Tuesday 6 May 2014

Lana del Ray, playing the deviant.


I wanted to write about feminism in a fun, youthful way. Female pop stars are using their sexuality very interesting new ways but many reactions to this are very old fashioned. I looked up the simplest explanation of feminism and it simply talked about men being equal women, if this is true sexy women in pop should be left to express themselves in any way they please. Liberal feminists would agree with the view these women didn't need to be criticised.

1 I found an absurd article about Lana del Ray, the article made a few good points about taking drugs and health and safety but I felt the whole article was slut shaming a woman for giving one view of womanhood that was a fantasy.

2 3 Other feminists criticized Lana del Ray for all sorts of things, being unhappy, being a victim and making us feel uncomfortable, the tone was thanks to Lana women would be dragged backwards into a grubby, male dominated Hell. This assumes women are impressionable and Lana is so powerful and women are so they would follow in her unhappiness.

 Lana's songs could more intelligently taken as a warning not  a guide to life, Lana looks stunning but sounds utterly depressed and confused, she states by subtitles that all that glitters is not gold. The idea that female pop stars just seems silly and restricting.

I chose to write about video Ride as a study because it has a confusing message that many people seemed to miss.

The girl in the video is free, daring, dependent and utterly free at the same time, this doesn't make it anti-feminist it makes the video fascinating. Many women just didn't get the duel messages in the video and this seems very strange.

4 5 The other aspect is the video is Lana del Ray does not run around the desert drunk and shag bikers in real life, she is a recovered alcoholic has not had a drink for seven years and has worked with homeless people in New York. Lana is very successful. This woman is a role model in real life, she has got herself out of so how is a woman making a movie a bad role model?



6 7 Is every actress who plays a weak female character a bad role model? This would make movies and pop videos boring, they would be full of perfect cheerleaders taking over the world, marrying perfect men and taking over the world, seeing powerful women in the media would be great but how boring and dishonest would this be if it we had to be perfect? Very, we've all fallen in love, trusted the wrong man, been to a dodgy party and learnt not to drink too much the hard way. Could feminism turn into us doing impressions of a poster girl that can't possibly exist in real life, this in itself not feminist and could become as restricting as the "Happy housewife" poster girl of the 1950s.

8 The idea of a dark, dangerous, female character is nothing new. The text points of that some see this role for women as empowering, they are certainly adventurous, interesting and powerful. They are feminine but rebel against socially accepted behaviour, this make them women who are not trying to do an impression on men but who are

Lana is also a complete deviant in the video, she is simply running around the desert with bikers living off her wits or many would say being a prostitute. I felt there was a Marxist way to look at this. In many ways feminism has made more of a workforce to be exploited. I remembered something Germaine Greer said about women wanting to be like men is a very conservative aim, I felt this was relevant as Lana shows very traditionally feminine attributes, she certainly looks all woman.

Lana  is a femme fatale in the movie, she attracts drama, waves around guns and arguably uses men, she is free, dangerous and not being a good money maker or consumer.

The more I study feminism the more confused I become by it. This article was an interesting way of exploring all types of feminism as well as writing about a aims of feminism sound like common sense at first but as you study feminism it becomes complex. If men repress us why do we want to be like them? I find myself agreeing with Germaine Greer on many points, we shouldn't be playing men at their own game, and if Lana wants to the Yang to male rock stars but changing the game. Blimely I might be a radical feminist.

The article was posted on my young adult blog hometown. The idea of Hometown is to challenge young people’s ideas and be rebellious. I would love the blog to introduce the 16-25 age group to new political ideas. The article caused a small debate online with feminists. I felt the reaction showed the article had the reaction I wanted so I was pleased with the result. 41 people have read the blog which is a low number but it has had a reaction so that is great. I enjoy upsetting a few people with my writing, if somebody has been upset they have been challenged.





2 http://lipmag.com/culture/why-lana-del-rey-cannot-be-a-feminist-role-model/comment-page-1/
8 http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=vKXZAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA13&dq=female+archytypes+and+Lana+del+Ray&ots=YKg5qAlZXS&sig=mb4xF8_2wb7L05mXKhARkc9ahuw#v=onepage&q&f=false





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