I am my only God - essay on art and fanart based on Lana

[annedauphine 34,559]

Now that I got it graded, I can finally post my graduation thesis Bear in mind, I only got a B  and this is 6000 words long I quote Lana and Marina and a bunch of other people! I'm sorry there aren't pictures of references but if you wish to see it in full, don't hesitate to ask me!

 

This is my assessment lol. I didn't corrected the spelling error of benefited. Not a single spelling error in my text and English isn't my first language and these British arses didn't cared enough to check their appreciation. These motherfuckers can lick me to oblivion

 

 

 

CriticalEvaluation is a thorough reflection on the relation between the practice and the studio and gives a good description of the dynamic of the process which has clearly a productive one. Succinct Presentation is clear and informative. Dissertation introduces the planned scope of inquiry well. You make a good set of clarifying self-mythology versus narcissism, well articulated and supported by reading and research. The analysis of the different ideas is handled well, and you build your argument although the clarity of your language hinders the expression of those ideas somewhat – none the less, the validity of the conceptual thinking still comes through. 

Broad range of research covering several subjects (Religion, Popular Culture, Psychoanalysis), which have been utilised in a discursive way. However, the significance of each is not fully unpacked, structures are not fully engaged with in order to reveal a deeper understanding of their inter-dependency or influence on one another. Would have benefitted from a more distanced objectivity or as suggested in the critical evaluation more of a synthesis between content and form. Would have benefitted from a more developmental structure and isolation of idea/arguments into discreet chapters. Good use of illustrations and captions in the succinct presentation. Appropriate attention to protocols throughout.

 

 

 

And here's the text!

 

 

 

I AM MY ONLY GOD

To what extent is art its own fan art?

 

                       

Where is the border between an artist's art, and the artist and the self-mythology that composes him? Is there even a limit, or are narcissism and self-mythology completely distinguishable? If they are, how relevant would it be to compare these two concepts, especially within an artistic context? In attempt to propose the beginning of an answer to these broad and essential questionings, I will use the notion of fans and the celebrities and art they are worshipping to understand better and try to discern the concept of self-mythology, the mechanisms behind what makes art its own fan art, and what it implies, in order to conclude to what extent is art its own fan art.

 

In my analysis, I will approach several subjects each through the eyes of the others are they are all linked and bear common roots. I will first define the subjects of our analysis, and explore which are the similarities and dissociations between the definitions and what they refer to, especially within the context of religion. I will then approach more particularly the notion of self-mythology, first through the eyes of celebrities, then through the eyes of fans, and how they are all linked to art. I will lastly open my analysis on the concept of narcissism, defining it, determining if self-mythology is or not narcissism, and exploring how and why it is necessarily associated to celebrities, fans and art. I will approach several notions through the eyes of the American singer Lana Del Rey, born Elizabeth Grant. Her example is particularly relevant in my study as I am myself a fan of hers and am able to witness the implications and deep influence of her own work in my practice and self-mythology. I will use her transgressive approach to fame and her use of anti-persona as a guideline in order to decipher in a concrete and accurate way the subtle differences and common points between narcissism and self-mythology, and what repercussions it has in terms of artistic production, especially as she presents the particularity of being a celebrity, a fan and an artist at the same time. After having defined the concept of fandom and being a fan, what self-mythology is and having analysed the narcissism links both concepts, I will lastly attempt to conclude to what extent art is fan art of art itself, despite the negative connotations of the modern definition of fandom.

