Bible CAMP: MAYHEM Requiem

[gagacabana 6,316]

43 minutes ago, bxr said:

“But/and/then on the eighth [episodic play] …”—a reprise, in real time! 

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Bible CAMP … lil’ zephyr echoes in the zeitgeist … 

This just convinced me to watch the season 

[bxr 1,880]

2 hours ago, gagacabana said:

This just convinced me to watch the season 

Genuinely looking forward to your episodic exegeses and/or catholiqueer insights 

[bxr 1,880]

Cross-thread reprise … elements of Bible, CAMP, Mayhem-adjacence, requiems-en-route …

Spoiler

 

“Not sure what it means, but this photo …”

Spoiler

Spoiler

[…]

It’s hard to pick a favorite, but what other scenes will you remember?

I love the two scenes in the Last Supper. They are just really beautiful, really resonant. The one where Miranda accuses Andy of betraying her is just so wonderfully dramatic. And then the dinner scene where Benjy — this character that you think is kind of a whack job billionaire — delivers really the most profound speech in the movie about the future and how it’ll come for us all. Miranda’s there, making a plea for the human touch and preserving the best of human achievement. That scene is, obviously, what the movie is all about: this battle between man-made creativity and whatever is coming next; we don’t know what it is, but we’re terrified of it, and we know it’s coming for us.

Tell me about shooting with that incredible tableau in the background.

We scouted the actual Da Vinci Museum, and we could have shot the one scene with people talking in front of the painting. They would have been fine with that. I said, “Can we do a dinner with candlelight?” and they said, “No, absolutely not.” So, we built a set.

But I got to spend a lot of time in the room with the real Last Supper and learn a lot about it. It’s amazing; you’re standing there with a 600-year-old painting that still moves you. There’s no better way to dramatize the best of human achievement than that painting.

And having that painting really underscores what Miranda’s saying to Andy. She’s asking, “Are you Judas?”

There’s definitely that undertone.

In retrospect refresh, the image itself echoes Fiske‘s media event lens …

Spoiler

The term “media event” is an indication that in a postmodern world … a media event, then, is not a mere representation of what happened, but it has its own reality, which gathers up into itself the reality of the event that may or may not have preceded it.

Beyond the image as immediate representation within focus, the image as event (albeit niche) expresses its own reality, which gathers up into itself the reality of The Last Supper locus, in the linger of AI discourse, and in light of a kind of inter-media-dimensional dynamic between Gaga & Madonna, Miranda, and/or Meryl, for instance (which, low-key Music Fashion Film—A Contrast!), within contemporary culture‘s sui generis backdrop … dissolving the fourth wall into a new frame … but, neither here nor there, really, just abstract associations articulating 

[gagacabana 6,316]

6 hours ago, bxr said:

dissolving the fourth wall into a new frame

Absolutely absolutely 

6 hours ago, bxr said:

And why are they giving Jesus/Judas ; Eve/Lilith realness here.... the catholiqueer-motifs about to keep me up all night  

[Ladle Ghoulash 48,023]

6 hours ago, bxr said:

Cross-thread reprise … elements of Bible, CAMP, Mayhem-adjacence, requiems-en-route …

  Reveal hidden contents

 

“Not sure what it means, but this photo …”

  Reveal hidden contents

  Reveal hidden contents

[…]

It’s hard to pick a favorite, but what other scenes will you remember?

I love the two scenes in the Last Supper. They are just really beautiful, really resonant. The one where Miranda accuses Andy of betraying her is just so wonderfully dramatic. And then the dinner scene where Benjy — this character that you think is kind of a whack job billionaire — delivers really the most profound speech in the movie about the future and how it’ll come for us all. Miranda’s there, making a plea for the human touch and preserving the best of human achievement. That scene is, obviously, what the movie is all about: this battle between man-made creativity and whatever is coming next; we don’t know what it is, but we’re terrified of it, and we know it’s coming for us.

Tell me about shooting with that incredible tableau in the background.

We scouted the actual Da Vinci Museum, and we could have shot the one scene with people talking in front of the painting. They would have been fine with that. I said, “Can we do a dinner with candlelight?” and they said, “No, absolutely not.” So, we built a set.

But I got to spend a lot of time in the room with the real Last Supper and learn a lot about it. It’s amazing; you’re standing there with a 600-year-old painting that still moves you. There’s no better way to dramatize the best of human achievement than that painting.

And having that painting really underscores what Miranda’s saying to Andy. She’s asking, “Are you Judas?”

There’s definitely that undertone.

In retrospect refresh, the image itself echoes Fiske‘s media event lens …

  Reveal hidden contents

The term “media event” is an indication that in a postmodern world … a media event, then, is not a mere representation of what happened, but it has its own reality, which gathers up into itself the reality of the event that may or may not have preceded it.

