October 5, 2011
Lady Gaga: The Death of Sex
I know this isn't recent but the article is insightful and fits in nicely with the dynamic of this blog. I've been trying to find the full version for some time now as most of them linked to the Sunday Times which was a dead link. The amazing and fascinating piece was first appeared on 12 September, 2010. Camille's scathing article is about Lady Gaga but it touches on many different topics as well that encroach on us each day.
Camile Paglia |
Article written by Camile Paglia
Lady
Gaga is the first major star of the digital age. “The planet’s biggest
pop phenomenon.” “The most famous woman in the world.” “The new
Madonna.” Since her debut album, ‘The Fame’, was released in August
2008, Stefani Germanotta (aka Gaga) has risen from obscurity in grungy
downtown Manhattan to sell 15m albums and 40m singles worldwide. Her
videos have garnered hundreds of millions of hits on the web. Her
Facebook page alone has more than 10m followers. Fans of Gaga have grown
up with sell phones and iPods as sticky extensions of their bodies. It
is an era of miniaturisation, computer-generated special effects and
image manipulation by Photoshop, with everything steeped in unreal,
highly saturated colour disconnected from nature. The fine arts have
been replaced by video games, from which the cartoonish Lady Gaga seems
to have popped. Since her rise, she has remained almost continually on
tour. Hence, she is a moving target who has escaped serious scrutiny.
She is often pictured tottering down the street in some outlandish
get-up and fright wig. Most of what she has said about herself has not
been independently corroborated… “Music is a lie”, “Art is a lie”, “Gaga
is a lie”, and “I profusely lie” have been among Gaga’s pronouncements,
but her fans swallow her line whole.
Little Monsters |
She
constantly touts her symbiotic bond with her fans, the “little
monsters”, who she inspires to “love themselves” as if they are damaged
goods in need of her therapeutic repair. “You’re a superstar, no matter
who you are!” She earnestly tells them from the stage, while their cash
ends up in her pockets. She told a magazine with messianic fervour: “I
love my fans more than any artist who has ever lived.” She claims to
have changed the lives of the disabled, thrilled by her jeweled parody
crutches in the Paparazzi video.
Although she presents herself as the clarion voice of all the freaks
and misfits of life, there is little evidence that she ever was one. Her
upbringing was comfortable and eventually affluent, and she attended
the same upscale Manhattan private school as Paris and Nicky Hilton.
Gaga showed early talent as a pianist but was never a prodigy.
There is a monumental disconnect between Gaga’s melodramatic
self-portrayal as a lonely, rebellious, marginalised artist and the
powerful corporate apparatus that bankrolled her makeover and has
steamrollered her songs into heavy rotation on radio stations
everywhere.
For two years, I have spent an irritating amount of time trying to
avoid Gaga’s catchy but depthless hits, which make me leap for the radio
dial to switch stations. That banal voice - alternating between bland,
bubblegum soprano and pushy, faux-manly alto. Gaga’s proper ambiance is
bars and dance clubs, where she is wildly popular. Lady Gaga is a
manufactured personality, and a recent one at that. Photos of Stefani
Germanotta just a few years ago show a bubbly brunette with a glowing
complexion. The Gaga of world fame, however, with her heavy wigs and
giant sunglasses (rudely worn during interviews) looks either
simperingly doll-like or ghoulish, without a trace of spontaneity. Every
public appearance, even absurdly at airports where most celebrities
want to pass incognito, has been lavishly scripted in advance with a
flamboyant outfit and bizarre hairdo assembled by an invisible company
of elves.
Furthermore,
despite showing acres of pallid flesh in the fetish-bondage garb of
urban prostitution, Lady Gaga is far less sexy than Stefani Germanotta
used to be. In fact, Gaga isn’t sexy at all - she’s like a gangly
marionette or plasticised android. How could a figure so calculated and
artificial, so clinical and strangely antiseptic, so stripped of genuine
eroticism have become the icon of her generation? Can it be that Gaga
represents the exhausted end of the sexual revolution? In Gaga’s manic
miming of persona after persona, over-conceptualised and claustrophobic,
we may have reached the limit of an era.