 

It is first important to interest ourselves about the various definitions of "myth". The Oxford Dictionary presents six definitions. A myth could either be "a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events"; "traditional stories or legends collectively"; "a widely held but false belief or idea"; "a misrepresentation of the truth"; "a fictitious or imaginary person or thing", or "an exaggerated or idealized conception of a person or thing". Several of these definitions bear negative connotations of being untrue or a falsification of reality. Fandom, narcissism and what derives from it are equally widely understood as being the source of detrimental emotions, sometimes leading to prejudicial behaviours. However, these concepts aren't always as negative as they appear, and my study will attempt to analyse in which contexts, especially in their implications in art. If the term fandom designs for the Oxford dictionary "the state or condition of being a fan of someone or something" as well as "the fans of a particular person, team, fictional series, etc. regarded collectively as a community or subculture", the word fan or fanatic roots its origin from Latin fanaticus, "of a temple, inspired by a god", and "fanum", temple, and means "a person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal, especially for an extreme religious or political cause", and "a person with an obsessive interest in and enthusiasm for a particular activity". The idea of a legend, but a legend rooted in truth and "historical" events, emphasized, embellished often lyrically and precisely through art, is important to keep in mind in order to understand the concept of self-mythology. Celebrity culture and art, because of how personal but turned towards others they are, truly are the easiest ways to understand how personal mythologies can surpass the selves and become another entity, part of the original self but definitely other, an artist never having total control over his creation.

 

The Oxford Dictionary defines religion as "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods", "a particular system of faith and worship", "a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion". The term's etymology stems from Latin "religio", "obligation, bond, reverence". As having defined the terms allows us to understand, the relationship between religion and fandom is an extremely broad subject. The common roots are more than trivial proofs that fandom directly derives from religion, and would make the subject of a whole study. The most obvious argument in favour of fandom being a religion would be the concept of community as well as the sense of worship. The emotions fans feel are related in many ways through essentially their violence and their at least seemingly disinterested purity to those felt by communities within religious worship. Shame, for instance, is a primordial element to keep in mind. Because of how negative the connotations to what is considered to be "real art" by society are, shame is one of the most common emotions experienced by fans, and it has a deep influence in their personal mythologies. It could be approached to the religious guilt that some might experience in certain situations.

 

If the definitions of “religion” could immediately apply to fandom, the notion of "superhuman power" is perhaps what differentiates fandom and religion to an extent, as often, it is precisely the humanity of a celebrity or element of popular culture that drives fans to adore it, as an icon of their own self-mythology, as an archetypal vision of unattainable perfection transforming into a receptacle of love to perhaps escape reality, as fans live through for and by the object of their love, whereas religion tends to be an ideal way of living, and fundamentally exists to propose a meaning to life and the reason we exist and have been created. Fandom exists for itself, has no purpose other than existing for its subject, and would not exist without it. It does not propose a meaning to life in the most general sense, but a meaning for the love that fans feel, a meaning for the existence of the idol itself, in a human way. Where religion requires a belief in the divine, something greater than humanity itself and at the origin of the creation, controlling it, fandom only requires the belief in the subject of the love, no matter how profane and disregarded as such it is. If fans bring as religious devotes offerings to their "human gods" or “man-made gods”, through letters, fan art, presents, tattoos, time and other means of dedication, the difference is that they are able to be acknowledged, a singer or creator of a show for example receiving the letters, whereas in religion the devotees have no physical possibility to contact their god (which, precisely, define it as a god), and their god is the creator as well as the subject to idolize, not just the creation to be adored. As the blogger Lady Geek Girl states in her essay "Oh, My Pop Culture Religion: Fandom as Religion?", September 2014, "fans know that their favourite content was created by people." There is no possibility other for the object of a fandom to be either human or created by a human, as well as there isn't any possibility for the object of a religion to be greater than humanity. Religious believers have no desire to manipulate or transform what makes the god a god, but fans have an intrinsic desire to contact and challenge the object of their love, by interacting with it or its universe, through the mean of their personal mythologies.

