“The Witch’s Dorothy”: On Gaga’s conflation of hero, villain, and witch

By Sarah Cook

In which I get one step closer to articulating Gaga’s intriguing use of failure, if we can equate failure with evil (i.e. witchery). If failure can be the same thing as a bad witch. If a bad witch can be good for certain things.

These notes are in response to Gaga’s performance of “Applause” (Applau-Oz) on Good Morning America, 9 September 2013.

1. That Gaga hovers somewhere between witch, villain and monster. That this hovering is the crucial source of her difference, i.e. her creativity, her power.

Audre Lorde: “Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic…Within the interdependence of mutual (nondominant) differences lies that security which enables us to descend into the chaos of knowledge and return with true visions of our future, along with the concomitant power to effect those changes which can bring that future into being. Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged.”*

1.2. Gaga embraces various differences – between her repeated incorporation of disability, multiple sexualities, the burqa, & her invitation to those who are “broke or evergreen…black, white, beige, [of] chola descent,” or Othered in any variety of ways – is this her endorsement of the creative power of difference? Does Gaga herself descend “into the chaos of knowledge,” the chaos of identity?

And can a rich white female ever invoke the power of Others in a way that is not problematic?

2. Gaga’s monstrosity has perhaps been established since The Fame Monster, sometimes occurring with a cyborg twist à la “Born This Way,” sometimes as manifesto (think of those haunting images that accompany the “Manifesto of Little Monsters” video done with Nick Knight). But with the inauguration of the ARTPOP era, I think we are seeing a new extension of Gaga’s monstrosity, one that harnesses magic and transformation – the bubbling cauldron and colored smoke in the “Applause” video – along with the multiplicity of stage presences that have occurred during each of her recent live performances. A magical, playful monstrosity. And now, with the incarnation of Oz, we see the previously clear distinction of the hero/villain binary made messy – or perhaps made articulate, specific – through the conflation of wizard/witch/Dorothy.

3. The Wizard isn’t the real villain of the story, we know that. His innocent folly and simple-minded desire for the mask of power – layered upon his own desire simply to go home – is ultimately dismissed: the true villain, the Wicked Witch, is rightfully killed and the Wizard actually provides Dorothy and her friends with what they need. With Gaga’s manifestation of all three of these figures on the stage – good, somewhat evil, more evil – she is therefore complicating our distinctions between the good figure and the bad one. How do we distinguish maniac from evil sorceress from small-town girl when they’re all showing up within and hovering so closely to the same body?

3.2. How does body become the medium in which we conflate our predetermined evaluations? How do bodies make things messy?

4. Gaga’s continual performances of gender identity: the constant conflation of man/woman/androgyny, of monster/pop star/fan (most recently, the blurred distinctions between performer and audience, as in her use of fans during her performance of “Swine” at the iTunes festival, and now the living poppies during her GMA performance, seen as costumes worn by audience members themselves). The conflation of Lady Gaga and Jo Calderone. We might also consider her infinite rebirths here, from “Born This Way” Gaga to the current multiplicity of wig changes and the monstrous multiple personas. This process of watching Gaga manifest over and over again, confusing us with her various representations (which one is real? which one is good?).

4.2. By imbuing these transformations with the Oz archetypes, so to say, Gaga has signaled clearer distinctions than before. It is hard to evaluate and define, for example, Gaga’s various personas in “Applause” – is Venus Gaga better than blonde Monroe-like Gaga in a birdcage? – but we can understand and separate Dorothy from Wicked Witch from the powerful Oz figure himself. By the end of her performance, however, Gaga further complicates her manifestations once again, and she clarifies her complication in her post-performance interview (see 8.1).

5. Toward the end of the performance on GMA, the camera suddenly cuts to the audience, suggesting two things. First, it reinforces the audience’s presence in the performance itself (for that moment, the performance is literally replaced by the cheering fans outside). Second, it suggests a mistake that had to be covered up. In this case, not so much covered up but distracted from: we simply see the fans instead of whatever else was happening onstage. The fans, then, became the remedy for some temporarily occurring failure.

