Gaga "Betrayals"

[artdoll 45,800]

2 minutes ago, AVeryGagaHolyDick said:

To be honest, I think it was an absolutely brilliant artistic decision to put him on a song like that. Just a bad PR move. It’s not another song about love or whatever. It literally says “do what I want with your body.” The song just wouldn’t work with a random singer like The Weeknd who isn’t a known abuser. I’m sure it was therapeutic for her, making him sing that.

I do understand why some people freaked out, but I genuinely think they’re a bit too shallow and fragile for real art. Sorry. 

I never thought about DWUW from the perspective of Gaga essentially tricking R.K. into "admitting" he's an abuser. Which is quite interesting to think about especially if you take into consideration that Gaga more or less knew about his scandals since, in the promotion for the song, she mentioned how they both have been scrutinized by the media.  

...Although, I think its highly unlikely. I just don't see Gaga putting her career in harm's way for the sake of making an unsavory person admit that they're unsavory. Going through all that trouble for something that only she'd be in on. I know during that era Gaga said she wanted to quit music and all, so you could theorize that she wanted to destroy everything while making one of the evils admit they're evil without realizing it. But I think she just wanted to be controversial for the sake of being controversial, as she said.

[kaosbender 105]

9 hours ago, AVeryGagaHolyDick said:

To be honest, I think it was an absolutely brilliant artistic decision to put him on a song like that. Just a bad PR move. It’s not another song about love or whatever. It literally says “do what I want with your body.” The song just wouldn’t work with a random singer like The Weeknd who isn’t a known abuser. I’m sure it was therapeutic for her, making him sing that.

I do understand why some people freaked out, but I genuinely think they’re a bit too shallow and fragile for real art. Sorry. 

I had given this thought before and approached it from both ways. Here is my take:

Daring until it became a reality. This man was an alleged abuser at that point, not convicted. So far, so good. I loved how she was willing to push the boundaries with her lyricism, how she was reclaiming her own narrative of a traumatic event. Then, it was proven that he was guilty of child abuse of all things and it turned sour. You don't need to find an abuser to portray an abuser image, hell most man on Hollywood probably have minor abuse stories and can fill the gap for Gaga, not just R. Kelly.

Then shooting a mv enacting abuse with an actual abuser can be argued whether it's high art or trash packed as ART. That's why I think she or someone else with common sense realised that mv is not okay to release because the medium was not correct for the narrative. If she was dead set on the concept, then she could have made a performance art exhibition out of this idea but not a music video, that might have proven to be a good concept but tasteless product.

You can freak out and you should freak out, in the end the purpose was to showcase abuse and owning it, so it should bring up some feelings you normally wouldn't feel on a daily life. Art can be argued, that's one of the main selling points of it. People can comment and criticise the end product and how it's actualised. Calling someone shallow and fragile for not liking this at this point in 2025 is bordering on projection, maybe before R. Kelly as convicted it's fine.

[warhol killah 8,598]

On 4/6/2025 at 9:47 AM, LauraPalmer said:

wasn’t there supposed to be a different Born This Way video or something 

 

On 4/6/2025 at 11:28 AM, artdoll said:

Yes, but it was leaked some years ago, I believe you can still find it on YouTube or something? I think it starts with Gaga jokingly saying something along the lines of "Okay, this is for the gays. All straight people need to leave." Its been a minute since I saw it lol.

The 8 min video that leaked during BTW10 wasn't the alleged "2nd music video" for Born This Way. I'm not sure but I think that was a fashion film intended with Government Hooker as the music.

The second video for Born This Way was directed by Laurieann Gibson, you can see tiny snippets of it on her "directing reel" somewhere, she has the black + white wig, wearing the latex outfit (but in black) she always has when performing the song, has 2 (or 3?) back up dancers, and is filmed in B+W.

