Bible CAMP: MAYHEM Requiem

[gagacabana 5,538]

First and foremost I'd like to say how much I loved every single paragraph you just wrote 

but this was such a funny way to put it lmaoooo 

49 minutes ago, Ladle Ghoulash said:

Gaga and her gay army

In the end, that's what The Monster Community is all about fr fr

[gagacabana 5,538]

27 minutes ago, Apec said:

Lilith and Persephone into the Requiem version of GOE

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY GENIUS 

Now I must draw fanart of MBTGa!GOE as Lilith and MRGa!GOE as Persephone kissing on the third circle of hell 

[Apec 195]

26 minutes ago, Ladle Ghoulash said:

The feminist read of the BR vid as decentering men from positions of power as a spiritual reflection of the rejection of patriarchy in religion is very interesting. Reminds me a bit of an interpretation I read of Alejandro and it’s MV years back which I found compelling: the three men in the song are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which does explain a lot of seemingly unconventional use of religious iconography in the video and live performances. To your point, extending the ethos of that reading beyond BR actually makes the bond between Gaga and her gay army in the Alejandro MV all the more potent- the dynamic becomes a shared, intersectional struggle between women and the gay (and broader LGBTQ+) community against hegemonic masculinity and the patriarchy as embodied through received notions of religion as the language and codification of real world power, which also serves as a great lead into the birthing of a new race born without prejudice in the BTW video.

The BTW MV feels like the nucleus of Gaga’s pop spiritual ethos: the articulation of how creation, the divine feminine, and a sort of metaphysical queerness through the rejection of received hierarchies and roles are essential and intrinsic parts of all life which are made manifest, not just in the process of being physically born, but extend into the psychic realm of self-determination, self-expression, and identity (which, in this context, feels like the fulfillment of the spiritual process begun through the desecration of the false altar of patriarchy in the BR video) and a process which we are not merely objects of, but participant subjects articulating and shaping the world through self-chosen roles in a religious mythic symbology of their own creation/reappropriation.
 

The way in which the video also decanters the othering binary of good/evil, sacred/profane etc. which is so often the origin of the scapegoating of out groups by those in power (in this case: the hegemonic masculine apex) through Gaga of accepting and embodying the roles of Mother/Messiah, Goddess/Devil, creation/destruction, paves the way for the non-dualism completely by the synthesis of EtherealGa and the Mistress in TAOPC. 
 

In terms of REQUIEM; your read of BR also reminded me of how I felt the show was almost a spiritual retelling of her career: opening with Disease feeling like a black mass intuitively reaching for the sacred, which I think you could argue she was doing through her devotion to the grotesque, depraved, and profane during TFM, through finding a burgeoning spiritual center in the chaos beginning in Abracadabra, which builds out into simultaneously feeling like she’s sitting in the eye of the storm (à la SOAM) and being able to touch the “beast inside” while still claiming peace in DWAS. Her gift for fusing liturgical symbology and meta dramaturgy is honestly unrivaled.

I'm in love with your entire post, from top to bottom. Your reading of BR and what you read about the Holy Trinity in the Alejandro video are almost exactly the same as how I interpreted it all those years ago!  The Alejandro video and how that extended into live performances felt indeed like the intersectional struggle decentering masculine hegemonic power through our shared intersectional forces, the female and the gay (as well as all of LQBTQ+ in her mind I'm sure) who struggled not just for acceptance, but actual equality which leads into the BTW video indeed! You're the first person who's seen that reading so fully that I've come across  and agrees as far as I can read, which makes me truly happy. Not that there's ever one true explanation, I know. That video, being the extension of decentering male dominance over women in BR, while having incredible artistic merit on its own, indeed makes much more sense in a satisfying way with its rejection of the religious status quo that Gaga herself sometimes represents (the nun/rosary, the (p)leather with the upside down crosses, as well as her only true allies (as seen through her eyes), the gay community. 

