Paglia: "Lady Gaga and the Death of Sex"
fishmongerfunk
4,154 Posts
Camille Paglia
Published: 12 September 201
Lady Gaga is the first major star of the digital age. 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???
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 jewelled 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. 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 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, 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???
Gaga has borrowed so heavily from Madonna (as in her latest video-Alejandro) that it must be asked, at what point does homage become theft? However, the main point is that the young Madonna was on fire. She was indeed the imperious Marlene Dietrich???s true heir. 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???
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 d??j?? 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. 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.
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???
Gaga is in way over her head with her avant-garde pretensions??? 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.
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.
Gaga's fans are marooned in a global technocracy of fancy gadgets but emotional poverty. Borderlines have been blurred 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???
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/public/magazine/article389697.ece
Published: 12 September 201
Lady Gaga is the first major star of the digital age. 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???
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 jewelled 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. 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 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, 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???
Gaga has borrowed so heavily from Madonna (as in her latest video-Alejandro) that it must be asked, at what point does homage become theft? However, the main point is that the young Madonna was on fire. She was indeed the imperious Marlene Dietrich???s true heir. 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???
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 d??j?? 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. 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.
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???
Gaga is in way over her head with her avant-garde pretensions??? 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.
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.
Gaga's fans are marooned in a global technocracy of fancy gadgets but emotional poverty. Borderlines have been blurred 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???
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/public/magazine/article389697.ece
Comments
EDIT: Seriously, does she think the 'digital age' began two years ago?
b/w
Kill the adjective/adverb
Sarcasm? Pop star = manufactured. Paglia fails to realize that everything about the current generation is manufactured and scripted. Gaga fits right in, and the kids can tell the difference just fine.
Sex will never die.
She had a nice figure in the beginning before she got rail-thin.
Yup, people are still having sex.
Ok, Almond you need to eat sister. I'm gonna go take a walk around the block. Aight!
No, I doubt she does, but you have to consider who she's writing this piece for. To the bulk of the Sunday Times' readership, things like iPods, text messaging, 3G phones, downloading music, YouTube and Twitter are all signifiers of "the digital age", even though you or I may have a far more nuanced understanding of what such a phrase might mean. And inasmuch as Gaga's success is unique in the way it's been gauged in Google search results, YouTube views and iTunes downloads as well as by more "traditional" measures, then she absolutely is "the first major star of the digital age", and without question the biggest thing in pop music right now.
Try as I might, though, I can't make any sense of her or her music at all. Lots of people I know - a great many of whom have good judgement, aren't normally inclined towards buying into hype, and are by no means teenagers - absolutely froth over her, while I wonder if there's something fundamental I'm missing about the whole thing. Not only do I not get it, I don't think the music's very good either. In fact, it's getting to the point where I'm developing a very real aversion to it, especially when it's sung by parties of drunken hairdressers in bars, or troupes of stage school brats on shows like Glee.
i hate them both.
Britney Spears is (was?) a star of the digital age, so is Miley Cyrus. No way is Lady Gaga the first.
You aren't supposed to 'get' or 'make sense' of her music (or her) - you're supposed to consume it. It's intended to be mindless. It's a mass product and represents nothing new in any way. She's basically an updated Elton John of a slightly different gender.
CP's take in this article suggests somebody who has never encountered or considered popular music before.
Lady Gaga's VMA outfit, which I just saw on Yahoo's front page (didn't even know the VMAs were on). The dress is by Alexander McQueen, and I think it's pretty interesting in terms of construction (I know, this belongs in the Heels thread). I think she looks prettier than usual. Maybe it's the white hair and quail feathers or whatever that head thing is.
Does anyone really still care about what Paglia has to say anyway?
i'm not as offended by her as i am by justin bieber.
It's not meant for me so good luck to her.
Also I think there are a few good singers like Will Young, George Michael and Robbie Williams, who actually make shitty records, but they've got talent to change their direction and make good ones, like Rois??n Murphy, which I think it's a brilliant pop star or like Saint Saviour, which performs for Groove Armada. For me, that's the way.
if the central thesis of that article is that gaga is a desexualised pop star - which i kinda agree with - then whats the fuss? if anything if your going to sell catchy songs to kids or teenage girls then the most morally correct vehicule would be a kind of androgynous human doll, or puppet, that performs an elaborate and colourful stage show. if anything that should be far less troubling to sunday times readers than madonna and her pointy boobs. or the pussycat dolls providing minors with the wisdom that the best kind of woman to be is a vapid slut that's hotter than someone elses girlfriend.
I get the feeling that Gaga has the musical chops to work beyond the pop genre, and hopefully that's when it will get a bit more interesting. She's classically trained to a high level IIRC but also pretty savvy in the studio with respect to knowing what her rekkids should sound like.
Whatabout the one XTina? She's put the singing on hold IIRC while her kid is well, still a kid. Great voice, cack material so far. But she has the talent to save credibility from the jaws of mediocrity. Stuff of hers that I think she sings well:
Genie In A Bokkle
Yoy Are Beatuiful
Basically I am finger crucifix to all forms of shouty/screaming/vocal pyro numbers doe. Even Aretha's. Fling as much sh1t as you want, I can take it. I think Aretha has a fragile side to her that you catch a fleeting glimpse of in some numbers, that is far more interesting to my ears than the steamhammer. Same for Mary J. I maintain her gravel is a front that she can only maintain for 99.5% of the time - I am sure she phrases a few things subconsciously in her default voice.
Lily Allen's career took off in 2005 thanks to her MySpace page.
what and why? jus asking
Calvin Harris too.