“Dark Paradise” by Lana Del Rey, Thursday, July 7, 2022
This July, as many American have celebrated Independence Day, I think it's important to look at different versions of the American Dream. Lana Del Rey 's 2012 record Born to Die examines " the dark side of the American dream " at times. While America is starting look more like it's Puritanical heritage with a little too much Flannery O'Connor and Homer Simpson pseudo-religiosity, the Northeastern secular world that Del Rey paints on her debut album seems like a world apart from a neo-conservatism. Del Rey's America is the America of Hollywood. It's New Yorkers who vacation Upstate in the summer and attend cocktail parties on the weekend. If they go to church, it's infrequent and not an evangelical version of Christianity. It's the America of the Jazz Age and the fifties. ALL MY FRIENDS TELL ME I SHOULD MOVE ON. But it's also the America of Mad Men. Del Rey has been criticized for sometime avowing an opposition to feminism. In 2014, the ...
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