In 1933, the critic IA Richards, writing about The Waste Land, spoke
of TS Eliot’s “persistent concern with sex, the problem of our
generation, as religion was a problem of the last.” After the first
world war, sexual experimentation and titillating smart talk became the
hallmark of the emancipated new woman, who smoked, drank, bobbed her
hair and danced the antic Charleston. Hollywood discovered that sex was
great box office - leading to pressure from civic and religious groups
for a production code, which movie-makers found ingenious ways to evade.
Theda Bara |
We
are approaching the 100-year anniversary of Hollywood sex: Theda Bara’s
incarnation as The Vamp in A Fool There Was (1915), a lurid femme
fatale who slew overnight the lingering Victorian ideal of the pure,
saintly woman-child, portrayed on screen by Mary Pickford and Dorothy
and Lilian Gish. Theda Bara, like Lady Gaga, was a manufactured
personality; although the studio publicity department claimed she was
born in the Sahara to a French artist and Arabian princess, she was
actually Theodosia Goodman, the daughter of a Jewish tailor in
Cincinnati.
The sexual icon of 1920s Hollywood was Clara Bow, a madcap flapper
who was probably falsely rumoured to have bedded the entire University
of Southern California football team. Lithe Louise Brooks, with her
signature bobbed hair, made landmark films of decadent eroticism in
Germany. Wicked Mae West and lushly buxom Jean Harlow began the
tradition of the sex bomb, which continued through Hedy Lamarr to Jane
Russell and Marilyn Monroe, whose influence endures around the globe.
But the cardinal sexual pioneer was Marlene Dietrich, who exploded on
the international scene in 1930 as the heartless cabaret singer of The
Blue Angel. In her subsequent films with the director Josef von
Sternberg, Marlene toyed with transvestism (based on the drag balls of
Weimar Berlin) and created the sophisticated look of hard glamour that
remains a staple of fashion magazines.
Marlene Dietrich |
Madonna |
Marlene
was Madonna Louise Ciccione’s idol; the seductive, commanding Marlene
permeates Madonna’s brilliant videos of the 1980s and the early ’90s,
with their dominatrix, transvestite and bisexual motifs. Madonna wanted
to play Marlene on film, but the idea was overruled by Marlene herself,
who (as the proud daughter of a Prussian officer) decreed Madonna “too
vulgar.”
Weimar cabaret was recreated in the 1972 film Cabaret, based on
Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin stories. Bob Fosse’s dazzlingly aggressive
choreography in that blockbuster film was adopted by Madonna for her
videos and stage shows - all of which have been doggedly imitated by
Lady Gaga. Gaga has borrowed so heavily from Madonna (as in her latest
Alejandro video) that it must be asked, at what point does homage become
theft? But the main point is that the young Madonna was on fire. She
was indeed the imperious Marlene Dietrich’s true heir. Madonna’s
incandescence is still on view in videos like Open Your Heart, Vogue and
Express Yourself. However, for Gaga, sex is mainly decor and surface;
she’s like a laminated piece of ersatz rococo furniture. Alarmingly,
Generation Gaga can’t tell the difference. Is it the death of sex?
Perhaps the symbolic status that sex had for a century has gone kaput;
that blazing trajectory is over.
The web has been a communication revolution, the magnificent
fulfilment of Marshall McLuhan’s prophecy of a “global village.” But it
has also fragmented and dispersed personal expression, draining energy
from the performing arts, with their dynamic physicality. For a decade
and a half, stars have steadily waned in power and sexual charge. Thus
Gaga seems comet-like, a stimulating burst of novelty, even though she
is a ruthless recycler of other people’s work. She is the diva of déjà
vu. Gaga has glibly appropriated from performers like Cher, Jane Fonda
as Barbarella, Gwen Stefani and Pink, as well as from fashion muses like
Isabella Blow and Daphne Guinness. Drag queens, whom Gaga professes to
admire, are usually far sexier in many of her over-the-top outfits than
she is.
