Switaj acknowledges that ‘the precise demarcations between persona and authenticity are, to say the least, slippery’ (2012, p. 36) but it would appear that singer-songwriter, Stefani Germanotta, is utterly submersed by the presence of her ubiquitous alter ego, Lady Gaga. In contrast to the situation regarding
Beyonce/Sasha Fierce, the use of character is visible in every element of Gaga’s musicianship and performance schema. Matthew R. Turner writes that, for Gaga,
44 Other precarious uses of an alter ego include Mariah Carey and Mimi, Janet Jackson and Damita
Jo, and Britney Spears and Mona Lisa. Spears cited Mona Lisa as the Director and star of the video for her hit single Do Somethin’ (2004). In his article Ego Trap, Sam Delaney quotes Britney Spears as explaining that ‘whenever I feel like being mean or……bustin’ people around to get stuff right……. It’s kinda easier to be called ‘Mona Lisa’ instead of Britney’ (2009). Delaney mocks this by suggesting that ‘that’s not really an alter ego at all is it, Britney? That’s just trying to justify your own selfish behaviour by blaming it on an imaginary friend’ (2009).
‘performance is the reality. It is a self-conscious performance and construction of reality’ (2012, p. 201). An interesting trajectory to consider is that Lady Gaga defines herself not as a musician, but as a ‘Pop Performance Artist’ and is openly fascinated with the work of performance artists, particularly Yoko Ono and Marina Abramović. The difference between theatre and performance art is perilously balanced but Abramović herself describes it by stating that
performance is the moment when the performer, with his own idea, step[s] his own mental and physical construction in the front of an audience, in a
particular time. This is not theatre. Theatre, you repeat. Theatre, you play somebody else. Theatre is a black box. Performance [art] is real. In theatre, you can cut with a knife, and there is blood; the knife is not real and the blood is not real. In performance, the blood and the knife, and the body of the performer is real (2010).
Abramović’s definition centres on the subject of ephemerality in performance; a topic area which is complex and much discussed. Considering performance as an
ephemeral event is one of the foundations to the field of Performance Studies (Schneider, 2012), and Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett writes that ‘the ephemeral encompasses all forms of behaviour – everyday activities, storytelling, ritual, dance, speech, performance of all kinds’ (1998, p. 30). The ‘liveness’ of performance – the sense that it happens in the here and now – ‘gives it its distinctive energy, interest and social significance’ (Allain and Harvie, 2014, p. 203) and it is through live performance that performers and audiences can ‘encounter and potentially interact with one another in real time, space and social process’ (Allain and Harvie, 2014, p. 203). Peggy Phelan (1993) wrote that live performance is distinguished by this very fact – that it is live – and that it is the ephemeral qualities of live performance which
should be enhanced, not subsumed. Matthew Reason explains that Phelan’s understanding of performance is ‘representation without reproduction’ and that
performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented, or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representations: once it does so, it becomes something other than performance. To the degree that performance attempted to enter the economy of reproduction it betrays and lessens the promise of its own ontology. (Phelan, 1993, p. 146, quoted in Reason, 2004, emphasis in original)
Abramović expands her above quotation in discussing ephemerality by stating that ‘performance is, kind of, a unique type of art because it is very temporary, and comes and goes’ (2010). Richard J. Grey II explains that, in performance studies, ‘social reality is a representation of human actions’ (2012, p. 9) and that, for humans, all expressive forms are performances, and it is these performances which help to construct reality.45 Both Richard Schechner (1985, 1995) and Victor Turner (2001) discuss the link between anthropology and theatre, and independently recognised that the notion of fatality features in both discipline areas. Grey explains that ‘if every form of human expression is a performance, then every performance is fatal since its expression also exhibits a temporal finiteness’ (2012, pp. 9 – 10).
In contrast, through his book, Liveness: Live Performance in a Mediatized Culture, Auslander describes what he terms as ‘classic’ liveness as the ‘physical co-presence of performers and audience; temporal simultaneity of production and reception; experience in the moment’ (2008. p. 61). However, he explains that, through
mediatisation, the concept of liveness has been significantly developed, and that the
45 The term ‘performance’ is used here in a broader context than that given solely through the
inclusion of cultural forms such as radio, television, and the internet means that ‘live and the recorded are deeply interlinked and that it is inaccurate to set them up as binary opposites’ (Allain and Harvie, 2014, p. 203). As an example, Lady Gaga makes great use of a variety of platforms ‘including live performance, sound
recordings, television appearances, music videos, fashion shows, museum events, websites, and social media’ (Auslander, 2014, p. 514), meaning that her
‘performances’ are documented and archived, eliminating the potential mystic surrounding the ephemerality of performance. Within popular music performance, there are also instances of the added dichotomy of a real-time performance which is lip-synched to recorded tracks. Auslander (2008) discusses both the now infamous case of Milli Vanilli, who were famously stripped of their 1989 Grammy Award when it was ascertained that they were lip-synching to recordings made by entirely
different singers, and Ashlee Simpson, whose 2004 appearance on Saturday Night Live came to an abrupt end when she was about to perform the title track of her debut album, Autobiography (2004), and pre-recorded vocals of the song she had already delivered, Pieces of Me (2004), were heard through the PA system.