5.2. Failure requires the presence of fans, requires community, requires applause. The presence of multiple others. In failing, we need multiplicity; or perhaps we fail by being multiple.

John Pluecker: “We” seems even more doubtful than “I.”*

The multiple spaces in which we can fail, become messy, become articulate, and honor the natural inconsistency of lived experiences.

Rachel Zucker: Why…did it take co-writing a book about giving birth at home and subverting the “I” voice of single authorship for me to see that I’d been speaking, always, in a borrowed language and pre-made forms?*

We might become the productive doubt of creativity, i.e. the creative source based upon multiplicity, based on difference. We are also a subversive source against the patriarchal and limited “I.”

5.3. Question: Which I/eye is Gaga?

5.4. Answer: all of them.

6. When Gaga-as-Dorothy and her Yellow Brick Road friends freeze during the second verse of “Applause,” they line up single file with Gaga in front, who holds a bright red apple. The arms of Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion are splayed around Gaga’s body, like a tree. Collectively, they become the physical, bodily tree of knowledge, where the forbidden fruit rests in Gaga’s hand.

Enter Wicked Witch, stage right: like a transgressive Eve, she wants that which she is denied. Perhaps she just wants to know things. It’s the apple that Eve/Wicked Witch desires, and in the fleeting moment where she grabs it out of Gaga’s hand, it is somewhat unclear who is taking/giving the apple from/to whom. The exchange of fruit, i.e. knowledge, becomes messy, and suddenly Gaga represents a Snow White figure, while the Wicked Witch becomes yet another evil witch, corrupting Gaga-as-Dorothy-as-Snow-White’s innocence. The conflation of stories & fairy tales, of good & bad, of knowledge and evil. Of one witch for another. (Why is it always so bad to be a witch?)

Anne Sexton: I have gone out, a possessed witch, / haunting the black air, braver at night; / dreaming evil, I have done my hitch / over the plain houses, light by light: / lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind. / A woman like that is not a woman, quite. / I have been her kind.*

7. During the performance, all it takes for Gaga to defeat the witch is that she pull the green wig off her head.

Then, like a victorious warrior, she swings it around triumphantly, even playfully setting it on top of her own then-wigless head. Herein lies the transformation I am most interested in: how easily she goes from being hero to villain. The playfulness required in being evil.

She doesn’t completely put the wig on, which we’ve seen repeatedly: we know she is capable of a thorough wig change while on a live stage, even if it means bringing her stylists out onto the stage itself. This choice, then, seems important – that the wig is just playfully held. That transformation can happen simply from play.

8. In the end, Dorothy is transformed. Her wig is bigger, and it houses one of her signature gigantic bows. Her shoulder-pads are huge, suggesting “Born This Way” implants beneath the blue plaid dress. Dorothy has been reborn, and now Stefani Germanotta’s natural short black hair (she begins the performance with a short black bob wig) is blond and huge.

Alice Notley: “A woman” “who is standing,” “waiting” “for the train”…“wears a business suit / big shoulders” “Her animal familiarity” “to us is” “powdered over,” / “pearlized” “She’s attractive,” “is suffused with” “her powers”*

8.1. Gaga explicitly analyzes this performance in the interview that follows: “Well you know, I think it really is an explanation in a way for my entire career so far…Dorothy was able to transform in order to survive, by transforming into Glenda, and then by transforming at the end back into the wizard who is just Dorothy herself – me.” So Oz the wizard is actually Dorothy, who is actually Gaga.

Notley again: “She belongs to” “the tyrant,” “though she thinks she’s” “her own” / “Now this is” “what happens:” “There is a figure” “in her body” / “another one, it” “steps out of it” “Leaves her body.”

8.2. Multiple Dorothy, monstrous Dorothy. Cyborg Dorothy?

8.3. By becoming Oz in the end, she becomes the source of the needed brains, heart, and courage, as well as of the ability to return home.