 

If we go back to the original definition of the "mythology", as we have previously seen, we know that the term implies references to religion which is, on some aspects as we have seen, extremely similar to fandom. But is fandom mythology? Could the collective personal mythologies of members of a fandom create what could be another universe of self-mythologies, an entity in itself, bounded through the love and admiration for the same personality or subject of interest? Particularly, if it is an artist that constitutes the very self-mythology of someone, then the cult of the celebrity becomes the religion of the self, but and it's a capital differentiation, through others. Fandom might then be the only and most representative instance where personal mythology isn't narcissism for the person it belongs to, but to the person it refers to. If fandom is the worst kind of love, it also arguably is the purest, as violent and aggressive it might end up (I think for example of this teenager girl stating calmly in the documentary Crazy About One Direction "I'm part of a fandom that could kill you"), perhaps fuelled in reaction to emotions such as shame, as fans love their idol only for their idol, but only to a certain extent, the idol never giving the love back to the degree the fan is feeling. Fans essentially love to love, not just love something or someone, and this "essence of love" is what makes their emotions and feelings amongst the purest of all humans, along perhaps with religious dedication.

 

Having analysed the origins, similarities and dissociations of fandom and religion, it then makes sense to state for now that if fandom isn’t religion, artists might just be fans of art as a creation, doing fan art of art, revering it by dedicating it themselves, in the fashion of the system of universes within universes that will later be developed. If myth can be seen etymologically as related to religion, we are then allowed to interest ourselves about self-mythology, and particularly to wonder what in self-mythology is the subject of this religion, what is the God? There are several possibilities. The first would be the creator of the work, the artist itself, making artistic labour a religion of the self. The God could also be what is at the origin of the work, the universes of references within references constituting the inspiration. The God could lastly be the art itself, or the entity constituting the practice as a whole, including the creator and the inspiration.

 

In "The Interior Dialogue", 2009, Stanley Krippner suggests that self-mythology is "an approach to personal transformation using the development of participants' personal stories about existential human issues for self-healing and personal growth." He distinguishes personal myths from the "cultural, institutional, ethnic, and familial myths", which influence personal myths and composes them, but are not personal myths by themselves, even though personal myths are composed and infused by all these elements. Self-mythology, if it bears its name from traditional definitions, is an extremely complex and peculiar concept to discern, because of how broad the subjects it touches are. Each memory, experience, each emotion and feeling, each sensitive approach to the world outside of one's conception of the self, forms a constantly evolving, transforming description of one's "true self". Self-mythology, or personal mythology, distinguishes itself from the definition of mythology, which is a body of myths constituting a whole entity, but in a subtle way as at the difference of cultural mythologies, it is unique to each person and defines them uniquely. 

 

Joshua Gamson's argument in Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America that "the position audiences embrace includes the roles of simultaneous voyeurs of and performers in commercial culture” is particularly relevant to our study as often, the concepts are inevitably mingled. Who is the audience, here? If fans are, as we have seen, the purest and most representative members of it, we can define it by being anyone with a personal mythology, which is everyone, regardless of their position, as everyone is included in the universes within universes that will later be defined. Artists, particularly, are the best placed to represent this duality of roles. If they are fans of something, is it only of art itself, through the means of self-mythology, or does their fan status goes way beyond their own work? The artist as voyeur absorbs and gorges on everything that could make part of his self-mythology and performs it by transforming it into his own practice. The artist can be compared to a hunter, whose prey is precisely myths. Art allows individuals to express and understand not only the world they are evolving in, but also, and sometimes more importantly, themselves. Photo shoots for instance, with particular settings, hair, makeup, allows to present an altered and embellished vision of the core of the artist, or on the contrary, the artist may take the place of a character with an opposite vision as who he really is, and by acting as such, the contrasts may lead to a better understanding of the true self. The persona develops and amplifies the ego, but gives it purpose, and can become even more renowned than the artist itself.