Peeping
dourly through all that tat is Gaga’s limited range of facial
expressions - something she has tried to make a virtue of in her song
Poker Face, which perfectly describes her frosty mug, except when she
goes weepy-tremulous or flashes a goofy, rabbit grin. Her videos
repeatedly thrust that blank, lugubrious face at the camera and us; it’s
creepy and coercive. Marlene and Madonna gave the impression, true or
false, of being pansexual. Gaga, for all her writhing and posturing, is
asexual. Going off to the gym in broad daylight, as Gaga recently did,
dressed in a black bustier, fishnet stockings and stiletto heels isn’t
sexy - it’s sexually dysfunctional. And it’s criminally
counterproductive, erasing the cultural associations from that
transgressive garb and neutering it. The gym-going Madonna, to her
credit, has always been brutally honest about publicity showing herself
in ratty gear with no make-up.
Gaga has become increasingly frank about airing her sexual issues,
revealing that she is “quite celibate” and that she avoids sex because
she fears losing her creativity through her vagina - an odd place for it
to drain by any standard. Despite her phobias, her lyrics can be
blatantly explicit, as in the crass clunker of a line “I wanna take a
ride on your disco stick” (from Love Game). There’s more carpentry talk
of a “vertical stick” in Bad Romance, where the theme is anal (”rear
window”) and safely vagina-free. Gaga’s sexual reticence can’t be
chalked up to priest-ridden guilt: although she was nominally raised
Catholic, her father (an Internet entrepreneur who was once a bar-band
rock musician in New Jersey) was clearly less repressive than Madonna’s
old-school authoritarian Italian-American father. In fact, the
puritanical strictness of Madonna’s background sparked her ambition and
strengthened her best work. Without taboos, there can be no
transgression - which is why Madonna’s ideas waned after she drifted
into misty Kabbalah.
There is no religious frame of reference in Gaga’s songs, aside from
the passing assertion, “Got no salvation, got no religion” (in So Happy I
Could Die); there is nothing remotely comparable to the sweeping
gospel-choir crescendo of Madonna’s Like A Prayer. So it is unsurprising
to hear that Gaga is consulting celebrity “spiritual guides” like
Deepak Chopra.
Compare Gaga’s insipid songs, with their nursery-rhyme nonsense
syllables, to the title and hypnotic refrain of the first Madonna song
and video to bring her attention on MTV, Burning Up, with its elemental
fire imagery and its then shocking offer of fellatio. In place of
Madonna’s valiant life force, what we find in Gaga is a disturbing trend
towards mutilation and death. Thus we get Gaga lyrics like “Show me
your teeth”; “Need a man now, so show me your fangs”; “Take a bite of my
bad girl meat” (from Teeth) - faintly sadistic cunnilingual jokes that
must be the cat’s meow among smirky teens.
At
last year’s MTV awards show, Gaga staged a barbaric spectacle where she
was seemingly crushed to death by a falling chandelier, after which her
bloodied body was hoisted up to dangle limply above her piano. On her
current tour, she appears to be killed by a psychotic stalker, who gnaws
her throat as the blood pours down her chest. Monster claws and other
horror-movie regalia are a Gaga staple. Several of her videos feature
murders of men - by rat poison or by being burnt alive from Gaga’s
flame-throwing brassiere. Her Bad Romance video ends with the tableau of
Gaga prettily gloating on a bed next to the incinerated skeleton of her
victim. The grisly mix of sex and death is sick, symptomatic of Gaga’s
alienation from her own body - another example of which is her promise
to reveal the title of her next album tattooed on her body next New
Year’s Eve. A Washington Post article described Gaga at a gay-rights
event last year as “looking slightly embalmed.” Yes, Gaga is like Norma
Desmond entombed in her own deadly cult of self. The layer of plastered
make-up without which she never leaves her room makes her resemble the
waxy, mummified saints under glass in Italian churches. It’s no
coincidence that Gaga’s Telephone video, her longest to date, is set in a
prison. Gaga has a bunkered mentality, as if she can’t escape the
burden or rigid limitations of her own assumed personality. Rootless,
she carries her own detention camp around with her, typified by a tattoo
on her arm with the death date of an aunt she never knew.
