Camille Paglia wrote a piece for the Sunday Times (now behind the pay wall, so there is
only a long tease) – Lady Gaga and the death of sex. I like this quote:
“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.”
Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of Kiss. Joerg Koch/EPA
I wonder if my former idol would be able to finally write a single article without giving Madonna way too much credit. And as far as the facial expression are concerned this has been a uniquely American malice. I have been baffled for decades why Americans are blind to faces. For starters most Americans don’t know that there is a good face and a bad face and this was true long before the text messages. Also there is also a long tradition of masked entertainers. The Asian and especially Japanese theater is a masked costume show. The Kiss for example is a blend of the Asian theater and rock-and-roll. But really Gaga has been manufactured for the rising Asian market where she might be even more popular than in US, she reflects that symbolic, masked tradition. A pose and a movement instead of the originally western theatrical Greek tragedy, drama and catharsis. But in America “drama” somehow became a bad word, signaling the uncomfortable surplus of emotions. So you don’t want drama? No problem, you got yourself “made in America” Gaga.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Yes, some of my favorite lyricists have been criticised as having too much “drama” in their songwriting. My own songwriting has been derided for verging on the histrionic. It is threatening to the American late capitalist paradigm to care about things a lot, to have passion, to express emotions and desires without restraint. Popular art is cold and mechanical. We are increasingly Taylorized, and trapped in a hyperreal capitalist prison that is in some ways more successfully authoritarian than the Stalinist system ever was.
Gaga’s work is mechanical in form and empty in content, and therefore representative of everything the American plutonomy is intent on forming its subjects to be. It is necessary that a certain banal apathy and pacified nihilism be the zeitgeist of youth culture, because today’s average American teenager will receive only a declining level of opportunity under the current system. Idealism and strong passions are dangerous and superflous for a generation who will compete fiercely to be among the indentured slaves treated as mere extensions of the machines that keep the servers running and the floors clean.
Hopefully we can them get them all riled up before it’s too late.
Sammy, in your last comments you make a lot of sense till you veer into predictions. I.e. Chabad will be this or opportunities for the young people will be that. Here is the thing, we have no idea what will happen in the future, rather literally.
You’re right, I should know better than to do that. Thanks for the criticism.