The Kiss (by Julia Alvarez)and Lady Gaga

By: Michelle Lim, Kayvon Flynn,Musab Raza, Leo Miloti

The Setting – Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga grew up in New York, and she expresses her love for her home-town constantly. New York has such a large impact on the artist, and the individual that she is. The fashion of New York, its culture as well as her racial roots – Italian American, are all strongly interwoven within who she is.

The Setting – The Kiss

Since some of the conflict presented in the short story deals with cultural differences and the clash of the immigrants and second generation, “The Kiss” is probably set in a time between the 60’s, when Hispanic immigration was popular. The way Sofia’s father is very protective of his daughters also mirrors the old traditions and accepted norms of his Old Country society. The story is also told during a lengthy span of time, as the writer jumps begins with a in medias res, flashback, to the current plot. Therefore, Sofia can be seen as a wild teenager, passionate young adult, and now a woman with her own family who still has angst towards her father.

However, the main place where action happens is at her apartment where her entire family get together to celebrate her father’s birthday. The fact that the story inhabits many different times also symbolizes the everlasting and timeless meaning of the story. Sofia may be able to pay her father back but it will always be a never ending battle between the two.

Characterization – Lady Gaga Lady Gaga’s

fashion- mainly her dresses, exemplify pieces of her identity, and materializes her individuality. Most of her dresses to express her feelings and her views. Her style is edgy yet round in character and has depth and meaning behind every costume.

Characterization – The Kiss

Protagonist-Sofia Antagonist-her father

Sofia: Attractive: “And yet she was the one with the non-stop boyfriends, her sister joked

without wonder and a little envy.” Optimistic-“I can love you as much as anybody else…Yes or No” Independent-“The youngest daughter had been the first to leave home…moved

out on her own.”

The father: Overprotective:” And now it was every man for himself, so what he made was for

his daughters. They would gather together without husbands, would-be husbands, or bring home work.”

Sexist-“How obnoxious for him to go on like that while beside him stood his little granddaughter, wide eyed and sad at all the things her baby brother, no bigger than one of her dolls, was going to be able to do just because he was a boy

Stubborn: “For months the no one could mention the daughter’s name in his presence.”

The Plot – Lady Gaga Lady Gaga was born on March 28th 1986 in

New York. She grew up playing the piano and adoring music. She attended NYU for her music career and her career exploded with her first #1 hit, Just Dance.

However, before she reached world pop stardom, Gaga experienced opposition and obstacles as a teenager and student. Much like Sofia, from “The Kiss,” she and her father had tension in their relationship as he was strongly against her career choice as an artist. The ballad song featuring her talent in the piano, “Speechless” is about her war with her father, whom she has now reconciled and has a strong bond with. Even so, during her early career, and even now, she was met with hateful response and criticism.

Despite her hardships, she is now one of the most influential and even controversial figures in the world today, inspiring others to be “free” through music and art in many aspects in life.

The Plot – The Kiss

In the beginning, Sofia is introduced as Carlos’ daughter who plans his 70th birthday party. All of the sudden it flashes back to her as a teenager who shared passionate and risky of a sexual active relationship with a boy who lives in New York. Pretty soon, she breaks up with him and finds a German, Otto, whom she falls in love with quickly and marries. Throughout her wild ride as a young adult, she is constantly battling against her father who thinks her living style is too liberal and crazy for him to understand or accept. Eventually she runs away and they lose contact until Sofia has her first baby. This brief history the writer shares is actually the Rising Action of the story.

In efforts to reconcile with her father, Sofia tries to please him by throwing him a family birthday party. The story fast forwards to today and Sofia’s party becomes a huge blast. Towards the end of the night, the daughters decide to play a shady game of blind folding their father and making physical contact so that he will guess who it is. The nature of the game is friendly and everyone is having a good time. However, Sofia takes this time to receive attention from her father. She gets up to tease her father, giving him a very sensual and wet kiss in his ear. The guests are surprised by her acts. Ultimately the kiss is the Climax of the story.

