In my first blog post about Lady Gaga’s Judas, I asserted that it isn’t heretical. In my second blog post about Judas, I may have suggested that it is, although that wasn’t my intention: Gaga becomes (not Christ but) a Christ figure, not a replacement for Christ but a new pathway into the story of Christ for those who have been blocked from taking the traditional route. This blog post is about to sound even more heretical than the first, but I hope you’ll bear with me!
Asking the right questions
As I said in my first Judas essay, the Judas video paints a very clear picture of the Christian struggle between good and evil. Even further, the video applauds public admission of this struggle and the honesty and humility of a person who can say, “I’m still in love with Judas.” And that’s true – I still find the performances of the three main figures very moving. But I know that this is not the only meaning of the video, and I believe that the main purpose of the video is not to reiterate the story of the Passion, but to use that story as a framework, perhaps even a foil, for another story. With the Judas video, we look at two stories side by side, and what we get is not a nice moral at the end, but just the unique questions that arise from those stories’ juxtaposition.
This is why contemporary art is hard to digest. If you ask, “What does it mean?” you are asking the wrong question. Some better questions are “What am I really looking at?” and “What does it point to?”
Let’s start with “What am I really looking at?”
I think you are looking at two different stories. One I’ve explained – the unique but traditional reiteration of the Christian struggle. The second story is something like my second essay, but bigger – the story of Gaga as spiritual leader.
The Gaga of the first story is a troubled follower, but the defiant leader Gaga breaks through repeatedly, and the more I watch the video, the less Jesus and Judas appear to have much to do with it.
The Second Story: Gaga, Warrior Apostle?
Let’s trace the second story, starting at the beginning. Gaga, on the motorcycle holding on to Jesus, smiles over his shoulder, his glimmering crown of thorns only edging into the frame. (Although Gaga appears to love Jesus, this scene should make us as uncomfortable as anything – Gaga is hanging out with Christ right on camera, smiling and laughing, her arm draped around the Divine Son. This reminds us with startling clarity that the divine is that close to us, and the unholy is that close to us, too). The camera follows Gaga’s head as it moves from either side of Jesus’ head, and Gaga’s face remains in focus while Jesus’ remains out of focus. Gaga, and not Jesus, is the star here.
As soon as they arrive in “New Jerusalem,” as Gaga has called it (one minute in), Jesus disappears. He is, apparently, wearing a helmet and face mask that completely hides him. Gaga waves a giant blue cape as they ride in, dismounts, and the camera follows her, leaving Jesus behind. Gaga commands the scene.
The first dance scene begins – Gaga, in flashy red two-piece, leads a troupe of dancers dressed in neutral rags in bold, aggressive choreography. The film cuts back and forth between the dancing and close-ups of Gaga on the motorcycle with Jesus.
The film will carry on this way throughout, alternating between story 1 – the narrative of Jesus, Judas and Gaga torn between them – and story 2, in which Gaga commands scenes, stares down the camera, and leads troupes of dancers in defiant choreography. Even at times when we appear to be watching story 1, elements of story 2 break through, such as in several shots where Gaga walks ahead of Jesus, or in the shot I referenced in the last Judas post where a woman leans her head on Gaga’s shoulder instead of Jesus’.
I’ll take a moment to draw your attention to two segments of the video where the presence of two stories is very obvious. The drama of story 1 crescendos with Gaga having to paint Judas’ face with the lipstick that will empower his betrayal of Jesus, but this scene is cut with a dance scene in which Gaga and dancers lunge with their fists held up, in a stance not dissimilar from a boxer beginning a match. Cutting back to story 1, Gaga smears the lipstick on Judas’ face and falls to the ground in extreme emotional duress.
Skip ahead to 4:37 minutes – Gaga again falls to her knees in front of Jesus. But this downward movement is immediately contrasted with an upward movement - in the next scene Gaga stands in the tub between Jesus and Judas, sliding her hands up her own thighs, suggesting sexuality and power. These are two different Gagas, two different stories.
Now may be a good time to recall that historically, women have been considered incapable of reconciling their good/chaste selves with their evil/sexy selves. A woman could be all one or all the other, but a woman who found herself to be some of both was bound to crack up, Black Swan-style. In other words, Gaga collapses at least partly because collapsing is what women do. She plays out that traditional story but also bursts through it with defiance and inner power.
What does it point to?
