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Lady GaGa: Archaic MysticPop Shamaness

By: Alex Weidman

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Huh?Placing Lady GaGa under the magico-religious role of shaman

is admittedly a contentious proposition. Besides the problem that

anything nearing the subject of ‘shamanism’ is bound to be

fraught with controversy in the academia today, it is a

proposition that asks the reader to consider Lady GaGa’s

proclamation, “Pop is the new religion,” seriously and allow her

a place within the scope of religious studies. It is my belief

that Lady GaGa not only makes use of ‘shamanism’ – as technique of

ecstasy (Eliade 4) – but is unequivocally a contemporary shaman, an

expression of the most primitive (classical) and essential

(refined) quality of the human spirit. Further, by understanding

Lady GaGa as a pop-shamaness, it begs the reader to consider the

artist as a contemporary mystic. In the (“secular”) world today,

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such is the consideration that our “reality” reflects the

cognitive compartmentalization and institutional privatization of

our individual and cultural identities (Fortmation of the Secular, 1-

20). But as the reflective structural composition of institutions

such as Religion, Science, or Politics might reveal, while our

understanding and engagement with the imaginary world around us

may shift and differ, human beings are, as Lady GaGa insightfully

remarks, “Born This Way.” With such an understanding, I see no

reason to confine the academic construction of mystic(ism) or

shaman(ism) to an “Oriental” east, far-away past, or classical

(typically referred to as “primitive” or “primal”) Other (King,

7-34).

It is my intention that, by presenting Lady GaGa through the

lens of “shaman,” the fields of Art History, Anthropology,

Economics, Political Studies, Religion, Sociology, and the

general Cultural Studies might come together in a mutual dialogue

with a specific, yet global, element of “Mass Media” – that

saturates all contemporary Western lives – and the oft

(seemingly) absent Public, where Lady GaGa finds herself as

interlocus in these intersecting (and interconnected) spheres.

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But further, by presenting Lady GaGa as a mystic I hope to disrupt

the narrative and sense of Other so often ascribed to this

category. I intend to do this, first in the sense that such

figures cannot be found, or engaged with, in our own (public)

time and place, “in history;” and second, to reproach this notion

that Other is somehow subversive, or antithetical, to Self, which

births itSelf in distinguishing Itself as being “different.” And

perhaps my third intention is to express the idea that, while

humans and their experiences may be shaped by their respective

time and places within any given cultural history, there are some

human experiences that transcend these barriers…or exist because

these barriers are there. While we may be different, at times

seemingly very; as it would seem to me, our differences make us

much more similar than we would often care to admit. There is no

Self without an Other.

My idea is that the performance Lady GaGa and her fans (We)

enacted for over a year during the Monster Ball found its inception

over 30,000+ years ago, in settings like Chauvet cave; a stage

that bore witness to the revelation of the most sublime

Paleolithic art yet discovered. While only remnants of ghosts of

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these could-be-performances, what remnants they are! Perhaps the

only things as magnificent are those echoes that continue

whispering to us today.

(Fig. 1 Lady GaGa with her revamped “disco stick”)Shaman: Archaic Mystic

Given the extended scope of interest this exposition hopes

to cover, orientation is integral, and all the more essential

given the subject matter of interest being shamanism. The shaman,

most simply put, is a social class of mystic, who has been separated

from others of their society by the intensity of their religious

experience (Eliade). Originally classified/observed within

nomadic, hunter-gather, societies of Siberia and Central Asia

(Znamenski, 3-39), the shaman is a dynamic figure in a communities

life. The shaman was not the sole, or even primary, religious

figure of a community; nor would their role necessarily be

confined to solely “religious” matters. Shamans would often hold

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leadership roles in their tribes (Whitley, 212). Rather than

being a religious specialist, Eliade suggests the shaman is “the

great specialist in the human soul, ” who is “guardian” of a

communities’ human spirit (8, emphasis mine). Yet here seems to

be a point, within the societies and cultures typically

associated with shamanism, “religion” does not always construct

itself as a distinctive ideological/epistemological /cultural

institution (Contemporary Theories, 99). King’s suggestion that,

“Religion has no independent existence apart from the academy,”

exposes what is otherwise taken a prori (King, 10). Westerners can

look at classical societies and see their belief in spirits,

ghosts, and gods and think this equates to some-type of

“religious” belief structure. But, as Niklas Luhmann describes,

the function of religion is that which “grounds the ultimate

indeterminability of all meaning; it absorbs the risk of failure

inherent in all social representation and determinations”

(Contemporary Theories, 99). A belief in otherworldly-entities seems no

stranger than a world-view composed of imaginary nation-states,

further being that neither of these world-views, by themselves,

“ground the ultimate indeterminability of all meaning.” No, this

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function must, and can, be found elsewhere.