Marina Diamandis, more known as Marina and The Diamonds, character Electra Heart is a notable example of when the artist-hunter becomes the prey of her own creation. After creating her and basing an entire self-titled album on her, she had to retract from her own creation and clearly states that Electra Heart was not herself, but a persona, and even celebrates her death, as shown in an interview from 2015, “I knew that wasn't true to who I was as a person, or how I felt like who I wanted to be, but when you're not happy with yourself like that, it's very hard to show it, and it's very hard to change your behaviours. […]” "It was almost like I had been burdened by something my whole life and then suddenly that went away...”; “I feel like Electra Heart was very much more about identity and expressing various female archetypes through character, which I really enjoyed and was relevant to me at the time, but now? I don't relate to that anymore.” The balance between creating a persona allowing to express the disclosed for various reasons parts of the personality, and the persona itself taking over the true self, is hard to maintain. It is easy for an artist to indulge into what seems to be the most relieving expression of the art and the self, to the point that the persona becomes more famous, or that the weight of the truth revealed becomes too heavy for the artist.

 

However, some artists today express a turning point in the concept of celebrity and its applications. Why is it so unusual for an artist today to reject the concept of fame after having acceded to it? And more particularly, why is it regarded as detrimental and subject to backlash? I am a fan of the singer Lana Del Rey, born Elizabeth Grant. Her being the greatest part of my own personal mythology and subject of research, I was able to notice some elements putting Del Rey as a peculiar position in regards to celebrity culture and its approach especially regarding personal mythology. In Lana Del Rey’s song "God Knows I Tried", from the album Honeymoon, out September 18th, 2015, we are faced with a very bold statement from the singer: "Wear my blinders in the rain, I feel free when I see no one and nobody knows my name", understandable as the singer having to wear blinders even in the rain in order not to be recognized by paparazzi, "I've got nothing much to live for ever since I found my fame". The song title and its religious connotations sonically - Del Rey mentions its gospel influence - and lyrically make it relate as I've mentioned it to the definition of a myth. These lyrics mark a turning point from her usual themes. Is this song meaning as shallow as simply being tired of paparazzi stalking her? The music video for the single "High By The Beach", from the same album, indeed pictures Del Rey alone in her own luxury house of Malibu, stalked by a paparazzo in a helicopter, and exploding it at the end with a futuristic gun as a metaphor, the lyrics being a subtle war declaration to celebrity disguised as a break up song. It is only through the personal mythology and vision of the artist that we are revealed the true meaning of the art, making sense in as many ways as personal mythologies (High By The Beach works as a break up song), but only complete and true in the artist's own vision.

 

This vision on celebrity and fame seemed to have taken a 180° turn, ten years after Del Rey’s singing debut, in a peculiar fashion in regards to the modern depiction of celebrity and pop culture. Del Rey's approach to fame is transgressive as she rejects fame after acceding to it, and most importantly uses the experience as part of her self-mythology, referencing her relations to paparazzi in her own music videos, instead of only being inspired by other artists and putting "Easter eggs" to quote her, in her own work for her own self, in what could be understood as narcissistic but is simply the expression of her personal mythology: she is still conscious that fame and celebrity status is what as an artist allows her to access to the most accurate translation of her personal mythology, which is precisely the reason she wanted to be famous in the first place, success meaning financial success and financial success meaning a much broader possibility to do high budget videos and music with the highest technology available in order to propose the most complete experience to fans and noticeably to herself.

 

But what if the artist is herself a fan? In a 2014 interview with journalist Laura Leishman preceding the release of her third studio album Ultraviolence, Del Rey is quoted saying "I am a fan of Carol King", affirming her position not only as a famous personality as well as an artist but also as being herself part of what we could call the system of "universes of universes". This system is a complex depiction of the way influences and inspirations can be perpetually and infinitely traced, only limited by human resources and knowledge. We can see celebrity culture as a complex map of the universe, where each personality or artist is inspired by other, greater or equal artists, themselves inspired by other artists and elements composing their own self-mythology in an always and uncontrollably expanding fashion. Because it is self-mythology, it however doesn’t only depicts celebrity culture, but every aspect of reality, including fandom, which is the most representative part of it, as artists and celebrities inevitably are fans themselves, through the mean of personal mythology.

