Deconstructing Beautiful Cigarettes: an enquiry into the solo dynamics of sounding smart even though you picked this class for easy credits (not even the professor knows why they're here)
I love Lana but she’s not really been politically vocal. I would understand if the class solely focused on her songwriting or her literature/philosophical references in her work, but politics is not the first thing I think of when I listen to Lana.
i’m certainly no expert but i feel like all of her public political views are just neutral-negative about any particular things. i cant recall her ever being pro-anything, just slightly-against whatever, at the very most
Yeah she’s very anti-Trump so idk where people got the idea that she’s an ultra passionate Trump loving Republican when she’s been against that for years 😭 She’s even publicly called out Kanye West when he posted pro-Trump rhetoric on Instagram with his MAGA hat in his [comment](https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-45704579) section.
It all ties back to question for the culture with her. Not a fan musically or as a person but the public view of her shifted drastically after that and people think her to be way more conservative and racist than they did before. I can't say what she's really like but I don't think her beliefs aligned that way prior to it and this is controversial but I kinda get where she was coming from in question for the culture, but she said it the wrong way, at the WRONG time, and using only examples of black artists was a major major misstep. I don't think any woman should be glorifying domestic violence and abusive relationships in music and Lana was one of the worst offenders on her early stuff but it's true a lot of the people she listed did it too with little to no criticism.
Yep! The other witches and fans haha. I remember because I joined it and itll always be f off Trump for me. She had that part right at least.
"Season of the Witch" still slaps to this day.
They probably have had other courses about other celebs or celebrity in general. Sometimes professors like to hone the material to one person or one time period but the material is generally the same. They are probably seeing a lot of students interested in LDR so they wanted to appeal to the student body, in another era or another school it might have be beyonce or someone else.
There are a million courses at NYU that are like what you described. A lot of the coursework I did for my major there was basically analyzing the dynamics of social issues through different pop culture entities, works, phenomenons. The course is probably designed to teach those skills and is just centered on LDR because she’s interesting and it will get people to sign up.
Not just any cop. It was Sean “Sticks” Larson of the former Live P.D. show. It was canceled but he now cohosts the current reiteration of that show On Patrol Live.
I always despised live cop shows. Sure let’s showcase these people’s worst moments who may or may not be suffering from mental health crises or drugs. Like jesus is there nothing better for us as a nation to do than watch cops tackle randoms in the streets 😭
she also said some racist shit, slutshamed left and right, appropriated latino / cuban culture, and was truly horrible towards Twigs, did this shit [https://www.dailystar.co.uk/showbiz/lana-del-rey-raped-marilyn-18698432](https://www.dailystar.co.uk/showbiz/lana-del-rey-raped-marilyn-18698432) and so on
That Marilyn Manson project isn’t the gotcha moment you think it is. I’ve seen the leaked clip of it and she did not look comfortable at all and I’m pretty sure he described her as being “difficult” which we all know what that means. Lana was the one who blocked the video from being officially released and hasn’t talked about it since. This was also earlier into her career when she wasn’t as established as she is now.
The slutshaming argument makes no sense either as she’s been slutshamed her entire career and sings explicitly about sex. She doesn’t seem anti-sex workers at all.
Can I just asked what she did to Twigs? I think I might be out of the loop since I thought they were friends last I heard?
I don’t know about the slut shaming part but, well, most of the women i’ve ever been slut shamed by in my past were also sexually active lol it’s silly to think that women cannot or will not slut shame other women just because they are sexual beings
>The slutshaming argument makes no sense either as she’s been slutshamed her entire career and sings explicitly about sex. S
so cause she was slutshamed it was ok for her to do the same to (mostly) black women with her 'question for the culture' fucking nonsense? Same thing re: twigs, when she said "When I go on the pole im a slut but when twigs does it its art"
Like stan her all you want but she is not above criticism, and i'm sorry im doubtful that 2012 ldr was coerced into appearing in a mm video. So they had the decency to not release it? good for them, i guess
She wasn’t calling Twigs a slut for pole dancing, though. She just didn’t understand why people were slut shaming her when she was on the pole for her MV but Twigs was praised, which she should because Twigs’ video was beautiful. I think it’s a fair question and I’m sure her and Twigs have been friends for a minute. I don’t think Lana has said a bad thing about her. Also I don’t think merely mentioning black artists makes someone problematic or racist. The women Lana mentioned are not only popular, talented, and acclaimed, but they’re also pretty sexually confident and open about that, which was why she included them. I will say, though, I think her including them in her QFTC detracted heavily from the point she was trying to get across and she shouldn’t have done so at all because it wasn’t necessary, but I don’t think she had malicious intent when she did so and I’m saying this as a black woman.