Initiation: Marrying the Night

(Fig. 2 Lady GaGa at Grammy Nomination Ceremony, 2012)As a recognized class of classical societies, who make

specific claims of knowledge, shamans must undergo an initiation.

For two reasons, it might seem: first, perhaps, to preserve the

knowledge/power which gives the shaman such social standing,

second, because perhaps the knowledge can only be gained through

an experience itself. Either way, this separates those

individuals who are merely perceived to exhibit shamanic

characteristics, and those who have obtained/developed those

powers to heal others (or potentially hurt). Shamanism often runs

in family lines, but can emerge independently, and individuals

typically describe being “called” to the art, attempts of refusal

not withstanding, or culminating in death (Whitley, 256). The

training of a shaman is not something that would have been

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institutionalized, and while master/student relationships,

followings, or cults could occur, their craft is inherently

mimetic. Rather the success of a shaman, because failure is an

ever-present threat, rests in their charismatic ability and

intuitive use of commonly shared mythologies and symbols to make

their audience believe, this is real (Znamenski, 3-39). So even when

initiation and training are tribal/public affairs, the “official”

initiation is still a private experience. This liminal period is

often assigned to manifestations of sickness or injury, which is

also often accompanied by some type of ‘ecstasy,’ dream vision,

and self-healing. One description is as follows:

[A] future shaman must fall ill and have his body cut in pieces and his blood drunk by […] the souls of dead shamans [who] throw his head into a caldron, where it is melted with certain metal pieces that will […] be part of his ritual costume. (Eliade, 43)

Being consumed by evil spirits, and the shamans of the past, the

initiate gains their wisdom and knowledge of how to cure

different ailments and afflictions (Eliade). While these

narratives must symbolically appeal to the society any respective

shaman comes from, they can all be seen as functional experiences

related to the shaman’s cultural role as “the great specialist in

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the human soul.” These unifying themes, present in many types of

initiation, are those tropes of death and re-birth. Often

initiates will be flayed and confronted with visions of their own

skeleton, which will be disassembled and re-made with metal,

becoming in someway part of their ritual costume (Eliade). This

highlights the importance of the costume in the craft of

shamanism and should not be understated, even if it largely

escapes the scope this paper might be allowed to cover.

The genesis that Lady GaGa presents of her inception, and

the story crafted around her youth, are of comparable ilk.

Engaged with music at an early age, and theatre in school, she

truly found her “mentor,” Lady Starlight, in the New York

underground. Besides the attraction of like-named “Ladies,” GaGa

said she was entranced by Starlight’s ability to project a

character, in a pose, with a laser-like focus and intensity. The

two put together a pop-rock-trash go-go routine, and eventually

GaGa got signed to her first record label (Goodman, 15). The

following events are recounted by Lady GaGa in her music video

Marry the Night, and is her story of autopoietic (self-produced)

enlightenment.

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Even before the video came out, which she also directed,

Lady GaGa explains that it is “autobiographical,” and about “one

of the worst days of my life.” The video begins with GaGa

(Stefani?), as a brunette, being wheeled down a hallway on a

gurney; she is in a hospital gown (fig.1). The viewer begins to

hear a disembodied voice, of GaGa, as she begins to explain:

(fig. 3)

When I look back on my life, it’s not that I don’t want to see things exactly as theyhappened, it’s just that I prefer to remember them in an artistic way. And truthfully, the lie of it all is much more honest because…I invented it. Clinical psychology tells us, arguably, that trauma is the ultimate killer. Memories are notrecycled like atoms and particles in quantum physics…they can be lost forever. It’ssort of like my past is an unfinished painting…and as the artist of that painting, I must fill in all the ugly holes and make it beautiful again. It’s not that I’ve been dishonest, it’s just that I loathe reality… (Marry the Night)

We learn that GaGa is at a “clinic,” and while the nurses really

only wore those “funny hats” to keep the blood from their hair,

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GaGa has chosen to infuse them with an aesthetic value.

Interpretations vary on why GaGa is at clinic, given that she

only ever alludes to the circumstances that brought her there

(but in a sense, does it matter?); “No intimacy for two weeks,”

the nurse tells GaGa as she confesses “I’m gonna be a star…

because I have nothing left to lose.” K.M. Zwick, in “Warrior

Queen: Marry The Night, Trauma, Regression, and Recovery,”

understands GaGa as a survivor of rape. When I interpret GaGa’s

revelation, I “read” a woman who has just undergone an abortion.