Beyond the image as immediate representation within focus, the image as event (albeit niche) expresses its own reality, which gathers up into itself the reality of The Last Supper locus, in the linger of AI discourse, and in light of a kind of inter-media-dimensional dynamic between Gaga & Madonna, Miranda, and/or Meryl, for instance (which, low-key Music Fashion Film—A Contrast!), within contemporary culture‘s sui generis backdrop … dissolving the fourth wall into a new frame … but, neither here nor there, really, just abstract associations articulating 

Interesting choice of image with them burning money in front of the Last Supper, perhaps intentionally mirroring the painting itself. Could potentially tie back into broader motifs we’ve discussed about decentering patriarchy, capital, received notions of religion by mirroring the breaking of bread with a bowl of money (the body of the modern antichrist) and, instead of devouring and disseminating it, burning it (perhaps as a metaphorical rebellion against the weight of capital, not just on the music industry, but as the nexus of many structures of oppression). 

[Apec 211]

On 5/25/2026 at 3:05 AM, bxr said:

A trove of intrigue throughout the abovementioned, but/and particularly the revisitation of Black Jesus † Amen Fashion … the story within the song always feels like a sphinx hidden in plain sight … you explore the record‘s eponymous duality quite beautifully … somewhere at the locus of the existing dichotomy (Black Jesus, Amen Fashion) and evolving into this blossoming integration with the rosary and a certain portal into divine feminine / sacred matriarch embodied consciousness … I was just thinking of The Black Madonna (Monsterrat, Czestochowa, etc.), and am really curious wondering where / how / if you see any narrative association … ?

Hope you‘re resting well!

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Also 

[T]he line that embodies the entire song for me has always been the one you quoted, “concrete poetry to feed my mind, old symbolism was left behind", embedded in a song in which she indeed centers a notion many Westerners still find too radical: That Jesus, geographically, would never be white, but darker in skin tone merely JUST CANNOT BE according to so many because of dogma. He needs to look like "us" to be acceptable. 

 

That "Black Marxist Jesus" chasing his whip after bankers had me in tears, ngl. 

I'm also going to become a bit personal here and then I finally answer (sorry) your great question about the dark Virgin Mary examples you've given me.

I definitely think a woman who went to a former convent remodeled into one of a network of semi-independent schools called The Convent of The Sacred Heart (a network that all bears the same name and almost came to be called Lady of the Sacred Heart) - they are all Girl's schools and the very first one was built, I kid you not, in the middle of Paris right after the French Revolution, which uh, great timing guys! 

Anyway, they were copied across Europe and many girls (of different faiths too) attended them because they mostly didn't require tuition and girls were either not schooled or pulled out when boy's tuition went up at 10 to 12 years of age - some of the Sacred Heart schools even went up to 18 years old and were academic moreso than preparing them for being the town seamstress, joining businesses that washed/dried clothes by hand, creating big batches of food to sell at the local market, housekeeping at stranger's houses, and farmwork farmwork farmwork etc. in the 19th Century - even though women weren't allowed at most Universities yet. The very first has been demolished now in Paris because all education is free and secular with a small fee for University (very small compared to US Universities) and in its place they built the Rodin museum. If you're ever in Paris, I highly recommend going there. Rodin was a genius. If you need a refresher, he's best known for "The Thinker". 

The Gates of Hell (Bronze)

New York was the first American Convent of The Sacred Heart school, but many others followed, as did tuition in the 20th Century. Gaga has stated some of her teachers were nuns, and to be blunt, while places like Middle America and certain European countries definitely worshipped Mary and even had Marian Sects, the convents all over the world worshipped something-odd-for-patriarchal-Abrahamic-religions: the worship of the Virgin Mary almost just as much if not more (in practice and not that they'd say it aloud) than Jesus himself. She must've learned about Montserrat at the very least as it is the most famous. Thank you so much for mentioning Czestochowa, most people don't know it and it happens to be near to my heart and I'Il tell you why in a second.

Detour here about my family 

I myself am a quarter Polish, with family back there and everything, and the rest is Belgian and I am so proud of that quarter. Poland has, besides being devoutly Catholic and worshipping the Virgin Mary, always been more of a French-aligned typical Western European country than what the Nazis, Soviets and Russians before them have tried to make it. They border Spain! My grandma was in the Polish Resistance, badass that she was. She was frequently sent through checkpoints and even covert ops with Nazi soldiers because she had perfected her German (for the cause) and looked the most "Arian" because of her blue eyes and light hair. Plus, they underestimated her because she was a woman so she could snoop more without being seen as a possible threat. She helped bomb Nazi supply lines and much, much more.

One day she was to bring food to refugees far into a certain forest, hidden in a deep, claustrophobic hole dug in the ground and covered with leaves and mulch. My grandfather had just arrived there after escaping two labour camps with a plastic spoon (!). He had been wandering the forest for years, subsisting on berries and the occasional nut. He was a Belgian who had just inherited a factory making very artistic, artisanal Antverpian rugs in '39 - it never turned much of a profit under him or his father however, since they were known for their high wages (the rugs were all handmade so no dangerous machinery) and having paid sick leave, even the beginnings of paid maternity leave. Then Germany occupied Belgium, my granddad had already sent the workers away and gave them money to hide.