It was more her "Fear of traditional masculine horrors inflicted on helpless people perpetuated by religious dominance" than a mere "fear of men" song imho, but y'know, even marketing THAT must've been a pain. 

Sorry for quoting you again, but "The BTW MV feels like the nucleus of Gaga’s pop spiritual ethos: the articulation of how creation, the divine feminine, and a sort of metaphysical queerness through the rejection of received hierarchies and roles are essential and intrinsic parts of all life which are made manifest, not just in the process of being physically born, but extend into the psychic realm of self-determination, self-expression, and identity (which, in this context, feels like the fulfillment of the spiritual process begun through the desecration of the false altar of patriarchy in the BR video) and a process which we are not merely objects of, but participant subjects articulating and shaping the world through self-chosen roles in a religious mythic symbology of their own creation/reappropriation."

I have tears in my eyes. This must've been the most beautiful expression I've ever seen of her ethos during BTW and after, as I felt it, as I saw it through my eyes too. Yes, that's what I feel she meant exactly, which is why BTW (and TFM before it) are such foundational texts to understand her, truly. Was it completely neatly wrapped up in a bow to include everone and everything perfectly? I don't think that was possible, especially in her mid to late twenties. But what a philosophy.  (Cognitive science has just had a breakthrough: we expand our minds even more, you know, like 24 can be very different to 26, around 32 years of age in our frontal lobes, besides our ever present brain plasticity). Sorry, just wanted to mention that cool really new fact. This is just such a perfect distillation imo, of her near entire ethos that contains everything floating around in it that makes Gaga Gaga. It's so good to finally read this so well articulated from someone who understands. I couldn't have worded it better (especially right now). I have a lot of pain and need some rest but:

"The way in which the video also decanters the othering binary of good/evil, sacred/profane etc. which is so often the origin of the scapegoating of out groups by those in power (in this case: the hegemonic masculine apex) through Gaga of accepting and embodying the roles of Mother/Messiah, Goddess/Devil, creation/destruction, paves the way for the non-dualism completely by the synthesis of EtherealGa and the Mistress in TAOPC."

This quote is perfection! 

But yes, I believe that summary of the BTW video was more or less her philosophy at the time, which then grew and matured. I am going to answer to the rest of your post asap as it is incredible. I urgently need rest right now but what you wrote feels so right to me, that was the "religion" she was looking for in the show nearly three days before they performed (the irony) and I totally agree: this was a black mass centered on the profane, her show was a grotesque retelling of her career but still reaching for the sacred, in an immense struggle portrayed so vividly through her voice, piano and movements. And how. The way you describe the progression is fantastic and feels so right. I'll answer more in depth asap but thanks for this tasty (?)  food for thought.

You're amazing. 

[Apec 195]

5 hours ago, gagacabana said:

First and foremost I'd like to say how much I loved every single paragraph you just wrote 

but this was such a funny way to put it lmaoooo 

In the end, that's what The Monster Community is all about fr fr

 Okay that was indeed funny, sorry , I'm a very emotional person sometimes!

About the "gay army", it's about the Alejandro video, it's obvious that I'm totally somewhere in the background, a bi girl without a bowl cut

Edited Wednesday at 09:23 PM by Apec

[Ladle Ghoulash 45,987]

28 minutes ago, Apec said:

It was more her "Fear of traditional masculine horrors inflicted on helpless people perpetuated by religious dominance" than a mere "fear of men" song imho, but y'know, even marketing THAT must've been a pain. 

100%! But even the imagery in the video destabilizes and reclaims symbols associated with fascism and it’s patriarchal horrors (via Nazi Germany as well as broader Greco-Roman militaristic archetypes) by recontextualizing them as figurative power structures that queer/marginalized people can appropriate and wield themselves. It takes imagery historically used to discipline, persecute, and aestheticize domination and turns it into a vehicle for signaling queer strength, solidarity, and even cultural omnipotence in pursuit of liberation. It honestly reminds me a bit of what Susan Sontag wrote about regarding the seductive relationship between fascist aesthetics, spectacle, eroticism, and power, except Gaga reroutes that visual language away from authoritarian domination and toward queer self-mythologization and collective empowerment.