 

But why, exactly, are as we have seen fans ashamed of loving what they love? I do not believe it is merely just because of how it is implicated in pop culture being disregarded as less "noble", less "pure", less "sacred". Another element could indeed be that the emotions the fans feel are the purest emotions any human can feel, through how extreme and seemingly disinterested they are, at the verge sometimes of or even completely becoming pathological obsession as some fans who killed their idol - we could cite Mark David Chapman who killed John Lennon in 1980 (as cited by V. Rousselet-Blanc in Les Fans, Les dieux de nos nouvelles mythologies) - which results in the fans feeling themselves being bared down to their very essence, living through the object of their love, breathing through them, their egos becoming their very personal mythology. Fans may be not ashamed of their emotions, but of the violence of their emotions, how bared down they appear, as they are representative of the true selves. The line between obsession and adoration is indeed very thin, and the notion of cult is omnipresent and infuses every kind of fandom, as an inevitable part of its definition.

 

 

No matter the negative connotations often falsely attributed to fandoms, even though not without reasons, artists still are and give the purest manifestations and expressions of personal mythologies, and the technics they use are the same than fans. They archive, they organise, they regroup in communities and use activism as weapons where poetry and shock aren't necessarily present. Instead of simply manifesting their emotions as such, emotions that are just as powerful than fans' ones, as wild and untamed as they are in pop and celebrity culture, they present them through often coded and specifically designed means, in what is "socially accepted" as being art, and by giving it a price. If fans are often the consumers by excellence, collecting and mass consuming their idols being sold as living advertisements in the most extreme cases, artists are supposed to be the producers, but of course sometimes the roles are reversed or intertwined, with for example artists using fandom as a media, appropriating the fans technics, such as Eric Doeringer and his Cremaster Fanatic piece on being a fan of the artist Matthew Barney, 2007.

 

The notion of copyright here is interestingly dissociating "fan art" from "real art", as cited by J. Bailey in “The Messy World of Fan Art and Copyright”: the particular case of the Harry Potter Lexicon, which had been a free site for years, was deleted and faced legal issues at the moment it offered a book for sale even though it was before tolerated by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. Law protects the artists, because their work is original, and fan art is deriving and sometimes depends from it. However, fan art has a peculiar place because often, in order to accept and appreciate it, you need to understand and know the original work to the point of wanting to go further. Fan art can for example change the original work and become "canon", a slang fan fiction term designing "official" in order to differentiate the added parts from what the original story is based on. The notions surrounding fan art being dependant from original art are still complex to handle and legislate, as the original art itself is often inspired by the self-mythology of the author itself, in the Harry Potter example J.K. Rowling did not invented the concept of a magic world in itself so I am allowed to wonder how fair it really is that fandom and fan art are disregarded by society, even though the manifestations of it are often not understood by the individuals that aren't part of it and don't share the violent emotions only fans can feel.

 

Essentially, Del Rey defines what self-mythology as we defined it is in her own way, as a fan, as a star, and as an artist: creating a work of art or a practice being part of the system of universes within universes, standing completely by itself but extremely engraved in everything that it came from and composes it, may it be the history of the singer herself, the singers she is herself inspired by, and equally influenced by the fame system the artist is part of as a successful entertainer. Furthermore, Del Rey also is transgressive in her approach to anti-persona. We can find several occurrences throughout the years of the singer reaffirming her position as not being a persona, from her earliest explanations as to why she changed her stage name and how vehemently criticized it has been, as mentioned for example by the New York Times in their review for the release of the artist’s first studio album “Born To Die”, to her cover stories from October 2015 where she for the first time expresses a difference between her art work and herself, calling "Lana" another entity from herself, Elizabeth. We can then conclude that fandom and art together might be the purest expression of personal mythology, even though as we have analysed the line between fandom and religion often overlaps, as the common roots in the definitions of mythology and religion remind us.