8.4. What does home mean for Gaga?

8.5. I don’t know that Gaga is pining for home the way Dorothy does (or perhaps Gaga is revealing a deeper motivation for Dorothy all along). Home, where Stefani Germanotta originated from and perhaps still waits, is not the ultimate goal.

9. So Gaga becomes the source of things – of multiple characters, of creative difference – of the power to transform the self. This is done through wigs, shoulder extensions, cheekbone implants, and alternate personas, and she harnesses them for her own transformation. She has firmly established her interest in “magic,” which she discussed during her last GMA visit. Since then, we’ve watched her magically transform on the VMAs and in London at the iTunes Festival. Gaga has expanded her “you were born this way” anthem into something like, be your own source of magic. Get what you need for yourself, and if it doesn’t exist, create it. Even if it means (re)creating yourself in the process.

In her conflation of villain and victim, Gaga hovers somewhere between monster and witch, between Notley and Sexton, between and among dresses, wigs, and creative chaos. As the source of magic, she could easily return to Kansas at any point but chooses not to, redefining the narrative of what it means to (re)turn, and complicating the traditional boundaries of body and home.

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Works Cited

Lorde, Audre. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” The Feminist     Philosophy Reader. Ed. Alison Bailey and Chris Cuomo. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008. 49-51. Print.

Notley, Alice. The Descent of Alette. New York: Penguin, 1992. Print.

Pluecker, John. “These Little, Little Men.” Evening Will Come. The Volta, Dec. 2012. Web.         <http://www.thevolta.org/ewc24-jpluecker-p1.html>.

Sexton, Anne. “Her Kind.” The Complete Poems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. Print.

Zucker, Rachel. “a homespun of questions pulled over a loom of gender and race with the voices of ancestral (mostly living) women speaking in the lacunae.” Evening Will Come. The Volta, Jan. 2013. Web. <http://www.thevolta.org/ewc25-rzucker-p1.html>.

Author Bio:

Sarah Cook is an MA candidate at the University of Maine, where she's focusing on poetics, creative writing and gender studies. Recent work can be found in gesture, Phoebe, and Horse Nihilist, and is forthcoming in Vector Press and SWINE. Her newest chapbook, a meadowed king, is out from dancing girl press.

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“Vast Emptiness”: a personal account of anxiety, Lady Gaga, and what happens when you don’t own cable.

By Sarah Cook

“In that opening shot Gaga seems to literally become the screen – and, as the camera pulls back, what was once the screen is revealed to be the performer on the stage. This blurring between the screen itself and the performer on the stage suggests a kind of transgression of the screen.” ~Meghan Vicks, from her and Eddie McCaffray’s initial discussionof Gaga’s VMA performance

I want to start by agreeing with Meghan’s observation – in fact, the longer the camera stayed right up against Gaga’s face, the more uncomfortable I felt. Was it just me? I became incredibly anxious for the camera to back away, and to see her body, the stage, the surroundings…

It didn’t help that MTV online was a bit tenuous throughout the VMA airtime, taking forever to post each performance (which was supposed to happen immediately after it occurred), and only offering a live-stream of alternative cameras: a couple backstage views, a view of the audience, a few different rooms, etc. For me, this became the most interesting part of the whole experience: I found myself anxiously searching various online sites for a chance to live-stream Gaga’s performance, and I clicked repeatedly through all the different live cameras that MTV offered, trying to see which one was the most promising at any given moment. It became a race to see Gaga live, or to at least figure out which source would allow me to see her performance the soonest.