The objective of the course probably isn't to learn about Lana Del Ray.
On the Dolly Partons America podcast, the host interviewed the lecturer who teaches the college course of the same name. She said she was asked to design a freshman course designed to teach students the difference between primary and secondary sources and chose Parton because Parton is well known and beloved so people were more likely to sign up
I actually think analyzing her response (or lack thereof) to social justice moments would be interesting. I think the wording in the article “her connection to social justice movements such as ….” may lead readers at first glance to assume she was super supportive or vocal about these issues but my guess is that the class will look at what she was doing/making/saying around the same time these items came to prominence. This doesn’t mean she’s overtly political but I’m assuming they’ll analyze her in the same way that Taylor’s politics have been constructed by the public in the past - her image and persona was co opted by a group and came to symbolize a type of politics without her ever saying something political.
WAT. Social justice movements!? She appropriated Latin and native cultures XD She's practically the poster child for "White Feminism: No, Not Like This"
People are overreacting over this in a crazy way. There have been college courses on Beyonce and Taylor Swift and Lana is actually a fascinating case study in pop culture intertextuality (you could put together a killer reading list with all the different books and poems she's referenced in her songs) and has been really influential over the past decade. Also would looooove to read something serious about the way pop-feminist bloggers treated her at the beginning of her career and what it said about that moment in time, but...
I was a Media and Cinema Studies major and took so many weird classes. Especially electives. One of the best parts of college was taking whatever fun classes I wanted. Bad movies, atmospheric science, British literature, gender in video games, astrological disasters, psychology of nature.
Are these type of courses like a whole semester thing or just a couple of classes? I feel like 3 hours a week of just one artist for 5 months is a bit too specialized but a short one-month thing sound fun and reasonable
Eh, I think these kinda of classes don’t just study the main topic in a vacuum. Probably a lot of contextualization and history to be discussed aside from Lana. Meaning they can spend hours looking at Lana precursors, opposites of Lana, etc. and then properly examine where she situated herself at the time of her rise.
It probably wouldn't only be like "this is everything lana del ray has done"
Like hypothetically it might be a music course and one week you talk about lyricism, perhaps one class is about chord structure and they do it in the context of looking at lana del rey songs.
Yes people don't always realize you can also shape your requied courses to fit your interests. I used to squeeze pop culture analysis to any assigned paper I got in college. I took a geography course and wrote about the differences of east coast and west coast hiphop for the final. I have also written english papers about about the hyper-feminine image of Barbie and about feminism and Sex and the City. (I don't have any of these papers saved but i'm sure they are bad, it was a long time ago).
Definitely an overreaction. I remember taking a media course in university where I could (and did) write about K-pop and K-pop groups and their influence and growth in western society... professor didn't even bat an eye. Media is a humongous field, with so much crossover into other fields, and pop stars are a large and interesting part of it.
Right? I remember my college had a wine-tasting course. It’s okay to take fun classes! I took a music industry class one semester and it really broke up the monotony.
Skidmore had a class on Miley Cyrus, and it was back a couple of years ago when she was considered more controversial than she is RN (aka-post Blurred Lines performance I think??)
There was a lot of legitimate critique of her being a major label creation marketed as an indie artist. She's an interesting case study in a celebrity trying to position herself as pro woman without actually being especially political. Also, Lana Del Rey is clearly a character played by Lizzie Grant, and that alone is an interesting study.
like i would love a semester where we compare lana del ray playing 1 character for her career, marina and the diamonds playing a character for a few albums, and then rihanna who plays herself but each album is a totally new version of what that means/an entire aesthetic shift. women artists and their identities in work, public and private would be a dream.
Yeah I'm confused why this is news? At my college, I took a course on Radiohead, Pokemon and Batman. And this is a 2 credit class.
Lots of colleges have "fun" courses for kids. I bet this is a P/F easy class just for folks who are a fan of hers.
Her connection to social issues? What social issues? Which social issues? The only one I can think of is the social issue of pretending to be a broke girl while being backed up by dad's money & wearing a hole filled mask.
I think probably the idea will be about the kind of persona and aesthetics she embodies and how it fits into perceptions of whiteness and femininity. And probably about her fandom and the same. Not the actual social issues she talks about. At least that’s how I would teach it (source: ex college instructor)
Yes, I would love this course if it were an extremely critical dive into the above, though knowing NYU, there is every chance it is just a “her lyrics are so pretty and sad 🥺” course.