Okay, so we see the second Gaga now, but what is she all about? This is where we start with “What does it point to?” First of all, the themes that we see in Judas are themes we’ve seen with Gaga before, and recently. Redemption, baptism even, self-assertion, the reality of good and evil as inextricable – all these themes cropped up in Gaga’s last video, Born This Way. Judas points back to Born This Way – so BTW should inform our “reading” of Judas. Anyway, Gaga has told us repeatedly that the new album will be heavily spiritual, so we can expect the various songs to present individual pieces of the overall picture of Gaga’s spirituality.
Baptism in the Primordial Ooze
Well, Born This Way is a creation myth that asks us to consider creation as eternal and our own spiritual (re)birth as infinite and self-empowered. In other words, Born This Way is about being born again. But not just once – over and over again (some background on this can be found in the long lost BTW essay).
Being "born this way" refers to a kind of post-baptism self - not the way you were actually born, but the way you are re-born. Every performance of Born This Way, including the video, features a symbolic representation of baptism. This video Gaga posted of her performances on the Graham Norton show includes a very recognizable representation of baptism (Born This Way begins at 5:33 minutes in). In this performance, a baptismal pool takes center stage - and it looks very much like the glass-front baptismal pools in Baptist churches. Gaga and her dancers climb into it and cover themselves with water. It's difficult to see on the video, but at one point Gaga even does a back bend that looks just like a baptism.
Gaga herself calls the baptismal waters "goo" and "afterbirth" (at about 10:10 minutes in). Calling it "afterbirth" stresses the idea of baptism as rebirth and confirms that "born this way" really means "re-born this way."
In the BTW video, the baptism looks somewhat different. Here it is:
Think I'm crazy for calling that baptism? Well, I see why you'd say that. But if you watched the Graham Norton performance above, you can see that the movement in this segment is the same as the more straight-forward baptism in that clip. They are covering themselves with the liquid, anointing themselves with it. That's baptism. But it's not water, so what is it?
It looks like paint, in flesh tones from white to black, swirled together, and a multiracial team of dancers anoint themselves with it and rise from it. Is it just me? It reminds me of the "primordial ooze" from which all living organisms are said to have evolved. And Gaga calls it "the goo."
Here we go again, mixing the spiritual with the secular. What does it mean to be baptized in the primordial ooze? Baptism gets fused with evolution for this result: Born This Way presents spiritual redemption not as a one-time, bright light, road-to-Damascus conversion moment but as a conscious evolution of the soul. We refine ourselves repeatedly, by being [re]Born This Way again and again as we come closer to our divine goal. (For Gaga, the divine goal is to be without prejudice or hate, to love and validate all people. Again, there is some more on all this in the long lost BTW essay.)
The problem of sin
The emphasis on spiritual evolution causes us to look at redemption in a different way. Redemption, in Born This Way, is more a fulfillment of soul-potential than a divine intervention. But if redemption comes from spiritual refinement, a soul at work on itself (with divine inspiration but not intervention), what does that mean for sin and salvation?
If there is no singular moment of salvation, then there is no “saved” and no “damned.” A “Christian” is a work in progress, not a ticketholder for heaven. “Sin” is the rough patches we smooth away, not the evilness that inevitably marks us for hell. Sin and sanctity are both our mettle, the mediums we use to re-shape our souls.
This, I believe, is what Judas presents.
They all fall down
I have to take a minute here to point you to my favorite Gaga scholar, the brilliant Meghan Vicks of Gaga Stigmata fame. In her essay, she brilliantly points out the ways in which Judas collapses binary oppositions. “Binary oppositions” is a literary vocab word referring to concepts that are considered mutually exclusive – up/down, hot/cold, heart/head, male/female, good/evil, etc. Much of art and literature seeks to prove that some of these oppositions may not be oppositions at all, and that includes Judas.
I don’t know much about art, so I’m glad Meghan pointed out that Gaga’s makeup mimics the paintings of religious icons, in which the eyes were heavily emphasized. These icons were considered sacred, meaning that there was some divinity in them, though they were only earthly objects. By presenting herself as an icon, Gaga collapses the binary opposition between “human” and “divine.” That is not to say that she is calling herself a god – that is to say that “human” and “divine” are not mutually exclusive, that humanity and divinity can co-exist within people. And that’s not a radical concept – I’ve heard it said in many religious circles that there is God in all of us.
