As IF Times

link What happened to Lady Gaga? | New York Post.

The reason that the product of many artists is so revered and timeless is because their works were often poignant reflections of the particular zeitgeist of their era.  Through their respective media, they brilliantly capture and convey their observations and perceptions.  It was the resonance with the audience that would determine the timelessness of their work.  The medium didn’t matter; painting, sculpture, literature or music.  While we know that many works of art were commissioned by patrons during their time, most ‘true’ art has no real correlation with financial value…at least not at the outset.  It’s a fair guess that nobody commissioned Pablo Picasso to create cubist paintings for financial gain.  In fact, when the patron first saw the result, he probably refused to pay.

With the passage of time, the appreciation of high artistic expression has been driven by those who have been  mysteriously appointed as arbiters of value.  Today, works of art are sold through Sotheby’s and Christie’s  for tens of millions of dollars or more because essentially, somebody convinced somebody else of their value.  Music of course is a general exception to this.  If it doesn’t catch on with the masses, its value is truly only esoteric.  Music isn’t better because it costs more.  As far as other forms of high artistic expression, the general public wouldn’t know a Cezanne from a Monet.  Or Walt Whitman from Walt Disney.  The masses are happy with their velvet Elvis’ and their paintings of bulldogs playing poker.

Interestingly, there is an attempt to transplant the high art model into the pop culture business. In the world of pop culture, what passes as artistic is usually overwhelmed by what is marketable and profitable.  No one went broke capitalizing on the very brief lives of teeny pop stars.  From the David Cassidys and Leif Garrets of yesterday to the Taylor Swifts and Justin Biebers of today, the teeny girl demographic will always be a dependable source of pop star mania.  Of course, in order to market the young phenoms, at the very least, they need to have some semblance of talent, however  limited that might be.  The fact is, much of the reason that pop stars become pop stars is because of promotion, not unlike the art auction racket.  Once they begin to market that boy band “A” is the flavor of the day, then the public believes it and the process becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.   If any art or talent is truly involved, it’s a happy coincidence.  Come to think of it, that’s how politics works.  Hmm.

In the case of Lady Gaga, her ascension to pop culture icon status is truly a mystery.  Bereft of any vocal or observable entertainment talent, her shtick seems to be dressing as if her outfits were picked by seeing eye dogs or designed by 3 year olds in art class.  Full credit to her team of promoters, over the past 3 years or so, she has managed to place herself front and center in the pop culture business.   This is exhibit “A” of what happens when entertainment is pursued as a marketing exercise rather than as artistic expression, (Exhibit B being Miley Cyrus).   It’s hard to imagine that years from now, people will listen to a classic Gaga track and then say “hey that’s good, play it again!”

So the question posed in the linked article is, what happened to Lady Gaga, as if some great talent has disappeared.   Nothing has happened to Lady Gaga.  It’s more likely the audience has moved on.  In the absence of talent, the shelf life of weird can only last so long.  Unlike in the high art world, it’s much harder to convince the plain folk that a sow’s ear is a silk purse.  Sometimes weird is just weird.

link Lady Gaga and the death of sex | The Sunday Times.

Most people would profess not to care for the shtick and move on.  Not Camille Paglia, a person you do not want writing critiques of you.  Ms. Paglia, for those not familiar with her writings,  is a teacher, author and social critic who is quite influential among intellectuals and liberals.  However, despite writing articles that appear in Salon Magazine, one could hardly describe her as a liberal.   She can write opinions that are divergent from the typical liberal mindset and has been known to voice opinions quite in contrast to them.  Though many conservatives may not agree with many of her views, they are insightful, original and thought provoking.  It would be unfair to categorize her as a liberal, she is independent and iconoclastic in her views. 

So when she decides to take the scalpel to the whole Lady Gaga phenomenon, it’s not as a music critic but as a culture critic.  At last someone more qualified than yours truly, has dared to come out and declare what I’m sure has been on the minds of many.  Lady Gaga?  We don’t get it. Banal music aside, the most interesting thing she had to say was not about Lady Gaga per se, it was this comment:

“…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…”

I have a simpler, less intellectually embossed version of this.  It’s been done.  The originality and honesty of musical artists appears now to have been replaced by images and personas that are packaged and marketed according to successful formulas created on an excel spreadsheet.  Fame and exposure has taken precedence over talent as a measure of success in western society. When William Hung famously mangled a Ricky Martin song on American Idol years ago, he achieved not boos and the hook, but instant fame, fortune and a record deal!  When you consider almost any ‘rock’ or pop band over the past 20 years, they could be interchangeable versions of each other.  The long hair, dirty jeans and  unkempt look is essentially a uniform for musicians.  It’s as if band publicists all shopped at one rock star store like some LL Bean outlet to outfit their people.  “Hey Irv, if you’re going to the Rock Store, could you pick up a few things for me from the new Keith  Richard collection?”.

It’s almost impossible to think of any successful young female artist today that isn’t obliged to flout her sexuality and comeliness in the most overt ways in order to achieve popular success.  If it’s not outrageous, it doesn’t capture media attention, if it doesn’t capture media attention, it’s not going to sell.  The phenomenon of Lady Gaga is reminiscent of cars you’d see in Tijuana or Manila, garishly overdecorated vehicles which only happen to be cars.  A lot of today’s acts are far from being edgy and original, in fact they are stereotypical and cliche.  Any argument as to good or bad is doomed to endless inconclusive debate, but the biggest danger to ‘outrageous’ acts is not that they are bad, it’s that they are boring.

And don’t even start me on that hugely oxymoronic genre of rap music.  Rap music has as much to do with Black sensibilities as Chop Suey does to Chinese food.  We’ll visit this later.