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Gaga X Topgun - Why?


Sandrology

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Sandrology

Dear Monsters, 

this is a Topic not to hate on Gaga or her team, but just my opinion so please keep the comments respectful to each other. 

personally I'm happy about new Gaga content but there are alot of things I'm kind of confused about why Gaga choose this to be the movie to make a score and theme song.

A Star is Born was totally up Gaga's lane. The Movie represents the rise and fall of fame, a topic Gaga talks about in many of her Albums til this day. The Movie also dares to talk about important social issues such as substance abuse and mental health, a topic Gaga has personally talked about many times and tries to reduce the stigma around it. Everything Gaga repesents, feels intervened in the plot of the Movie and therefore a great match. 

 

With topgun there are some issues before this film was even released:

#1 - Topgun: Maverick is just like the first movie, advertisement for the military. The Pentagon was heavily involved before the first movie even had a script. To no surprise the recruiting numbers skyrocket after it's success in 1986, and started the involvement of the Department of Defence in Hollywood Blockbusters in the long-run, to advertise to new service members. This is one of the reasons the DoD is trying to push a sequel for many years. Gaga has never clearly shown affection to the US. Military, so it came as a surprise to me to hear about her involvemen, and still feels kind of odd.

#2 - To include the Chinese market, (where Gaga was banned from music-wise due to talking to the Dalai Lama), the taiwanese flag was removed from the original TopGun jacket. Gaga is an outspoken democrat and advocat for human rights. It doesn't sit right with me, that this movie was created to tip-toe w/ the chinese market in times of Uyghur-repression and the non-democratic believes against taiwan or lately chinas neutral position towards russias invasion into the ukraine.

#3 - Tom Cruise, an outspoken member of Scientology, has publicly adressed psychology as "pseudoscience", and disagrees to use antidepressants against current state of research and science. Gaga's opinion on psychology, psychotherapy and the use of antidepressants couldn't be any further away from these of Tom Cruise -  Executive Producer and leading actor of this movie. So how these two came so close together seems like a mystery to me. Apart from this movie Gaga is doing everythings she can to talk about mental health and PTSD, founded the Born This Way Foundation for research and support and even talks about her personal medication for education purposes on this matter.

 

What are your thoughts on this movie?

As much as I love Gaga, I have struggles to support this movie by going into the cinema. For me personally there are too many issues. I accept Gagas career-choices, but for me personally I think I'm going to distance myself from this movie. Am I the only one that has a hard time with it?

 

Sources: 

https://www.cpr.org/2020/08/26/1986s-top-gun-drove-a-military-recruiting-boom-will-the-sequel-do-the-same/ 

https://www.looper.com/269807/the-untold-truth-of-top-gun/

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/04/new-top-gun-maverick-hollywood-china.html

https://people.com/celebrity/tom-cruise-lashes-out-at-matt-lauer/

 

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LilyLark

Honestly, I feel like a lot of people don't even pick up on the rah rah military subtext, even though it is blatant. I mean there are film critics who have criticized Marvel for military subtext, but are praising Top Gun. The main take aways from the original film are "Tom Cruise, awesome planes, unintentional gay subtext," and I suspect they wanted a Berlin esque ballad so they went to Gaga as she fits the that sort of profile best of all the big pop stars (besides Beyonce).

The Scientology aspect is a legit question, though, but as I mentioned above...military subtext exists in a lot of films from Marvel to Star Wars to Top Gun. But I think the industry often just separates the art from the artist, unless it's something truly horrific like rape...and Tom is (oddly) beloved in Hollywood by many, many people (not just Gaga). So yeah, I think it's more separating the art from the artist (re: Scientology) and money...

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Bolkins

I’ve thought about the first point a couple of times. It’s certainly not very ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon of her. But whatever, I hope she got a fat check for her participation. 

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These are fair questions, I think. Gaga makes her decisions and does what she does, and we are free to likr or not like. She's not a saint, she's human.

HMH video isn't the first time she's sung with the airforce overhead, and Joe Biden is commander-in-chief and she sang at his inauguration. She's a patriot. That's a good thing in the right hands, like hers.

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KORG

If she wasn't pro-military she wouldn't have done that ultra Americana flag shtick at the superbowl.. twice.

Literally.  America is a system for military recruitment wherever you turn. Team sports? Military prep. Pledge allegiance? Military prep. 

She is a product of her country and likely believes that these forms of indoctrination and war-readying are perfectly normal & hasn't really given them a 2nd thought beyond "it's a song gor a movie".

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Meat

1. Did you care enough to read an actual movie review before writing this dissertation? Literally all of them say that this movie is nothing like the first one and there’s no military propaganda involved this time. There’s a reason why it’s shaping up to be the most critically acclaimed movie of the year. Even snooty left leaning publications are giving it 5 stars. 

2. Gaga is not banned in China.

3. Scientology is not any worse than other mass religions like Christianity and Islam. Conservative leaders from those religions are literally trying to ban abortion and murder people from the LGBT community. So according to your logic she should stop working with everyone that follows a religion?

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Fresco

1. Every country needs a military to defend itself from foreign aggressors. It's just a fact of life. Needing a military, need soldiers. :shrug: 

2. It's a sequel movie. The patch changed from 1969 to 1986. Wasn't the last big battle of Top Gun movie in the Indian Ocean? Kind of makes sense. I'm not going to get hung up on a patch on a jacket.