Insurgent performers have often captured the spirit of a generation,
from Frank Sinatra driving bobbysoxers wild and Elvis Presley lewdly
gyrating his hips, to the Beatles waking people up with a bang after
their dreary upbringing in the conformist, postwar 1950s. International
idols have always been springtime spirits of infectious energy, symbols
of a new dawn. Among the magnetic presences in music today are tigresses
of charismatic sensuality or gamines of buoyant charm - Beyonce,
Shakira, Rihanna, Nelly Furtado. Never has there been a breakthrough
mainstream performer like Gaga who obsessively traffics in twisted
sexual scenarios and solipsistic psychodramas. All the frantic, flailing
arm moves imposed on her by professional choreographers can’t disguise
her essential depressiveness and spiritual paralysis, registered in her
videos in her often inert torso. With her garish costumes and piano
playing, Gaga is often compared to Elton John. But Elton never tried to
present himself as a sexual athlete. On the contrary, his sequined
costumes were self-satirising, meant to amuse and render him harmless.
And Elton’s co-written original songs were well-constructed populist
hits that won a huge, multi-generational audience, and are still on the
radio after 40 years.
Like
Boy George (another of Gaga’s claimed models), Elton sang feelingly,
even soulfully (as in the tender Your Song), which Gaga does not.
Furthermore, Elton’s supple piano work was superior to anything Gaga has
shown thus far. For example, in her video of her performance on BBC1
last year of an acoustic performance of Poker Face, Gaga is pleased as
punch with her ostentatious fusillade of empty flourishes, which are
embarrassingly unsupported by the song itself.
implied that Gaga had surpassed Bowie - an idiocy that should have been instantly punished by a lightning bolt from Zeus. Bowie at his height in the early 70s was one of the great avant-garde artists of the 20th century. He was the brilliant heir to Dada and surrealism. And in his daring gender-bending, he was a warrior for sexual liberation and for a redefining of the psychic fluidity of sexual orientation. Gaga does not belong in Bowie’s company.
Andy Warhol |
Another
inspiration regularly cited by Gaga is Andy Warhol, whose code of fame
and celebrity she has adopted. Warhol would certainly have endorsed
Gaga’s relentless marketing of appropriated material, exactly as he
transformed newspaper photos of stars and politicians into brightly
coloured silk-screens. But comparisons are less convincing of Warhol’s
Factory to the Haus of Gaga, the style team whose leading figures are
Matt Williams and Nicola Formichetti (the true inventors of her look).
In person, Warhol was modest and recessive; the theatrical denizens of
the Factory were not hidden backstage as cogs in a commercial machine.
Many of Warhol’s superstars were authentic misfits, products of New
York’s bohemian and beatnik underground in the 1950s. They were edgy and
sometimes self-destructive, including the bold-as-brass drag queens
(Jackie Curtis, Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling) who cross-dressed when it
was dangerous to do so.
Bette Midler |
Gaga
is in way over her head with her avant-garde pretensions. She should
relax and snap back to her real genre, which is closer to vaudeville or
musical comedy in the bantering Bette Midler style. Right now, with her
spindly physique and wobbly moves, Gaga sometimes seems overwhelmed by
her frenetic production, like Citizen Kane’s terrified, feeble,
reedy-voiced mistress pushed out onto the stage of Salammbo. She wants
to have it both ways - to be hip and avant-garde and yet popular and
universal, a practitioner of gung-ho “show biz”. Most of her worshippers
seem to have had little or no contact with such powerful performers as
Tina Turner or Janis Joplin, with their huge personalities and deep
wells of passion. Joplin, far more cruelly ostracised in her Texas home
town than Gaga ever was in Manhattan, channelled the profound emotions
and raw technique of black blues singers, backed by virtuosic
psychedelic guitars.
