“The womb, the tits, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter… love-perturbations and risings… these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul. “Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman,” she quotes, contradicting the woman-from-man’s-rib story evoked by the Eden opening. Like Elvis, Whitman’s another “daddy” of hers, and seeing as he’s the first speaker of her song’s name, presumably a daddy preeminent. She recites “I Sing the Body Electric” by Walt Whitman.
That is what she seeks what do these celebrities know?Īfter Lana bites the apple, she becomes a stripper. For Lana Del Rey, that god is John Wayne, or even more, since power and influence seems to spring equally from the other stars of her Eden, god is celebrity itself. In the Bible story, Adam and Eve were said to have eaten the apple to obtain the knowledge of good and evil they were banished from the garden for seeking that knowledge, seeking to be like god. She’ll find redemption in this story, but first, the fall-a dance with Satan’s serpent, itself electrified cold blue. God himself, in this origin story, has a stand-in in John Wayne, according to her opening monologue: “John said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light, and John saw that it was good.” Likewise, per the opening lyric of “Body Electric,” the first of three songs in the film, Lana is surrounded in Eden by a heavenly host of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and Jesus, her “bestest friend.” But if Christ is simply one among the chorus, and nothing more, merely Lana’s peer after the Nietzschean death of god (a turn referenced on her “Gods & Monsters,” which plays later in the film), then her savior must lie elsewhere. It begins with Lana as Eve, born with makeup on in a bikini of roses. Lana got me thinking, and that's all you can ask for. I started this essay to explain why, but, by the end of writing, I was back on her team. But something here, despite some interesting symbols and techniques, left me initially nonplussed, not quite pumped up the way I'd expected. From on high down to the rough city, to the smooth country, to paradise again-a cycle not unlike what I expect for my own life, working in New York till it grinds me to a nub, then retreating to the country to put myself out to pasture. The half-hour short film is comprised of three acts: Lana in the Garden of Eden, then falling to contemporary Los Angeles and finally returning to heaven via a detour through rural America. But watching “Tropico” yesterday-its three featured songs out now on iTunes-I felt unmoved, and kind of bad. “Young and Beautiful” is my favorite track from this year, and Kanye’s incorporating it during his wedding proposal his wisest 2013 decision, in my eyes. For some reason I didn’t care at first, but I’ve become a late, song-on-repeat-for-an-hour Lana Del Rey fan.
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