Gaga
July 11, 2010
AS OF last month, the 24-year-old porn pop star Lady Gaga had sold 15 million albums. In this entry, I write:
Lady Gaga is a perfect example of what T.S. Eliot called the “diabolic imagination.” She is the strutting, crotch-grabbing, hip-swiveling, eye-batting embodiment of a subhuman urge to delight in perversion. “[T]he number of the half-alive hungry for any form of spiritual experience, or for what offers itself as spiritual experience, high or low, good or bad, is considerable,” Eliot wrote.
Gaga’s fans are half alive.
By the way, I have deliberately not posted the link to Gaga’s hugely popular music video Bad Romance, viewed 242 million times on Youtube. It is one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen. If it was marketed simply as porn that would be bad enough. But this is a mainstream pop video viewed by middle class teenagers. Gaga is part of what the reader Kilroy M., in this entry about bearded fashion models, calls “the mainstreaming of horror.”
Every single person who markets, stages, views, listens to, records, consents to, approvingly reviews or purchases Gaga is participating in evil. Every single journalist who writes about Gaga and does not say she is dangerous is participating in evil. Every parent who knowingly allows their child to be exposed to Gaga is engaging in child abuse. Every child or adolescent who has watched Bad Romance has had his innocence permanently destroyed. Every friend of Gaga is a friend of evil.
— Comments —
Youngfogey writes:
You are mostly right about Lady Gaga, but I fear there is something you miss.
What we see in Lady Gaga is a herald of a certain kind of end, a clear sign that our culture has died. I think Gaga knows this, perhaps she has not processed this idea on a conscious level, but she seems to me, like many of her generation, to intuit it unconsciously.
People often compare Gaga to Madonna, but the similarities are superficial. Madonna’s message was the any limiting of sexual expression was repressive and that truly fulfilled lives must involve acting out one’s desires. Gaga’s message, and you can see this clearly in the Bad Romance video, is much more ambivalent about sexuality. Where Madonna’s videos promised joy and happiness to those who would throw off the restraints of Christian sexual morality, Gaga knows that sexual indulgence is linked to horror. This is why the motifs of horror films are repeatedly present in her videos along with sexually provocative images. No question, her music is nihilistic. She seems to me to be communicating that sex is all that offers and comfort in a nihilistic world, and that even the comfort of sex is small. There is a sadness to her music and videos that was not present in older artists’ like Madonna’s
In this sense, Gaga represents a kind of honesty that has hitherto been missing in pop music. In so far as she puts before our culture the truth the sexual anarchy gives rise to monsters, I see her work as an advance. For this, I think she deserves at least a little praise.
Laura writes:
So by that argument doesn’t all pornography deserve praise for its honesty?
I only agree with your first point. She is a herald. But there are no redeeming qualities to her work. That is not the same as saying she has no talent.
MarkyMark writes:
I just took a gander at the Lady Gaga video you alluded to, ‘Bad Romance’. That is some DISTURBING stuff! While I could find numerous problems with the video, the end scene was what genuinely shocked me; I couldn’t look at it. You’re right when you say that those who allow their kids to watch that stuff are engaging in child abuse.
Jesse Powell writes:
Are you aware of the connection that Lady Gaga has to the gay community, and that she is bi-sexual herself? From the Wikipedia entry on her:
“Gaga attributes much of her early success as a mainstream artist to her gay fans and is considered to be a rising gay icon.[95] Early in her career she had difficulty getting radio airplay, and stated, “The turning point for me was the gay community. I’ve got so many gay fans and they’re so loyal to me and they really lifted me up. They’ll always stand by me and I’ll always stand by them. It’s not an easy thing to create a fanbase.”
And in reference to her personal life Wikipedia states:
After The Fame was released, she (Lady Gaga) revealed that the song “Poker Face” was about her bisexuality. In an interview with Rolling Stone, she spoke about how her boyfriends tended to react to her bisexuality, saying “The fact that I’m into women, they’re all intimidated by it. It makes them uncomfortable. They’re like, ‘I don’t need to have a threesome. I’m happy with just you’.”
Lastly, Wikipedia states:
Gaga is the most popular living person in terms of social networks. She has close to five million Twitter followers and ten million Facebook fans.
Jesse adds:
This article in the Indian press is one of the sources in the Wikipedia entry on Lady Gaga. The first sentence of the article sums up the story quite well; “Popstar Lady Gaga has irked even her die-hard fans by pretending to be murdered and eaten on stage by a psycho killer during her Manchester show, just hours after a spate of serial killings rocked the region.”