 

To this point of the analysis, as we already have started to study, we need to expand our vision by opening it on what intrinsically bounds what we have studied, which is the notion of narcissism. In regards to narcissism, the Oxford dictionary presents us three definitions: "excessive or erotic interest in oneself and one’s physical appearance"; "extreme selfishness, with a grandiose view of one’s own talents and a craving for admiration, as characterizing a personality type"; and "self-centeredness arising from failure to distinguish the self from external objects, either in very young babies or as a feature of mental disorder". The two particularly interesting aspects of these descriptions for us are the notion of "excessive" and "erotic" attraction, as well as the "craving for admiration", which are most commonly found in personalities having accessed to fame, but as we have seen, can also characterize the fans. We can see already how negative and extreme these connotations are. The best example for this is of course celebrity culture, because its settings and underlying patterns are what allow narcissism to develop when it isn't already present as for instance a disorder.

 

A few years after her debuts, Lana Del Rey has finally accessed to her so desired celebrity status, adulated, adored by her notably zealous fans, as the photographer Chuck Grant immortalized in her photography work in her “Superfan” series (Grant is Del Rey's younger sister; in an interview for Billboard, October 2014, Del Rey is mentioned by the interviewer Bruce Wagner that Grant was "so shocked by the violence of the fans emotions that she doesn't take pictures of them anymore" – we can note that Grant uses this aspect of her personal mythology in her artwork), and even more often disregarded as irrelevant for her implication in pop culture and tumultuous performances and interviews, such as the Saturday Night Live performance January 14th 2012 or her infamous "I wish I was dead already" quote by Tim Jonze for The Guardian, June 12^th 2014, as well as her declarations about how she doesn't consider herself a feminist in a Fader Magazine interview, June 2014. We will see what is the part of narcissism in her approach to fame.

 

As the concept of narcissism inevitably infuses every aspect of our study, we first need to challenge it with self-mythology and understand the differences between these concepts. The first distinction we need to make in order to understand if self-mythology is narcissism and what its implications are in art, is that there are several narcissisms. Freud distinguished two narcissisms; primary and secondary. The primary narcissism has been an object of debate. Freud first described it as the stage where a child "narcissistically invests himself with the love he had felt from his mother" , as cited by J. Holmes in Narcissism, 2001, later largely challenged and argued by numerous psychanalystes, until the concept became too derived from its original meaning. Symington, in Emotion and Spirit, 1993, tells us that "the only narcissism that exists... is the second narcissism”. This second narcissism as Freud describes it contains the capital notion of pathological self-preoccupation, and is strongly associated to "self-soothing" behaviours based on research of pleasure. From what we defined about self-mythology, we already can sense a major distinction from narcissism. If personal mythology can have deriving sexual implications due to the potential nature of what composes it, it isn't its primary subject. The relation constituting self-mythology is not a sexual or pathological approach. It is, with much more subtlety, a romantic kind of relation, where the self accumulates events and inspirations in order to archive and reuse them but while still being detached from them, in a kind of respect if not admiration, that is perhaps halfway from pathological but never fully. Even if the self-mythology was composed purely of elements of sexual nature, it's the approach that makes it different from narcissism.

 

Equally, we need to understand the difference between selfishness and narcissism. Art is indeed selfish, as it is work to understand for oneself, the creator, ideas that might be part of his self-mythology, directly or through the world he's evolving in. It is, however, not necessarily narcissism as Freud describes it, apart if the art itself is about exploration of narcissism. But even there, the distinction between persona, narrator and creator is fundamental. The creator is not necessarily the narrator in the art work, the almighty entity self-controlling and creating, as we have seen in the distinction of fandom from religion. It is as we have seen common for artists to use of personas and characters to describe something they precisely wouldn't be able to access otherwise, or to project themselves on another plane, allowing themselves to get the detachment from their own self required to expand their vision.

