Hello, Jo Calderone!

Ok, first of all, the pop cultural moment in question: http://www.mtv.com/videos/misc/684905/you-and-i-live.jhtml#id=1668980

 

So it appears Jo Calderone is the alter ego of Lady Gaga, who is the alter ego of Stefani Germanotta. 

My initial gut response: You go, girl.  Lady Gaga has become known for flashy concerts, flashy clothes, and flashy stunts like arriving at an awards show in an egg.  But those people who say everything she does is "just for publicity" fail to realize that everything EVERYONE famous does is just for publicity, but that each thing they do still has a purpose.  In Lady Gaga's case, she creates new themes and trends for and with her alter ego over and over depending on what she's experimenting with at the time.  

For awhile there it was "Dead, Injured and Trapped Women Killing Men", a trend which my feminist self very guiltily enjoyed.  In her Bad Romance video she was sort of semi-tortured in a bathrub, sold as a prostitute/object, and then lit a dude on fire in the bed with her sparkling bra (female-only body parts as weapons).  In her Paparazzi video she got pushed off a balcony and brokenly got up from a wheelchair with arm braces, and throughout the video intermittent images of dead women appeared.  Then she poisoned the dude who threw her off the balcony and reported herself, which landed her in jail.  And lastly, in her Telephone video (featuring a--let's face it--gutsy performance from Beyonce, who isn't usually as off-the-wall as Gaga), she starts off in the prison (not sold, not injured, but trapped), gets broken out by her girl B, and then poisons a whole diner full of innocent people (except for one dude who was not innocent, 'cause he wronged the Honey Bee).

This trend, I thought, represented the oppression of women's bodies by systems and societies full of patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism (three related but different things) through images of violence.  It also offered a symbolic solution to the problem: take down (poison or incinerate) patriarchy and misogyny as represented by The Dudes Who Get Killed in Gaga's videos.

Recently she's shifted over into a trend about the birth of a new generation of people/aliens, who accept everyone, no matter how "weird", because there really is no normal or weird, we're all just Born This Way.  Thus, emerging from the egg, her bizarre video in which she's got an eye on her chin and there's aliens floating around and giving birth, etc.

But that trend really didn't last long: it was nowhere to be seen in the Judas video (which overall was pretty blah conceptually compared to her others.)

I'm still trying to figure out what's going on in the "You and I" video, but one thing I know: Jo Calderone is in it.  And he also performed the song at the MTV Video Music Awards.  So could he be the mascot of her next trend?

What I liked about Jo at the MTV VMAs:

A drag performance/male alter ego seems like both a natural/fitting and creative next step for Gaga.  What interests me is that through Jo we get a take on Lady Gaga from Lady Gaga.  He talked in his opening speech about Gaga's artifice, that she's not real: this from the very same person who is Lady Gaga while dressing up as a man.  Whoa!  I like that kind of reality/theater/fiction/gender-bending confusion.

What disappointed me:

For the first time I've ever seen (not claiming I've seen all her performances) she occasionally let her act get in the way of her singing, and she sometimes sounded out-of-breath.  But more importantly, I feel like she didn't completely commit to Jo.  There he was, and overall I thought her physicality was really impressive.  It was clear to me that she had some gut instincts or good training about how to move like a man in general, but then she added some very theatrical mannerisms (smoothing the hair, hunched shoulders, big obvious showy gestures) that made the drag act very much an act, definitely a show.  She wasn't Lady Gaga, with the crazy costumes, but she was still giving a very external performance.  

 

I think it would have been even more compelling and fascinating if she had gone out there and actually tried to disappear into Jo and actually make us buy it.  What if Jo had been chill, just walking around and talking about Lady Gaga?  What if he had smoothed his hair, but not with such a big "look-at-me" gesture?  What if he had just...been there?  How cool would that have been, if we saw an alter ego who was not only male rather than female, but "real"/truthful rather than highly stylized/theatrical?  I think that would have been a really fantastic move on Lady Gaga's part, because of course the kick would be that the most "real" thing she does she does as a man.  Giving us a great gender-is-an-ocean-we-can-all-swim-around-in moment, which I think really lies in keeping with her overall philosophies.

But whatever.  She didn't ask me.  Jo, if you're reading this, I can coach you so you can chill out on stage and do some awesome subtle stuff.  Have your people call my people.