[Ziggy 11,239]

23 hours ago, AVeryGagaHolyDick said:

To be honest, I think it was an absolutely brilliant artistic decision to put him on a song like that. Just a bad PR move. It’s not another song about love or whatever. It literally says “do what I want with your body.” The song just wouldn’t work with a random singer like The Weeknd who isn’t a known abuser. I’m sure it was therapeutic for her, making him sing that.

I do understand why some people freaked out, but I genuinely think they’re a bit too shallow and fragile for real art. Sorry. 

Girl…you’re papering over Gaga’s own intents putting him there. She literally said “people have written many false things about us” like…she didn’t just do it for the edge and artistic merit; she did it bc she weirdly believed he was innocent of wrongdoing and a victim of media slander.

i see where you’re coming from and were it not WIDELY known he had done some messed up stuff (not the extent we know now, to be clear) that would be very different but this was post pee tape. Post Aaliyah. It wasn’t brilliant artistry; it was ignorance and suggestibility from others. And she didn’t take the concept far enough beyond shock to make it artistically compelling. It went about as far as his feature and him humping her. That’s not really fulfilling the artistic promise that would warrant also platforming, again, a fairly widely known abuser. 

Edited April 8 by Ziggy

[Ziggy 11,239]

On 4/6/2025 at 8:14 PM, artdoll said:

I never thought about DWUW from the perspective of Gaga essentially tricking R.K. into "admitting" he's an abuser. Which is quite interesting to think about especially if you take into consideration that Gaga more or less knew about his scandals since, in the promotion for the song, she mentioned how they both have been scrutinized by the media.  

...Although, I think its highly unlikely. I just don't see Gaga putting her career in harm's way for the sake of making an unsavory person admit that they're unsavory. Going through all that trouble for something that only she'd be in on. I know during that era Gaga said she wanted to quit music and all, so you could theorize that she wanted to destroy everything while making one of the evils admit they're evil without realizing it. But I think she just wanted to be controversial for the sake of being controversial, as she said.

And she also said “we’ve both had bad things written about us in the media.” She ain’t tricking him if she’s drawing a direct parallel between them unless she’s also admitting to being an at the time fairly known sex abuser (the extent only came out later)

[artdoll 45,800]

3 hours ago, Ziggy said:

She ain’t tricking him if she’s drawing a direct parallel between them unless she’s also admitting to being an at the time fairly known sex abuser (the extent only came out later)

Going off @AVeryGagaHolyDick's theory, The "tricking" part simply comes from getting him to sing "do what I want to your body" to her while she actively sings " do what you want to my body, you won't use my mind" to the media. I don't think there's any more to it than that

[Starmie25 16,765]

On 4/6/2025 at 4:09 PM, princedeeblebleble said:

the Lady and the Legend thing

That's sort of not under her control. Tony's estate was selling off his memorabilia and the documentary was included unfortunately 

[Ziggy 11,239]

10 hours ago, artdoll said:

Going off @AVeryGagaHolyDick's theory, The "tricking" part simply comes from getting him to sing "do what I want to your body" to her while she actively sings " do what you want to my body, you won't use my mind" to the media. I don't think there's any more to it than that

yeaaahhhh im just skeptical this holds much water, but even if it does it feels weird that she'd bring a Black man she otherwise has nothing to do with on the project to make an example of as a sexual predator lol like the theory feels like grasping at straws to justify what was ultimately just a little bit of petulance on her part. And admittedly, he does sound great on the song and if you choose to believe he was the target of media harassment then it's easy to make the leap to "having him on this song mocks YOUR narrative about him AND me. we're victims together teaming up!" that makes way more sense then some convoluted scheme that basically ran the risk of tanking her career. We know she wasn't in a great headspace at the time and i have doubts she'd be in a good enough one to have a gag like that.

[ReplayBoss 231]

On 4/5/2025 at 8:22 PM, Carl Grimes said:

venus music video as well, i'll never forgive the world for robbing us of that

What are you talking about? We have the Venus video right here. https://www.instagram.com/p/hPoy11JFB3/?igsh=cTBrcHQ3Z3ljMmZ1