Lana Del Rey Defends Herself Against 'The Guardian' Controversy

[longtimeman 8,907]

I don't think the point was that this was unusual. I think the point was to contradict the claim Lana has often made recently that she's not interested in fame at all, but she clearly is interested in the positive aspects, just not the negative ones. And also that being respected as an artist may be more important to her than her art itself.

 

 

I can't remember reading or hearing her saying that she didn't want to be respected as an artist - in my experience, that's the goal of every artist who shares their work (and I'd argue that an artist who doesn't share their work isn't really an artist at all, because part of art is communicating with a listener/viewer/reader/,,,). She clearly wants to be loved, by people around her and by the world at large, but that's fairly normal, particularly for somebody who has been through addiction and is re-creating herself. One of the things that I find most fascinating about her is how wrong so much of what she does and says is, if she was only concerned with getting ahead. That idea of all publicity being good publicity is complete BS - just ask Rolf Harris - and taking on the media is one thing you can never win at in the short term. Having said that, there are plenty of singers in the past who have fought with the media and lost, and then gone on to a long and successful career, so hopefully she follows in their footsteps.

[slang 1,532]

The more I think about her, the less I think of her as being depressed, but of just not knowing and therefore changing her mind frequently, but only about certain things. So in a lot of interviews she says she's happy, but in others she says she's not. This is just another aspect of "I'm going to re-release AKA; I'm not going to release AKA" ;  "The album (UV) is finished; let's redo the album"; "I derive strength from my audiences; I feel guilty that I don't care as much as my audiences". "I'm engaged; "we're friends". I'm tempted to view the whole leaks/unreleased phenomenon in similar terms. I mean why bother to have a "final version" of Behind Closed Doors, if you're not going to release it? She must have changed her mind. While I think she has stable core principles or values (e.g. family, human rights, artistic aesthetics), the phrase "strange weather" would seem to apply as much to herself as anyone she has ever sung about.

 

There is also the question of balance and bias. If she says the right thing (such as the mention of her community outreach interest in the Guardian interview) it will be buried in the print; if she says the wrong thing it will be a headline. I don't think it's a given that journalists are obligated to use the most shocking sound bite as the "news", especially if other articles contradict it (i.e., doesn't she say in an earlier interview dead artists aren't very useful? Doesn't she also like living artists?). From what I can tell, the interviewer's attempts to get her to rebut or even clarify her answer were lame. Instead of asking her about family or her art for reasons to go on in the land of the living, he asks her about live shows and adoring (if sometimes annoying) fans. But we all know she's often uncomfortable with performing. If the interviewer had said something like, "well, but what if I were to use 'I wish I were dead already' as the title for this interview? Would that be accurate?", do we believe LDR would have simply said yes, or would she have back pedaled furiously? If you're going to treat the headline as "news" and not just LDR saying something stupid, then that's the kind of probing you have to do. But the interviewer clearly quit while he was ahead (at least in the 2 min excerpt I heard).

[Wilde_child 490]

Regarding passionate fans:

 

"The funny little thing about love is that you're blind all the time,

And even when you think you had enough

You're wanting more, it isn't right but

You can't stop."

 

But who doesn't want to know if Scarlett Johansson is wearing any underwear?

#DirtyOldManPost

 

No, you're not.

 

I completely disagree with this and almost everyone in this thread.

 

