The Symbolic Lana Del Rey

thoughtsie:

First please enjoy with me the music video in question: Young and Beautiful 

First and immediate impression while watching it this afternoon, despite being completely brain dead from finishing finals, it jumps out at you that she is wearing the gem tear drops a la Lil Wayne:

 

What gives? Did she recently kill someone? Just get back from prison? No? You sure?  Alright so does someone die in the song? Kinda, sorta, maybe? As the video progresses the death symbolism gets deeper with the orchestra director guy mimicking the suicide pose she romanticized in her Summertime Saddness music video:

So theres the suicide angle that is then reinforced by her walking toward a gate filled with light, no doubt symbolizing heaven as she asks God to let her bring her man with her when she gets there. All of that is really obvious though, and doesn’t answer the question of why she would need to wear the tears if she merely wanted to get the death point across. Meanwhile what does any of this have to do with Gatsby, if anything other than to be a sad love song that plays nicely on the soundtrack? Here is your answer: 

A subtle mimicking of the original Gatsby cover art. That red lipstick and the celestial eyes and most importantly THE TEARS MOURNING THE DEATH OF THE AMERICAN DREAM. 

But ok yeah, so if she’s copying the cover, why not just actually let some real tears flow? Here is where I think the subtly is the most brilliant, because seriously why not let one elegant single tear roll to get your comparative artistic jollies? Because the tattooed tears are symbolic of killing someone. *Spoiler* Which, since Gatsby ends up killing someone and paying for it later, the homage to the tattooed tears is so much more powerful, even if only subconsciously, than if she had just used real tears. 

Oh my gosh and if you wanted to be political and feminist about it, if she had actually cried it would have been an acquiescence of weakness, while wearing the tattooed-tears instead gives her a strong masculine edge AND puts her in a role of dominance because they imply that she did the killing. Which is even more meaningful since it is Daisy’s fault everyone dies in the book. So then there is the element that Lana could loosely be portraying Daisy, but do the lyrics back this up? Indeed they do! They might as well be verbatim from Daisy’s portions of dialogue in the book as well as fit the character of her shallow preoccupations with beauty.  

So Lana is portraying a powerful, but still weak minded Daisy in addition to paying tribute to the strong overtones of death that rule the book. The fine crafting of all this is so beautiful in contrast to the stark in-your-faceness of Luhrmann and his interpretation. 

Lana Del Rey Releases Striking Video for Her ‘Great Gatsby’ Song

by Jeremy Gordon

It’s ironic that Lana Del Rey was recruited to sing on The Great Gatsby soundtrack, since her well-explored aesthetic of glamor gone to seed dovetails perfectly with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s original text—and not Baz Luhrmann’s glitzy, bright-colored explosion of 1920s excess with all the happening dance choreography and immaculate art direction. She just released a video for that song, “Young and Beautiful,” where she sings while accompanied by an orchestra, draped in striking colors and shadows. It’s a simple enough set-up, but there’s something grandiose in the direction as accompanied by her throaty vocal ruminating on whether love turns to something else after all the artifice has worn off and there’s nothing but people.

BULLET Magazine broke the news of the video today and accompanied it with this bit of analysis, to which I would like to add and reveal that the “something grandiose” is the metaphor for Daisy killing everyone and Lana taking on that role. 

The metaphor of the tears meaning killing in relation to the tears mourning the American dream could then be dissected and connected to the death of love after beauty fades, but I’ll let someone else worry/write about that one since that could get super political. 

I wrote a thing…I just really like metaphors ok

French.

I’m in the library google imaging eharmony profile templates at 9am on a Friday. 

For French 101 our first writing assignment is to create a draft for a fake eharmony profile for ourselves. So in order to go above and beyond to compensate for how atrocious my actual French is, I thought it would be funny to photoshop my info into an actual eharmony ad or profile or whatever they are. Not having much luck on that front and feeling as awkward as anyone looking at dating profiles in public should. 

File under anecdotes from my life in college. 

How the rest of my team handled the end of the season:

Everyone immediately became honorary members of:

and then went and yolo-ed it up

and then there was me:

How to celebrate being done with your two hardest finals.

Walk alone back to your dorm. Pull out trash bags and stuff all the clothes you know you won’t wear over the next week. Empty all the desk drawers. Throw away everything you can. 

Once your room has reached a good point of depressing messy barrenness pull your rain coat on and leave. Walk alone to the erg room and set it for 30 minutes steady state 5/4/3/2/1 x 2.  

Then push. Pull. Coast through the piece. Push every meter like its one meter closer to getting home for the summer. You’re not trying to prove anything with this brief practice, just finish. Before you know it you’re done just as its starting to rain outside. 

Clean up and walk to the bus stop in the drizzle. Sit down and wait, soaking, as the light rain slowly turns into a downpour. On the bus gaze out the window and watch the water droplets chase each other down the glass. Ask the elder gentlemen staring at you for the time. 

“Say why are your eyes so sad?” 

Smile. Say you’re just tired. 

Get off the bus at the phone repair store and wait as the man at the counter assesses your wet appearance. 

Leave with no phone since they can’t fix your problem. 

Decide to indulge. Buy overpriced strawberries and chocolate and boxes of wonderful flavors of tea from Whole Foods. 

Walk back. 

Stop for dinner. Stare at the cashier like a deer in head lights when he compliments you. 

“You’re really quiet aren’t you? I think you’re beautiful.” 

Smile in shock and float home through the dark. Find a note in the bag with his name and number that says “you’re gorgeous” with a smiley face. 

Too bad you don’t have a phone. 

Just realized I’m 18 

And that means I could totally go get a tattoo if I was so inclined. 

Interesting. 

Also on a completely unrelated note I saw this on my dash and thought it was cute:

(image from Alanna)

You know its going to be a productive night blogging when you’re wearing a budweiser t-shirt, paul frank monkey boxers and your wanna-be hipster glasses. 

On a scale of Kate Middleton to Ke$ha…

I’d say today on the Princess to Hot Me$$-o-meter I hit around the range of “wet dog” never actually recovering my appearance after morning practice. So as the universe would have it I had an SJP moment like the one featured in the picture above. It was casual, you know, trying to flirt (by “flirt” I mean speak in full sentences without stuttering or otherwise humiliating myself further), but totally hating yourself for not brushing your hair or putting your contacts on. Trying to rationalize by telling myself I actually might have had a shot at pulling off a cute librarian look, except I face the hard truth that I honest to God look like the biggest nerd/dork ever in my glasses. The rain smeared make up from last night probably didn’t help much either. Oh well #keepin’itreal. 

Day 13 revisited with observations and reactions.

WAVING HI TO MY CRUSH IN PUBLIC

howdoiputthisgently:

I THINK I’M LIKE

BUT I’M REALLY LIKE

I posted this on my mothers wall the other day to tell her that I had attempted to interact with this guy I like, she came back with these as more accurate depictions of how I would have looked in the purposed scenario:

WAIT KATE IS EVEN HOLDING A CAMERA. Doppelganger. Obviously.