 

Whether or not the use of persona is narcissism is open to speculation. On one hand, we could say it is, as the creator gets passed through the limits of his own self for the purpose of understanding and so glorifying the self itself. On the other, from our understanding of narcissism, the use of persona isn't linked to eroticism or sexuality, except in the case of fetishism, which allows individuals to put themselves in situations they wouldn't allow themselves to be outside a sexual context, taking a persona though for example roleplays in order to free themselves from taboos and get the most intense physical pleasure possible, narcissistically, for their own good. Artists exploring personas in sexuality blur the limit between self-mythology and narcissism, as their research is based on eroticism. Sometimes, too, the persona is the artist himself, staged. Ellis Cashmore, in “Celebrity/Culture”, cites Christopher Lasch's "The Culture of Narcissism". In Lasch's opinion, "The media gives substance to and thus intensify narcissistic dreams of fame and glory, encourage the common man to identify himself with the stars and to hate the 'herd' and make it more and more difficult for him to accept the banality of everyday existence". Lasch's position to regard narcissism as intrinsically detrimental in terms of our approach of celebrity culture is extreme and need to be tempered. Regardless or not if narcissism actually is self-mythology, its presence deriving from celebrity culture is not purely detrimental as it composes the basis of what will unravel to the inevitable and intrinsic personal myth.

 

Cashmore also states that "instead of just being devices for marketing films, music or the consumer produces they endorse, the celebrities have become products themselves". The art world is full of personalities whose person is treated as an as important factor than their art itself when it comes to putting it on the market, often not without criticism. The art implied can then become not necessarily the final pieces, but more the way the personality managed to sell itself by advertising his art work. We can think of artists with major success that had roots in popular culture as of course Andy Warhol or more recently Jeff Koons, whose immense success made a lot of ink run. These artists’ personalities are perhaps as famous as their works themselves.

 

Lana Del Rey, particularly, is a good example of an artist whose work challenges both the notion of celebrity and narcissism, especially in her debut. The chorus of the 2007 song “Disco”, interestingly leaked by fans themselves after the singer got her computer hacked, allow no possible doubt: "I am my only God". In another, even earlier song “A Star For Nick", the songstress vehemently states "you know it, I know it, I'm gonna be a star", assuming her position as craving celebrity status to the point of including it in her artwork. If Disco lyrics can instantly be regarded as narcissism, their use here isn't necessarily a glorification of the singer's person, adulated as a deity, but more as an inspirational invitation from the woman to herself to access to the celebrity status she's longing for, as the verses lyrics confirm: "You know how I like that celebrity type". As this song has been done at a time where the singer wasn't famous yet but precisely desperately trying to be, I am able to presume that it is not destined to anyone but the singer herself, not necessarily in a narcissistic way but still infused by it, the art - the song form - being the expression of her personal mythology.

 

It is interesting to compare the fascination of the general public for the private lives of stars and celebrities, with the content of personal mythology. From what we defined, any personal mythology intrinsically bears elements from the day life of the person it belongs to. The obsession from hardcore fans, what precisely define a "true" fan, for the daily life of a celebrity outside of what it is known for - its art and its representation of its self-mythology, can be linked to narcissism in several ways. The fans want to know everything about their idol or subject of obsession in order to get the most complete understanding of them, so that, as they know no connection is truly possible, they can create the most perfect version of them in their mind, for their own pleasure, to the extreme point that some fans physically change their appearance through cosmetic surgery, as for example Cindy Jackson becoming physically a Barbie doll, as cited by V. Rousselet-Blanc in “Les Fans, Les Dieux de nos nouvelles mythologies”.

 

We are fascinated by celebrities because we want to be like them, or better, we want to be them. We want what they have, look like they look, live their life. Do we want their happiness because we love them, or are we fans even in our hatred, do we just love to love as much as we love to hate and are finding our own happiness in the art or entertainment they present us? Scandal sells sometimes more than the art presented by celebrities, and sometimes, scandal even is the very art of celebrities. Later in the Laura Leishman interview, Del Rey states, "I write for myself", "I like to put in little things to the songs, kind of little innuendos that make me happy. When I listen to it, there's a line, I'm like that's funny. I put a favourite quote from a Walt Withman poem in there", etc. The songstress here mentions a fundamental point. We are faced with the choice of considering that the artist doing work for herself is narcissistic, or that she is but part of the same system than us all, as if her celebrity status didn't affected her approach to art nor fandom.