I really don't understand Lana's reaction or the reaction of most of this fanbase to the interview. Many of you have completely lost any shred of objectivity in worshiping your queen. "I'm your cult leader", indeed. Neither the interviewer nor the editor did anything wrong here. (Oh, BTW, they never used the word "suicidal".) This is as clear cut a case of attacking the messenger if there ever was one. Shame on any fans who sent hate messages to them. It's also just stupid. You only validate all the negative press she's ever received. I'm also really bothered by the tendency in this fanbase (perhaps online millennial culture generally?) to celebrate "sassy" responses even when in the wrong as if it's somehow inherently admirable because it's "sticking up for yourself". I find that really warped. In my view Lana did three things wrong here: 1) Saying dumb shit in the first place. 2) Saying more dumb shit on Twitter blaming the journalist for the original dumb shit she said. 3) Deleting the dumb shit she said on Twitter even though someone has certainly screencapped her dumb shit. If Lana doesn't like headlines like these, there's an easy solution: Don't give journalists soundbites like this to work with. And if she just can't help herself there's an easy solution to that: Stop giving interviews. This is just the umpteenth example of Lana's victim-playing far exceeding her victimhood. It's getting really old.

 

I mean, most of what Lana has been bitching about is the media and how she doesn't like how it's portrayed her... so of course the logical thing for her to do is give a shitload of interviews to the media. And then act surprised and indignant when she inevitably doesn't like how it portrays her... You know, by quoting her verbatim in their headline. But, you know, it's just oh so scandalous that anyone would even raise the question that someone who titled their album Born to Die or sang "but I wish I was dead" or "I wanna die" et cetera et cetera might have a death wish. Please.

 

This whole kerfuffle is also just dumb from a PR perspective. In light of her unfair criticism of this interview, her praise of the very good NYT article will likely now be seen (unfairly) as a puff piece. And instead of coverage dominated by mostly positive reviews and successful worldwide sales figures, she fucks it up with this bullshit. Unless it's part of a deliberate strategy to stir up controversy on the thinking that all publicity is good publicity, but nothing about Lana's media strategy since she hit the big time has seemed very well thought out to me. People who think this is actually Lana being some sort of media Svengali are like political pundits who used to talk about Obama playing multi-dimensional chess: fawning partisans who see what they want to see.

 

***

 

Something I've been thinking about lately is a theme in both her music and interviews: passivity. (And also in this instance passive-aggressiveness.) The passivity or submissiveness in her lyrics has been pretty well dissected, especially the feminist angle, but as it relates to her interviews, I don't think it really has been. She's always talking about how sad she is and how her treatment by the media makes her sad and that she keeps playing for her fans even though it doesn't make her happy and she doesn't want to do this shit anymore... as if she has absolutely zero agency and is just an object acted upon by external forces. She constantly blames others and takes no responsibility for her own role in her current situation or her ability to take action to get out of it. I mean, she has resources at her disposal such that she could do almost anything she wants. If she really doesn't want to do this shit anymore, barring contractual obligations (which would still be her responsibility, she signed the papers), she should be able to stop making music today, never work a day in her life again, and still live a quiet, comfortable middle-class life on the money she's already earned, if she hasn't completely squandered it on topiary ponies or making self-indulgent 30-minute short films. And if she's contractually obligated to produce a certain number of albums, she's got plenty of stuff already recorded she could use. At some point she needs to put up or shut up. Or at least stop pointing her finger everywhere else and look within. Really, this episode is a low point for both her and her fanbase.

[Tammy 2,291]

Maybe Lana should start to answer fan questions on her websites once in a while instead of doing interviews with the press that obviously can't / don't want to see anything good in her & her music and never will ... as to the rest, can we get over that bullshit G. interview at last? We all know how the media work and what they are able to just to sell their papers and to get readers ... I mean, today it's Lana, tomorrow they will be already talking about Clooney's wedding.  And Lana is still so young and there's still so much to learn ...

[Wilde_child 490]

But seriously (and late in the discussion), I am enjoying reading the fame vs Art debate. You all are very articulate and knowing.

If I may offer a biased opinion, I tend to believe that, at times Lana seems to pursue the epicurean ideal ("just an ordinary girl", "opulence is the end", simple things in life) but she also displays a decadent imagery...

I would dare to say the lady contradicts herself and might be aware of that.

 

As O. Wilde once wrote: "The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves."

I quite like that!

