Why is lana such a bad girl?
Lana del Ray made a movie about a sexy, doll like
anti-heroine. The mini movie on the one hand looks stunning and on a rainy
English night it’s a slice of a naughty endless summer. Like Lana tells us
“I am fucking crazy but I am free.”
1 2 On the other hand our doll shows a frightening
vulnerability and puts herself in real danger, she also smokes, drinks but
still manages to look stunning. The most shocking thing about the movie is she
has lots of sex with older “ugly” men, it’s not safe sex either. The video was
only ever presented as a movie, or another Lana del Ray ultra-feminine,
feverish daydream. Online feminists went crazy at the eccentric singer’s
fictional behaviour. She calls Lana’s behaviour “misguided” and fulfilling
every bad female stereotype. Another tells us she is no longer in the popular
feminist role model gang.
Lana never said she was the next Naomi Wolf or Germaine
Greer, she’s never admitted to being a feminist and is not telling people how
to live. The video asks more questions than it answers, is this girl crazy or
free? Why is she behaving like a crazy woman? What is the attraction of
ugly bikers?
3 Now Lana daring to be a sexy child girl may not the only
thing that makes people feel she’s “gone too far”. Teens have always been “folk
devils” while being “Mods and Rockers” trashing seaside towns and each other or
the last big scary teen tribe were ravers who took drugs and danced till
dawn at huge, illegal outdoor parties. There were fears about safety and
morality and a feeling they could cause the end of civilisation. A few people
fall victim of bad behaviour most settle down, get married and bore their kids
with tales of being a better rebel than them. All Lana does is make a
movie and other feminists are shocked, is this about feminism or something
else?
5 Lana is living outside the modern American dream, that
dream involves money, family, self-indulgence or spending a fortune on your
beautiful children would or anti-heroine be any happier is she got a career and
shopping habit or lived a Betty Friedan nightmare looking after ungrateful
toddlers way before she was ready to spend her days cleaning and babbling to
babies. If she lived out either dream she would be living somebody else’s
dream, the capitalist one. We might be shocked at the portrayal of
self-destruction but it’s her life to destroy and feminists should believe
women have the right to get out of the doll’s house and live how we like. Of
course many feminists believe a career is our salvation but maybe this
character doesn't fancy it, not when there’s a bike to get on and a party to go
to. Lana ticks every outlaw box she can, her love looks like it comes for free,
just like the 60s Hippie commune, she dances till dawn like the ravers and
she’s a deviant woman like the ladettes.
7 A career would really still probably involve being
underpaid by a man and thanks to capitalism she wouldn’t be paid very well for
her time. Germaine Greer points out the dream of women in the workplace and
feminism in general is a very conservative one, another half of the population
can work till they drop. Look at Britain’s greatest career girl, Margret
Thatcher, she made it by behaving like a man.
Our anti-heroine is also depressed, then happy, then
depressed. Lana del Ray is daring to be weak. Lana dares to be foolish, she
does dangerous things and takes risks and these bloggers don't like it.
She falls in love and messes up, and is weak. Sounds like a human being making
their life up as they go along. Now feminists are not allowed to get depressed,
feel trapped or be naughty. Is that freedom, do we have to live our lives
perfectly? Lana is not telling anyone how to live, she lives many lives through
her videos, she rarely tells the media anything about herself and she has never
written a feminist book she simply expresses herself in a postmodern mash up of
femininity. We watch another Lana drama because she uses intelligence and
beauty in all her but this is not life.
So what is going on? Marxist theory tells us the money
makers want us all to work hard and have the same morals, we need to be good
and virtuous little money makers, this may not serve us but it will serve the
machine. Are feminists also falling for this myth of the “good person” and the
“good role model”? Maybe we aren't slut shaming her but we're too frightened to
take the chance on a risky life too far outside the dream society thinks up for
us, maybe it’s time feminist asked themselves are they living out other
people’s dreams and maybe they should live their own.
2
http://portable.tv/music/post/a-rant-about-lana-del-rey-and-her-idiotic-new-video-for-ride/
3
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/moral_panic.htm
4
https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/99sep/9909friedan.htm
6
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-21698522
8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CITBPjJCU9o
