Femininomenon: Ep1 Lana Del Rey

This podcast episode explores the performance and persona of Lana Del Rey in the context of popular culture. The host discusses how Lana's image and music have been controversial and polarizing, but also appreciated for their originality. The episode provides background on Lana's upbringing and the creation of her stage name. It also highlights the themes in Lana's music, such as Americana and references to American culture. The host reflects on the significance of Lana's performance as a representation of America and how it evokes nostalgia and pride. Hi guys, welcome to Femineminon, a podcast about feminine phenomenons in our popular culture, investigating what makes them tick and why you should care about them. This is our first episode and I have been deliberating for just so long on where to begin. I've been thinking of Lena Dunham, Elizabeth Taylor, Azealia Banks, Darsha, Ballerina Pharmac. You guys have seriously no idea how hard it was to choose who to start with. Anyone I mentioned will definitely be getting an episode in the future, but today I wanted to start with who I would say is the poster child for courting notoriety and controversy, a true femininemon, if you may. You might love her, you might hate her, but you sure as hell know her and that is the incomparable Lana Del Rey. Okay, something important to mention is that I'm going to be discussing Lana in a more abstract sense today, like I'm not really interested specifically in who she is as a person, more as an idea, a character and a performance and how we as a culture have responded to that performance and what that means about us, yeah. So in regards to the Lana as a performance side of things, you might be a little confused because Lana isn't really an actor on the stage or in a theatre sense, but the definition of performance I've found is actually super broad. I've been doing some research and I discovered Robert Leach's Theatre Studies, The Basics book, which has been so helpful in informing me on my ideas around this topic. Yeah, anyway, Leach reckons that any piece of behaviour slash doing slash action which is in some way marked off or framed as a performance, children playing mummies and daddies perform, lectures on their podiums perform, hip-hop dances perform in nightclubs, so on and so forth. If it's still a little bit confusing, the way that I understand performance is it's doing something for the sake of being seen and received by other people or it's an action you undergo that makes reference to other similar actions that people have done before. So as soon as you think about what you are doing, it becomes performance. I find this really, really fascinating and as a theatre major, I find this so illuminating in the sense that it really shows that theatre is such a fundamental part of human nature and the way our minds work, because as far as I am aware, we are the only creatures that perform and evaluate our own behaviour in this way, but I digress, pardon me. So when you are thinking about performance within the terms of the definition I just gave, it is so easy to understand that just about every singer, songwriter, actor, anyone in the public eye is doing a performance of some kind, but what I think makes Lana so special is that from the moment she really burst onto the scene in about 2011, her performance and creation of Lana Del Rey was already so defined, so intentional, so crafted and distinct visually, sonically, it just blew people away, which is absolutely not to say that she was well received, but more on that later. So I know I said I wasn't really interested in Lana as a person, but it is super important to give you guys some context around Lana and how she came to be. So just in some broad strokes, Lana Del Rey was created by Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, a woman born in 1985, New York, New York and raised in Lake Placid, which is upstate New York. So we can glean through her music that Elizabeth was quite troubled growing up. She cuts a very tragic figure if we were to look at her life through a narrative lens, I suppose. She was very into partying, she has a history with substance abuse, she has had lots of very passionate, tumultuous, potentially abusive relationships with more powerful men than her that often wound her, we hear a lot of that in her music. She was very wealthy growing up as well, and I know I'm being vague, but all you need really is a sense of how Lana came to be. She briefly went by the name of Lizzie Grant, she released an album under that name, but it was pulled from circulation and basically Lizzie Grant didn't exist. And about a year later, she became Lana Del Rey and she released Born to Die. So I loved Born to Die, I think it was absolutely revolutionary, the kind of sound and imagery that she was using was unbelievably original and creative and was so unlike and in opposition to so much of the popular music that was out there at that time, and it was just so polarizing as well. Like the album either got 5 stars or like negative 3, just so you guys can get a sense of the type of vitriol that her album produced, so I've got 2 stars here from the Rolling Stones. She's just another aspiring singer not ready to make an album, given her cheap image it's surprised how dull, dreary and pop-starved Born to Die is. About 5.5 points out of 10 