[PrettyBaby 2,219]

I really don't understand Lana's reaction or the reaction of most of this fanbase to the interview. Many of you have completely lost any shred of objectivity in worshiping your queen. "I'm your cult leader", indeed. Neither the interviewer nor the editor did anything wrong here.

 

...

 

This is just the umpteenth example of Lana's victim-playing far exceeding her victimhood. It's getting really old.

 

So did they do nothing wrong, or was she victimized to a point?

 

 

My point was more that I think much of her sadness is innate or internal, but to the extent that it's caused by external factors there are many different courses of action she could take to minimize them, but she'd rather just continue playing the victim and scapegoating the media far beyond the extent she was actually victimized. It's bad enough when she complains about media coverage of her generally (it's been two and a half years since SNL now), but particularly shitty in this case because she personally attacked a journalist who did absolutely nothing wrong or unusual-- in fact, he'd almost be negligent as a music journalist if he decided not to lead with that quote-- mostly in reaction to how other media outlets covered the interview. Surely this is not the way to get favorable media coverage or dispel negative media narratives about her.

 

 

While it may be true these journalists did nothing illegal, that's actually a fairly low standard for evaluating the ethics of their behavior. EE, I'm sure you know more than I do whether the writer did anything unusual... but when you say, "in fact, he'd almost be negligent as a music journalist if he decided not to lead with that quote" you seem to protest more than a bit too much. Again, did the journalists at the Guardian do "absolutely nothing wrong or unusual," or is there in fact an "extent [to which] she was actually victimized"?

 

I think it's important for us to see legal and professional codes as a floor, below which we must not sink, but it's also important for us to be objective enough to take a step back from time to time and decide whether we should do even better. Do you agree with that much, EE? I mean, what do you think? Is there room for discussion about whether journalists in general, and the Guardian journalists in particular, have done this enough?

 

There's definitely room for discussion about what Lana may have contributed to the problem, and I think you and FSP make some excellent points. Additionally, in calling Ariel out she wrongly suggested he was the writer (but are we expected to believe that he was completely uninvolved?) and made, imo, overly specific charges. I mean maybe the contact person and/or the interviewer were hiding sinister motives, but that's rather speculative. I wish that she had handled it differently by focusing on the end result, the actual article written by Tim Jonze and published by the staff of the Guardian, and what it was about the article that made her feel wronged. But that doesn't mean she was in the wrong to call them out at all. That's how communication works, or should work: if one party misunderstands, or distorts the communication through wrong emphasis, then the other party may attempt to set the record straight. The problem is, I think she tried to set it straight by presenting a fuller picture of the situation, when I think what was needed was clarification.

 

Communication is a tricky business, and personality styles indeed play a part in how we handle it, as well as education (including which models we adopt) and professional training (or, admittedly, lack thereof ) But I think we can all do better if we try.

[MotelHoney 305]

I just think that the journalist wrote something that wasn't untrue *out of context*. 

[evilentity 13,341]

So did they do nothing wrong, or was she victimized to a point?

She has been victimized by the media, but not by this journalist.

 

While it may be true these journalists did nothing illegal, that's actually a fairly low standard for evaluating the ethics of their behavior. EE, I'm sure you know more than I do whether the writer did anything unusual... but when you say, "in fact, he'd almost be negligent as a music journalist if he decided not to lead with that quote" you seem to protest more than a bit too much. Again, did the journalists at the Guardian do "absolutely nothing wrong or unusual," or is there in fact an "extent [to which] she was actually victimized"?

No, I actually don't think this journalist victimized Lana in any way or even did anything ethically wrong. Lana on the other hand... And if anyone was victimized here it was the journalist.

[PrettyBaby 2,219]

She has been victimized by the media, but not by this journalist.

 

No, I actually don't think this journalist victimized Lana in any way or even did anything ethically wrong. Lana on the other hand... And if anyone was victimized here it was the journalist.

 

I see.

[lafleursauvage 324]

This whole situation right now is just.... 

 

 

 

A mess I tell you... a mess...