3. We all work with people of different religions and with different views on non-work subjects.  Well, actually some religious/cult sects try very hard to not allow or work with people of other religions, which is very discriminatory.  

 

 

 

 

 

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TimotheeChalamet

It's nothing deep or subtext-driven: it's the American super popstar business, at some point you dip into acting and work on movie soundtracks. Really nothing to over analyze, like Gaga isn't some supernatural being transcending the business rules and living a life full of double meanings: they offered this opportunity, she took it. End of the story, she is still the same artist supporting peace and love. 

Reminder: Hold My Hand is a great song 

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KORG

Can I also point out that Scientology, as a religion, hasn't committed genocides, colonisation, or mass political manipulation, murder & blackmail?

It's a crock, but all religions are, just that scientology is one of the less bloodthirsty.

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Gagaono
6 minutes ago, Meat said:

1. Did you care enough to read an actual movie review before writing this dissertation? Literally all of them say that this movie is nothing like the first one and there’s no military propaganda involved this time. There’s a reason why it’s shaping up to be the most critically acclaimed movie of the year. Even snooty left leaning publications are giving it 5 stars. 

2. Gaga is not banned in China.

3. Scientology is not any worse than other mass religions like Christianity and Islam. Conservative leaders from those religions are literally trying to ban abortion and murder people from the LGBT community. So according to your logic she should stop working with everyone that follows a religion?

As much as I respect everyones opinion- I cannot agree with your last paragraph about scientology. When it comes to cults, there are some main differences to a religion. While you could argument that every practiced  believe that requires a membership like a cult or religion, has some of the main structures - like distinct ideologies that more often than not defer from actual proven, scientific facts, for example - in common, a cult often steps over the boundaries of the members freedom. While religious people mostly aren't forced to publicly advertise their religion or being instructed by the institutions themselves (except for cases of strict religious upbringing, other cases of peer pressure etc.) on how to behave in various cases of human interaction and life itself, cults mostly try to on one hand isolate their believers from people that aren't part of the cult and on the other hand require, that the members actively help to recruit new members in order to achieve a higher/better reputation within the cults operational structures. While in most practiced, western religions it is up to the religious adherents themselves to what extend they want to practice the religion and how much of their time they want to dedicate to it, cults are known for demanding much, if not most of their members time and money. Especially Scientology is known for those structures mentioned. 

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Meat
3 minutes ago, Gagaono said:

As much as I respect everyones opinion- I cannot agree with your last paragraph about scientology. When it comes to cults, there are some main differences to a religion. While you could argument that every practiced  believe that requires a membership like a cult or religion, has some of the main structures - like distinct ideologies that more often than not defer from actual proven, scientific facts, for example - in common, a cult often steps over the boundaries of the members freedom. While religious people mostly aren't forced to publicly advertise their religion or being instructed by the institutions themselves (except for cases of strict religious upbringing, other cases of peer pressure etc.) on how to behave in various cases of human interaction and life itself, cults mostly try to on one hand isolate their believers from people that aren't part of the cult and on the other hand require, that the members actively help to recruit new members in order to achieve a higher/better reputation within the cults operational structures. While in most practiced, western religions it is up to the religious adherents themselves to what extend they want to practice the religion and how much of their time they want to dedicate to it, cults are known for demanding much, if not most of their members time and money. Especially Scientology is known for those structures mentioned. 

Christianity is the world’s largest cult, followed by Islam. I’m sorry if you can’t see the damage organised religions have laid upon our society. They are even worse than cults to be honest. And if you don’t agree then I suggest you count the number of people that were killed by these religions over the years.

Christianity was a strong tool white people used to colonise, torture, abuse and murder millions of innocent people, but yes, small cults are the problem. Smh 🤦‍♂️ 

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Gagaono
Just now, Meat said:

Christianity is the world’s largest cult, followed by Islam. I’m sorry if you can’t see the damage organised religions have laid upon our society. They are even worse than cults to be honest. And if you don’t agree then I suggest you count the number of people that were killed by these religions over the years.

Of course I can see the damage caused by religions, but that is besides the point. It is a fact nevertheless that the structures and mechanisms of a cult defer from those of religious institutions and therefore they are not the same. In every system of believe their can be people that practice their believe to an extreme extend and use it as a vehicle to explain violence or hatred against others and the more members one religion/cult etc. has, the higher are the risks of the system being used for negative causes. It has to do with ideologies and exegesis of some groups of people/nations that can form within mentioned religions/cults. But it is more likely to occur on a big scale in religious systems with many followers and a brought spectrum for interpretation than in cults that have misanthropic structures within their dna and leave almost no room for interpretation.  

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Nathan

She’s been doing stuff like this since 2016, appeals to right leaning people which expanders her market.

Personally I won’t watch the movie as I don’t need to support the American military complex, but glad for those who enjoy it. 
 

At the end of the day, if this is the avenue she feels is right for her, who are we to challenge that. 

 

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Sandrology
21 minutes ago, Nathan said:

She’s been doing stuff like this since 2016, appeals to right leaning people which expanders her market.

Personally I won’t watch the movie as I don’t need to support the American military complex, but glad for those who enjoy it. 
 

At the end of the day, if this is the avenue she feels is right for her, who are we to challenge that. 

 

Exactly, thank you for your comment. I have no harsh feelings towards this topic or gaga whatsoever, just wanted to know if I'm the only one that isn't so supportive of this era.

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