When Carlos becomes humiliated and ends the game and the party, the story reaches a Falling Action.

“The Kiss” does not really have a resolution as the main conflict between Sofia and her father is never really resolved. However, it is implied that Sofia becomes one step closer to her sexual freedom and from the shackles of her father.

The Conflict – Lady Gaga Bad Romance represents her "bad

romance" with the music industry, displaying how she wants the love of the entertainment industry, and everything they have to offer her. She realizes however, that she must go through a mandatory change in order to maintain the kind of relationship she yearns for with the music industry, which is why within the music video she is force fed pills by two models in a bathtub, it was representing her change into The Fame Monster.

Gaga however believes that in becoming a new person she found who she truly was all along because another reference to the video: she begins off the video in a sensory depravation tank: a place where she hears nothing, sees nothing, tastes nothing, and smells nothing. She is a blank white sheet (she wears white latex in the video) but towards the end of the song/video she expresses that she wants to feel everything there is to feel, have the "bad romance" with the industry, achieve everything she wanted to achieve.

The Conflict – The Kiss

The conflict going on in this story is mainly between Sofia vs. herself vs. her father. Sofia wants to be recognized by her father as shown by her feeling hurt when her father didn’t guess her during the game. Alvarez uses great diction to describe the way Sofia imparted her “kiss” upon him.

This kiss is meant as a symbol to show Sofia independence in her sexuality and how her father now has no hold over her. “His face darkened with shame at having his pleasure aroused in public by one of his daughters. He looked from one to the other. His gaze faltered. On the face of his youngest was the brilliant, impassive look he remembered from when she had snatched her love letters out of his hands” (Alvarez). During this scene, Carlos has a flashback about the love letters that Sofia had from the German. This flashback is useful as it serves to further provide detail to the conflict that is going on between Sofia and her father.

Theme – Lady Gaga

Her album is named “The Fame Monster”, because of the theme of her music career. She’s addicted to the fame, the beauty, the fashion, and the pop stardom that comes with being a musical celebrity.

Theme – The Kiss

The theme within the short story, “The Kiss” is centered around the culture and identity of immigrants into America. Alvarez specifically and tenderly approaches the topic of the father of the house, Carlos, as “Papi”. Papi represents the residual Old Country remnants within their family. There is a dark, foreboding sense that the theme contributes to the Old Country, the inappropriate and incestual “kiss” in the end of the novel leaves much to be desired. It is not until the short story is nearly finished that the reader is alerted to the fact that the culture and identity of immigrants in America is only the direct theme.

The indirect theme deals with familial values, including that though each and every family member had spoken by the end of the short story, children suffering from incestual relations with their parents don’t know how to speak with their words, they communicate with their actions and relations with the world. For example, Sofia, the daughter who is afflicted as being the object of sexual attraction of Papi’s, communicates with the world through being beautiful, attractive, wanted, and possibly loved – for even though her father showed a perverted attraction to her beauty and attractive personality, it seems to leave her feeling emptier than before, constantly attempting fill herself with something that she herself knows not of.

Point of View – Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga often uses the “all seeing eye” symbol by blocking her eye and leaving her right eye open. It’s a play on the Illuminati clan, who believes that the rich entertainment leaders rule the world. This represents her point of view on fame, that the fame rules the world.

Point of View – The Kiss

The point of view in “The Kiss” is third person omniscient; all of the characters thoughts, feelings, emotions, and histories are known completely by the reader, as informed by the narrator. This point of view assists the reader in understanding each of the daughters of Papi as well as himself. This asserts the reader to do an in depth analysis of Alvarez’s story, due to the fact that the flashbacks and change in the focus of character can lead the reader astray or confused, during which the reader fully understands every aspect of the novel, such as the indirect theme, characterization, tone, mood – for so much is communicated within the seven pages in the novel.

“I was born this way!”-Lady Gaga