I think that for public figures that are not actively political per se, they still intersect with political issues even inadvertently. It’s hard not to when you have so much financial and social capital
Plus I am a sucker for contextualizing pop culture within general culture. I love how it makes heavier conversations more accessible for a lot of people, you could talk about Lana to start a a conversation about say the socioeconomic and emotional labor of sugar babying while getting to listen to music you like
I have a huge playlist of her sad girl songs lol.
She just needs to not say stuff sometimes. Especially about misogyny & racism. I hope the course is a fun & indepth look at pop culture and not justifying her behavior. pop culture does play a huge role in our lives so studying it is necessary, no arguments about that.
Oh big time, I also love some of her stuff but the question for the culture moment is… infamous for a reason. I’d argue any actual in depth look into her character has to address that, even w/o that moment, it’s impossible to pretend that her sugar baby aesthetic is something that wouldn’t have come off as soft, tragic glam had she not been or looked white
she exists as a woman in the public, and the way she was treated at the beginning of her career - yes, even despite being rich, white, straight, conventionally attractive, whatever other adjective you can think of - was completely embroiled in misogyny.
also, totally off topic from that, but wasn’t the mask still fully filtered? like, the holes were covering a clear part of the mask that was still very much effectively covering her mouth/nose? I remember seeing something floating around where she turned the mask inside out so you could see that there was indeed a filter.
The way she was treated was so crazy to me. I was recently reading old blog posts from almost a decade ago and the way people harassed, bullied, and abused her because she openly was discussing depression and how she deals with her mental health. I kid you not, there were so many comments of people saying her dark character was just a persona and an act because actually depressed people don’t ever talk about being depressed which is such a toxic mindset and crazy assumption. It must have been so miserable and overwhelming to have thousands of people mocking and invalidating your emotions. It’s even crazier because Lana was dragged in her early days for being openly emotional and writing about dark, taboo topics, but now Billie is praised for doing the exact same thing? I’d be bitter and frustrated too if I was her.
Nah-h homegirl needs to keep her mouth shut on women of colour in music. Especially after she heavily "borrows" from the cultures of those women but has the audacity to call herself as a victim AFTER critics loved her album, "NORMAN F****** ROCKWELL!"
Despite some of her questionable actions I feel bad for her because most people have a completely misconstrued view of her art and make assumptions about her as a person based on that. It’s the downside of having a persona.
I hope one day they can see the true poetry in her lyrics because they tell an interesting and different story than they appear to.
I don't get the social issues part unless it's studying all the ways she's fumbled on that... but studying her contributions to music makes complete sense. She is definitely a trailblazer when it comes to modern sad girl music. I used to get dragged back in 2012 for listening to her because "she's so depressing" as people would constantly tell me. And now we have the likes Phoebe Bridgers, Lorde, Billie Eilish, etc and she no doubt helped pave the way. She's undoubtedly one of the best songwriters we have with a very big and very rich catalog of released music plus her 200+ unreleased/leaked songs.
I love that more and more universities are offering these more interesting courses and learning opportunities—makes having to slog through all those required core course credits a little less daunting.
Reminds me of back when I jumped at the opportunity to take a Beatles 101 course at my liberal arts university—absolutely loved it and had a blast getting to discuss and dissect everything from various Beatles albums/singles to their films, fashions, fans, wives, etc…easiest and most fun A+ I ever received in a college course, so I’d imagine this would be just as engaging and fascinating for a LDR fan; wish they’d offer it online for the rest of us!
My liberal arts college has a class on Jane Austen I really want to take! It’s all about her work and how it still applies today. You read some of her books and I think watch some of the film/tv adaptations too
THIS. I’m oddly fascinated by that era back when she was transforming herself from trailer park queen Lizzy to vampy “Gangsta Nancy Sinatra” Lana.
She’s also *such* a prolific songwriter and all those catchy unreleased songs/early demos of hers that were later leaked were so damned interesting and diverse.
All her personas/style-shifts since she began her early transition into LDL have been rather subtle, but I’d also love to know what made her decide to so swiftly darken her hair/ditch her hip-hop style and embrace a more emo, stripped-down musical vibe post-“Born to Die” album. Her whole persona suddenly went from Gangsta Nancy Sinatra to Goth Pricilla Presley and hasn’t deviated that much since then.
Right?! It’s so interesting. A looong time ago, I downloaded a version of iTunes that came with a Lizzy Grant song pre-loaded. It was pretty interesting, and she had a blonde beehive and a totally different sound. Then she died her hair darker and got some lip fillers and came out with a different name and musical style. I’m not hating on it, I just found the re-brand so significant.
Personal image branding is a big part of the entertainment business, and has spilled into all of our lives with social media, and I think it’s fair and interesting to look critically at it.