Laday Gaga’s “Telephone” video has 66 million views, and so can be assumed to be culturally significant. The video has strong lesbian themes. It begins in a women’s prison, then Lady Gaga gets released from prison and joins Beyonce, a popular black musical artist, and the implication is that Lady Gaga and Beyonce are lesbian lovers who are partners in crime. The video revisits the Thelma and Louise theme, with Lady Gaga and Beyonce as Thelma and Louise. The end of the video portrays Lady Gaga and Beyonce poisoning a large number of people at a restaurant, seemingly targeting men who show an interest in Beyonce, and other men and women in general. This I suppose is intended as revenge against all the men who are jerks and call Lady Gaga and Beyonce on the “Telephone” too often. Finally, Lady Gaga and Beyonce drive off in the “Pussy Wagon” into the sunset, again reminiscent of Thelma and Louise, promising never to return to the town again.
Evan writes:
While I’m generally sympathetic to your views on society, your recent post on Lady Gaga has left me thinking about how you would suggest teaching children about morals in modern society.
“Every single person who markets, stages, views, listens to, records, consents to, approvingly reviews or purchases Gaga is participating in evil. Every single journalist who writes about Gaga and does not say she is dangerous is participating in evil. Every parent who knowingly allows their child to be exposed to Gaga is engaging in child abuse. Every child or adolescent who has watched Bad Romance has had his innocence permanently destroyed. Every friend of Gaga is a friend of evil.”
The above has me wondering about the disconnect between your views and the reality of the west today. Gaga is banal compared to much of the current youth pop culture and as evidenced by the Youtube views is incredibly well known amongst the young. I understand the reluctance to allow teens to view such material, but to suggest that this is child abuse seems odd. On this basis I assume that you would choose not to expose your teens (if you have children of that age) or others’ children to Gaga. Surely it would be better to allow your children to be exposed to such common material and discuss it with them rather than shelter them completely?
Does protecting children from such banal facets of pop culture adequately prepare them to function in the “real world” once they are no longer under the charge of their parents? I’m still in my early twenties and I know far too many children who were raised in strict households as youth who transformed into promiscuous party goers once granted freedom from their parents. Many others who were raised in such households seem incredibly socially awkward and are so out of touch with popular culture and societal norms that it is often difficult to hold conversations with them. I have trouble understanding how they can flourish or even adequately function in a society such as ours.
Though some of these children obviously grow into socially well-adjusted conservative adults it seems to me that many children who are so sheltered have a very difficult time creating a balanced social life for themselves once exposed to the whirlwinds of promiscuity and degradation that exists in our society. This is all anecdotal observations but it is a problem that I have observed time and again throughout my experience in the public education system.
Laura writes:
My husband and I have always sheltered our two sons from violence, pornography and the worst of popular culture, going so far as to remove our second son from public education in kindergarten in large part because of the exposure of his playmates to television and video games, which had become noticeably worse since his older brother attended kindergarten several years before. My youngest son attended a private school in which students were forbidden to watch any television or play computer games at all, even in their homes. He has been homeschooled since fourth grade and has just finished eleventh grade. For most of their childhood, my children watched little television.
My eldest son, who is in his final year of college, is well-adjusted and does not seem to have been harmed by our failure to introduce him to sadomasochistic sex. My younger son is sociable, bright and well-liked. He too seems to be okay despite a pornography-free existence. You say, “Though some of these children obviously grow into socially well-adjusted conservative adults it seems to me that many children who are so sheltered have a very difficult time creating a balanced social life for themselves once exposed to the whirlwinds of promiscuity and degradation that exists in our society.” My experience is entirely different. I have known many children exposed to popular culture and children sheltered from it. I have seen no evidence that these children who are not exposed to popular culture turn out to have more problems in adulthood. In fact, they seem to have more satisfying interests and more enthusiasm. Still a wholesome childhood is no guarantee of psychological stability.
I hope that many children in America have difficulty adjusting to “whirlwinds of promiscuity and degradation” without actually giving into them. Parents today should not be raising children who adjust to our society but children who do not. But obviously it’s not enough to just shelter children from harmful images. They also have to be told what activities are wrong and they also have to be under some supervision as older adolescents.
Besides, viewing pornography is wrong regardless of the consequences. It degrades the people who participate in its production and the viewer. It lessens the ability to enjoy real sex and to sustain love and marriage.