But here’s where it got especially weird: once Gaga started performing and I had yet to find a live stream, I realized I could hear her faintly in the background from these random MTV cameras. Each camera had a slightly different volume of sound, but none of them were loud: so while the visual cues were completely absent, the echo of “Applause” in the background told me she was onstage at that moment. I clicked ever more rapidly to try and see what I was only slightly able to hear. I clicked over to something called the “Talent Lounge.” There, I saw a bar with the phrase “Good Vibrations” written along the front. There were three small TV screens hung up in various corners of the room – they looked about a half-inch big on my computer screen – setting a kind of sports bar vibe. I was about to click onto a different camera when I realized those three small TVs were all broadcasting Gaga’s performance: multiple Gagas, and yet they were all so tiny! And so, my first taste of Gaga as Gaga as Gaga was through computer through video through TV, all these layers of technology that gave me what I desired only by lining up just so.

I couldn’t make out any details except that it looked like she was dressed in all black. But when the performance ended, I clicked over to the offstage camera only to see that she was dressed as Venus, complete with the long flowing wig and clam shell bikini from her video. Then, amidst my still-frantic online searches, I came across an image advertising the performance, only this one showed her wearing the Telephone-era blonde wig. I began to think that she must have performed multiple times, or that perhaps there were many versions of Gaga running around onstage simultaneously. Maybe there were decoy Gagas trying to keep the audience in suspense as to which one was real.

When I finally watched the full performance, I was able to make sense of my “decoy Gaga” theory and realized that she had merely done something very similar to the music video itself: that is, she (re)created multiple personas for our rapid consumption. As Meghan and Eddie pointed out, a key difference is that Gaga wasn’t referencing historical, cultural images and tropes but was “dragging herself.” 

However, there is another crucial difference between this performance and the video, one that perhaps, as a part of the audience, we often forget: that is, that there was an audience.

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During her recent appearance on Good Morning America, Gaga spoke about the pain of not performing in front of thousands of people: how much she missed this component during her time of hip-injury and healing, how she cried during the video shoot for “Applause” when she thought about how much she missed her fans, how much she depends on them. If Gaga truly lives for her fans, then the presence of this live audience must allow her to bring her performances more fully to life: as she sings about living for the applause, she faces the real-life potential for such in the cheering hands before her.

This relationship between the dependent performer and her audience – like the jester whose purpose relies on there being people to witness her – inherently aids in Gaga’s creativity onstage, which included the creation of multiple personas. These various performances of herself quickly condensed and interrogated any kind of linear understanding of time: within a matter of moments, we had Born This Way Gaga, Fame-era Gaga, Telephone-era Gaga, and Venus/Aphrodite Gaga, as Meghan and Eddie clearly distinguished. In the music video, we see image after image, with individual screens separated by distinct cuts, shuffling through the different appearances and references; no matter how quickly the shuffling becomes, the images remain separate, the implication being that they aren’t simultaneously possible (we know Gaga had to dress up and then dress down and change multiple times into each outfit). Despite technology, there’s something clear about each version: there’s this Gaga, and this one, and that one over there, etc.

And yet somehow it’s not until she’s live on the stage where they became conflated for me, where she moved through them so quickly that I began to confuse one for the other, began to think that I’d pinned her down – there she is! – up until the moment where she’d transform once again. “Transformation as magic,” she said on GMA, that it’s her “obsession.” And so the real-life Gaga, the in-flesh performance, became multiple and recursive as opposed to strictly linear. She moved through different versions of herself and yet remained there, in her black leotard, (almost) the entire time. The conflation of outfit and flesh, of identity and performance – coupled with MTVs awkward online presentation – emphasized Gaga’s monstrous multiplicity for me: it’s not that a bunch of decoy Gagas were running around, tricking me into not seeing the real one, but that the real Gaga can only be seen through such constant, repetitive (aggressive?) (monstrous!) multiplicity.

Or, as Roland Betencourt beautifully put it, “the medium is perceptible only in witnessing the manifestations and transitions of forms through its space, but not as an ontological category, which can be reduced to flatness, whiteness, or two-dimensionality.”

Indeed, the camera started out by accommodating her presentation as a canvas, filling up the screen until I physically wanted to back away myself. That feeling of not being able to see the picture clearly, not seeing everything at once – I felt anxious, out of control. It is only by the end of the performance, once we’ve witnessed the magic of transformation over and over again, that we’ve seen the full picture of Gaga. But during that moment of extreme close-up, it almost felt possible for the camera to suddenly back away far enough to reveal all forms of Gaga at once.