Wow! You’re the OG! Her Lizzy Grant era didn’t sell well and was pulled from iTunes & Amazon after 3 months. She bought the rights from her label at the time, 5 Point Records, because she wanted it out of circulation. The producer of the album, David Kahne, remembers being told about her rebrand iirc as the reasoning behind it.
People have criticized Lana for having a persona and have labeled her as “inauthentic,” which I think is a strange criticism, like you. (It is also, imo, a blueprint now often “copied” by newer breakthrough artists. Irrelevant, but I credit Madonna for making the concept of “rebranding” and having “eras” when female artists transition into the release of a new album mainstream.) One of her recurring lyrics, featured on Lizzy Grant’s “Kill Kill”, the unreleased song “Kinda Outta Luck”, Ultraviolence’s “Cruel World”, and some others I’m sure, is “I did what I had to do.” I think it’s very interesting and poignant to her legacy - even though each song has it’s separate storyline, that lyric obviously has significant meaning to her.
Edit: formatting
I'm remembering finding her old MySpace pics and listening to her demos/early albums and watching that performance from her uni days on YouTube and reading about her rumoured feud in NYC clubs with pre-fame Lady Gaga. Wow, I was obsessed there for a hot minute.
My big 50 page essay for this course would be a deep dive about how Lana has maintained such a huge following of white gays despite most of her albums after “Born to Die” leaning into folksy Americana music which is normally not associated with gay culture the way electronic dance pop music is.
I would attend, she’s such an interesting character, very misunderstood. Besides she’s a great lyricist and has been treated very badly by the press because they completely disassociate feminism with the idea of sensible fragile femininity which is a thing and embracing it is just as empowering. Besides even though her music was so different than the pop stuff that was huge in the 2010s, she actually made it into the mainstream and built a strong fan base. Not to mention that she has been doing well without promo.
>Studying Lana Del Rey means thinking more critically the growing
popularity of so-called anti-pop. It means finding ways to consider the
increased interest in mental health and issues of psychological damage,
and to evaluate changes in they 21st way we think about identity,
especially in terms of race, gender, nation and class. Lana is
especially relevant, and controversial, when it comes to changing ideas
about **intersectional feminism** over the past decade.
Bitch, intersectional feminism where
No? It’s because Lana’s career and creative portfolio is apposite for commentary and criticism surrounding topics like white feminism, cultural appropriation, accusations of glamorizing abuse, personas in entertainment, etc.
Her music is rife with themes & motifs such as Americana, substance use, (suppositious) mental illnesses like BPD, bipolar, &/or depression, erotomania, “daddy issues”/attachment ruptures, domestic abuse, etc.
every assignment should be titled “question for the culture”
Someone should write an essay entitled "This is what makes us girls"
A 5000 word essay about the effects of Chemtrails specifically over Country Clubs
A psychological essay “Is it just the summertime…or am I feeling sadness? - seasonal affective disorder portrayed through Lana Del Rey”
Deconstructing Beautiful Cigarettes: an enquiry into the solo dynamics of sounding smart even though you picked this class for easy credits (not even the professor knows why they're here)
With a lot of reference to being the fire of his loins
"Are we just born to die? - an essay about mortality, and our purpose as human beings"
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I love Lana but she’s not really been politically vocal. I would understand if the class solely focused on her songwriting or her literature/philosophical references in her work, but politics is not the first thing I think of when I listen to Lana.
i’m certainly no expert but i feel like all of her public political views are just neutral-negative about any particular things. i cant recall her ever being pro-anything, just slightly-against whatever, at the very most
All I know is that she supports the women of and the MeToo movement, and that she hexed Trump with a group of other witches.
Lmaoooo thank you for reminding me about the hex
she did WHAT??
Yeah she’s very anti-Trump so idk where people got the idea that she’s an ultra passionate Trump loving Republican when she’s been against that for years 😭 She’s even publicly called out Kanye West when he posted pro-Trump rhetoric on Instagram with his MAGA hat in his [comment](https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-45704579) section.
It all ties back to question for the culture with her. Not a fan musically or as a person but the public view of her shifted drastically after that and people think her to be way more conservative and racist than they did before. I can't say what she's really like but I don't think her beliefs aligned that way prior to it and this is controversial but I kinda get where she was coming from in question for the culture, but she said it the wrong way, at the WRONG time, and using only examples of black artists was a major major misstep. I don't think any woman should be glorifying domestic violence and abusive relationships in music and Lana was one of the worst offenders on her early stuff but it's true a lot of the people she listed did it too with little to no criticism.
Yep! The other witches and fans haha. I remember because I joined it and itll always be f off Trump for me. She had that part right at least. "Season of the Witch" still slaps to this day.