He waited until the Nazis came knocking. They didn't want to throw him out because he knew the factory inside out - but they needed any factory they could get their hands on. Refusing to become a collaborator like shamefully many of the bigger factories had become (his was small), they arrested him and sent him to his first labour camp where many died of malnutrition, overwork, sicknesses spreading easily, etc. The rest you know until the hole in the ground - My grandmother was immediately smitten with grandpa and vice versa. In those WWII days you could marry without witnesses, a priest/secular version/or the like, they were iust papers both of you signed and you were legally married in both countries you lived in, in the hope that occupation would one day stop. Since my grandpa was a fugitive he had to keep moving so after a few visits he had to go and both of them didn't know if they'd ever see each other again.

About a month or three after our Armistice/Surrender in Europe Grandma (I sadly never got to know her) used those papers to track him down and found him, all shaved and cleaned up, at his home. She rung the bell with a two-year old boy holding her hand - his child. My mother would follow a couple years later.

BIGH SIGH... Back to Czestochowa. She has an illustrious career of protecting the Byzantine Empire until she was brought to Poland (which is very devoutly Catholic but has a majority of Marian worshippers as well) by its prince and his horses refused to go any further than the monastery it is still at (um, maybe they were hungry and tired? Not everything is a sign! ). Anyhow, during the Middle Ages we have Iconoclasts trying to destroy the painting but creating healing springs instead... But what is so important to me is not the supposed protection of the Virgin Mary, especially that of Czestochowa, but that SHE has been THE SYMBOL AGAINST repression by Russians, she was even the National symbol for Poles who believed in/were fighting for liberation from Nazi occupation. Czestochowa the city has been deemed holy for the Black Virgin Mary's help in being liberated from first the Nazis, then the Soviets. While I'm no believer in the magical realism, I am proud that they turned their Marian worship into making this very painting THE symbol of fighting against oppression.

Anyway, back to Gaga and Black Jesus. I think she didn't want to be obvious with a Montserrat reference, which would be making it more of a runway song than it already sounded. Women's fashion is the peacock version of human fashion, everybody talks about the women's lines primarily even though men also show off new collections - and since we discussed that I think young Gaga here was expanding her mind in both religious and secular ways, while dreaming of her future, she subverted the obvious - she made the fabulous person strutting down the runway "Black Jesus" instead of "Black Mary", so to speak. She also used the profane to praise him ("Jesus is the new black") and literally Amen's fashion itself. I think this all congeals into a young mind liberating herself from metaphorical shackles imposed by strict received religious notions, creating new forms of what she believes is ecstasy and basically starting to think for herself re: religious beliefs to follow and those that don't rhyme, plus everything I mentioned in my previous post. This obviously takes place way before she became famous so it's not a philosophy/theology as tightly knit yet as in, say, BR or Alejandro with the last one going into BTW making her able to embody the divine feminine/Goddess-like Matriarchal figure who can't stop life from creating a shadow self who WOULD use evil in this intersectional struggle for equality (at the very least). But these are TFM-BTWGa thoughts, here in BJ + AF her mind has just started exploring new ideas. It must not have been easy to go back to a state of mind you were in years before you were world famous but she pulled it off, I think.

I am so surprised by that House of Z poster! What?? Is this just AI? That "promo" poster is everything! But now I see it's AI, I didn't even recognize Gaga....Okay, I'm diving into @bxr's explanations now.

Edit: Thanks @Ladle Ghoulash for pointing me to the original thread. So it has nothing to do with anything coming up. Just Madonna using Gags for promo as always () and hitting the jackpot with a definite Eve/Lilith burning Capital itself in front of the breaking of the bread in the last Supper (probably metaphorically as you say) as well as a heavy plotting against Patriarchal Apex Hegemony and received notions of religion vibe in this picture. Still going through @bxr archives on this! I wanna know what that duck is doing there though! 

Lilith, Eve and Persephone analysis in both GOE's next! Persephone is the main star in Requiem!GOE for me, but Lilith is super important in both. Let's dive into short histories and then see where they fit...

Edited 5 hours ago by Apec

[bxr 1,880]

6 hours ago, Ladle Ghoulash said:

Interesting choice of image with them burning money in front of the Last Supper, perhaps intentionally mirroring the painting itself. Could potentially tie back into broader motifs we’ve discussed about decentering patriarchy, capital, received notions of religion by mirroring the breaking of bread with a bowl of money (the body of the modern antichrist) and, instead of devouring and disseminating it, burning it (perhaps as a metaphorical rebellion against the weight of capital, not just on the music industry, but as the nexus of many structures of oppression). 

3 hours ago, Apec said:

I am so surprised by that House of Z poster! What?? Is this just AI? That "promo" poster is everything! But now I see it's AI, I didn't even recognize Gaga....

 I wanna know what that duck is doing there though! 

Brief blink association on the duck blush … Gaga is sitting with the burning capital, Gaga is actively engaged with the burning of capital, Madonna sits adjacent, witnessing but not participating … on the opposite side of burning capital, positioned before Madonna, is a drake … so, just a brief salt grain musing on the blink … would be to consider … whatever a drake means to contemporary music culture industry capital (and/or what a GenAI rendered prompting to include a drake in said frame means) … and where the two aforementioned diametric figures are positioned in association

 

And, in the meantime/intermission, before proper reflection response … Apec—the lineage stories: Aces, on, deck