Although these examples are widely discussed, the situation regarding ‘live-like’ or ‘non-live’ (Reason, 2004) performances is wider-reaching, and not all carry such negative connotations. Jaap Kooijman details Michael Jackson’s performance of Billie Jean at Motown’s 25th birthday celebrations, and explains that ‘the performance has been widely considered as a groundbreaking moment in the history of pop
music’ (2006, p. 119) because ‘it was a pivotal transition in that it marked the shift of emphasis from musical performance to visual presentation’ (2006, p. 119). It was the performance in which Jackson debuted his interpretation of the moonwalk but, in
reality, the moonwalk was just one of a series of visual, characterful, elements which were interwoven throughout the entire performance;
the single white sequined glove grasping his crotch, the staccato movement of his pelvis and his angry gaze into the camera have all become classic
elements of the Michael Jackson star persona, reappearing in his other ‘live’ performances and the music videos. (Kooijman, 2006, p. 122)
The reason for the emphasised nature of the word ‘live’ is because, in spite of the placement of the performance in the popular music history books, Jackson’s vocals were pre-recorded and the vocal element of the rendition was lip-synched. The performance persona constructed by, and afforded to, Jackson following his
appearance at Motown 25 was based on his visual image, his body and the gestures and movements he made with it, not on the presentation of the vocal delivery.
Klaus Biesenbach, curator at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, offers his opinion that
Lady Gaga is performing art, and I think Marina Abramović is performance art. There’s a difference. If there’s a narrative, it’s performing art; if it’s an object, it’s performance art. It’s – to me – a clear distinction. (Biesenbach, quoted in D’Addario, 2011)
In his chapter ‘Barbie in a Meat Dress: Performance and Mediatization in the 21st Century’, Auslander (2014) discusses that Gaga deals with the dichotomy of whether she is a performance artist or a pop musician (although she coined the term ‘pop performance artist’ to attempt to counteract this) by inhabiting different personae for different contexts. Auslander (2014) details the launch party for her perfume The Fame, held at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, at which she executed a
performance piece (‘Sleeping with Gaga’) ‘for which she was seen to be sleeping inside a giant replica of the perfume’s signature bottle next to a large digital clock’ (Auslander, 2014, p. 518). In an Abramović-inspired move, the viewing public could approach the sleeping Gaga and touch her hand46, before she was then given a tattoo, drawn on the back of her neck. The setting of the Guggenheim suggests the presence of a performance artist, not a pop musician, and it would appear that there was no direct correlation between this launch event and the music from the album of the same name. Offering an apparent disconnect between the visual and the
narrative of the performance is also resonant in Lady Gaga’s musical presentations; both through live performance, and the music video format. The narrative behind songs such as Poker Face (2008) and LoveGame (2009) are often disguised behind effervescent dance beats and synth tracks – presumably so as not to isolate a
younger demographic – and the music video for Yoü and I (2011) shows Gaga depicting five different characters throughout; a Nymph, a Bride, an Erotic Dancer, a Mermaid (Yügi) and a Man (Jo Calderone). Seemingly at odds with the rather
traditional love-song-lyric,47 the characters for this video do not appear, initially, to be connected – either to each other or to the narrative of the song. However, it may be that the five characters are not different individuals but, instead, are different
representations of facets of Gaga’s own personality. In doing this, perhaps Gaga is questioning ‘whether we should yield to the identities placed upon us or if we should
46 Abramović’s 1974 installation, entitled Rhythm 0, comprised of Abramović stood next to a table,
upon which sat 72 items encompassing a plethora of artifacts including pens, scissors and a loaded gun with the written instructions giving permission for the participants of the installation to use any of the objects on her, as they desired to. Gaga’s installation for The Fame was much less extreme, allowing the viewing public to approach and physically touch Gaga was a homage to her admiration of Abramović’s work. The physical silence surrounding Gaga is also evocative of Abramović’s 2010 instillation at MoMA, The Artist is Present.
