As we go about our daily lives in our media-obsessed society, we absorb a great deal of information that we would never have sought out on our own. If you're me, you consequently find yourself forming nuanced opinions about subjects that you really, truly don't care about.
One such subject is Lady Gaga. I don't follow big-name pop at all, and I don't hear her music much. It strikes me as marginally less annoying than most music in its vein, but I mostly avoid it (Meshuggah mashups aside).
Gaga's persona, however, is so ubiquitous that I've settled on a fairly specific attitude towards here. In short, I think that her business model is impressive and even revolutionary in some ways. However, most of her 'freak' credentials—be it her music, her appearance, or her way of presenting herself in interviews—are old-hat. This is a minority perspective, so I was pretty surprised to come across a Slate editorial that captures most of my thoughts about Gaga:
"What's really so provocative about Lady Gaga, past the flank-steak frock and gravity-defying hats? Answers to this question have a way of falling backward on themselves. None of Gaga's supposed transgressions—from the near-nudity onstage to the risqué-ish lyrics ("You've got me wondering why I/ I like it rough") to the ritual oversharing—had not already been made in 1972. She is touted for her boldness in becoming an outré bisexual icon, even though David Bowie, literally old enough to be her grandfather, carried that flag in more treacherous times. If anything, Gaga's idea of impudence is tame. "I love sex," she once taunted a reporter—not, in most contexts, a radical position. "I'm a free bitch, baby," she rhapsodizes, like a saucy 13-year-old padding out her Facebook bio. Lady Gaga references her own name more, and more annoyingly, than any other musician today, rubbing listeners' noses in its mild weirdness ("Gaga, ooh là là!"). She dwells, pointedly, on words that might have seemed scandalous in the era of iceboxes ("Hooker! Yeah, you're my hooker./ Hooker! Government hooker./ Hooker! Yeah, you're my hooker./ Hooker! Government hooker"). She reports reading Rilke "every day." Despite her premises of avant-garde audacity, her provocations seem perpetually mired in a ninth-grade idea of insolence and spunk. (DAAAAAYUM. -ed)
"In an adult world, there is nothing especially radical about saying bad words and reading moody poetry. Underneath her histrionic patina, in fact, Gaga's mettle shimmers sparkly clean. When she talks about her goals of increasing autonomous pride, community acceptance, and respect for personal industry—all praiseworthy objectives, needless to say—she is setting her compass by lodestars that are conservative in all but the political sense: Tend your garden proudly and let others tend theirs as they please, her gospel might go. When she uses mass-market sounds (like Euro disco), throwback sounds (like the long-lost sax solo), and old cultural symbols (like glam-rock raiment), she is following a preservationist's creative path. Gaga's credentials as a carrier of the '70s and '80s torch are impeccable. But this is 2011. What is she doing, really, besides reaching back in time to claim a safer, more old-fashioned template for pop-star success?"
This passage just about sums it up. For me, Gaga is emblematic of a larger trend in contemporary American culture: conservative ideas being repackaged and accepted into the culture continuum anew. In politics, you have the Tea Party. Fashion has its long-running 80s resurgence. Much of indie rock has fallen back on a mix of 60s studio innovations and 80s keytar swagger. In the metal world, we've seen the retro-thrash movement and the old-school death metal revival in quick succession. The theaters are full of remakes and sequels. In troubled times, people like to look to the past for comfort and inspiration. That's exactly what's going on now.
As an aside, I think that Slate writer Nathan Heller missed Gaga's most obvious influence: Madonna. Seriously, what makes Gaga more than a Madonna rehash with a wilder fashion sense?
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