Scott M. writes:
Lady Gaga is merely the culmination of trends in popular culture that have been in play for decades, and have been foisted on an easily manipulated and morally complacent mass audience that has been incapable of formulating cogent reasons for resisting their morbid and infernal allurements.This is partly because of the wholesale embrace of performance styles that had long been a part of the subterranean world of low culture and the criminal demi-monde, but, with the advent of the electronic media, could now be brought into our living rooms, and experienced first vicariously, and then, before long, made normative in the imitative conduct of those whose emotional and sexual development had been commandeered by movies, MTV, and the Internet.
As a middle-aged man looking back on the disordered, and disordering, cultural influences of my youth, I can identify numerous mephitic emanations which were extant by the time I was in junior high school, and were forerunners to the glossily packaged saturnalias of today. For example, in hindsight, it seems uncanny to me that a production like the musical “Cabaret,” with its sadomasochistic themes, could be excerpted on the Ed Sullivan Show and other variety shows, in the late sixties and early seventies, and seemingly pass without any comment except for congratulatory burbling about Judy Garland’s daughter, Liza Minnelli, and her breakthrough performance. Cabaret was certainly a precedent for the sulfurous sub-text of Lady Gaga’s videos. (If I remember correctly, the Sally Bowles character appeared with bruises, torn clothes, and ghoulish make-up, and was introduced by a simpering and androgynous master of ceremonies, whose queer significance was clarified for me somewhat, when I read Jorge-Karl Huysman’s La-Bas in my late twenties.) I was non-plussed and puzzled by this. Today’s teenagers are not likely to be non-plussed by Lady Gaga. She is merely a spokes-creature for the world they have been born into.
We can speak of the ageless “powers and principalities” that have been seeking to destroy human souls since time immemorial, but we would be telling only half the story if we did not identify groups in the human community that have been determined and impassioned agents of real malevolence, and whose depredations have not only been tolerated but internalized by their victims. Every heterosexual who tittered delightedly at gay “camp” performances in which the hetero-normative world was held up for mockery (such as the John Waters movie and subsequent musical Hairspray) was preparing the way for the mainstreaming of the likes of Lady Gaga. If I may state the obvious: the guiding consciousness in her videos is every bit as homosexual in its origins as the German fashion designer’s bright idea of female models with beards. In the world of talented homosexuals, there are those who try, through art, music, literature, and philosophy, to find their way to the center of life to the best of their ability (as we all do), and there are those whose vocation is to attack the very sources of life and defile them. Those of the latter group are driven by hatred for the sacred, for the human body, for the call to love and the vulnerability we experience when we heed that call. As C.S. Lewis once said (and I am paraphrasing), the only place outside of Heaven where we are free from the risks of love is Hell, where all love has been erased. Lady Gaga and her conceptual collaborators are selling a hellish vision of freedom, and, yes, when parents do not shield their children from this they are guilty of a moral idiocy that would be unforgivable were it not for the indoctrination that has been foisted upon them for decades, often in the name of “tolerance” and a prolonged adolescent anti-puritanism that has long ventured beyond its proper scope.
There is something else at work in our degenerate popular culture that I find difficult to diagnose unambiguously without some trepidation, but, as you and many of your readers are familiar with Lawrence Auster, Jim Kalb and others, I trust that I am on safe territory. Just as the high-tech assaultive juggernaut promoting Lady Gaga would not be allowed to flatten the moral and aesthetic lives of the young were it not for the mainstream acceptance of an essentially predatory version of the “gay” weltanshaaung, the equally dehumanizing animalistic thud of hip-hop, and its attendant modes of behavior, would not be rampant, if a preferential option of indulgence had not also been extended to the social pathologies of blacks, long before rap and hip-hop could have been foretold even by the most misanthropic dystopian novelist. In fact, it was the inane noblesse proffered to the latter anointed victim group that made the acceptance of the assaults of the former inevitable. Seen with some enlightened hindsight, the priapic screeching of the likes of Little Richard, and the trashing of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival by Chuck Berry, a hedonic primitive who could barely play his instrument, should have been troubling to a lot more people than merely the supposedly bigoted kill-joys in the southern Citizen’s Councils who said, not without some prescience, that we were in danger of being “dragged down to the level of the n——..” By the time people of my generation began to watch documentaries about the Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll, we had already been primed for the notion that we had never had any real civilizational eminence to fall from, or, at least, that there was no declivity to fall into that would not be more “life-affirming” or liberating than bourgeois propriety and white norms of behavior. Indeed, we were expected to thank blacks for getting us in touch with our libidos and saving us from the vestiges of the Victorian era! Egalitarianism had won us over to the point that, today, the children of the baby boomers will simply take their moral indifferentist/default liberal parents at their word, and accept Lady Gaga as an expression of an interesting, exotic, and ultimately enthralling outlook on things, just as, decades before, the world view of knife-wielding bad Negroes in Mississippi roadhouses was mainstreamed through the adoption, by whites, of primitive rhythm and blues.
