Music
CONTACTStaffCAREER OPPORTUNITIESADVERTISE WITH USPRIVACY POLICYPRIVACY PREFERENCESTERMS OF USELEGAL NOTICE
© 2024 Pride Publishing Inc.
All Rights reserved
All Rights reserved
By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Private Policy and Terms of Use.
My bitch is better than your bitch! And she wore that dress before yours did! My bitch would kick your bitch's ass!
This is the kind of thing the older generation -- my generation -- has begun to say ever more loudly about the younger generation's first bona fide superstar, Lady Gaga. David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, Elton John, Grace Jones, and'crossing ourselves and throwing salt over our shoulders'Madonna all did it years before Gaga, and so much better.
The world's most famous gay Madonna fan, Camille Paglia, was recently given four pages in the U.K.'s The Sunday Times Magazine to say this, 'demolishing' Lady Gaga, aka Stefani Germanotta, as an 'asexual, confected copycat who has seduced the Internet generation.' Paglia is a worthy critic indeed, and her mocking epithet 'the diva of d'j' vu' is bound to stick like chewing gum rubbed in a hated schoolgirl's hair. But after reading her impassioned assault -- which, for all its fascinating history of female Hollywood stars, seemed to boil down to 'she's not Madonna, and I don't fancy holding her meat purse' -- I found myself liking Lady Gaga more rather than less.
Paglia's essay was further proof of Gaga's importance. As I like to say to gay friends of a certain age who rail almost daily against Gaga on Facebook, for someone so shallow, so talentless, and so derivative she certainly seems to hold your attention. The passionate hatred Gaga provokes is all part of her remarkable potency. When was the last time pop music mattered? When was the last time you cared? Until Lady Gaga came along, just a couple years ago, pop seemed thoroughly pooped. Some nice tunes and haircuts here and there and some really excellent financial institution ad soundtracks, but really, who thought pop could ever trouble us again as a total art form?
Gaga has single-handedly resurrected pop. Or at least she's made it seem like it's alive. Maybe it's a kind of galvanic motion -- those pop promos sometimes look like Helmut Newton zombie flicks -- but boy, this is shocking fun. And yes, her persona is something of a pint-size Bride of Frankenstein, assembled out of Photoshopped dead star body parts. But isn't everyone nowadays?
Of course she's not David Bowie or Madonna. It's not 1972 or 1984. Instead, we're a decade into a new, blank, digital century when creativity is curation. The pop past weighs heavily on our shoulders -- but Gaga wears it so lightly and sprightly on her tiny frame it's inspiring. In the flickering, shape-shifting shape of Lady Gaga, tired old postmodernism never looked so frisky. And it turns out to be really good on the dance floor. The 21st century didn't really get going, or have a decent soundtrack, until Ms. Germanotta came along with her Gagacious beats.
But the older generation's resentful backlash against Lady Gaga -- how dare the kids think they have a proper star to speak for them! -- is well and truly underway. Paglia's piece was well-timed and has already prompted a host of copycat columns around the world complaining about Gaga the tiresome copycat. It had to happen, of course. She is now so huge as to be completely unrivaled in pop cultural terms -- the most famous woman on the planet: too big and tasty a target for the press not to chew up.
That mesmerizing meat dress she wore to the MTV Video Music Awards -- where she picked up eight trophies, including Video of the Year for 'Bad Romance' -- displayed a spooky kind of prescience. The inevitable lip-smacking Gaga backlash seems almost to be a predetermined part of the Gaga plot. And to those who like to tut and roll their eyes over the meat dress and intone 'It's been done before, dear,' please remind me again which year it was that a female artist, let alone the biggest artist in the world, accepted an MTV award, or any music award, dressed as a rib-eye?
Gaga 'wants to have it both ways,' complained Paglia in The Sunday Times, 'to be hip and avant-garde and yet popular and universal.' But isn't that what really great pop -- pop as a total art form -- tries to do? Put images and concepts into contexts they're not supposed to inhabit? Like the pop charts? Isn't that what Madonna at her best was doing? Yes, it's probably ultimately a doomed project, but if there's anything that approaches avant-garde for the masses, it's that meat dress at the MTV awards, or that jaw-dropping video for 'Bad Romance,' complete with smoking skeleton and sparking bra.
