"The Decay of the Pop Star" and Ziggy Stardust

What you just read is a direct quote from Camille Paglia when she recently spoke at The Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.  I came across the article on The Examiner and thought what a perfect way to tie this in with the Little Monster theory of Lady Gaga's next performance art piece "The Decay of the Pop Star" and the "coincidental" parallels to Ziggy Stardust.

Ziggy Stardust

If you're one of Gaga's Little Monsters, by virtue of your age, you might not know who Ziggy Stardust is.  Ziggy Stardust is David Bowie.  Or David Bowie is Ziggy Stardust.  

Ziggy Stardust was a fictional character created by David Bowie for his 1972 concept album titled "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars".   Ziggy was a human manifestation of an alien (or possibly a mere mortal with a Messiah complex) on earth, destined to bring a message of hope to humanity in the last few years of it's existence.  Ziggy embodies all the characteristics of a rock star; promiscuity, drug intake, lavish lifestyle and eventually is destroyed completely by his gluttony for fame, excess and ironically, by the fans he inspired.  It was a rock and roll suicide.

In a Rolling Stone interview with William S. Burroughs, Bowie expanded on the Ziggy Stardust story:

The time is five years to go before the end of the earth. It has been announced that the world will end because of lack of natural resources. Ziggy is in a position where all the kids have access to things that they thought they wanted. The older people have lost all touch with reality and the kids are left on their own to plunder anything. Ziggy was in a rock-and-roll band and the kids no longer want rock-and-roll. There's no electricity to play it. Ziggy's adviser tells him to collect news and sing it, 'cause there is no news. So Ziggy does this and there is terrible news. 'All the young dudes' is a song about this news. It's no hymn to the youth as people thought. It is completely the opposite. [...]

The end comes when the infinites arrive. They really are a black hole, but I've made them people because it would be very hard to explain a black hole on stage. [...]

Ziggy is advised in a dream by the infinites to write the coming of a Starman, so he writes 'Starman', which is the first news of hope that the people have heard. So they latch onto it immediately...The starmen that he is talking about are called the infinites, and they are black-hole jumpers. Ziggy has been talking about this amazing spaceman who will be coming down to save the earth. They arrive somewhere in Greenwich Village. They don't have a care in the world and are of no possible use to us. They just happened to stumble into our universe by black hole jumping. Their whole life is travelling from universe to universe. In the stage show, one of them resembles Brando, another one is a Black New Yorker. I even have one called Queenie, the Infinite Fox...Now Ziggy starts to believe in all this himself and thinks himself a prophet of the future starmen. He takes himself up to the incredible spiritual heights and is kept alive by his disciples. When the infinites arrive, they take bits of Ziggy to make them real because in their original state they are anti-matter and cannot exist in our world. And they tear him to pieces on stage during the song 'Rock 'n' roll suicide'. As soon as Ziggy dies on stage the infinites take his elements and make themselves visible.

Sound familiar?  This is pretty much the exact, carbon copy theory that Gaga's fans are buzzing about.  The one big, huge, obvious piece of information conveniently left out is that this has been done before by none other than David Bowie, an artist that Gaga has been accused of lifting from before.   Gaga has said that she is influenced by Bowie, along with a plethora of other obvious artists; even though she once arrogantly said she is inspired by no one.

"The Decay of the Pop Star" theory goes something like this.  Gaga is, on purpose, making herself out to be pretentious, holier than thou, self destructive, arrogant by wearing fur and doing other things that many people find revolting as part of her act; a pop star in the process of decaying.  She is purposefully alienating the public to the point that they demand she goes away.  Her fans, with all their conviction, believe that everything their idol does has meaning and purpose.  At the end of the Ziggy copy and paste, Lady Gaga will either commit suicide on stage or be murdered; Lady Gaga the character that is.  Once "Gaga" is dead, Stefani Germanotta will resurface and she will continue her career as her real self. 

If the monster's theory is correct and Lady Gaga goes through with the "decay of the pop star", it would be a pop culture travesty of epic proportions.  Of course, saying that everything has already been done is valid.  It has.  So artists take something from the past and try to make it their own.  However, there is no possible way for Lady Gaga to take Bowie's concept and make it her own.  It's too specific.  Too detailed.  It would be an obvious case of artistic thievery, just as the speeding up of chord progressions are; and Lady Gaga should be held accountable if she does go down this road. The only way for her to take Bowie's concept and make it her own is to actually kill herself, which we know she won't do. Anything else is stolen goods no matter which way you slice it. 

Lady Gaga is nothing more than a wannabe try-hard who wants so desperately to be as monumental as her predecessors from the 70's and 80's. That will never be.  Her new album title ARTPOP, the reversal of "Pop Art", can attest to that. I'm not exactly sure what ARTPOP is supposed to mean and I have a hunch neither does Lady Gaga.

So before you start calling Lady Gaga a genius for creating the most epic and legendary performance art piece ever done, just know that the only one who really played guitar is Ziggy.