from Pitchfork, you'd be hard-pressed to find any song on which Lana Del Rey reveals an interiority or figures herself as anything more complex than an ice cream cone-licking object of male desire. So, how lovely. My thoughts, this album is by no means her best album, but the hatred and backlash it received was crazy, it was undeserved. Something about this album and just Lana Del Rey as a person and as a character really rubbed so many people the wrong way. But a really interesting thing is that in the years since then it has become regarded in a new, more appreciative light and I think that is the beauty of Lana's work as well, is that as she released several subsequent albums later, it's when you see everything together and what each of the albums mean when they're complementing one another that you are able to realise the genius, the mythology and the character, the performance of Lana Del Rey. The album's themes are mostly concerned around sex, love, drugs, patriotism, capitalism and essentially this idea of a decaying Americana. Okay, so cycling back to what I was saying earlier, if we understand performance as to be a type of reference or citation, then Lana fits the bill so perfectly because when you listen to her music, it's like, literally when is she not citing something? I have a little soundbite from one of her songs, I've Born To Die, this one is called Off To The Races, hold on. Righto, so yeah, right off the bat, we've got references to geographical American locations, we've got Las Vegas, Los Angeles, we've got references to Lolita, the light of my life, the fire of my loin, pardon me, that is a line that Humbert says to Lolita in Vladimir Vokov's book, we've got references to colours, to red, white and blue, we've got references to money, to expensive champagne and all of this stuff, it's just one snippet out of one Lana's whole discography, she weaves this incredibly rich tapestry with frequent allusions to very recognisable, significant aspects and motifs of Americana. I think that is part of the success of her music as well, is that you hear it and you go, oh yeah, she's singing about Elvis and she's singing about Coney Island and Billie Holiday, Marilyn Monroe, American flags, ice cream sundaes, red heart-shaped sunglasses and white lines on your man's tanned leather skin, like all this stuff. Her sound is so visual, which is a part of why it is so accessible, she's constantly referencing the familiar, she is performing her America as she sees it, and it is her understanding of America that is caused for it to mean so much to so many people, and this is partly why there was so much backlash when it was initially introduced out into the zeitgeist, is because around then, and definitely nowadays too, there was a sort of trend to say, oh, fuck America, America sucks, and there's this idea floating around, particularly around 2016, Trump's America, where there was this sense we are living at the end of times, basically, the glory days are behind us, but were the glory days even something to be proud of, and they were built on the back of bigotry and wars and slavery, and there was this real crisis of the American spirit, where it was suddenly shameful to be proud of being American, and this is really troubling to me, because patriotism is another one of those fundamental aspects of human nature, because it's basically just tribalism, but on a huger, larger scale, and to suddenly view your tribe or your nation as shameful is really poisonous to the collective human consciousness, because that is something that we need to have a secure individual identity, is to have a secure national identity of who we are, and what are our values, and what do we stand for, and what Lana was really capable of is re-inspiring the sense of national pride, because she still sees the country as so beautiful and deep and nuanced and romantic, and there's a comfort and a beauty, I think, people found in being reminded of what your country was capable of, and that wasn't just the sort of like good, like homey things as well, like she made America cool, she made it very glitzy and very glamorous, and she was bringing back to the collective consciousness the ideas of like why America is what it is, because it was able to produce so much culturally, and suddenly people were hearing all of these things again in her music, and it was like, oh yeah, I remember this, yeah, pardon, I read this really fabulous quote that is also from Robert Leach's book, which is performance images the world, from the images we can find explanations of the world and how we participate in its ongoingness, in other words, performance is a particular way of reflecting on our identity, perhaps especially our communal identity, and communicating about it. Lana performs an image of the world, aka America, this image is, it is nostalgic, and it is melancholic, but the sense of national pride is so strong, and something that is interesting, and this is even when she is admitting that the country is faltering, like in her Lust for Life album, she is still proud to be American, but she, there's a sense that she is saddened to believe that something so great can falter, like it is currently, and I know I'm speaking like I am American, all of a sudden, which is, if anything, just a testament to how powerful Lana's music is, because music is so abstract, and