A READER who asked for suggestions for his college literature course writes:

What a treat to return to the Internet after several days away to find your thoughtful and lengthy response to my admittedly difficult request! Thank you very much for taking the time to respond – you’ve introduced me to some new writers and refreshed my memory on some others. I haven’t read Meredith or Gissing; I’ll look into those. I have read Sarah Orne Jewett in the past but forgot about her – great idea. I had also forgotten about Blixen/Isak Dinesen; I was just thinking I might try to put together a connected story/film lesson or two using her story Babette’s Feast and the excellent film version. I like the idea of starting with some of the ancient Greeks and especially A.’s idea of Antigone and the natural law. Teaching The Book of Job as literature is also an intriguing idea. Read More »

I WAS reading a blog the other day in which a young woman stated that she loves Lady Gaga. The pop star, she said, makes her “feel alive.”  This is to be expected as the fans of Lady Gaga are half alive. Here is an apt quote from G.K. Chesterton’s Everlasting Man:

There comes an hour in the afternoon when the child is tired of ‘pretending’; when he is weary of being a robber or a Red Indian. It is then that he torments the cat. There comes a time in the routine of an ordered civilization when the man is tired at playing at mythology and pretending that a tree is a maiden or that the moon made love to a man. The effect of this staleness is the same everywhere; it is seen in all drug-taking and dram-drinking and every form of the tendency to increase the dose. Men seek stranger sins or more startling obscenities as stimulants to their jaded sense. They seek after mad oriental religions for the same reason. They try to stab their nerves to life, if it were with the knives of the priests of Baal. They are walking in their sleep and try to wake themselves up with nightmares.

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RENÉE writes:

When I was twelve years old, my orchestra conductor told us that when she was young, women were not allowed in professional orchestras because they would have to be replaced with they got pregnant and it seemed more practical to just hire men. To me that seemed very sensible, though my opinion was something I knew not to share.

Throughout my life I have had many moments like that, knowing that the prevailing wisdom was wrong about matters of discrimination against women, but not feeling secure to voice my opinions because of fear, and, more importantly, not knowing how to frame my opinions in a manner that would even satisfy me. For, though I sensed that it seemed justifiable to discriminate against women, I still felt on some level that it was not fair. And the desire for fairness is what I was taught was the basis for any perspective on matters of gender. Read More »

LAST DECEMBER, Lady Gaga performed for Queen Elizabeth at the annual Royal Variety Performance in Blackpool.  Please don’t write to me and say that lots of trashy perfomers have appeared before the Queen. I don’t care if Satan himself tapdanced on a piano for the monarch. The point is, the Queen of England and the Queen of Nihilism should not be in the same room together, let alone shaking each other’s hands. If the Queen of England were responsible to her people she would not have shaken hands with Gaga or clapped at her performance. She would have appeared in a national address on television and asked all parents to ban Gaga from their homes. Instead, the Queen has done what leaders throughout the Western World have done. She has stood by, a mere spectator at the desecration of innocence and the tortured spiritual death of the West.

Reader N. writes:

There is a hidden significance to any performance for the Queen of England, although it isn’t as important as a few centuries ago. Ever since Henry VIII the English monarch has been the head of the Church of England. Yes, the Archbishop of Canterbury is the leader of that church, but the monarch is the titular head. Read More »

JESSE POWELL writes:

I see that bringing to attention the harmful pornographic imagery Lady Gaga has produced in her music videos and public persona has started a vigorous and much needed discussion of the harms that pornography, which is titillation of the senses without regard to the moral content of the message and the imagery, does to our culture. 

It’s important to emphasize here how clueless most people are as to the harms and dangers that Lady Gaga represents, and how the press has treated Lady Gaga with deference, approval and affection. Youngfogey has made comments about how it is at least redeeming that Lady Gaga is showing the dead-end of sexual liberation. Evan talked about the need to expose teenagers to cultural icons such as Lady Gaga so that they will be prepared to deal with the “real world” once they are no longer under the supervision of their parents. When Youngfogey and Evan made their comments, they were operating under the assumption and common understanding that the messages that Lady Gaga sends in her videos are actually bad, that they represent either the failings of and false promise of sexual liberation or they represent a danger that children need inoculation against through limited exposure combined with moral teaching as to why the messages embodied in Lady Gaga are bad. 

The wider culture, the response of the average person who imbibes of the cultural environment around them, does not have this fundamental understanding that what Lady Gaga represents is bad or morally dangerous at all. Now true, there is a feeling that Lady Gaga is often “naughty” and occasionally someone will describe the imagery she uses as “disturbing” but overall the cultural response to Lady Gaga is positive, affirming, and without a sense that what she is doing is wrong.  Read More »

MARK writes:

Laura wrote in the entry about Lady Gaga: 

“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.” 

This is well said, and I wish every one of your readers would get this into their psyche. Can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned (Prov. 6:27)? The question answers itself, yet people persist. And there’s no sanctimonious judgment on my part when I say this, because I was among those people. And I’ve been burned by my experiences. 

Some philosophical types shrug off pornography as banal, but then, as you’ve indicated, banal is not benign. Speaking for myself, I wish I’d never laid eyes on pornography. Read More »

IN THE previous entry about Gaga, a reader says that shielding children and adolescents from pop stars may be to their detriment. I have heard this argument before. His point was that young people are later exposed to temptations that they are entirely unprepared for and thus give in to them. But, of course, limiting your child’s intake of toxic vulgarity is not the same as placing him in a locked cell. A child only needs to walk into the local CVS pharmacy and listen to what’s on the audio system to get a warning that sexual depravity exists. 