 

The quasi-fascistic angle becomes even more interesting in the context of BTW, where Gaga embodies the “birth of evil” and asks, “How could I protect something so perfect without evil?” That line always stuck with me because the moral ambiguity of it was genuinely shocking, especially for someone of Gaga’s cultural stature at the time. But I think the point is less an endorsement of domination and more an acknowledgment that power itself is morally unstable and maybe unavoidable. In this context, violence and fascistic spectacle become figurative symbols for cultural saturation and mass indoctrination redirected toward egalitarian ends: queerness normalized through repetition, inundation, theatricality, and symbolic occupation of pop culture itself.

 

She effectively uses the machinery of mass culture ( the airwaves, corporate spectacle, militaristic imagery, religious iconography) as “necessary evils” in service of liberation, while also signaling the spiritual non-dualism we discussed before re: TAOPC.

Edited Wednesday at 05:31 PM by Ladle Ghoulash

[Apec 195]

3 hours ago, Ladle Ghoulash said:

100%! But even the imagery in the video destabilizes and reclaims symbols associated with fascism and it’s patriarchal horrors (via Nazi Germany as well as broader Greco-Roman militaristic archetypes) by recontextualizing them as figurative power structures that queer/marginalized people can appropriate and wield themselves. It takes imagery historically used to discipline, persecute, and aestheticize domination and turns it into a vehicle for signaling queer strength, solidarity, and even cultural omnipotence in pursuit of liberation. It honestly reminds me a bit of what Susan Sontag wrote about regarding the seductive relationship between fascist aesthetics, spectacle, eroticism, and power, except Gaga reroutes that visual language away from authoritarian domination and toward queer self-mythologization and collective empowerment.

 

The quasi-fascistic angle becomes even more interesting in the context of BTW, where Gaga embodies the “birth of evil” and asks, “How could I protect something so perfect without evil?” That line always stuck with me because the moral ambiguity of it was genuinely shocking, especially for someone of Gaga’s cultural stature at the time. But I think the point is less an endorsement of domination and more an acknowledgment that power itself is morally unstable and maybe unavoidable. In this context, violence and fascistic spectacle become figurative symbols for cultural saturation and mass indoctrination redirected toward egalitarian ends: queerness normalized through repetition, inundation, theatricality, and symbolic occupation of pop culture itself.

 

She effectively uses the machinery of mass culture ( the airwaves, corporate spectacle, militaristic imagery, religious iconography) as “necessary evils” in service of liberation, while also signaling the spiritual non-dualism we discussed before re: TAOPC.

Just peeking, but I agree there, totally. I just wouldn't be able to put a seemingly reclaiming fascism angle in the tagline of the song "Fear of..." without making it sound incredibly offensive 

How she transformed the very symbols of destruction into tools of creation, letting us see both signs of the coin (the fires of war, the destruction displayed on those screens in the background) while using the same imagery for self-determination and free will for queer, marginalized people and women and what she represents in the video... It's brilliant. She immediately has our attention because we're basically Pavlov dogs when it comes militaristic imagery (cultural as well as because of innate survival instinct) to draw our eye to things that are used to dominate and subjugate, but somehow she's turning them into tools of queer and female liberation, domination even, solidarity and a way of showing creation of self.

And then came the omnipotence you talked about beccause of her stature as a public figure whose videos were played over a huge chunk of the world - you can't say she didn't use her platform! But the way she molded every sign of patriarchal apex hegemony at its very worst -  and made facism into self-determination and freedom for the marginalized...  Not only was she giving us serious counter-programming, as it were, she was trying to pull fascism's/authoritarianism's teeth by representing freedom for us by making us (especially queer folks) wield their weapons, their uniforms, their badges, etc.

