"Do you know who i've always depended on? Not strangers, not friends. The telephone! That's my best friend' (Marilyn Monroe, cited in Maddox 1981: 262).
Lady gaga was just on tour in Melbourne and it made me think about the symbolism and iconography of the telephone in her video compared to early films that advertised "female" telephonists in early australia. Most people thought Gaga's video would take place in a club, however, Gaga did what people least expected. When Gaga wore a bright blue and old fashioned telephone on her head while cooking a "poisonous meal" she was commenting on the way in which the telephone has invaded her everyday thoughts. Text messages, gossip, mass media are constantly ringing in. In a way she is saying that the telephone, although once and is still a medium of power, has now become a medium that also causes distraction, and controversy with "poisonous" outcomes. People wear this power, but also wear this force that inhibits are ability to "connect" effectively with the people sitting in front of us.
It seems as though the "telephone" (although, now a mobile phone and video phone in some cases) over the past 70 yrs has represented female power- and in gaga's case sexual power as well. Women were able to gain agency in the industry through their telephone skills. Now the telephone is embedded in everyday culture- women and men carry around phones. It is what links them to and from the world that surrounds them and as monroe said it has become everyone's best friend.
Gaga must have looked at old photos of women working in the industry because during my 16mm film viewing session at the ACMI this past Monday I took some screenshots of women working as telephonists and I see a striking resemblance. There is a very robotic and mechanical essence to both the pictures. Gaga and the Australian telephonist have the phone on their head, underscoring the idea that the mechanical device is literally a part of their movements and thoughts. Gaga notes that the she has a fear of the telephone, she said, 'That's my fear --- that the phone's ringing and my head's ringings...Whether its a telephone or it's just the thoughts in your head, that's another fear...."
I wonder how the early women telephonists felt about having a voice in their head all day...
Me at the 16mm viewing room at the Mediatheque at ACMI
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