Similarly, Judas breaks down the opposition between good and evil. Gaga, loving both Jesus and Judas, is both good and evil. Gaga has said many times, “If you’re not casting a shadow, you’re not standing in the light,” meaning that good and evil are linked like light and shadow, and you’ll always have them both. Sin and sanctity are both our mettle.
In Judas, Gaga is follower and leader, loyal and rebellious, conflicted and assured, faithful and heretical… as the oppositions come crashing down. Even “male” and “female” seem to be collapsed, as one section alternates between identical scenes of male and female dancers. The characters themselves challenge many of those oppositions on their own: Mary Magdalene, the prostitute apostle, is chaste and unchaste, sinner and saint; Jesus is king and pauper, servant and master, human and divine.
Even betrayal and forgiveness get collapsed, as Jesus urges Gaga to give Judas the lipstick that empowers the kiss. The betrayal must happen for the forgiveness to exist. And Jesus smiles as Judas kisses him – the forgiveness and the betrayal are simultaneous. Like the light and shadow Gaga described, betrayal and forgiveness are the opposite sides of the same coin.
Meghan points out that even the choreography seems to point to the collapsing of opposites. She explains that the movements are largely symmetrical, with a movement toward one direction reflected with a movement toward the other direction, followed by a movement that seems to bring those two movements together.
Think again about the first verse:
When he calls to me I am ready
I’ll wash his feet with my hair if he needs
Forgive him when his tongue lies through his brain
Even after three times he betrays me
Immediately the lyrics disorient you – because they collapse the various narratives of the Christian story. Mary Magdalene, Jesus, sinner, forgiver – they have all been merged. In Gaga’s stories, no one gets to be a saint but no one has to be a villain. By collapsing the Christian oppositions of sin and salvation, Gaga shows us the end of molds for what a Christian is, and the beginning of real soul freedom. There is no sanctity, only authenticity.
In Gaga’s theology, we don’t atone by praying our regret or by trying to impose rules that stifle our true selves. We atone by nurturing our best selves, being honest with ourselves, and reforming ourselves through positive self-love, not through negative self-criticism. When we collapse sin and sanctity, the result is authenticity, honesty, truth, and the potential to be born the way we were meant to be.
Some of you might feel like a Judas
In her recent interview on Ellen, Lady Gaga relayed this story (5:20). At one of her concerts, Lady Gaga said to her audience, “Some of you might feel like a Judas.” She saw many of her fans burst into tears.
Perhaps those who were not raised religious would not understand this. And some religious people may not understand it either. But many of us who were raised religious have taken a beating – religion has enriched us in some ways but deeply wounded us in others.
At a college Bible study I listened to my peers explain that if a woman’s husband beats her, they should try couple’s therapy, and the woman should do everything she can to “rehabilitate” her abuser. Now, that hurts. I can’t even imagine the wounds that gays and lesbians have sustained from the church. As my favorite feminist blogger explains, the oppressed experience their oppression as hatred. We feel hated and we’ve been encouraged to hate ourselves, to think of ourselves as worthless, maybe even damned. So Christianity isn’t the yellow brick road for everyone. Some of us need a new pathway.
For those “some,” the guilt and shame that has been imposed on them is too much to cope with. The exclusion and ostracism is too heavy to bear. Gaga wants to free them from that burden – she wants them to love themselves. So she needs a new story, or at least a new pathway to the old story.
Judas gives us a way to overcome our shame. After all, you can't feel like a Judas when you're singing "Juda-ah-ah."
Gaga herself has said that the Judas video is a “cultural” story, not a “religious” story. That means that questions like, “Did Jesus’ death on the cross atone for the sins of all humanity?” are not at play here. If you are wondering how you can make a story about Jesus and not include that bit, the answer is with courage. Many literal thinkers will reject it or even vilify it. But all Gaga is doing is using symbols she knows we will understand (Jesus=good/holy, Judas=bad/unholy) to tell a new story that, while different from the old story, explores or responds to the old story.
I think Judas opens up questions like these: How would we be different if we powered our spirituality with self-love and strength instead of self-rejection and criticism? Would we behave differently if we put more emphasis on self-directing our spiritual growth instead of depending on a moment of conversion? How would Christianity as a whole be different if we recognized equally the sin and sanctity in all people? Would we judge less, love more, and come closer to reaching our spiritual potential?
I don’t think Lady Gaga is blasphemous, and I’m inspired by the ideas and questions Judas introduces. If you don’t agree, well, you can “Judas-kiss me if offenced.” But you know that’s not very Christian, right?