semiotically undefined, it does have this really unparalleled ability to connect with our emotions in such a powerful way. Online, and you heard it from me a second ago, but there's this meme where it's like, I just saluted the fact that I'm Jamaican, like Lana's ability to create and maintain this kind of national devotion, even when you are not from that nation, is just incredible. Another really significant aspect of Lana's performance is that people at first didn't want to believe that it was even real, like she was inauthentic, she was said to be a poser, because her prior Lizzie Grant persona, her wealthy parents, like all of this basically threw into question whether or not people should even bother listening to what she has to say, which, honestly, is fair enough. People want to know that what they're listening to isn't just for money, or for like streaming, like they want it to be real. But in the years since, I personally think that we have been able to learn that Lana Del Rey is by far one of the most authentic popular mainstream artists that we have. Period. Which is a bold statement, I know. So how do we even measure authenticity? I had a really excellent discussion with Jeff Stahl, who is a popular music teacher at VU Dub on this topic, and basically there is two ways to be authentic. One, there's artistic authenticity, wherein the authenticity is derived by being creative and original, and two, there's commercial authenticity, wherein you become authentic by using authenticity and relatability as a marketing tool. Like, for example, Taylor Swift has manufactured a relatable girl-next-door, just-like-you image, which is great. Her brand is that she could be your older sister, she's nice, she's friendly, she is very palatable. And that is also where her main criticism comes from, funnily enough, where when people criticize Taylor, it's more like, oh, she's basic, or she's boring, but that's because she's marketed to be palatable, essentially. So Lana, on the other hand, when she came onto the scene, she had none of this branding, and because of her wealthy background and the controversial content in her songs, meant that people were less willing to take to heart what she had to say, because, first of all, it was really grating that she would be saying these contrarian things, but also, who was she, even, to be saying those kinds of stuff in the first place? Like, people didn't know her. But what makes Lana special is how she continues in that same vein for years, through massive backlash, public scandals, controversy, please look up Questions for the Culture to learn about one of her most significant controversies, very relevant, don't have time to discuss it now, however. Through all of this, she continues writing about what she believes to be important, what deserves to be expressed artistically about America, being a woman in America, and she has refused to bend to anyone if that meant compromising that artistic vision and integrity. So, essentially, Lana's authenticity was earned across years and derives from the fact that she, so, okay, if for some reason, singing about America or relationships gone bad became taboo, don't know how that would happen, but anyway, Taylor Swift would sing beautiful, amazing songs about love or family or her cats or something else, because just as she is supremely talented, she also has a brand. But Lana would go on writing about the shitty man that she has been with till all the record companies have booted her, and even then, she would be writing and selling poems and doing anything, because what she has to say comes from her soul. And writing and making songs is something that she needs to do. And that's how you know when you are listening to Lana is that you are listening to an unfettered performance of the soul, because that has been tested, and she is still continuing to do so, which is so, so valuable, because in listening to her truth, in Lana's truth, there is a truth in ourselves and in our wider collective consciousness that we are able to access. Before she deleted her Twitter account, she had this really beautiful quote from Walt Whitman in her bio. Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. Our culture needs Lana Daldwy for what she represents, essentially, the paradox of modern existence. She loves people that hurt her, she yearns for the past, a country that is slipping away, and she is constantly grappling with the beauty and the decay that modern existence is faced with every day. And her persona beyond the music is just as problematic as said music's content, her public persona as well. But we live in such a black and white world at the moment that even this idealized reflection of reality is so crucial and is just so nourishing for our culture. We need Lana Daldwy so we can see ourselves, or a side of ourselves. Okay, I think I'm going to wrap the pod up here, though I'm sure so many of you would love to hear me wax lyrical about Lana for god knows how long I could go on for. But yeah, Feminomenon is actually a great start, I think. Please let me know in the comments if you guys have any suggestions for future episodes. I've linked my weekly newsletter and this week's Pinterest board, which was just delicious to create. So yeah, check that out too. Thank you guys, I'll see ya. See my muscle like diamonds, my baby crimson and purple. you