In the indignant roll call of the artists Gaga has 'ripped off,' one who is rarely mentioned is the Australian-born performance artist Leigh Bowery, who died in 1994 of AIDS-related illnesses. Bowery defied gender, and pretty much any category you care to mention, with his stunning, hilarious, and terrifying body-morphing outfits, sometimes fashioned out of his own (ample) flesh. Like Gaga, he had a very keen sense of humor about what it means to be human and set out to sabotage conceptions of 'sexiness.' Famously, he once lay on a divan in a shop window in a London art gallery preening himself for a week.
Gaga, however, is reclining in the shop window of the world. Paglia's accusation that Gaga is 'asexual' spectacularly miss the point that Gaga is postsexual. She's post'the now boringly compulsorily 'sexy' world that Madonna helped usher in, bullwhip in hand, which is now as burned-out as that 'Bad Romance' skeleton. Gaga isn't asexual or even particularly androgynous -- she's transexy. She's deliberately overexposing 'sexiness,' making it as transparent as her skin sometimes seems to be. Instead of just rubbing herself up, she's showing gender and sexuality up by taking them to grotesque extremes. Even if she sometimes looks like Dali doodling his ideal inflatable doll.
But I doubt any of this will persuade those of my generation who have decided to spoil the younger generation's fun and let them know how ignorant they are. After all, that's the only kind of fun we oldies have. Even if her detractors' dreams came true and Lady Gaga was publicly burned at the stake in Central Park, they still wouldn't be happy. 'Oh, look at her!' they'd say, rolling their eyes. 'She's so tired! Joan of Arc did that in 1431. She had much better hips. And she did it in French!'
Want more breaking equality news & trending entertainment stories?
Check out our NEW 24/7 streaming service: the Advocate Channel!
Download the Advocate Channel App for your mobile phone and your favorite streaming device!
From our Sponsors
Most Popular
38 Male Celebs Who Did Full Frontal Scenes
November 17 2023 5:18 PM
These are all the celebrities Who came out as LGBTQ+ in 2023
December 31 2023 12:19 PM
26 actors who showed bare ass in movies & TV shows
February 28 2024 1:50 PM
16 times male celebrities had to say they weren't gay
April 17 2024 11:57 AM
21 LGBTQ+ reality dating shows & where to watch them
April 03 2024 4:01 PM
15 Unforgettable Gay Kissing Scenes From TV & Movies
February 14 2024 10:20 AM
14 queens who quit or retired from drag after 'RuPaul's Drag Race'
April 04 2024 12:56 PM
40 steamy celebrity Calvin Klein ads we'll always be thirsty for
January 04 2024 10:54 AM
The 15 Best LGBTQ+ Movies of 2023
December 04 2023 10:32 AM
Watch Now: Advocate Channel
Trending Stories & News
For more news and videos on advocatechannel.com, click here.
Trending Stories & News
For more news and videos on advocatechannel.com, click here.
Latest Stories
How Todrick Hall is giving back to the community
April 17 2024 8:35 PM
Here's who 'Drag Race' fans on social media want to see win season 16
April 17 2024 5:05 PM
Andy Cohen responds to all the recent Bravo & 'Housewives' chaos as more ensues
April 17 2024 3:56 PM
Not just JoJo Siwa: 30 songs made for an artist & released by another
April 17 2024 3:16 PM
How The Pride Store celebrates National Tea Day: A tale of two brews
April 17 2024 2:14 PM
Here's why Netflix's 'Baby Reindeer' is our new twisted queer obsession
April 17 2024 12:17 PM
April 17, 2024
April 17 2024 11:50 AM
Troye Sivan & Charli XCX are teaming up for the gayest tour ever
April 17 2024 11:43 AM
Kennedy Davenport finally explains the rumored 'All Stars 3' drama with Trixie Mattel
April 16 2024 4:16 PM
Watch the queens from 'Drag Race Live' hilariously reveal Out's RuPaul cover
April 16 2024 4:10 PM
Noah Beck claps back at people who assumed he's gay for hugging a male friend
April 16 2024 4:03 PM