I mean, isn’t this basically what happened?

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This jumbling and circling of time is exactly Kristeva’s distinction between female versus male time.¹ Gaga embodies an understanding of female time, which is “all-encompassing and infinite like imaginary space.” This is in contrast to male time, which is linear and monumental, with “the stumbling block of…death” always waiting at the end – something Gaga completely opposes in her notions of infinite birth. The nuances that Kristeva might help us to tease out from Gaga’s performance strike me as rich and productive: the recursivity of time; the necessity of multiple perspectives in order to achieve a fuller insight; and the fundamental links between multiplicity, gender, and performance.

Such obvious performances (we could actually see the wigs resting on Gaga’s head), and the quick addition and easy subtraction of props and clothes, highlight the necessary use of such accessories and “dress-up” in order for these presentations of Gaga to exist in the first place, underlining the performative aspects of gender and identity. To quote Eddie, the “only firm barrier left by postmodernism – that between performativity and essentialism,” is highlighted to the point of explosion in this performance.

But for me, it was all filtered through MTV’s online presence. There was the caption: “Lady Gaga coming offstage,” and the small awkward camera. I immediately picture Jo Calderone: “When she cums, it’s like she covers her face, cuz she doesn’t want me to see, like she can’t stand to have one honest moment when nobody’s watching.” The implication is that all her moments of honesty are viewed publicly as opposed to privately. Or even further: that all public moments, for Gaga, are honest.

As Gaga drags multiple versions of herself onstage, where and when and why are we locating her honest moments?

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Before I ended up on the “Talent Lounge” camera, when I could still just faintly hear that Gaga was currently onstage, I searched the faces of the various audience shots, hoping for something to be revealed. I watched people watching her, expecting to see – what was I expecting to see? People moving, dancing, wearing wild facial expressions. I expected to see that same mirror that I’ve come to see when I consider looking into Gaga’s face. The stillness of the bodies in the audience – the people backstage, the people in various rooms and in the “Talent Lounge” and all these strange locations that MTV was letting me look into – became even stiller in contrast to what I expected to see. Just various groups of bodies looking immobile, blank.

If the eye mask at the end of the “Applause” video is as significant as I assume it to be, then I’ve got to wonder if it goes both ways: if the audience’s immobility and stillness was reflecting back some kind of truth about Gaga’s performance itself.

“Her ability to perform doesn’t depend on a blankness, but on an emptiness, a loss of self. She isn’t a chameleon, but emptiness, an all-surface no-innards being – just like a Koons work…Gaga is a new being that has grown from the encounter of trauma with a vast emptiness” (Eddie McCaffray).

I go back to the mirror: the act of looking toward Gaga and seeing a multiplicity of truths reflected back. The act of looking even further – or perhaps of losing the distance that allows us to see more, just like the close-up camera in the beginning of her performance – so as to see blankness, emptiness, loss. We either look from a distance at a great multiplicity, or from a closeness where we see directly into the canvas of Gaga. This repetition of varying perspectives becomes a kind of folding inward, not just of time (in her short recreation of multiple “eras”) but now of space as well. It becomes incredibly difficult to think and write about Gaga’s various manifestations without encountering some form of anxiety about time and space, and the inevitability of emptiness.

The cosmic void of Gaga – could this be the epitome of failure?

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¹ Kristeva, Julia. “Women's Time.” The Kristeva Reader. Ed. Toril Moi. New York: Columbia      University Press, 1986. 187-213.

Author Bio:

Sarah Cook is an MA candidate at the University of Maine, where she’s focusing on poetics, creative writing and gender studies. Recent work can be found in gesture, Phoebe, and Horse Nihilist, and is forthcoming in Vector Press and SWINE. Her newest chapbook, a meadowed king, is out from dancing girl press.

Click here to follow Gaga Stigmata on Twitter.

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