I have tonight come to a different understanding of my relationship to humanity. This will not be an excited peon to Lady Gaga's uniqueness, so little monsters may move on. It is a meditation on my own foolishness.
I find myself looking at one thing in a new light, even though the filter on Lady Gaga is flickering with ambivalence and ultimately disgust.
It seems that Lady Gaga exemplifies the time we live in, and indeed it infuriated and to a more existential degree now, it still does, because I sense her team knows it. But now, all of my justifications of my strange aversion to this person's presence in the media have been taken away. Of course I have been very stupid and very wrong in my judgment of her. And no, I have not turned into Donald Sutherland in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" or some grazing sheeple who only sees things surrounding any media figure in a vie en rose way. Fuck that. We need to stop thinking celebrities are important for breathing. How does that Lindsay Lohan girl live? Or that Kim Kardashian? I want to see things about......shocking! REAL people. So I still hate the intense focus on a fluffy commentator like Lady Gaga.
Yes, I also realize I am contributing to it, but this really is my last summation about the child.
Ever since I was asked by a very cool relative of mine to watch Lady Gaga's "Oprah" performance and to "critique" it, I have been weirdly fascinated by her. For some reason I felt she was mocking what I held so sacred but was not replacing it with anything of value. I still stand by this, since she is fatally Post Modern. That is the issue I have always had with Monsieur Warhol, and we see the broken remnants he left behind. So she was reigniting the debate, and I was horrified! My relative later admitted that they had had a good inkling of what my reaction would be to this girl with the auto tuned voice, easily forgettable music who actually stated with a straight face that one of her inspirations is David Bowie. She is a rogue and an upstart! I do not deem David Bowie sacred, but of course I would get annoyed by someone referencing him who creates songs about oral sex.
So, much to my amazement, I saw this girl had created "controversy" for herself every single day between then and now. Really, in my decades on this planet, I have never seen someone go from playing for the Queen to Elton John to a concert series to.....the "Telephone" video. Oh boy.
But before I discuss that, I have to say what preceded this. I read that Lady Gaga has been voted The Most Influential Person according to "Time" magazine. Fuck, I had to read that again. No way. What is this chick gonna be doing a "Poker Face" duet with the Pope next week? I only just saw this chick the other day, it seems like, I thought to myself with indignation. And no, of course I am well aware of the fact that the girl on the screen and record is not "Lady Gaga". "Lady Gaga" is composed of 100 people, and she is the paper tiger logo.
I did go to another site to confirm this bizarre voting by "Time" magazine, which I had always considered hopelessly conservative and was the staple of say, generations from World War II. However, they had a ridiculous rant by Cyndi Lauper on her "relevance", and Cyndi is so out on Planet Nine it made me chuckle. Then I watched Lady Gaga's little video "acceptance" and her discussion of her love for Deepak Chopra! HaaaaHaaaHaaa........for real, if that girl could find a more banal, vapid symbol of complete lack of spiritual force combined with craven capitalism I don't know how! I saw the satire, and it was mildly compelling. She was fucking wearing that sparkling bra she wore at the "Much Music" festival (yes, this bitch does do research), except it was different. It made me laugh. And I hated this girl with every fiber of my being before that. I didn't think she was doing anything new, I thought she was trying to be like other singers, I was very jaded. Now, no, I did not Learn to Love Lady Gaga. But I did watch the "Telephone" video, which I vowed never to do.
So after seeing that hilariously bad ode to Deepak for the sake of her little baby "monsters" (I wish adults would think about their children calling some stranger "mama" thus their children are implicitly "babies". Read a book on Hitler youth. I now think this Lady Gaga machine is trying to show that conditioning is easy when your audience is neglected. That is one thing that troubles me. It seems children are her main audience, but tonight I understand why gay males like her.....I thought it was silly at first...the club bois were her main target audience or something).
