Born to vogue: uma análise sobre a identidade gay e a música pop em Madonna e Lady Gaga

Abstract

This monograph is dedicated to the analysis of the process of gay identity building through pop music as a mediatic cultural product, with the object of research being the audiovisual works "Vogue" (1990), by Madonna, and "Born This Way" (2011), by Lady. To reflect on this issue, the research is based mainly on theoretical propositions of the area of Cultural Studies that discuss about identities and about massive popular music. It also includes as theoretical basis works that cover topics such as culture, cultural industry, globalization, homosexuality, gender identity and semiotic studies. It approaches authors such as Manuel Castells, Tomaz Silva, Stuart Hall, Kathryn Woodward, Jeder Janotti Junior, Thiago Soares, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin and Iuri Lotman. For the analysis of the works, the method of analysis of pop music video clips proposed by Jeder Janotti Junior and Thiago Soares (2008) and the Semiotics of Culture (according to Iuri Lotman‘s propositions) is used. The research concludes that pop music and the artists and works in question participate as evident elements in the cultural production of gay identity as a resistance to the norms instituted by legitimized social groups. It is noticed that the gay subjects develop in the contemporaneity identification relations with the productions of the mediatic culture that involve the ―diva‖ and its representations of fame, power and overcoming of adversities and social oppressions. It is borne in mind that this is a generalizing view that does not involve homosexual individuals in their entirety, but that the elements of pop music are significantly present in the identity of this social group.