2nd Person Review: Lady Gaga

written for Reviews taught by Kevin Killian, fall 2009

You come home after a long night and turn on the television. You’re looking for something lightweight, something you don’t have to think too hard while watching it. “Saturday Night Live” is on and it’s a new episode. Host Ryan Reynolds is funny enough but what really makes the show is the dynamic performances by Lady Gaga. Maybe you’re not sure what to make of her elaborate costumes, her winking lyrics, her overall persona but you are absorbed, you’re intrigued with her delicate (or maybe not so delicate) balance of club culture, pop music, and performance art.

Lady Gaga embodies the pop performer role – the over the top nature of the removed spectacle on stage with shiny costumes, back-up dancers, singing at you but never to you. In her second of two performances on “Saturday Night Live,” Lady Gaga stands on a rotating platform, wearing a costume made up of what was essentially a black bikini and a metal harness holding up metal rings. As the backing track starts to recite “let’s have some fun, this beat is sick / I want to take a ride on your disco stick,” the rings start to orbit her until they reach her head. Perhaps they never were supposed to go over her head, perhaps they were meant to nearly smack her in the forehead, but at that moment, the spectacle becomes real and the absurdity and Gaga’s self-awareness gives the performance a whole new dimension.

That maybe intentional wardrobe malfunction provided a break in the persona that sets the tone for the rest of the performance. After a few minutes of “Lovegame,” she steps off the platform and walks to the piano onstage, all while wrangling those orbiting rings, and sings a medley of “Poker Face”, “Bad Romance” and an ode to New York City. Her backing band ceases to play and it becomes just about Gaga singing to you, for you. This gesture breaks the mold of the removed pop icon and the endearing way she maneuvers her costume, smiles and waves at the audience, humanizes her so that she becomes more than a performer, she becomes real. It’s at that moment when she ceases to be Lady Gaga but Stefani Germanotta – more relatable to you, more human than her pop counterparts.