An illustrative example might be useful: A well-known jewelry store in my area recently advertised a sale of a boxed set of engagement and wedding rings in a televised commercial by using, for the sound track, a corrosive primitive blues-rock tune with the phlegm-rattling vocalist screaming, during the chorus, “I got a Mojo box!” The style of music, the strangled howl of the vocals, and the reference to a primitive southern black superstition involving voodoo hexes (“mojo”), were all evocative of a less-evolved cultural realm into which the sacredness of the marriage bond and the implied tenderness and vulnerability of human love itself had not yet entered. I have since learned that I cannot expect many of my peers to comprehend why I find this appalling. As a member of the “second thoughts” contingent, I am convinced that any conservatism that does not seek to reverse these cultural abdications is not worthy of the name.
Laura writes:
Excellent. “Moral idiocy” is the perfect term for the indifference of parents who allow their children to play in cultural sewers and then spend $200,000 to send them to college, as if there is anything left of their minds to be elevated. Lady Gaga is more than a celebration of sexual license, as Scott points out. She is part of the wider cause of political liberalism, which is a struggle for power. The “inane noblesse” associated with black culture, and anything remotely homosexual, creates aesthetic blinders. We are awash in propaganda. The chief characteristic of propaganda is not the art, but the messsage.
James P. writes:
Evan writes,
“The above has me wondering about the disconnect between your views and the reality of the west today.”
Personally I am happy to be disconnected from a culture that wallows in monstrous filth and that actively rejects truth, beauty and goodness. Evil may be an ubiquitous “reality” but that is no reason to surrender to it. Indeed, those who wish to destroy the family and Christian values want you to surrender, and want you to give up as hopeless any effort to shield your children from “reality”. Nevertheless, resistance is justified, necessary, and possible.
“Gaga is banal compared to much of the current youth pop culture and as evidenced by the Youtube views is incredibly well known amongst the young.”
Inexorably, today’s shocking depravity becomes tomorrow’s humdrum banality, as the engines of cultural destruction seek new nadirs of vulgarity in a frenetic effort to stimulate the deadened senses of a brutalized public. But so what? Lady Gaga is no less evil for being banal and commonplace, and it is no less imperative to protect your children from her than from whatever new outrage has emerged to supersede her. I wouldn’t let my kids watch a 1970s slasher movie, even though these movies are banal by today’s standards and many, many people have seen them. Toxic evil is toxic evil, regardless of how old it is or how many other people have feasted on such carrion. I couldn’t care less how many other people let their kids watch Lady Gaga, my duty as a parent is to shield my children from things I consider inappropriate, however popular they may be.
“Surely it would be better to allow your children to be exposed to such common material and discuss it with them rather than shelter them completely?”
Having watched the video, the short answer is no. A conversation about that video would not be edifying, and watching it would only open the door to demands to watch other garbage of escalating levels of impropriety.
“Many others who were raised in such households seem incredibly socially awkward and are so out of touch with popular culture and societal norms that it is often difficult to hold conversations with them. I have trouble understanding how they can flourish or even adequately function in a society such as ours.”
Does Evan have a job? If so, what kind of job is it? At my place of work, the subject of necrophiliac porn videos never arises in conversation, and somehow we all manage to function. Personally and professionally, I have flourished and functioned superbly for decades without the dubious benefit of knowledge of popular culture. I don’t watch TV, I rarely see movies, and I find watching sports so utterly boring that I can’t even feign interest convincingly. Yet this has never seriously impeded my social or professional life.
I grant that it is probably socially easier to ignore popular culture when one is in the adult working world than when one is in high school or college. In my case, from high school through grad school, lack of knowledge of pop culture was not a significant problem because I associated with people who had other things to talk about. I simply had no interest in people for whom popular culture was the central focus of their mental universe — I’d rather stay home and read a book than socialize with such dullards. Then as now, when people referred to popular culture, I straightforwardly expressed my indifference, and this only precluded friendship, romance, or casual social interaction with people too boring to associate with anyway. No great loss in those cases.
“many children who are so sheltered have a very difficult time creating a balanced social life for themselves once exposed to the whirlwinds of promiscuity and degradation that exists in our society.”
Children are better able to withstand those whirlwinds if they have developed self-discipline, strength of character, and a sense of right and wrong. I want to raise my children to have the moral and intellectual strength to regard popular culture with the boredom, contempt, and disgust that it deserves. Exposure to television — even “educational” television — weakens them, and of course, exposure to evil, however banal and commonplace, corrodes their souls and undermines their character development. One need only meet the coarse, ignorant, and self-indulgent children who are typical products of popular culture and the public school system to understand this properly.
