What We Talk About When We Talk About Lana Del Rey’s “Born to Die”
The lack of attention on this blog to Lana Del Rey‘s music is not an oversight as much as it is an overwhelming inability to put into words what stirs so strongly everything that I love, have loved, and will always love about art.[1] But with yesterday’s release of her latest video, “Born to Die,”one of the smartest and most emotive works I have witnessed this year, her value as an art-ist, that rare operator able to move between mediums and messages to edge closer and closer to the god-honest truth – and to the edge itself – becomes crystal clear.
Cinematic doesn’t cover it; we’re messing with prophecy here, dethroning the earthly gods we made, it’s love, it’s sex, it’s the ever-present linger of death haunting every man that would reign over his fellow man and nature itself, building kingdoms and riches only to find his mortality prevails : as Lana sings, “I feel so alone on a Friday night.” This song outshines her others if only in sheer production value – it’s sleek, shiny and massive, the Cadillac Escalade of quivering strings and sultry devil-may-care delivery.
Being a ruler was never easy, but love was always harder, and when the two collide, empires get shaken and legends die young and lonely; Cleopatra knew it, and Jesus Christ, and Louis XIV in all of his mirrors and gold, and Elvis knew it too, and James Dean, and any eponymous larger-than-life figure who is, at heart, a human just like you and me, and who Lana openly reveres in her music and videos, showing some empathy for men of myth: Sometimes life is not enough / and the road gets tough I don’t know why.
La Dolce Vita / Classic Cars
Lana does here what she does best in the rest of her work: she alludes and reinvents, what film critic Robert Stam calls the ultimate purpose of art, “to be reworked by a boundless context, where the text feeds on and is fed into an infinitely permutating intertext, seen through ever-shifting grids of interpretation.” Did you get that? Infinitely permutating intertext: see also, the founding of America mimics the founding of Rome, marble columns, manifest destiny and boundless ambition included; Lana wears a green flower crown like a laurel wreath, along with a toga dress and protective tiger minions screaming Caesar, who was also blinded with blood on the steps of his greatest achievement; she’s got hair like Anita Ekberg in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the sweet life, isn’t that the American dream; the “city streets” are regal European gardens but she’s wearing a fringe vest and blue jean cutoffs and only American kids make out on car hoods; her eye makeup is, yes, obviously, recalling Cleopatra, but it’s Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra, now through a silver-screened lens, and sure, Richard Burton wore armor in that film – but what’s American tough-guy armor but inked skin full of tattoos?
The ending is a surprise, a departure, only the good die young, we know that’s a lie; and the flames that lap around are the same that burned Rome to the ground, and Atlanta in Sherman’s march, and London according to the Clash. Well, James Dean, the American, died in a car crash, and the best country singers die in the back of classic cars, except Elvis, who lives; you can ask the Hold Steady how a resurrection really feels. Covered in blood in the final scene, the bodies framed in a crucifixion, the ultimate sacrificial lamb, Lana Del Rey can only pray: I’m hoping at the gates / they’ll tell me that you’re mine.
– Caroline Klibanoff
[1] Circa August of this year, Fiona and I contemplated writing a piece on her last album and failed, along these lines (chopped & excerpted for sense) me: LANA. Fiona: i need to seek treatment for addiction me: im weirded out by how not jealous i am Fiona: she's so completely different from so much else me: this is getting ridiculous im obsessed is she real? she is simultaneously rich and poor is the best way i can describe it…fur coat/trailer park all of all worlds Fiona: gonzo porn star me: seriously me: this is crazy her songs are movies not songs Fiona: oh my god you're right i SEE the song Fiona: let's shoot a new music video me: lets do a writeup for the blog Fiona: split screen omg YES necessary me: wher ewe separately try to put into words WHAT this is Fiona: holy shit pawn shop LYRICS me: RIGHt?!?!?!?! Fiona: ooooooooomg but HOW she sings it WE HAVE TO WRITE OUR REVIEW me: 10 thigns i would do in order to be LDR / 10 reasons why my skin crawls at htis music / 10 things i feel when i hear this album Fiona: let's do a 10 list but call them different things hm now i have to think about my take me: yeah me too hard to think when all i can do is listen