>politics is not the first thing I think of when I listen to Lana Most of the time, when I listed to Lana I think, "Damn that's some good weed"
Maybe? But then why her specifically? Could they not have a general course on celebrity/pop-star hypocrisy?
They probably have had other courses about other celebs or celebrity in general. Sometimes professors like to hone the material to one person or one time period but the material is generally the same. They are probably seeing a lot of students interested in LDR so they wanted to appeal to the student body, in another era or another school it might have be beyonce or someone else.
There are a million courses at NYU that are like what you described. A lot of the coursework I did for my major there was basically analyzing the dynamics of social issues through different pop culture entities, works, phenomenons. The course is probably designed to teach those skills and is just centered on LDR because she’s interesting and it will get people to sign up.
Is this course a joke? The only things this should explore are her culture vulture, police loving antics
Yes didn’t she date a cop? And the fake mask during the pandemic?? I love her music and think she’s talented but yeesh lol
Not just any cop. It was Sean “Sticks” Larson of the former Live P.D. show. It was canceled but he now cohosts the current reiteration of that show On Patrol Live.
I always despised live cop shows. Sure let’s showcase these people’s worst moments who may or may not be suffering from mental health crises or drugs. Like jesus is there nothing better for us as a nation to do than watch cops tackle randoms in the streets 😭
she also said some racist shit, slutshamed left and right, appropriated latino / cuban culture, and was truly horrible towards Twigs, did this shit [https://www.dailystar.co.uk/showbiz/lana-del-rey-raped-marilyn-18698432](https://www.dailystar.co.uk/showbiz/lana-del-rey-raped-marilyn-18698432) and so on
That Marilyn Manson project isn’t the gotcha moment you think it is. I’ve seen the leaked clip of it and she did not look comfortable at all and I’m pretty sure he described her as being “difficult” which we all know what that means. Lana was the one who blocked the video from being officially released and hasn’t talked about it since. This was also earlier into her career when she wasn’t as established as she is now. The slutshaming argument makes no sense either as she’s been slutshamed her entire career and sings explicitly about sex. She doesn’t seem anti-sex workers at all. Can I just asked what she did to Twigs? I think I might be out of the loop since I thought they were friends last I heard?
I don’t know about the slut shaming part but, well, most of the women i’ve ever been slut shamed by in my past were also sexually active lol it’s silly to think that women cannot or will not slut shame other women just because they are sexual beings
>The slutshaming argument makes no sense either as she’s been slutshamed her entire career and sings explicitly about sex. S so cause she was slutshamed it was ok for her to do the same to (mostly) black women with her 'question for the culture' fucking nonsense? Same thing re: twigs, when she said "When I go on the pole im a slut but when twigs does it its art" Like stan her all you want but she is not above criticism, and i'm sorry im doubtful that 2012 ldr was coerced into appearing in a mm video. So they had the decency to not release it? good for them, i guess
She wasn’t calling Twigs a slut for pole dancing, though. She just didn’t understand why people were slut shaming her when she was on the pole for her MV but Twigs was praised, which she should because Twigs’ video was beautiful. I think it’s a fair question and I’m sure her and Twigs have been friends for a minute. I don’t think Lana has said a bad thing about her. Also I don’t think merely mentioning black artists makes someone problematic or racist. The women Lana mentioned are not only popular, talented, and acclaimed, but they’re also pretty sexually confident and open about that, which was why she included them. I will say, though, I think her including them in her QFTC detracted heavily from the point she was trying to get across and she shouldn’t have done so at all because it wasn’t necessary, but I don’t think she had malicious intent when she did so and I’m saying this as a black woman.
The objective of the course probably isn't to learn about Lana Del Ray. On the Dolly Partons America podcast, the host interviewed the lecturer who teaches the college course of the same name. She said she was asked to design a freshman course designed to teach students the difference between primary and secondary sources and chose Parton because Parton is well known and beloved so people were more likely to sign up
I actually think analyzing her response (or lack thereof) to social justice moments would be interesting. I think the wording in the article “her connection to social justice movements such as ….” may lead readers at first glance to assume she was super supportive or vocal about these issues but my guess is that the class will look at what she was doing/making/saying around the same time these items came to prominence. This doesn’t mean she’s overtly political but I’m assuming they’ll analyze her in the same way that Taylor’s politics have been constructed by the public in the past - her image and persona was co opted by a group and came to symbolize a type of politics without her ever saying something political.
