{Special Guest Post by Toby Johnson, author of Gay Perspective: Things Our Homosexuality Tells us About the Nature of God and the Universe}
Lady Gaga's new music video for “Born This Way” begins with a powerful creation myth.
In a voiceover with eerie and dramatic space music, Gaga begins: “This is the manifesto of Mother Monster.” She then describes a birth of magnificent and magical proportions: it was the infinite birth of the mitosis of the future, infinite wombs giving birth to infinite new life—and it is eternal! It is the birth of a new race within the race of humanity, an evolution into a race that is without prejudice, without judgment, only boundless freedom. This is the birth from the Eternal Mother of the Multiverse.
But at the same time, there is another birth: the birth of Evil. And She Herself is split in two, rotating in agony between two ultimate forces. It seems so obvious that everyone would choose good, but the Mother wonders, “How can I protect something so perfect without evil?”
Then begins the song “Born This Way.” The song is unabashedly gay positive, with lyrics like “Don’t be a drag – Just be a queen” and the closing verse, “No matter gay, straight, or bi, lesbian, transgendered life / I’m on the right track baby / I was born to survive.” The rest of the verse then recaps with another layer of division among humans: “No matter black, white or beige / chola or orient made.” So all difference—sexual and racial—is celebrated as love for life; to wit, “I was born this way.”
Lady Gaga declares that “It doesn’t matter if you love him, or capital HIM…/ ‘cause you were born this way.” (The small letter “him,” I understand to be another man; the capital “HIM,” God.) The chorus contains the lines “‘cause God makes no mistakes / I’m on the right track baby / I was born this way / Don’t hide yourself in regret / Just love yourself and you’re set.”
The choreography and special effects are marvelous, the costumes—naturally!—outrageously wonderful (and mostly scanty). Throughout the second half of the song, Gaga and a male partner are dressed as tuxedoed Day-of-the-Dead skeletons—celebrating the mortality that necessarily comes with being born in temporal flesh, perhaps.
The sentiments of the song are familiar these days; Christina Aguilara said the same thing in “Beautiful.” This is the popularization of a central tenet in humanistic psychology: positive self-esteem results in healthy self-image and positive behavior, embracing the principles of nonjudgment and tolerance of others. Especially in these days of Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” campaign and the repeal of Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell:
These are important principles that the gay liberation movement brings to the evolution of human consciousness: virtue comes from within us, not from obedience to rules that seek to curb human passions as though they were inherently evil.
Lady Gaga sounds a lot like Madonna, and this is a message Madonna has been proclaiming for years. “Born This Way” echoes with “Express Yourself” and just a hint of “Like a Prayer.”
But, speaking of curbing evil, it’s interesting that the video begins with that creation myth in which duality—good and evil—co-arise together; and the Great Mother (armed with a machine gun) wonders how to protect the perfect without evil. That is, Evil exists in some way to protect the Good. They are not competing opposites, but cooperating forces.
The myth of the Great Mother giving birth to the material universe is a common theme.
In Babylonian mythology, the Cosmic Mother Tiamat gives birth to the universe from her infinite womb; she is slain by the hero Marduke and her body is fashioned into the world as we know it. From that same Babylonian/Persian — that is, Iranian — culture developed the religion of Zoroastrianism with its two opposing principles of Light and Dark (the gods Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu, Good and Evil). This dualistic religion influenced all of Western civilization. From this source came our notions of God and the Devil. Deeper then that the creation myth in Gaga’s song is the relationship between Good and Evil.
In Grendel, the amazing little novel from the 1960s about the Beowulf-battling monster whom we all remember from high school English lit, Grendel pleads his own case, explaining that human beings need to believe in evil — monsters in the woods, for instance, werewolves and vampires, Hannibal Lecters and, I would add, “homosexuals,” etc. — so they can know where the village ends and the wilderness begins. Belief in the existence of evil out beyond the city wall gives assurance that things are safe here inside.
I’ve personally taken Grendel’s self-description as a kind of mantra for gay consciousness. He calls himself an “earth-rim-roamer, shadow-shooter, walker-of-the-world’s-weird-wall.” Wall-walkers are able to see what’s on both sides of the wall. This is a very different kind of dualism than that of old-time religion: it’s not us-against-them / good-against-evil, but infinite, eternal life giving birth to itself magnificently and magically—ecologically, cooperatively, harmoniously.
Lady Gaga’s song begins “This is the manifesto of Mother Monster”: Nature Herself is the monster. We will all die and become skeletons because we were born in mortal flesh. And God makes no mistakes: we were born this way. What a nice cosmology! The celebration of difference and diversity and variety among human lives furthers boundless freedom.
And Lady Gaga certainly walks the world’s weird wall!
WATCH "BORN THIS WAY" AFTER THE JUMP BELOW!
Toby Johnson, a former Catholic monk turned activist, psychotherapist and spiritual writer, was a student of Joseph Campbell and has a Master's in Comparative Religion and a doctorate in Counseling Psychology. Among his many books are Gay Spirituality: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness
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