What greater ‘thing’ would a woman, chasing fame, ever have to

give up…lose? Either way, GaGa is taken home and lies in bed -

naked. Time passes. You can’t tell how long; but GaGa, back in

“reality”, has already told us it’s all the same day. The phone

rings, and it’s the record label to tell GaGa she’s been dropped.

(fig. 4; GaGa in the tub

bleaching her hair)

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If what follows next cannot be described as an ‘ecstatic

performance,’ I do not know what can. GaGa loses it. As she

explains in an interview, “that was the one moment in the video

where I couldn’t really be the director […] and I said … “I’m

gonna relive that [moment] exactly as it happened, and I’m just

gonna need you to shoot it, because I can’t be the director right

now” (Vevo Interview). GaGa ends her rampage in the tub, a

recurring icon in the Ladies work, finally “explained” as her

original “liminal space” of transformation, bleaching her hair

blond (fig. 2). Transforming her hair into the image of the

iconic female pop star: Britney Spears, Pamela Anderson, Madonna,

Marilyn Monroe, to name but the most obvious references. And

while we cannot know what, if any, noetic knowledge Lady GaGa

obtained from this trauma, nor can we know what noetic knowledge

or powers the shamans of the past gained; we see that by altering

their performativity frame of reference; i.e. by putting on a

costume, they transform themselves into something who-is-not, not

afflicted by an ailment, not weak, not a failure. But perhaps the

true power, which at least GaGa finds (and shares!!!), is the

ability to relive/recreate a past experience through the power of

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performance. As Meghan Vicks discusses in her piece on the video,

“Soldiering Emptiness : Inverting Crucifix,” to even approach the

origin, let alone reach it, is to fundamentally alter it. Meghan

clearly explains this power of art to, “make palatable and even

beautiful real suffering – that kind of suffering that has no

redemptive quality or spark of beauty when one’s enthralled in

it” (Vicks 2011). But this is the power of art, if we can let go

and let it, to transform our awareness of our suffering. As the

German poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote, who GaGa is quite fond

of given that she has a quote from his Letters on her left arm:

“And still Losing is ours, and even Forgetting; has Form in the everlasting State of Transformation. ‘Things which have been let gone’ circle; and though we are seldom the middle, one Circle, it draws around us the unbroken Figure”(translation mine) Auch noch Verlieren ist unser; und selbst das Vergessen / hat noch Gestalt in dem bleibenden Reich der Verwandlung. / Losgelassenes kreist; und sind wir auch selten die Mitte / einem der Kreise: sie ziehn um uns die heile Figur. (“Für Hans Carossa”)

Master of Exorcism : Shaman as Proto-Artist

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(Fig. 9 & 10; from Exorcist interlude)

Having lost “oneself,” and been reborn/recreated in the

spirit world, the shaman gains mastery over the spirits. This

places the shaman within a unique psycho-social position,

considering the world-frame of classical societies. All pains and

happenings had a relational cause that could be traced back to

either the ancestors of old, some otherworldly spirit, or an ill

intending other (Thrower, 99-120). As many authors have

concluded, an essential function of the shaman is to act as a

kind of public, and personal, psychologist (Whitley, 218-19;

Douglass). This is part of their role as a healer. One way this

function manifests itself is through the shaman’s role as

psychopomp, master of séances, as Mary Douglas aptly demonstrates

in Purity and Danger. A shaman is called to help an individual

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suffering from palpitations, back pain, and an overall weakness…

but who is also convinced that his fellow villagers are “against

him.” The psychopomp, knowing of course that the ancestors are to

blame, conducts séances throughout the village, encouraging each

villager to speak out their grievances with the individual, while

allowing him to share his misgivings (Douglas 87).

While this seems like an interesting way of dealing with

physical pain to many Westerners, perhaps it is merely a way in

which we have largely forgotten. Talal Asad, in Formation of the

Secular, reveals that pain does not end in the brain, when it

interprets whatever neural signals it’s receiving from whichever

part of the body; but rather that pain is generated from the brain

itself. The terminus of pain “can be thought of as actions that

are sited at once in cultural and neurophysiological contexts.”

Asad continues, “What a subject experiences as painful, and how,

[…] are themselves modes of living a relationship. The ability to live such

relationships over time transforms pain from a passive experience

into an active one” (84). The séance concludes with a theatrical

performance where the shaman (unknowingly cupping a hand full of

blood,) draws forth a tooth from the fainting patients body. The

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villagers celebrate and congratulate the man. The pain of social

tension has been extracted, albeit symbolically, from his body and

the social-order reformed in the solidarity of belief inspired by

the shaman’s convincing performance. Alas, times change. Lady

GaGa cannot go to every school, or town, where identities

conflict, and social tensions arise; she cannot exorcise each

individual. So she goes about exorcising herself, letting us

watch along the way, feeding us bits of the narrative and showing

us that we each have the innate human power to exorcise our

demons and insecurities from ourselves.