Generation
Gaga doesn’t identify with powerful vocal styles because their own
voices have atrophied: they communicate mutely via a constant stream of
atomised, telegraphic text messages. Gaga’s flat affect doesn’t bother
them because they’re not attuned to facial expressions. They don’t
notice her awkwardness because they’ve abandoned body language in daily
interactions. They’re not repelled by the choppy cutting of her videos
(in febrile one-second bursts) because that’s how they process reality -
as a cluttered, de-centred environment of floating bits.
Gaga’s fans are marooned in a global technocracy of fancy gadgets but
emotional poverty. Everything is refracted for them through the media.
They have been raised in a relativistic cultural vacuum where chronology
and sequence as well as distinctions of value have been lost or
jettisoned by politically correct educators. It is a world of blurred
borderlines - between childhood and adulthood as well as between parents
and children. The young waver between dependence and independence and
are slow to leave the comforts of home. Old family hierarchies have
broken down. Gaga, for example, gets drunk with her parents and calls
her father her “best friend.” She startlingly said this summer: “I’ve
been in my father’s arms for two weeks wishing him happy Father’s Day.”
There are blurred borderlines between the sexes: gender is now
alleged to be fabricated rather than biological; so everything is a
pose. Thus Gaga welcomed the rumour about her being intersex and
converted it into a fashion statement. Casual “hooking up” blends
friends and lovers, with sex becoming merely an excuse for filial
hugging. Borderlines have blurred too between public and private:
reality-TV shows multiply; cell-phone conversations blare everywhere;
secrets are heedlessly blabbed on Facebook and Twitter. Hence Gaga
gratuitously natters on about her vagina. In the sprawling anarchy of
the web, the borderline between fact and fiction has melted away.
Camille Paglia
Professor of Humanities and Media Studies, University of The Arts in Philadelphia.
October 4, 2011
Thanks CrapGa for inspiring others to unleash more nonsense to the tune of capital Y.O.U. on us. Thanks for promoting the unnecessary slaughter of animals. After the meat dress, I guess the whole Kermit dress hoopla to make a statement against fur is kinda moot now. Brace yourselves. Another tsunami of stupidity is starting to swell.
Click here to see what I'm talking about.
P.S. Fur kills. Don't be an asshole.
October 3, 2011
If there is a Tumblr blog everyone should check out, it's wearethe99percent.tumblr.com. I know this is completely off topic considering the nature of this blog but I fully support the Occupy Wall Street protesters. I hope this movement continues to grow and the big guys at the top are taken down several million pegs.
Occupy Everything.
Dear Anthagio
You haven't pissed me off. :) All you've done is resorted to cheating methods you've learnt ever so well from your mamma monster. So, due to the fact that you can't play fair and are a little prick, the poll has been removed.
P.S. I don't stalk your Tumblr account. See, Blogger has this little thing called "statistics" that tells me how many times my blog is viewed, from what countries, which posts are being read and provides the links that linked to my site. I can click on the links and voila! I now can see where people are mentioning and linking my blog from anywhere on the world wide web. I knew who you were all along my friend.
Anthagio's Tumblr
October 2, 2011
Obama Comments on Gaga's Clownish Ways
President Obama attended the annual Human Rights Campaign gala in Washington, D.C. where he spoke briefly to gay advocates. He joked and said “I held some productive bilateral talks with your leader". The joke drew laughs and no doubt had a sarcastic nature to it. Also noteworthy, Obama said of Gaga.
“She was wearing 16-inch heels. She was eight feet tall. It was a little intimidating."
I'm sure it was very difficult to have any sort of serious talk with someone who attends your gala on stilts and hair that's two feet high. How can anyone look her directly in the eyes....er sorry, two feet up first then directly in her eyes and not think to yourself "What the hell is she wearing. Who is this idiot"? Doesn't this completely distract from the seriousness of her message? This is the equivalent of a King's Ball and enter the court jester Gaga, trying to walk at eight feet tall with her caked on makeup and pathetic buffoonery. I'm surprised she didn't ride in one of those giant unicycles juggling five oranges blowing on a New Year's Eve party favor.
Obama is 6'1" and Stefani is 5'1". Napoleon syndrome much?
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