 

We all are craving validation from others. Through social media, wealth, comfort and success, we are seeking from others the confirmation that we're good, that we're great, that we're, in a way, better. Apart from of course some inevitable exceptions, art doesn't differ. The artists put their work out the world in expectation that it will be praised and appreciated, but are their intentions really pure? We are allowed to suppose that the pleasure artists get from getting their work validated actually is directed towards themselves only, in what can be thought as a narcissistic way. An artist makes art for himself, first and foremost. And this is why he precisely puts it out in the world, when he doesn't keep it disclosed for himself: because it is by being confronted to the mirror that is the world, that he can get it back reflected and enriched. Where modern celebrities rely on media in order to get what define them, art is often the media itself. Artists use their personal mythology to describe their personal lives in their work, hinting at their influences, referencing, doing their work as fans by archiving their predecessors in their own pieces. If we follow our analysis, this would mean that "real art" actually is more intrinsically a manifestation of narcissism or the ego than "fan art" based on celebrity culture and mass media, which is a complete dissociation from what is widely regarded in society.

 

Ellis Cashmore, in Celebrity/Culture, states "in a sense, we're all fans of varying degrees”. From our study, we can conclude that this statement is particularly true and has many repercussions. Anyone with a personal mythology, which is everyone, is a fan by nature. But some are expressing it in more sincere or visible ways, and artists, and especially fan artists that use their fan status in their own work, might be the purest representation of personal mythology. An artist as a peculiar place in society, furthermore if he is part of a celebrity system where he has his own fans revolving around him. If it isn’t possible to completely detach from narcissism, both in art and self-mythology, narcissism actually may serves self-mythology and might not necessarily be detrimental in art and fandom, as opposed to the common distinction of it, supported by its etymology and studies.

 

The subject of my analysis is broad, and its conclusions are even more, amplifying to create other universes of speculation, other mythologies. I was able after defining the terms to start analysing through this study how religion and fandom are linked and to what extent. From this starting point, through popular culture examples relevant to my sensibility, I was able to discern self-mythology and its influence through every aspect of our study, the place of artists themselves and the place of fans, the place of fan art in art, and the implications of it. I used my sensibility to the Lana Del Rey fandom and its influence in my own self-mythology and practice to study the place of celebrity culture in art and personal mythology. Always through the eye of self-mythology, I have studied the fans emotions and how important they are in shaping the relationship between fan art and the original art it derives from. Finally, I have expanded my vision by looking into the complex subject of the relationship between narcissism, self-mythology and art, differentiating narcissism from selfishness and observing how its influence isn’t necessarily detrimental. From all these analyses, I am able to conclude that art is its own fan art by the means of self-mythology and to the extent narcissism allows. I now wonder how it could be applied through my own practice in order to understand both my own self and my religious beliefs, as a fan, a fan of art, a fan of what composes my self-mythology, a fan of Lana Del Rey, a fan of fandom, and a fan of God.

 

 

 

Thank you for reading. For real.

[hello moto 116]

that v long

[renaissance 8,126]

You should record an audio version of this because I ain't got time to read all that  

[letsescapelizzy 672]

my mind cannot fathom long long posts.. its really too much to read..

not to put anyone down, just not for me..

[annedauphine 34,559]

Yeah lol I don't blame anyone for not reading it Just thought that if it belonged somewhere it would be here

[Dua Lipa 3,587]

Anne you amaze me with everything you do. You can basically do everything and your good at it. GREAT JOB

[labionda 52]

interesting piece, loved it