I remember looking at that video over and over, astonished how she balanced that tone so well, that you at least feel what she means if you pay attention. 

Yes, she very much consciously used a tool commonly used as propaganda as a total antidote/ANTI-propaganda tool in favor of queer solidarity on TV (they indeed still played music videos, and they played Gaga non-stop, I still remember that to too ). That's pure determination and bravery - I understand why she had to fight for it with her label.

Twin moment again: When BTW the song came out, people were talking about how she should shut up, let the music start, and while I tried to ignore the moaners one sentence hit me like a lightning bolt - the exact same one as you. That sentence is an exact dot in the journey to The Art of Personal Chaos/MBT and spiritual non-dualism. The fact that with BTW we open on a cheerful looking pink triangle (that gay men had to wear in concentration camps during the holocaust) wherein we see the The Eternal Mother, who has two faces facing two sides, referring to the Roman God Janus who stood for new beginnings and transition, begin bearing a new race. Then we're diving headlong into Dali, Bacon and more to talk about the pendulum of choice and that "Vertigo" music playing while that last sentence sends chills down your spine. That was an important moment in knowing how serious she felt about all of this, even if we knew already. 

Sorry, actual Requiem thoughts still incoming, discussing the pure worldly journey while reaching for the spiritual you described as well as Lilith and Persephone appearing in GOE as just one example My head is too full of ideas.

Edited Wednesday at 09:19 PM by Apec

[Apec 195]

5 hours ago, gagacabana said:

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY GENIUS 

Now I must draw fanart of MBTGa!GOE as Lilith and MRGa!GOE as Persephone kissing on the third circle of hell 

 

I need this! (And I actually need to post my thoughts that led up to them in GOE asap sorry )

Edited Wednesday at 09:21 PM by Apec

[gagacabana 5,538]

45 minutes ago, Apec said:

 

I need this! (And I actually need to post my thoughts that led up to them in GOE asap sorry )

I'm looking forward to those! 

[bxr 1,770]

I go off the grid for a few hours, and—somewhere between the Akashic Record, the Emerald Tablet, and the Library of Alexandria (and, what appears to be a political campaign helmed by one of our classmates—where the commitment to cultural literacy and historical consciousness extends into institutional advocacy and reform extracurriculars!)—the little underground-pop-civilization-syncretic-salon-bible-CAMP-that-could went full-stop blueprint symphonic make it real manifesto now mode … @Apec @gagacabana @Ladle Ghoulash our lil‘ tetramorph force tribe 

I have to catch up on the latest additions to the anno monstrami codex, but/and … ough the editor got wiped (twice!), so the entirety of what was supposed to be is no more … alas, so from memory … first: LOVE the feminist incorporation, so necessarily locus cynosure to the collective narrative identity (was also today years old when i recognized that we can‘t spell Apec without Ace) … and two brief memos that sprung to mind … the BR Plato‘s association reminded me of the Atlantis/Amazon duality … namely, that Atlantis represented (if my memory recalls) the Western patriarchal civilization, and was defeated by the Amazons who were a Mediterranean (Libyan?) matriarchal society … so, that element for potential integration … and that “created her own language of liturgy and ecstasy when she evolved musically” reminds me of Requiem‘s inherent dark feminine structural feel to the sonic aesthetic … that it lingers and dwells so intentionally in development of the negative space … that it doesn‘t necesarily “go” anywhere in that way, that it doesn‘t build bombast from a front-loaded frame, that it doesn‘t careen toward the climax or explicit conclusion at the outset, that it continues in this tantric, sybillian, sirenian manner felt quite diametric in contrast to the modern/proximal pop approach (male-produced mainstream frequency), and quite paradigmatic shift to the feminine in practice beneath principle … Video Phone, Telephone, PERSEPHONE! … oh, also! the created language and musical evolution reminded me of this (especially, especially in relation to Ladle‘s la danse du sabbat thread)

Spoiler

The distinction between music and noise seems to be blurring: melody and words are being replaced by shrieks for which the only accompaniment is frenetic rhythm, and the result, we all have many times observed, is a sort of collective hysteria similar to that of primitive people.