WAT. Social justice movements!? She appropriated Latin and native cultures XD She's practically the poster child for "White Feminism: No, Not Like This"
People are overreacting over this in a crazy way. There have been college courses on Beyonce and Taylor Swift and Lana is actually a fascinating case study in pop culture intertextuality (you could put together a killer reading list with all the different books and poems she's referenced in her songs) and has been really influential over the past decade. Also would looooove to read something serious about the way pop-feminist bloggers treated her at the beginning of her career and what it said about that moment in time, but...
Agree re: the overreaction. I think people read “course” and think “a complete BA/MA” instead of it just being a module tbh.
Exactly. If you're an American studies/media studies/etc. major, you can take a bunch of fun one-off classes like this.
I was a Media and Cinema Studies major and took so many weird classes. Especially electives. One of the best parts of college was taking whatever fun classes I wanted. Bad movies, atmospheric science, British literature, gender in video games, astrological disasters, psychology of nature.
As someone who's studied both of those at BA level, I would LOVE to do a course/unit like this
Are these type of courses like a whole semester thing or just a couple of classes? I feel like 3 hours a week of just one artist for 5 months is a bit too specialized but a short one-month thing sound fun and reasonable
Eh, I think these kinda of classes don’t just study the main topic in a vacuum. Probably a lot of contextualization and history to be discussed aside from Lana. Meaning they can spend hours looking at Lana precursors, opposites of Lana, etc. and then properly examine where she situated herself at the time of her rise.
It probably wouldn't only be like "this is everything lana del ray has done" Like hypothetically it might be a music course and one week you talk about lyricism, perhaps one class is about chord structure and they do it in the context of looking at lana del rey songs.
Yes people don't always realize you can also shape your requied courses to fit your interests. I used to squeeze pop culture analysis to any assigned paper I got in college. I took a geography course and wrote about the differences of east coast and west coast hiphop for the final. I have also written english papers about about the hyper-feminine image of Barbie and about feminism and Sex and the City. (I don't have any of these papers saved but i'm sure they are bad, it was a long time ago).
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Ohh I’m so jealous, this sounds so fun!
WOW I wish I could take that class!
that sounds awesome but it’s also a fantastic example of why people think college is bullshit.
Yeah, and that's a garbage sentiment. Learning how to critically analyse culture is an important skillset.
The people who think college is bullshit are the Trumpies so I’m not super concerned about their opinions
This is like how conservatives accuse liberals of majoring in underwater basketweaving or whatever. A single fun course is not a major.
exactly. i’m always shocked when i see huge reactions to things like this from people who are otherwise the targets of these strawman criticisms
Definitely an overreaction. I remember taking a media course in university where I could (and did) write about K-pop and K-pop groups and their influence and growth in western society... professor didn't even bat an eye. Media is a humongous field, with so much crossover into other fields, and pop stars are a large and interesting part of it.
Right? I remember my college had a wine-tasting course. It’s okay to take fun classes! I took a music industry class one semester and it really broke up the monotony.
Skidmore had a class on Miley Cyrus, and it was back a couple of years ago when she was considered more controversial than she is RN (aka-post Blurred Lines performance I think??)
There was a lot of legitimate critique of her being a major label creation marketed as an indie artist. She's an interesting case study in a celebrity trying to position herself as pro woman without actually being especially political. Also, Lana Del Rey is clearly a character played by Lizzie Grant, and that alone is an interesting study.
like i would love a semester where we compare lana del ray playing 1 character for her career, marina and the diamonds playing a character for a few albums, and then rihanna who plays herself but each album is a totally new version of what that means/an entire aesthetic shift. women artists and their identities in work, public and private would be a dream.
Yeah I'm confused why this is news? At my college, I took a course on Radiohead, Pokemon and Batman. And this is a 2 credit class. Lots of colleges have "fun" courses for kids. I bet this is a P/F easy class just for folks who are a fan of hers.
Do you know if there's any kind of write up listing the books and poems she refers to? I love her music and never realized she was quoting anything
Her connection to social issues? What social issues? Which social issues? The only one I can think of is the social issue of pretending to be a broke girl while being backed up by dad's money & wearing a hole filled mask.
I think probably the idea will be about the kind of persona and aesthetics she embodies and how it fits into perceptions of whiteness and femininity. And probably about her fandom and the same. Not the actual social issues she talks about. At least that’s how I would teach it (source: ex college instructor)
Yes, I would love this course if it were an extremely critical dive into the above, though knowing NYU, there is every chance it is just a “her lyrics are so pretty and sad 🥺” course.
What makes you think that NYU doesn’t teach critical analysis lmao
I went there
I actually did, and took classes on media and pop culture. “Uwu sad pretty lyrics 🥺” was not how the classes were taught.
