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Tuesday, Jun 8, 2010 11:09 PM UTC

Queer imagery in Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro”

The gay icon's new video is like Givenchy at the Folsom Street Fair

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Topics: Lady Gaga, Broadsheet, LGBT, Love and Sex,

Queer imagery in Lady Gaga's Lady Gaga's "Alejandro"

Lady Gaga, like her predecessor Madonna (to whom she pays homage — or is that rips off? — in her latest video), also owes a great deal to the gays. The latest Gaga epic, “Alejandro,” opens on the image of a strapping young officer asleep at his desk wearing fishnet stockings and black pumps, with an AK-47 at arm’s length. The next scene cuts to a fleet of shirtless men in black spanx (though they clearly have no need for them), sporting black bowl cuts, marching in black boots — perhaps realizing conservatives’ nightmare when DADT is repealed? But men in heels and carrying assault rifles aren’t a contradictory image in the context of queer sexuality, fetish and kink. So exactly how queer is Lady Gaga’s new music video? Oh, let us count the ways …

1. Gender bending. Gay men wearing heels is nothing new, of course. But this isn’t just about boys in girls’ clothes; it’s also about exploring feminine movement. One gentleman slinks around on the bed like calendar pinup. The dancers move behind Gaga in a synchronized mass, wave their arms out like tentacles and then draw them back in to do an update of the bend and snap. And there is a great deal of attitude in those snaps (most delightfully, the one to Lady Gaga’s left).

On the bed, Lady Gaga takes the dominant role and aggressively thrusts against her bowl-cut twin doggy-style. (And what straight woman has imagined doing something similar to a beautiful gay man?) On another level, it’s a more subtle play on the old Internet rumor about Lady Gaga and her penis. However you read it, this is not your typical girl-on-boy.

2. (P)leather daddies. It’s hard not to read the Freudian subtext in the line, “But a boyfriend’s like a dad, just like a dad,” as Gaga wrestles with her lover in bed. Does Lady Gaga just want a gay leather daddy?

The video’s extreme leather fetish — from Lady Gaga’s oversize motorcycle jacket and pleather nun’s habit to the dancers’ thick black boots – is like Givenchy at the Folsom Street Fair. Of course, you rarely have leather without …

3. S/M. We see the classic signifiers: Choke-holds and ropes and whips. One dancer shoves his partner’s hips to the ground, grunting like a Marine. A man in spiked headgear with strings around him bookends the video: He really just needs a leather face mask that zips across the mouth. Indeed, the question of power, authority and violence is a pall that hangs over the video, much darker than her previous offerings.

4. Sex toys. Does anyone else think that rosaries look a lot like anal beads?

In May, Lady Gaga told the Times Online, “[The video is] a celebration and an admiration of gay love — it confesses my envy of the courage and bravery they require to be together.” And just in time for Gay Pride.

More Alex Jung.

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