To put oneself into a trance under the effect of certain rhythmic excitation is to leave momentarily the civilized state to fall into a savage one, at which point, from the depths of human nature, the individual‘s bestiality can make its appearance too strongly for a weakened spirituality to correct.

Unfortunately, this state has become more the norm today, so that persons usually under the influence of the anapestic hard rock beat and other addictive influences often need their own “detoxification“ process, or some new exposure in healthy conditions in order to realize that there is an antidote to destructive noise. Unfortunately, such an alternative often becomes possible only in a time of extreme sickness or when a choice is no longer an option. This is why future healing environments must be sensibly controlled, especially in regard to music that is played inside them.

"We all carry our primitive ancestors with us." Some sounds can lower us to what we were in consciousness a long time ago, while other melodies and music will carry us forward, ennobling and lifting our entire being toward increasing harmonies and expressions of refinement, beauty, creativity, and evolution out of addiction, degeneracy, cruelty, and even criminal activity. To a large degree, "We are what we hear.

Today we stand at a crossroads. More than ever, humankind is resisting human-UNkind, both within ourselves and in the outer environment. Light and destructive forces are becoming increasingly polarized. Unlike ancient societies, which carefully monitored the music they permitted to be played, our times currently have an "anything goes" attitude. Thus, the only hope in the midst of our free choice is for us to educate ourselves to deepen our sensitivity and discernment so that we can learn how to feel what is truly healthy for the greater well-being of ourselves and our society. Real tastes develop out of consciousness, not hype.

 

… I think there was more, but for now … before the editor comes through with that third betrayal … a denouement into intermission … (if any of this made any sense … as always, just music salt grains into the airwaves)

Edited Thursday at 12:05 AM by bxr

[bxr 1,770]

20 hours ago, Ladle Ghoulash said:

100%! But even the imagery in the video destabilizes and reclaims symbols associated with fascism and it’s patriarchal horrors (via Nazi Germany as well as broader Greco-Roman militaristic archetypes) by recontextualizing them as figurative power structures that queer/marginalized people can appropriate and wield themselves. It takes imagery historically used to discipline, persecute, and aestheticize domination and turns it into a vehicle for signaling queer strength, solidarity, and even cultural omnipotence in pursuit of liberation. It honestly reminds me a bit of what Susan Sontag wrote about regarding the seductive relationship between fascist aesthetics, spectacle, eroticism, and power, except Gaga reroutes that visual language away from authoritarian domination and toward queer self-mythologization and collective empowerment.

The quasi-fascistic angle becomes even more interesting in the context of BTW, where Gaga embodies the “birth of evil” and asks, “How could I protect something so perfect without evil?” That line always stuck with me because the moral ambiguity of it was genuinely shocking, especially for someone of Gaga’s cultural stature at the time. But I think the point is less an endorsement of domination and more an acknowledgment that power itself is morally unstable and maybe unavoidable. In this context, violence and fascistic spectacle become figurative symbols for cultural saturation and mass indoctrination redirected toward egalitarian ends: queerness normalized through repetition, inundation, theatricality, and symbolic occupation of pop culture itself.

She effectively uses the machinery of mass culture ( the airwaves, corporate spectacle, militaristic imagery, religious iconography) as “necessary evils” in service of liberation, while also signaling the spiritual non-dualism we discussed before re: TAOPC.

The precision, whew… I’m detouring from the chronological order of operative reflections in the thread, but your insights here felt aligned with a Scheiße recap from back around the “Anatomy of Change“ release … some of the aspects aged better than others, but the BTW “quasi-fascistic” angle felt not entirely unrelated …

Spoiler

Also, Bible CAMP‘s first Sontag mention!

