The late 2000s and early 2010’s was an era truly unmatched in its ability to produce an array of iconic songs and accompanying music videos. Two trailblazers who truly made their mark during this period are none other than pop legends Lady Gaga and Fergie. These women managed to dominate in record sales, while simultaneously creating a name for themselves in a primarily male-dominated industry. Both have been heavily revered as camp icons and have demonstrated this extreme campiness through their visual content. These music videos tend to show not only a camp-like pattern of aesthetics, but also often portray visuals in which they openly display their own sexuality.
To start, it’s difficult to deduce an exact definition for the nuanced concept that is “camp,” but you know it when you see it. In simplest terms, camp is an aesthetic principle that garners appeal for it’s overly eccentric and often ironic presentation. This idea of camp is nothing if not Lady Gaga’s and Fergie’s respective music videos. This attainment of camp level status is reached through the use of extravagant, unconventional costumes, paired with colorful, elaborate, and over-the-top set designs.
Take the music video for ‘Telephone’ by Lady Gaga featuring Beyonce for example.The video is primarily set in a loosely-run all-women’s prison, and Lady Gaga is no doubt the center-stage, outlandish protagonist. In Susan Sontag’s Notes on Camp, she writes, “It [camp] is the love of the exaggerated, the “off,” of things-being-what they are not” (Sontag, 1964, p. 3). The costumes and accessories that Gaga adorns herself with scream camp, and exemplify this idea of utilizing various objects outside of their initial function for aesthetic purposes: from outfits made completely of crime scene tape or see-through plastic, to sunglasses constructed out of lit cigarettes, rotary phone headdresses, and Diet Coke cans used as hair rollers. Additionally, Sontag touches on a complete embodiment of the character in order to achieve the camp aesthetic, writing, “What the Camp eye appreciates is the unity, the force of the person [...] Character is understood as a state of continual incandescence - a person being one, very intense thing” (Sontag, 1964, pp. 8-9). Lady Gaga is nothing if not her most authentic, eccentric self, and she takes on her role in this music video with complete dedication. Through the incorporation of actual lines, a loose story arc, and method-acting resemblant expressions and techniques in this music video, Gaga successfully encompasses the role of a convicted bandit.
The music video for ‘Fergalicious’ by Fergie featuring will.i.am, is another classic camp staple. In her video, Fergie appears as a seductive proprietor of a candy-filled wonderland that she has deemed, Fergieland. The video, especially in regards to its set design and environment, is undoubtedly over-the-top. As Sontag writes, “The hallmark of Camp is the spirit of extravagance [...] In Camp there is often something démesuré in the quality of the ambition, not only in the style of the work itself” (Sontag, 1964, p. 7). Though it’s painfully evident that much of the set is a result of computer-generated animation, the immense effort placed into it’s construction is clear and extraordinary nonetheless. The special effects effectively align with the video’s theme and further demonstrate the passion in its production. From candy-cane fields, to large ornate rooms filled with sweet foods, Fergie and her dancers are consistently engulfed in colorful and extravagant surroundings, and thus it’s clear that much time and effort went into the thematic conceptualization and subsequent visuals for this video. Sontag also adds, “Camp is art that proposes itself seriously, but cannot be taken altogether seriously because it is “too much” (Sontag, 1964, p. 7). It’s no doubt that Fergie and her team put serious energy into this project. However, it's blatant outragousness distinguishes this work from an artifact that would ever be deemed as “high culture.” The entire premise of the song and music video is to pay homage to Fergie herself as a sex symbol, accompanied by large symbols of desire and glutony to further illustrate this theme. It’s likely that most viewers wouldn’t see this video as a serious and introspective representation of Fergie’s attitudes toward her sexuality, and rather as a fun and playful exploration of Fergie’s sexual prowess, which is the whole point of camp.
Neverthless, both videos incorporate elements of hypersexualization, which calls into question the exact origins of these decisions, their initial intent, and the desired audience reception from these tactics. For example, Gaga’s ‘Telephone’ contains a scene in which her character shares an intimate and passionate kiss with another prisoner character. Gaga also incorporates a minute long continuous dance sequence in which she and her background dancers are only dressed in spiked bras and underwear for the entirety of their set. In addition, as mentioned early, Fergie’s entire song is an acknowledgment of the sexual desire placed on her by men, which is only exacerbated by her and her background dancers’ provocative outfits and suggestive dance moves. So what does this open portrayal of sexuality mean in the context of feminist practices within popular culture? In Andi Zeisler’s Feminism and Pop Culture article, she writes, “[Laura] Mulvey pinpointed the way that images of women onscreen seek to align viewers of any gender with the male gaze. So it makes sense that many girls and women grow up seeing images of girls and women the way men do— the images themselves are simply constructed that way” (Zeisler, 2008, p. 9). Since both Gaga and Fergie are presumed to be independent, confident women who fully embrace their sexuality, one has to wonder if the choice to explicitly display this sexual nature in their respective videos was an autocratic decision, or one forced onto them either by societal standards or outsider input. Yet it’s no secret that women have been hypersexualized in media, and thus Zeisler poses a hypothetical question asking, “So what could a feminist reclamation of—or just an improvement on—pop culture look like? Well, female musicians wouldn’t be encouraged to sex up their images for major-label deals or coverage in music magazines or on MTV” (Zeisler, 2008, p. 20). In this debate, the lines between a woman’s own dictated public expression of their sexuality, and the imposed sexualization onto women in order to appease the male gaze, gets extremely blurred.
In any case, it’s clear that there appear to be consistencies of extreme campiness and heightened sexual expression in the music videos for both ‘Telephone’ by Lady Gaga and ‘Fergalicious’ by Fergie. These running themes raise important issues regarding gender in the music industry. Other questions can be raised regarding the added pattern between the two videos where an African-American musician is the featured artist. One could ask if these Black artists are being used to adhere to the popular trope of the Black supporting character to further hype up the white, female lead. Probably a stretch, but just some food for thought.
Works Cited
Sontag, Susan (1964). ‘Notes on 'Camp' (pp. 1–13). Partisan Review.
YouTube. (2009). Fergie - Fergalicious (Official Music Video). YouTube. Retrieved December 1, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T0utQ-XWGY.
YouTube. (2010). Lady Gaga - Telephone ft. Beyoncé (Official Music Video). YouTube. Retrieved December 1, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVBsypHzF3U.
Zeisler, A. (2008). Pop and Circumstance: Why Pop Culture Matters. In Feminism and Pop Culture (pp. 1–21). Seal Press.
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