Megan Fox/ Gaga Don't Preach

"I don’t want to open my mouth or speak anymore, because everything I say becomes scandalous. It wears you out. . . . So I’m a bit jaded. " —Megan FoxNow who's the dummy here? The Craig Mcdean photos, which appear in June's Interview are in the well-trodden style of Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin. I feel dumb typing that because it's such an obvious (and banal) thing, with so little re-invention or value add it makes me want to run back to bed and put on the eye shades and snooze till its 2020. Mr Mcdean has lost his way, slowly but surely and his work has, over the years, become as thin and bloodless as his visage. These photos are surely as unshocking, and unprovocative as the new Lady Gaga video Alejandro. In a sense they are the least new of all her videos, in the way it heavily, and humourlessly, trods the well trodden path that Madonna has made her own... 20 years ago? Where's the outrage? Even the Catholic iconography feels lazy and banal. It's just deja vu all the way, safely within the familiar territory of director Steven Klein's fashion work, it's merely a cheaply garbled remix of familiar Madonna videos like Express Yourself (1989, David Fincher), Vogue, Erotica etc. Even model Evandro Soldati's cameo is but a pale reflection of Cameron Alborzian's (British-Iranian) in Express Yourself.
Gaga has been promoting the video as a tribute to gay people and the gay people have been wagging their tails but it's hard to see where the honour is. Do gay people see themselves as worshipful (of Gaga) S&M drones? Still? In 2010? How pathetic. Gaga don't preach.Snooze... Wake me up when there's really something to see.