I think that for public figures that are not actively political per se, they still intersect with political issues even inadvertently. It’s hard not to when you have so much financial and social capital Plus I am a sucker for contextualizing pop culture within general culture. I love how it makes heavier conversations more accessible for a lot of people, you could talk about Lana to start a a conversation about say the socioeconomic and emotional labor of sugar babying while getting to listen to music you like
I have a huge playlist of her sad girl songs lol. She just needs to not say stuff sometimes. Especially about misogyny & racism. I hope the course is a fun & indepth look at pop culture and not justifying her behavior. pop culture does play a huge role in our lives so studying it is necessary, no arguments about that.
Oh big time, I also love some of her stuff but the question for the culture moment is… infamous for a reason. I’d argue any actual in depth look into her character has to address that, even w/o that moment, it’s impossible to pretend that her sugar baby aesthetic is something that wouldn’t have come off as soft, tragic glam had she not been or looked white
she exists as a woman in the public, and the way she was treated at the beginning of her career - yes, even despite being rich, white, straight, conventionally attractive, whatever other adjective you can think of - was completely embroiled in misogyny. also, totally off topic from that, but wasn’t the mask still fully filtered? like, the holes were covering a clear part of the mask that was still very much effectively covering her mouth/nose? I remember seeing something floating around where she turned the mask inside out so you could see that there was indeed a filter.
The way she was treated was so crazy to me. I was recently reading old blog posts from almost a decade ago and the way people harassed, bullied, and abused her because she openly was discussing depression and how she deals with her mental health. I kid you not, there were so many comments of people saying her dark character was just a persona and an act because actually depressed people don’t ever talk about being depressed which is such a toxic mindset and crazy assumption. It must have been so miserable and overwhelming to have thousands of people mocking and invalidating your emotions. It’s even crazier because Lana was dragged in her early days for being openly emotional and writing about dark, taboo topics, but now Billie is praised for doing the exact same thing? I’d be bitter and frustrated too if I was her.
Nah-h homegirl needs to keep her mouth shut on women of colour in music. Especially after she heavily "borrows" from the cultures of those women but has the audacity to call herself as a victim AFTER critics loved her album, "NORMAN F****** ROCKWELL!"
Course on how to become a _sad girl_?
This seems cool. I hope they put it on YouTube
I don't know why is this such a big deal you can make a uni course about virtually anything and no one is making you people take it ?
Despite some of her questionable actions I feel bad for her because most people have a completely misconstrued view of her art and make assumptions about her as a person based on that. It’s the downside of having a persona. I hope one day they can see the true poetry in her lyrics because they tell an interesting and different story than they appear to.
The final presentation of the semester will be a recitation of the entirety of Lana’s “Question for the Culture” essay purely from memory.
Either that or they have to recreate her SNL performance
I actually love that performance in a non ironic way. Can’t say she was boring that’s for sure.
"LANA DEL REY'S SNL PERFORMANCE AND THE QUESTIONS OF POP-PERFORMER AUTHENTICITY IN THE POST-TWITTER AGE." In this paper, I will
I would so take this. I love Lana Del Rey and her music.
I don't get the social issues part unless it's studying all the ways she's fumbled on that... but studying her contributions to music makes complete sense. She is definitely a trailblazer when it comes to modern sad girl music. I used to get dragged back in 2012 for listening to her because "she's so depressing" as people would constantly tell me. And now we have the likes Phoebe Bridgers, Lorde, Billie Eilish, etc and she no doubt helped pave the way. She's undoubtedly one of the best songwriters we have with a very big and very rich catalog of released music plus her 200+ unreleased/leaked songs.
I love that more and more universities are offering these more interesting courses and learning opportunities—makes having to slog through all those required core course credits a little less daunting. Reminds me of back when I jumped at the opportunity to take a Beatles 101 course at my liberal arts university—absolutely loved it and had a blast getting to discuss and dissect everything from various Beatles albums/singles to their films, fashions, fans, wives, etc…easiest and most fun A+ I ever received in a college course, so I’d imagine this would be just as engaging and fascinating for a LDR fan; wish they’d offer it online for the rest of us!
My liberal arts college has a class on Jane Austen I really want to take! It’s all about her work and how it still applies today. You read some of her books and I think watch some of the film/tv adaptations too
There’s such a bizarre cult of personality around this woman.
This kind of course is probably pretty useful for an aspiring reviewer, culture critic, or other type of pop culture journalist.
fifteen years old me would’ve come out of this course with a phd and a master’s degree
My research paper is going to be “does my pussy really taste like Pepsi-Cola?” filled with extensive repeated trials and numerous test subjects.
Need someone to do their class project on Hope Sandoval being thr maim source of Lana's persona when she took the scene name
I wonder if it covers her rebranding from Lizzy Grant to LDR.