In the video interlude “The Exorcist / Puke on GaGa,” we see

an ethereal and pristine Lady GaGa (with 4 legs) who eventually

becomes straddled by “Stefin,” who then promptly vomits green

glitter all over the statuesque figure. As Rachel Clark points

out in her essay on the piece, “Puke on GaGa – Honoring Vomit,”

this is a reference to past comments made by the singer, such as

in GaGavision 43. “The creative process is 15-minutes of vomiting

… this giant regurgitation of my thoughts and feelings, that I

spend days, months, years fine tuning. But the idea is you have

to honor your vomit, you have to honor those fifteen minutes.”

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But to produce, one must also consume. And just like vomit, which

as Clark points out is a physical and bodily act that we can often not control,

“the act of re-appropriation [is] both transformative and

radical,” and likewise a natural bodily process that is often out

of our control. “The creation of art is marked with violence and

suffering,” but through the internal act of transformation and

re-appropriation, “that kind of suffering that has no redemptive

quality or spark of beauty” (Vicks, 2011), can become an

inspiring piece of artwork. The closing image of the film may be

GaGa, bound-and-twisted, into some horrific contemporary idol;

yet Clark points out again, “the real art here is … the artistic

regurgitation upon them [the former and later idols]. By honoring our

vomit, we confront our subjective existence within the raw meat

of our bodies and recognize that it is only through imagination

and creative expression that we can be free” (Clark, 2011).

Grounding the Indeterminable : Experiencing the Representation

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(Fig. 11 Lady GaGa and the Fame Monster)

As the former section hopefully demonstrates, the shaman “as

poet, myth-recounter, and performing artist […] enables their

audiences to sense in their own souls a force greater than

themselves” (Asad, 50). That force which can alter our sufferings

and pain. Douglas’s gives another such example of shamanic

healing from Levi-Strauss’s account of a shaman’s magical

performance to aid a difficult labor. Collectively, the shaman

succeeds by “making an emotional situation thinkable.” As Douglas

expands:

[T]he body and internal organs of the patient are the theatre of action in the story, but by the transformation of the problem into a dangerous journey and battle with cosmic forces, by shuttling back and forth between the arena of the body and the arena of the universe, the Shaman is able to impose his view of the case. The patient’s terror is focused on the strength of the mythic adversaries andher hopes of recovery fixed on the powers and ruses of the Shaman and his troups. (89)

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As we can see, the shaman’s performance meets with Asad’s

assertion. In this sense then, shamans are the great masters of

awareness: their own, and of others. By intuitively utilizing art

and performance, they direct and transform the awareness of the

individual and community, allowing them to live relationships of

pain, and thereby changing their reality.

But Lady GaGa is not attending to the labor pains of a

mother giving birth; rather, she must attend to ever-increasing

throngs of “Little Monsters” as the new vying “Pop-Queen” of this

infantile digital era. So what ailment does Lady GaGa attempt to

address in her pieces, in her ever “present” performance?

Speaking with great affect in her voice on Oprah, she tries to

explain simply: “All the things that I do in terms of the Fame,

and in terms of the Fame: Monster, it’s meant to sort of make it

a bit easier to swallow this… horrific media world that we live

in” (Oprah, 2010). And so for The Monster Ball, Lady GaGa, who

always is uniquely aware of remaining relatable, fashions an Oz-

esq story…about getting ready to go to the concert, and all the

hiccups that happen along the way. Among there are; the car

breaking down, traversing the (New York) subway, getting sucked-

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up by a twister and landing in Central Park (New York), getting

lost and “eaten” by monster in said park, being abandoned by your

friends just before arriving at “the greatest party ever,” left

to face the “Fame Monster” alone, who then promptly eats you,

only to be destroyed by your “explosive sexuality,” and finally

concluding with the arrival at The MonsterBall, when the house-

anthem “Bad Romance” blares and all those present fall in for the

idiosyncratic mantra “Ra-Ra ah-ah-ah; Ro mah ro-mah-mah, GaGa, ooh-la-la.”

As it seems to me, GaGa has become mythopoeic in response to

the progressively changing and complexing order of our world,

where the rituals and ideologies of the past seem more-and-more

removed and disconnected. Joseph Cambell, eat your heart out.