Anyway, the "Telephone" video was beyond my expectations.....in that I went in without any. Totally bitter and cynical. Visions of Perry Farrell in my head. I thought I was probably going to be wasting my time, but since I had watched part of an early Lady Gaga video, I might as well try to watch this latest one to know why this is always being watched.
Yes, money pays for promotion, and it can buy fame easily, but this girl continues to stay around......she gives a non threatening vacuous message to her "children" and a more disturbing one to those who care to know more. But the issue is that most of America is distracted by the bells and whistles. Especially the babies.
Well, the movie starts out in a surreal women's prison with hilariously clad women who are so large they could be men. They are all in heat, especially burnin' for the new meat, who is, of course, Lady Gaga. "Prison" is kind of a misnomer here in that there is so much campy behavior and dress that you know you are on the set of a video. There is a trivial kiss, but the toxins of the cigarettes is the real issue......anyway, it is simply a Stepford version of a Quentin Tarentino film, with some Russ Meyer added in. But there seems to be an anger that is not present in Tarentino's or Meyer's films.....a real anger...or maybe I was just wishing for that in retrospect. The dialogue, dance, whatever is irrevalent. The product placements are brutally in your face, you can't get away from them....like you can't get away from Lady Gaga. Then there is a sexy element between Beyonce and Lady Gaga, they give B's boyfriend what was comin' to him and LG goes into her sandwich routine (don't forget the Tiberium!). If people don't understand that the diner is America, I don't know where they are at......And the scary dance around the bodies just shows our disconnect from others. I do think that was the intention, but again, wrong demographic. Lady Gaga, no matter how many people her corporation pays to name her "Greatest Person Ever to Walk the Face of the Earth" is only going to appeal to people who are used to the average pop tart's act. The mighty Madonna (yeah, the only artist who never stole from anyone, right Debbie Harry, Cyndi Lauper, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc?) never made comments on society except to promote her "emancipation through sexual degradation" campaign. Express yourself.....by bending over! Yeah!
So the comments about the "Telephone" video that litter the net are usually from 11 year old girls who for some reason watched it. They wail about the beauty of being a baby for their mommy, and how nice Lady Gaga looks in police tape. This is a very effective way to repulse anyone over the age of 15.
And this is where the story ends. Warhol focused on youth culture for awhile, but his focus was never on children, and a female pop tart's main focus group is little girl........ As a visual artist Warhol was able to get away from classification by using other outsiders to promote himself. He soon became an old lady who loved to dine with the society ladies and celebrities of his era, earning the name Drella.
On the other hand, we have Lady Gaga putting out another remix of her albums for her children soon, since it is time to cash in now honey. This video will never be seen for what it is, because frankly, the music is wallpaper. Lady Gaga, like Madonna, is a visual performer. They really see music as secondary.
The audience that the Lady Gaga corporation wants to market to has had ten years of blonde pop tarts with auto tuned vocals. We went through 9/11; most adults consider something like this childish, and they are right. It certainly looks like it on the surface.
So, in summation, I do not feel the interest in Lady Gaga that I did because I have figured out the reason why I was annoyed. In fact, I feel rather sorry for her. She has a huge fan base composed primarily of little girls who are concrete enough to think this girl is "fashionable" and "unique" but actually her behavior is a ruse. Her music is really not supposed to be played except by Clear Channel that is piped through to Dentists' offices, or when one is intoxicated. It is indeed soulless and repetitive. But she is bound and gagged (S&M reference noted) by her contract. She can't alienate these children, but it is a horrible commentary that they are her biggest fans. So she gives them Deepak Chopra platitudes of "Be Yourself" (or maybe Madonna's "Express Yourself"). Thus, ANY commentary (and I am NOT saying this girl and her corporation are Noam Chomsky, Erving Goffman, et al) is LOST. Therefore, the act is getting stale. But honestly, I appreciate that she tried, even if the set up was right from the beginning that she would fail. But that failure has something to do with the culture that she is trying to warn people about in an inoffensive, but pretty obvious way. Feel like making a sandwich?
