Just Ride: Lana del Rey, Authorship and the Language of Biker Culture as Metaphor

The paper deconstructs Lana Del Rey’s “Ride” (2012) video which heavily relies on, and some would say exploits, a very stereotypical image of American Biker culture: as the back-of-the-bike babe she travels through the mythologised American great wide open, engages in deviant sexual experiences and hedonistic partying. Her clothing, her over-sexualised pouting and posing are all images from the clichéd album of biker fantasies. On the surface this is therefore yet another repetition of the myth of Othering and deviance associated with this culture. However, as this presentation will argue, a closer reading reveals that for Del Rey biker culture in her work operates as metaphor for her own career and her understanding of it. Instead of using biker imagery to appropriate authenticity, Del Rey—aware of her own artificial persona—uses the image of biker culture as a metaphor for her own inability to ever be authentic. By utilising it in this manner instead of devaluing the actual culture, she devalues its clichéd stereotypes through positioning herself as entirely fake.