Youngfogey writes:
You wrote “So by that argument doesn’t all pornography deserve praise for its honesty?”
Before I begin my answer, let me say first that I agree substantially with your assessment of the origins on Lady Gaga and the cultural streams from which she has jumped. So, I would not want to be read as mounting a general defense of her.
While I am no expert on the subject of pornography, I think the answer to your question is no. The message of much “mainstream” pornography is exactly that of general cultural liberalism: that the good life is to be found through indulging the libido in all the forms the imagination can create, that unrestricted sexuality is an unquestionable good.
Lady Gaga’s message, at least in the Bad Romance video, is that unrestricted sexuality releases monsters and is not, in fact, a doorway to the good life. Gaga does, I admit, celebrate perverse forms of sexuality along with materialism and hedonism. What makes her different from past pop stars is that she has sprung from a thoroughly non-Christian context and that her target is not so much Christianity, but liberalism.
It was liberalism that promoted sexual freedom as a road to fulfillment and that, at least in its rhetoric, decried the acquisition of material goods in favor of a generalized humanitarianism. Gaga is about the rejection of these ideas. Her work conveys the disappointment of the young person who has found liberalism hollow, but who sees no other alternative.
Her celebration of perverse sexuality is not about the liberal promise of joy and freedom to be realized there, but about the cold comfort of physical pleasure in a world of monsters. Her celebration of materialism is about turning to the accrual of wealth in light of the failure of all the other liberal promises.
In this way, I think Lady Gaga is much more honest than pornography which reinforces liberal illusions. Lady Gaga is significant because she is the first post-liberal pop star. Any analysis of her work that fails to recognize this is incomplete.
Finally, I’ve generally found that expanded definitions of “pornography” such as you seem to be using less than helpful in discussions such as these. Would you be willing to lay out your definition a bit?
Laura writes:
You mean that the exhibition of this demonic reality awakens people to the implications of sexual freedom and their disillusionment. Well, that’s fine for professors of popular culture who have already lived their childhoods and adolescence but the problem is, the images themselves influence behavior and thought. Sexual and violent images are arousing. Young adults imitate what they see, and to a certain extent we all do. And, sure while they’re having sadomasochistic sex, they may be thinking, “This is the apotheosis of decay. I am rebelling by indulging in the worst,” but they have destroyed their souls in the process. You may say, “Well, no. They don’t imitate what they see in Gaga precisely because it’s so horrific.” But then I think you deny the subliminal power of the visual, and how exposure to any images of violent sex, whatever the symbolism or intellectual message, makes it hard to perceive and know beauty. Even for married people, it impedes delight in their bodies and intimacy, though it may be temporarily stimulating.
Pornography encompasses all images of real or simulated copulation, full nudity and any sex acts beyond kissing and touching. Images of oral sex are pornographic. Full images of an entirely unclothed married couple having intercourse are pornographic. Sex by its nature is a private act. The public exhibition of a sex act reduces human beings to objects to be manipulated, sex toys, automata. Pornography robs sex of its personal dimension, for viewer and viewed.
Lady Gaga may be an expression of the worst, but I don’t understand how she in any way signals, or leads to, a rejection of the worst.
Youngfogey writes:
Agreed. What I have been offering here is my analysis of Gaga in her larger intellectual and cultural context, not parenting advice or really any practical thoughts on how to respond to her videos etc. Just because I understand that she indicates a turn from cultural liberalism and an exposing of its emptiness, doesn’t mean I’m taking my girls to her concert. As I said, I agree with much of your analysis, but felt there was an important bit missing.
You wrote: Lady Gaga may be an expression of the worst, but I don’t understand how she in any way signals, or leads to, a rejection of the worst.
Oh, I don’t think she signals a rejection of the worst only that she signals an unwillingness to pretend that the worst, or even the bad, lead to fulfillment and not to horror.
Laura writes:
Yes, I can appreciate what you’re saying about her irony. Her point is, “You want to have sex? Okay, let’s go. Here’s your freedom.”
At the best, her work represents a subconscious revulsion, an encounter with the worst that leads people to notice their cravings for innocence and fulfillment. That seems like wishful thinking, but I hope you are right and she is the first post-liberal pop star, that these paroxysms of despair are the precursors of renewal. But it seems that any society that is incapable of preventing her from making this point before millions of young people lacks the will to bring about any cultural rebirth.
