and figuratively. Gaga ends the song by saying “Some men may follow me/but you choose death and company” and this lyric is “Speechless” in a nutshell: it takes a lot to choose life over death when living in a world of despair, but Gaga wants to live and wants her father to live and she got her wish.

The remaining songs on The Fame Monster are two songs, one technologically advanced and the other organic and a bit supernatural. The song “Telephone” is something to prepare for because it’s so fast that it just might hop away frantically like a jack rabbit. “Telephone” is by no means romantic or lithe like “Alejandro” and “So Happy I Could Die,” but instead it’s sweaty, and erratic, and the fastest song on Monster. Imagine you’re at a club and you just bought your first drink of the night and your cell phone rings constantly. It’s either the same person or different people. It might be a friend who wants to hang out or your mother or grandmother calling to check in, when all you want to do is get tipsy and dance with someone sexy. It’s Rodney Jerkins’ kinetic dance track that signifies the hyper urgency of Gaga’s need for disconnection. In true Gaga fashion she makes her need for mental disconnection physical. She sings that “I left my head and my heart on the dance floor,” suggesting the macabre work of writer Edgar Allen Poe more than any pop diva I can think of. The subject matter and staccato pace lend themselves well to the vocal style of Gaga’s diva-in-crime Beyonce. The Houston native Beyonce is one of the pop singers who is responsible for popularizing staccato singing (read: rapid-fire singing) in R&B and pop music. The annoying threat of technology seems like a redux of Beyonce’s 1999 hit “Bug-A-Boo” with her old group Destiny’s Child. The monster that caused Gaga to dance around like a headless horseman is technology, but the monster is also the voice inside Gaga’s brain telling her that she doesn’t deserve to have fun, leaving her feeling guilty. In the end, when her cell phone rings Gaga is pressing the “f--- you” button on it that stops the ringing and sends the incoming call into voicemail. “Can call all you want, but there’s no one home, and you’re not gonna reach my telephone.”

The Fame Monster opened on an S&M note (“Bad Romance”) and closes on an S&M note (“Teeth”). “Teeth” is a Southern Gothic song replete with southern gospel vocal riffs and the type of brass section that plays at a traditional New Orleans funeral ceremony. The song plays like one of Anne Rice’s epic vampire novels set in New Orleans; like Rice’s novels, “Teeth” is carnal and humid. As on “Monster,” on “Teeth” Gaga uses cannibalism as a metaphor for the often bloody, ugly truth (“Take a bite of my bad girl meat”). Just think of “Teeth” as the club girl from “Monster” transformed and out of zombie form, and instead more like a receptive human being, but changed like Sigourney Weaver’s character in 1984’s Ghostbusters after she’s overtaken by the monster. Even though Gaga wants to love with her “hands tied,” she’s the aggressor who’s just playing the submissive sexual partner; it’s passive-aggression, but she’s really the dominatrix.

Gaga’s perpetual mission statement is about obtaining the truth, and inspiring people to be their true selves no matter how much society thinks they’re sick freaks. This all furthers Gaga’s fascination with transformation from one state to the next, which explains why she demands from her lover “Tell me something that’ll change me.” Untruth is the monster displayed on “Teeth.” Whether it’s telling lies to others or to yourself, you’re a monster because you’re not free and you might as well be a creature tied on a leash in a cage.

The Fame Monster runs the gamut of the monster archetypes Stephen King lays out in his book Danse Macabre, and Gaga’s use of them is inventive to say the least. It’s further evidence that she doesn’t care much what other people think, and she’s not afraid to look grotesque. Despite all the monsters present on Monster, the album is never terrifying, but instead it’s theatrical, which is a core part of who Lady Gaga is. In high school, she was a drama queen (literally) who acted, danced and sang with all the flamboyance of a female Freddie Mercury. Gaga succeeds in freeing herself a bit more and inspiring her fans, or at least she inspired me, but I, like many would give a lot to be as free as Gaga seems to be.