However, while The MonsterBall makes similar use of the shuttling

between fantastical-exaggeration and would-be mundane, the

purpose (besides that stated previously by the Lady) seems

unclear. Certainly people are not suffering from the process of

going to a concert. While this has the effect of building a true

sense of community solidarity, we can also see it as a function

that works to “ground the ultimate indeterminability of all

meaning.” And this is important, especially given the current

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trend that attempts to construct shamanism as that primitive

expression of mysticism that “birthed” religion (Contemporary

Theories, 201), which is in direct contrasts with what Eliade

describes as “[…] the universal character of the ideology implied in shamanism.

The shamans did not create the cosmology, the mythology, and the

theology of their respective tribes; they only interiorized it,

“experienced” it, and used it as the itinerary for their ecstatic

journey” (265-66, emphasis mine). This brings the conversation to

an interesting “chicken or egg” type of scenario, which alas

mostly falls outside the scope of this paper. But her agreement

seems to fall inherently in line with Eliad’s understanding of

the issue, as she states in her Manifesto of Little Monsters:

There's something heroic about the way my fans operate their cameras. So precisely and intricately, so proudly, and so methodically. Like Kings writing the history of their people. It's their prolific nature that both creates and procures what will later be perceived as the "kingdom." So, the real truth about Lady Gagafans lies in this sentiment: They are the kings. They are the queens. They write thehistory of the kingdom, while I am something of a devoted Jester. It is in the theory of perception that we have established our bond. Or, the lie, I should say, for which we kill. We are nothing without our image. Without our projection. Without the spiritual hologram of who we perceive ourselves to be, or rather to become, in the future.When you are lonely, I’ll be lonely too, And this is the fame.Love and art. 12-18 1974Lady GaGa

The speech is woven into another video interlude of the Monster

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Ball, over a vignette of dark and disturbing scenes of GaGa

wearing different types of masks. She is monstrous, sometimes

even horrific, but there is an instance when she lifts the mask

with Mickey Mouse on it to reveal a poignant vulnerability in a

smile of disarming innocence; all the more disturbing given the

images which have juxtaposed it. The final scene leaves us with

GaGa again in a bondage mask; a zipper across the face gives the

appearance of lips, pulling a key from her mouth.

The basic message that has been deduced, even by “little

monsters,” is to say that GaGa is only the reflection of desires

her subjects wish her to become; a reflection of the culture and

its narratives, but now also of the reflections of a reflection.

GaGa turns the audiences’ pre-concert ritual, which essential

involves becoming Lady GaGa through an appropriation of the

various hodgepodges of iconographic representations associated

with her, that she herself had re-appropriated; and then turning

their travel to The MonsterBall, into a cosmic affair where you have

to fight to get to that mythic place where you can “be yourself.”

GaGa insists that the meaning of The MonsterBall is “to free

yourself,” from all those insecurities, doubts, and memories of

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anyone who ever told you that you couldn’t. Her message is that

you’re a superstar baby, and she believes in you.

And so it would seem our point is coming into focus. Lady

GaGa says she created The MonsterBall so all her fans would have a

place to call home, or at least gather in number; it is a place

where the reality of your identity will remain uncontested, and

you can be “who you really are.” But the idea is that you can

carry that on, that after “tonight, you can be whoever you wanna

be, whenever you wanna be!” And, if we can say Lady GaGa is such

a thing as a contemporary shaman, perhaps she can help reveal

something about this ephemeral element of our past. Perennialists

like Aldous Huxley sought to find a type of experience among

humans that could be identified as an experience with an

“objective” reality. Lady GaGa, however, has no interest in

anything of the sort. In fact she loathes reality, preferring a

giant dose of bullshit any day, anything but the “truth.”

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(Fig. 12 & 13, Lady GaGa from the Manifesto)

Bibliography

Asad, T. (2003). Formations of the secular. Stanford, CA: Standford University Press.

Douglas, M. (1966). Purity and danger. New York, Ny: Routledge.

Eliade, M. (1951). Shamanism: Archaic techniques of ecstasy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press.

Goodman, L. (2011). Lady gaga: Critical mass fashion. New York, Ny: St. Martin's Griffin.

King, R. (1999). Orientalism and religion: Postcolonial theory, india, and 'the mystic east'. New

York, Ny: Routledge.

Stausberg, M. (2009). Contemporary theories of religion: A critical companion. New York, Ny:

Routledge.

Thrower, J. (1999). Religion: The classical theories. Washington, DC: Georgetown University

Press.

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Whitley, D. (2009). Cave painting and the human spirit: The origin of creativity and belief.

Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Znamenski, A. (2007). The beauty of the primitive. New York, Ny: Oxford University Press.