47 You and I is widely reported to be a seemingly conventional lyrical narrative of a love song and was
strive to explore the multiple identities found within each of us’ (Grey II, 2012, p. 129). This also includes a fluidity with gender and ‘by/through the persona of Jo Calderone and the multiple other personas she adopts, Lady Gaga pushes cross- dressing into the realm of drag and gender play’ (Humann, 2012, p. 75).
Auslander (2014) acknowledges that Lady Gaga confuses his tripartite schema for musical personae in performance, and asks
how can one sustain an analytical distinction between persona and character when an artist’s persona is manifest only as a seemingly infinite proliferation of characters?
He suggests that what Lady Gaga does, so successfully, is ‘asks her fans to identify not with an identity but with the ability to produce ever-changing identities in
response to different settings and circumstances’ (Auslander, 2014, pp. 520–521).48 In essence, that her ability to change persona is part of her performance persona. In referring back to the notion of identity as a performative construct discussed at the start of this chapter, what is being performed in this example is Lady Gaga, an alter ego controlled by the performer (Stefani Germanotta) who uses the guise of the alter ego to create further personae and characterisation; ‘Lady Gaga is performance’ (Grey II, 2012, p. 8). Gaga’s ability to use her persona as a central, and fluid,
48 Lady Gaga has also cleverly incorporated the use of character into the communicative relationship
she has with her fans. The thematic use of the monster character state is prevalent in many of her earlier artistic situations; each of her tracks on her second album, The Fame Monster, is attributed to the fear of a particular ‘monster’ character. For example, a Fear of Alcohol Monster (So Happy I Could
Die), a Fear of Death Monster (Speechless) and a Fear of Sex Monster (Alejandro). In emphasising
the role between the performer and the spectator, she enhances the concept of character by affectionately coining the phrase Little Monsters to represent her fan base. This comes with a verbal
Monster Manifesto designed to define the role and relationship between Gaga and her fans. By
defining herself as their Mother Monster, the role of character is expanded to make her fans part of the storytelling process, thus casting them into a role.
performative construct is not an original concept49, and is a notion that was also explored by David Bowie who, ‘rather than developing a consistent persona … sang in many voices and from many subject positions without identifying clearly with any of them’ (Auslander, 2006b, p. 106). However, where Bowie and Gaga differ is that Bowie’s approach to his characters was that the portrayal was a temporary existence of a different persona which could, ultimately, then be passed on to another
performer. In this respect, Bowie’s approach to characterisation was analogous with that of an actor, whereas, as Switaz writes that
there is no clear distinction between Lady Gaga’s on- and off-stage personae- selves. She is never seen performing Stefani Germanotta or an off-stage version of Lady Gaga (2012, p. 35)
This is not least because, despite evidence to the contrary, there is a reoccurring insistence from Germanotta that Lady Gaga is not a character, but a reality; that Germanotta, herself, is Gaga. In an interview with Andrew Murfett, Lady Gaga explains that
The biggest misconception about me is I’m a character or persona – that when the lights and cameras turn off, I turn into a pumpkin. It’s simply not true. I make music and art and design all day long. Yes I wash my face and go to sleep but when I wake up, I am always Lady Gaga (2009).
To contrast, Auslander explains that in 1971, David Bowie announced his forthcoming plans by saying:
49 Rebecca M. Lush poses what she calls ‘the great Gaga debate: is she original or is she just an
expert assembler of past cultural references?’ (2012, p. 173). The controversial meat dress worn by Gaga to the 2010 MTV VMAs (an extension of the meat bikini which Gaga wore in a photo shoot with Terry Richardson for Vogue Japan), was a concept originally used by artist Jana Sterback in 1987. It may also be no coincidence that Jo Calderone bears a striking physical resemblance to Earl, the male alter ego of Annie Lennox, whom she performed as at the 1984 Grammy Awards ceremony.
I’m going to play a character called Ziggy Stardust. We’re going to do it as a stage show. We may even do it in the West End. When I’m tired of playing Ziggy I can step out and someone else can take over for me. (Bowie, quoted in Harvey, 2007, quoted in Auslander, 2006b, p. 111)
It is difficult to imagine another performer taking over the Lady Gaga mantle, and when a performer is so closely aligned with a particular persona (such as Lady Gaga or Nicki Minaj) ‘it becomes easier to imagine that persona, however artificial, as an authentic expression of the performer’s self’ (Auslander, 2006b, p. 112).