See the comments in that entry by James P., who writes:

 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.

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TODAY’S pop performers lower the bar so far that aesthetic simplicity and understatement seem primitive. In fact, they are the end products of high civilization. This lovely version from the sixties by the French chanteuse Françoise Hardy of “Tous les Garçons et les Filles,” is the sort of thing crowded out by Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus. Loveliness, the smiles of a summer night, feminine purity, these have become so quaint and unreal that some even argue that parents are not preparing the young for life if they don’t expose them to the bleakest of alternatives.

The video was sent by Thomas F. Bertonneau, who writes “there is no gyrating, no electronic processing of the voice, very little cosmetic makeup — simply a beautiful feminine voice singing a song about every young person’s dreadful worry that everyone except he or she has someone to love.”

SEE THE excellent contribution by Scott M. in the previous entry to various reflections on Lady Gaga and the diabolic imagination. He writes:

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. Read More »

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.

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IN THE previous entry, Kristor writes:

The Food Channel is not popular because Americans are underfed, but because they are underloved. 

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THE POSTMODERN ANTIQUARIAN writes:

I often tell my wife that I’m a materialist, but just a very bad one. The same is true for my Epicurean aspirations, and I’m not sure that’s a negative trait. Let me explain.

Last night, I indulged in a feast at one of the finest restaurants in our area. The first course consisted of raw oysters, served with a sauce of “compressed fennel” and “carbonated lemon.” I cannot tell you what compressed fennel is, nor can I explain how to carbonate a sauce, but I can tell you it was exquisite. Veal agnolotti with a carmelized broth and a tender rib-eye steak followed. The meat induced in me an almost infinite gratitude that I am not a vegetarian. I can neither spell nor pronounce the name of the dessert, which involved lightly fried pastries with a hazelnut sauce, but by then I was numbed with ecstasy. Read More »

JESSE POWELL writes:

It appears the Twilight novels and movies have started a new craze of teenagers biting each other to show their love and passion. This is not a joke; apparently some teens even go so far as to draw blood in their bites. The health risks of this are emphasized in the articles on this subject.  Michael Kaplor, 16, is quoted as saying, “I think a lot of people draw blood because they want to feel very powerful, when you bite the other person you get the huge adrenaline rush and it feels like you can’t stop and some people just take it too far”. 

I haven’t heard this said explicitly, but it seems to me this biting is something boys do to girls much more than the other way around. The ABC News article linked above includes a vidoe that is four minutes long and well worth watching.

THE POP STAR Lady Gaga has brought the normalization of pornography to new levels. Her sadomasochistic Youtube music video Bad Romance is probably the most popular video on the Internet, with 242 million views. It features erotic dancing, nudity, simulated intercourse, and violence. Gaga makes the sign of the cross while swiveling her hips and the final scene shows the star in bed with a charred skeleton, her breasts emitting flames. The video has been viewed by many millions of teenagers.

Gaga apparently sees herself as the leader of a quasi-religious art cult with Michael Jackson as her inspiration. She states in Rolling Stone, “Michael got burned, and he lifted that glittered glove so damn high so his fans could see him, because he was in the art of show business. That’s what we do. I don’t even drink water onstage in front of anybody, because I want them to focus on the fantasy of the music.”

Jesse Powell writes:

The latest cover of Rolling Stone magazine features Lady Gaga almost in the nude looking tough holding two machine guns. In the teaser for the article it states: Lady Gaga tells contributing editor Neil Strauss art is life and not being fierce isn’t an option: “When I wake up in the morning, I feel just like any other insecure 24-year-old girl,” she says. “Then I say, ‘Bitch, you’re Lady Gaga, you get up and walk the walk today.’  Read More »

FASHION models in Berlin this week showcase the work of designer Patrick Mohr.

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ROSE writes:

Here is a glimpse of Disney’s postmodern take on Rapunzel in the trailer to Tangled, which is coming out this fall. It’s nothing but the heroine violently assaulting the hero. It reminds me of Shrek where Princess Fiona beats up Robin Hood. Apparently the only important “real woman” quality is to punch things, especially men. Read More »

I APOLOGIZE for posting such a large version of Australian Conservative leader Tony Abbott in a bikini swimsuit. It’s true that the image is unsettling and so I have reduced it in size. Fortunately, this phenomenon of the Man-in-Pampers remains relatively rare on American beaches, at least on the beaches I know. Read More »

A READER WRITES:

In the face of all the cultural and political forces which dominate our lives and have brought so many negative consequences, I have to admit at times I wonder what the heck any of us can really do to change things. It seems that the traditionalist worldview that you advocate is simply never heard, and when proposed in even the mildest forms, is shouted down vehemently by our cultural controllers in the media, the entertainment industry, mainstream politics, and the universities.

What I keep coming back to is the idea of starting small, with whatever we have, and wherever we find ourselves. This year I have the opportunity to teach an introductory Literature and Composition course to freshmen at a nearby college. In the tradition of true liberal education, I would like to include some texts which might help my students to begin to question much of the received wisdom of our age, as your blog has helped me to do of late. Read More »