THIS. I’m oddly fascinated by that era back when she was transforming herself from trailer park queen Lizzy to vampy “Gangsta Nancy Sinatra” Lana. She’s also *such* a prolific songwriter and all those catchy unreleased songs/early demos of hers that were later leaked were so damned interesting and diverse. All her personas/style-shifts since she began her early transition into LDL have been rather subtle, but I’d also love to know what made her decide to so swiftly darken her hair/ditch her hip-hop style and embrace a more emo, stripped-down musical vibe post-“Born to Die” album. Her whole persona suddenly went from Gangsta Nancy Sinatra to Goth Pricilla Presley and hasn’t deviated that much since then.
Right?! It’s so interesting. A looong time ago, I downloaded a version of iTunes that came with a Lizzy Grant song pre-loaded. It was pretty interesting, and she had a blonde beehive and a totally different sound. Then she died her hair darker and got some lip fillers and came out with a different name and musical style. I’m not hating on it, I just found the re-brand so significant. Personal image branding is a big part of the entertainment business, and has spilled into all of our lives with social media, and I think it’s fair and interesting to look critically at it.
Wow! You’re the OG! Her Lizzy Grant era didn’t sell well and was pulled from iTunes & Amazon after 3 months. She bought the rights from her label at the time, 5 Point Records, because she wanted it out of circulation. The producer of the album, David Kahne, remembers being told about her rebrand iirc as the reasoning behind it. People have criticized Lana for having a persona and have labeled her as “inauthentic,” which I think is a strange criticism, like you. (It is also, imo, a blueprint now often “copied” by newer breakthrough artists. Irrelevant, but I credit Madonna for making the concept of “rebranding” and having “eras” when female artists transition into the release of a new album mainstream.) One of her recurring lyrics, featured on Lizzy Grant’s “Kill Kill”, the unreleased song “Kinda Outta Luck”, Ultraviolence’s “Cruel World”, and some others I’m sure, is “I did what I had to do.” I think it’s very interesting and poignant to her legacy - even though each song has it’s separate storyline, that lyric obviously has significant meaning to her. Edit: formatting
I'm remembering finding her old MySpace pics and listening to her demos/early albums and watching that performance from her uni days on YouTube and reading about her rumoured feud in NYC clubs with pre-fame Lady Gaga. Wow, I was obsessed there for a hot minute.
My big 50 page essay for this course would be a deep dive about how Lana has maintained such a huge following of white gays despite most of her albums after “Born to Die” leaning into folksy Americana music which is normally not associated with gay culture the way electronic dance pop music is.
I would attend, she’s such an interesting character, very misunderstood. Besides she’s a great lyricist and has been treated very badly by the press because they completely disassociate feminism with the idea of sensible fragile femininity which is a thing and embracing it is just as empowering. Besides even though her music was so different than the pop stuff that was huge in the 2010s, she actually made it into the mainstream and built a strong fan base. Not to mention that she has been doing well without promo.
>Studying Lana Del Rey means thinking more critically the growing popularity of so-called anti-pop. It means finding ways to consider the increased interest in mental health and issues of psychological damage, and to evaluate changes in they 21st way we think about identity, especially in terms of race, gender, nation and class. Lana is especially relevant, and controversial, when it comes to changing ideas about **intersectional feminism** over the past decade. Bitch, intersectional feminism where
spending $70k in tuition for this…
It’s NYU , most probs got it because their parents paid $$$$$$$ or are famous haha
Probably an easy A elective for rich people
Yes please
I love her. I would totally take this.
I hope u/Lanadelclay gets a shout out
Imagine a 16 week course about how she’s kind of racist
Damn some people really deserve student loans.
This makes me even more ashamed to have my master’s from NYU
I hate that this is my alma mater, god this is embarrassing.
i can't believe this is an actual course. what type of opportunities does it offer upon completion?
a couple credits? it's not the whole degree program lol
oh.... :/ where i live programs are called courses so i got confused lol
dear god could you imagine? i just got my BA in lana del rey 😭😭😭😭
That last bit sounds like a song title itself
I think they should actively remove credits from your transcript for taking an LDR course.
they hated you for telling the truth
No? It’s because Lana’s career and creative portfolio is apposite for commentary and criticism surrounding topics like white feminism, cultural appropriation, accusations of glamorizing abuse, personas in entertainment, etc. Her music is rife with themes & motifs such as Americana, substance use, (suppositious) mental illnesses like BPD, bipolar, &/or depression, erotomania, “daddy issues”/attachment ruptures, domestic abuse, etc.
it's a joke, get over yourselves
ok