Edited Thursday at 02:21 PM by bxr

[bxr 1,770]

23 hours ago, Apec said:

@Ladle Ghoulash "Reminds me of Gaga saying that she “needed to find the religion in the show” during the BTS commentary. In spite of the conversation about Gaga and religion often centering around her provocative use of religious iconography, I think her most interesting contribution to the discussion is actually decentering the ecstasy and liturgy of religious experience from the nexus of tradition/established faith practices (“my religion is you”). Taking religion, at first, as obsession and devotion during TFM, then gradually building it into a personal practice, belief system, shared ceremony, but also, probably most radically in the idea that religion is the machination of personal meaning using the world (both figurative and abstract) as raw material."

This is a comment that fascinates me endlessly, especially how you very astutely see her decenter the liturgy (the public work of sacred ritual) and almost shove away the altered awareness of a connection with the divine - while possibly asking the listener to maybe use them as well as she is not the one to follow spirituality/psychologically during TFM, seeing as she's quite literally corrupted in TFM. From Bad Romance the song begging for corruption in a certain way and adding Hitchcock movies in the verses with varying leading ladies who could not be seen in that state of religious ecstasy - the opposite in fact. The video quite literally seeing her drugged into a different state, a state of at first seemingly, before the drink is pushed into her mouth Gaga seemed to embody supplication (humbly, urgently asking a deity for help but paradoxically,  after what should've brainwashed her to the dominance of "man" (the bath, derobing and drink administered by what I see as female patriarchal avatars she rises above anything liturgy - though the whole sale of her body is steeped in ritualistic actions themselves until she does not choose meekness/false or true ecstasy but complete defiance. Maybe this defiance fits with ecstasy, but I see Gaga choosing free will in songs like GOE and many other female-empowering songs, not because liturgy or ecstacy are something she WANTS to avoid, but because being a human woman brings with it different challenges sometimes than for men. Her "my religion is you" is such a great catch as to said decentering on TFM. 

But when we go further we se her personally partaking in shared ceremony created BY HER from BTW on whereas Joanne is chock-full of songs that consider the altered state/ecstasy if you see it religiously or as a strong metaphorical bunch: the dissecting of female desire and the confronting of guilt as a whole in Sinner's Prayer for example (an ever-present Catholic subject), the mechanics and true altered state of grief re: Grigo Girls and the true ecstasy of close bonds with one another, creating new liturgy as it were. I definitely agree, as metaphor, true meaning or somewhere in between is something she grew in her use instead of further decentering. Imho, she created her own language of liturgy and ecstasy when she evolved musically.

Sorry, clicked post too soon Mayhem/REQUIEM up next! Also: Greek mythology.

 On the blink / first blush, two anchors surface … the liturgy as effigy, and the drug motif (with undercurrents of altered states of identity consciousness) … but rudimentary musings, nothing proper proper, just noggin jots while they‘re top of mind

How Ladle articulates the form and function of religious iconography with the decentralization of ecstasy and liturgy from the confines of traditional ritual rigidity … and segues into the transformation from obsession, devotion to personal practice, shared ceremony but/and “most radically in the idea that religion is the machination of personal meaning using the world (both figurative and abstract) as raw material,” in immediate retrospect, underscores this sense of an emergent religious subculture, within the Hebdige general framework, where spectacular subcultures in particular establish their distinct identities through how they “handle” the raw materials of social existence itself by giving expressive form to the social patterns / rites / rituals … but it‘s interesting, in context of contemporary pop iconography, for instance, how he approaches the reality of “raw material“ in media culture / market society: the material (i.e. social relations) which is continually being transformed into culture (and hence subculture) can never be completely ‘raw.’ It is always mediated: inflected by the historical context in which it is encountered; posited upon a specific ideological field which gives it a particular life and particular meanings. … but, that was a mental detour that may or may not have made sense, what originally resonated was this sense of establishing / erecting cultural or historical or traditional religious, etc. liturgy as an effigy or prototypic / archetypal representation of this ideological practice / ritual experience itself … the function of the effigy is to decenter, to deconstruct, to dismantle, and in its own way, to then celebrate and congregate from the shared experience as a certain triumph for the audience / participants … to free them from whatever was designed to be defeated … and then, there‘s also this sense of the “religion of you” establishing this reality of the living temples of the embodied church … from the ruins / rubble of the ivory tower, so to speak … from the “law written on stone,” to “the law written on hearts” … the community itself as the spiritual authority within culture / society

