Considering Lady Gags, Minus the Finance
Much of the thought devoted to Lady Gaga has considered her as either a financial entity and/or as a marketing entity-or a straight-up market entity, taking into account the fact that currency is attention and attention is her business. (Um yes and business is good!) But what happens when you judge her as an aesthetic entity, as straight homosexualist Mark Dery does? Let us say he finds her lacking.
"Gaga is the poet laureate of the supremely banal: porntastic fantasies about riding your disco stick and bluffin' with my muffin, 'getting shit wrecked,' dry-humping under the disco ball, dreaming of fame, becoming famous, world-wearily lamenting the Faustian bargain of-yawn-fame, and popping a wide-on worthy of the Sex and the City crew over 'Louis, Dolce Gabbana, Alexander McQueen, eh ou,' and of course Manolo."
It goes on. (AND HOW.) Apparently she compares very unfavorably to Freddie Mercury, but who among us doesn't? (via)
Just fyi, "Lady Gags" is not a typo by Choire.
I would purchase "AL;SDKFJASFL;KJ: An Awl Guide to Style and Usage."
Revenue stream!
Dery is jealous of Gaga's mother of pearl shoulder pads.
Makes me miss Lester Bangs even more, which I thought was not possible.
p.s. I can't believe how this guy is so incredibly lame as to haul poor Henry Darger in there on just no no pretext whatsoever.
Among about six billion other points of name dropping, yes.
Something about this article strikes me as taking Lady Gaga more seriously than she probably takes herself, to wit.
Exactly, HG. Although I was amused at all the dissertation-speak being thrown at someone who sings about her cell phone cutting out in a club.
HG, yes.
"Of course, Gaga, like Cooper or Bowie, isn't a genuine Outsider, in the Henry Darger sense of the word."
There's the context, why do you need pretext? Because Darger was a visual artist, rather than a singer?
Gaga's entire career basically begs for a purply academic analysis like this.
"Name dropping" is different from "referencing." Harry Knowles name drops. If you're gonna bash the piece, at least get your terms straight.
Someone should fax this to Toby or Julie. It'd be great for the next issue of Modern Review.
+1
send that man a young, dumb, and full of cum t-shirt.
"Talk about defining deviancy down. What beige days we live in, when mentioning Rilke, Warhol, and David Bowie are proof positive of edgy intelligence."
That's actually pretty funny though.
I haven't read the article (I'm finishing a paper – if you see me commenting – YELL AT ME) but I would like to strongly state that I am Team Gaga.
FINISH YOUR PAPER, YOUNG LADY, OR YOU'LL GET SENT TO YOUR ROOM!
In our household, we love her, we love her.
He lost me at "True that." Also – I think he isn't considering her in the larger frame of current pop music, because she's definitely the smartest thing on the radio and has been since she blew up (and I say this as a lover of pop). Also also he left out a key demographic of Team Gaga, which is smart 20somethings.
What beats me is why people love Gaga and hate Ke$ha. (Not that they're the same at all!) Can we talk about that?
Well, that was a condescending read.
I think this whole debate boils down to the fact that Gaga's music is a lot less interesting than her image.
I thought everybody who says they like her already pretty much admitted that they love the hype not the music. If not I certainly hope so.
No, that's just it. The debate boils down to the anti-crowd saying "but she's all hype/the music isn't anything special" while the pro-crowd say "but her persona is awesome/the music is just stupid fun." She's a perpetual argument machine.
Seems like consensus to me! Yay!
Dery used to be my professor and for some reason I felt like I had to react to this publicly:
http://stevespillman.net/post/536343187/to-lord-dery-subject-a-brief-dumb-defense-of
Dery really lost me when he started defending rockism and putting down dance music but I do have to say that a lot of the "isn't she so smart?" press about Gaga has been sort of disconcerting to me. She is smart about keeping herself in the public eye, yes. And that's probably the most important talent for any pop musician to have these days, since nobody gives a fuck about pop music [tm my favorite old saws]. But whenever she gets interviewed she sounds… well, not very smart. Maybe it's all a metacommentary on how vapid "celebrity artist"-related discourse is these days, but I dunno…
The little monsters army thing is fine with me, anything that will freak out the suburban moms is a-ok. Like, that was the only redeeming feature of Marilyn Manson. We Have Come For Your Children is always fun.
I find the reactions here to the article kind of predictably apathetic.
Not sure what's condescending about what he wrote, exactly, and why, because Lady Gaga isn't as brain-dead as Justin Bieber, she's somehow beyond criticism. Also, the twists people put themselves into to defend Gaga by saying, "Hey, everyone knows her music's bad"? Isn't she in control of that? The smartest voice on the radio can still be that of a dumdum.
Also, when did making a wide array of references become "namedropping"? If he'd said, "Let's look at the lyrics of my late friend Freddie Mercury," maybe, but…
Maybe I'm just getting grumpy about the "stupid fun" argument. I'm tired of stupid fun. I want my smart fun.
Here ya go!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzemBJ1q_UM&playnext_from=TL&videos=qSThlxNPXK4
(couldn't find 'Jimmy Tomorrow' on youtube)
thankyousir/madam.
But what about Taylor Swift, how not smart is she?
Hell hath no fury like a trucker-hatted former Brown semiotics major. I'm not getting what some of you aren't getting. Balsa_Wood's dead on. Yes to smart fun. Free-associated responses: Trouble is, she *doesn't* freak out the suburban moms, or won't, not for long. The minivan-driving yoga-mom demographic will have her on iPod heavy rotation in a year or two, given that the whole culture genuflects to youth culture. It's a way of draining off some rejuvenating Type 0 from the youth, in order to Feel Young Again. Botox for the Soul. Moving right along: "Dery really lost me when he started defending rockism…" Whaaa—? Raising the charge of rockism in order to preemptively rebut it—a standard rhetorical gimmick (hey, they've even got a name for it: prolepsis!)—isn't the same as invalidating it. Yes, rockism is real, which is why I did that utterly gratuitous and deeply satisfying drive-by on The Boss, while I was at it. My point was simply that the reflexive defense of Gaga—accusing her detractors of rockism—doesn't convince, in my case, since I'm not a rockist, at least not in the Bruce-worshipping David Brooks sense of the term. Where were we? "she's definitely the smartest thing on the radio": Talk about damning with faint praise. That Gaga looks positively Mensan in the low-functioning context of Clear Channel-controlled robo-playlists is a verdict on the vacuity of radio, not evidence of Gaga's smartness. And finally, I, too, miss Lester Bangs, if that's any cold comfort, Barnhouse. As for the Lady's shoulder pads, not my style, but I'd kill for a Kermit-ized version of David Byrne's Big Suit. Stop making sense, M.D.