The altered state / identity consciousness within the drug motif, the potential synchrony … the Born This Way album review from back in the day, explored the album from the (verbose) lens of, well, said said state and catalyst … I think it took a generally chemical, sonicultural, philosophical approach … neither here nor there necessarily, but maybe some symbiotic conceptual symmetry, and a bit of the pop gonza flow (oh the bravado  … 2011 was a time)

Spoiler

Oh, and the empowerment aspect is apex, I‘ll revisit in a separate response—mental bookmark

Edited Thursday at 02:30 PM by bxr

[Ladle Ghoulash 45,987]

14 hours ago, Apec said:

The fact that with BTW we open on a cheerful looking pink triangle (that gay men had to wear in concentration camps during the holocaust) wherein we see the The Eternal Mother, who has two faces facing two sides, referring to the Roman God Janus who stood for new beginnings and transition, begin bearing a new race. Then we're diving headlong into Dali, Bacon and more to talk about the pendulum of choice and that "Vertigo" music playing while that last sentence sends chills down your spine. That was an important moment in knowing how serious she felt about all of this, even if we knew already. 

Absolutely love your insights into the symbolic and aesthetic references/lineage in the BTW video. The “pendulum of choice” feels especially prescient in the context of TAOPC, as there is this kind of unstable oscillation between “good” and “evil” within each of the characters once they’ve claimed a degree of agency (especially EtherealGa embracing the Mistress’ chaos magick in the ACT III).
 

How fitting that her alchemical transformation that follows (beginning even to resemble the Mistress herself at the top of ACT IV) leads into a section including SOAM, KFL, and BTW: her communing with the moral ambiguity of the nature of power and how to employ it is readily forged into a righteous, compassionate, and liberatory sense of power: being willing to dance even if you know your rebellion won’t single-handedly end systemic misogyny/oppression, being willing to kill for love or employ power/strength/perhaps even violence for who/what you love and the right for others to do the same, and the streamlining of each of those struggles into an anthem about that struggle for self-articulation, expression, and agency being as intrinsic as being born and existing themselves. 

[Ladle Ghoulash 45,987]

8 hours ago, bxr said:

The precision, whew… I’m detouring from the chronological order of operative reflections in the thread, but your insights here felt aligned with a Scheiße recap from back around the “Anatomy of Change“ release … some of the aspects aged better than others, but the BTW “quasi-fascistic” angle felt not entirely unrelated …

  Hide contents

Also, Bible CAMP‘s first Sontag mention!

The screenshots you included didn’t embed properly unfortunately

[bxr 1,770]

2 hours ago, Ladle Ghoulash said:

The screenshots you included didn’t embed properly unfortunately

Ough, updated 

[Ladle Ghoulash 45,987]

11 hours ago, bxr said:

The precision, whew… I’m detouring from the chronological order of operative reflections in the thread, but your insights here felt aligned with a Scheiße recap from back around the “Anatomy of Change“ release … some of the aspects aged better than others, but the BTW “quasi-fascistic” angle felt not entirely unrelated …

  Hide contents

Also, Bible CAMP‘s first Sontag mention!

“This is where dictatorship gets flipped- at the peak of one’s power, give it back to the public”

“Gaga’s not a fascist, but if that’s what it takes to free you, then so be it” 

Using the tools of the fascists for antifascist purposes, inverting the aesthetic, the propaganda, the hypnotic inundation…brilliantly said. Did you write this, btw?