h+ magazine just published a significantly re-written, revised and expanded version of my essay “Lady Gaga and the Dead-Planet Grotesque,” updated for the “Telephone” video.

If David Bowie’s chameleonic posturing prefigured the hypertext web, Gaga may be the first version of a human being we have seen capable of thriving in the era of the social web. She is shiny, clickable, and malleable in the face of endless attention fragmentation. She is an adaptive strategy. Without any solid or “real” self, her identity becomes whatever it needs to be, immune to the toxic shock of the incoming century, fully geared up to party in the ruins. Is it any wonder that she’s provoked the response she has, both adulation and hatred? She’s the first non-boring thing to happen in pop music for almost fifteen years.

Consider Lady Gaga in prison in the beginning of her new video. That’s all of us, “held captive” in the modern condition — but Gaga is the Magician, able to transform any situation to her will. Five minutes in and she’s reassembled her outfit from chains and cigarettes and is wrapping herself around the girls in the prison yard. The other people in prison are already listening to her songs on her branded Lady Gaga headphone… she set the context before she even arrived. Though she may be in prison, she already rules the world. This is what adaptation to the 21st century looks like. The brand “Gaga” can be reassembled from anything, even in a vacuum, even from trash, just as we must learn to do with our own masks of self…

(h+: Lady Gaga and the Dead-Planet Grotesque)

(Lady Gaga: The Fame Monster)

While interpretations of what Lady Gaga “means” may be interesting from what I’ve gathered, she as an individual is not. At least David Bowie made good music. Gaga seems more like the Chauncy Gardner character from the film “Being There”. There’s also odd parallels to Andrew W.K.
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please, no….more…gaga….posts. Wasting…time on…an inkblot test…with a vagina and…no soul. all you postpostpostculture fuckheads are taking a tiddlywink on your imaginations by projecting your alterculture desires onto this lady who makes godawful music. The idiots like her, i don’t see them puttin on their robes and realizing the transcendent when they put in a gaga cd. We, our kind, have some great imaginations, i’ll give you all that. But come off it, we’ve oversaturated the sex market so the neo-dadaSurreaLynch is all hers. Give her some duct tape and the blog posts a’roll

Although the article has nothing to do with my preferences, I liked it because it is thought provoking. The interpretation is more universal in nature and Gaga used as an example. Good writing!

Ha ha - brilliant!

Best post-modern cultural theory spoof article I’ve ever read.
The whole thing reads like a bumper edition of Private Eye’s Pseud’s Corner.

Gaga is the living incarnation of Thick Plus.

ill quote one of coils slogans - “resist the things you can find everywhere”

also-

“Gaga seems more like the Chauncy Gardner character from the film ‘Being There’.”

lol. i might be more interested in this interpretation

I am horrified by Lady Gaga, and in the sense that “beauty is only the beginning of terror” and bored of her in the sense that “through boredom lies fascination”. I could play with the thought of what she is about in my head for hours, the way I could play with a kid’s kaleidoscope toy for hours. I can also put her down as soon as I think of a single other thing to do with my time.

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“Lady Gaga is the only person prospering in this cultural climate. Therefore she has done something right.”

great logic.

p.s. it’s by no means a given that she isn’t boring.

Also, she is by no means the only one prospering. Unless I’m misunderstanding something…

No she doesn’t deserve the awe or press she gets.  If we could stick to the music for just a few moments and ignore the pop drivel you might hear 20-30 seconds of talent wrapped up in silliness pander to the press.

Like, people who pray a lot and turn a little crazy (because they’ve been enlightened) sometimes adopt gender-neutral/confused roles, and Lady Gaga likes to wear gender-neutral/confused costumes, so the only reason she would be popular is that the entire human population is currently forming a massive global consciousness that will automatically be enlightened?

I think everyone is putting way too much energy into interpreting Lady Gaga. It’s just dance music. There’s nothing more to it. There’s no hidden significance.

She sells an over the top appearance in order to keep the spotlight on her for as long as she can because with each new ridiculous costume, with each new crazy-ass music video, she’s upping the ante and burning the candle at both ends. At the rate she goes, she’ll burn out quickly and there’s a ton of competition for the collective pop-cultural attention span right now, so she has to make every minute count.

There’s really nothing post-human about it. It’s simple entertainment market economics. Lady Gaga is extreme evolution of Madonna but where Madonna would ride out each incarnation of her career for each album released, Lady Gaga reinvents her look for each single she releases.

I’m tired of her already. It won’t take long for the rest of the world to catch up to me and at that point she’s going to have to resort to human sacrifice on tour if she’s going to get a piece of the public’s action again.

She’s a talent-less HACK posing a musician.

Sure, let us all become malleable ciphers, “post-human” cybertronic nonentities, twitterable molecules, “indestructibly vacant,” without thought or affect. Anyone who is horrified by this all-englobing depersonalization is deemed “reactionary.“If you believe what you write, you are a Frankensteinian monster.History ends with Gaga. When future alien archaeologists dig through centuries of detritus to unearth the last gleaming vestiges of human culture, they will classify everything they find as B.G. or A.G. before or after Gaga. They will quickly determine that everything original and useful happened B.G., while everything A.G. is a giant pile of meaningless, glitzy garbage.

I find her interesting as a visual artist with her medium being her own persona and its relationship with the media.  When I hear people get their panties in a wad about her musical talent I just think it’s because they are thinking in narrow channels of definition of what they know an artist to be. She sings - so… she MUST be a singer - there, I’ve put her in a box.  So what if she’s not a musical virtuoso - you are commenting on this blog, correct?  So, she has inspired some interest on your behalf - and if she is loosely musical, loosely fashion, loosely sociological experiment - she is all those things - she is, then, an entertainer.

Men, especially, I’ve found to be the most threatened by her and will make the most derogatory comments.  (And making themselves sound like insecure assholes in the process.) Are they threatened by the fact that she is at the same time sexual and the same time strong, and could give a shit what they think?  She’s not sucking up and being passive, being a Britney so that she can earn your attention - albeit simply for a hard on?  She’s doing what she wants, she’s creative and entertaining, *you’re* paying attention, and I think she rocks it.

Some people just can’t stand for things to change or be different.  They are her haters.

“Some people just can’t stand for things to change or be different.  They are her haters.”

That sentence is laden with more irony than you realise. IF ONLY Gaga represented some kind of sea change in music and pop culture. She doesn’t - except perhaps for the amplification of certain aspects of “the spectacle”, but that spectacle has long been an intrinsic part of pop music. As a pop music obsessive, LG feels to me like the last big hurrah of the dinosaur majors before they finally bite the dust. So desperate are they to appear part of an organic musical revolt that they’ve spread misinfo about Gaga being a self-made star and being in total control of her own career. Oh please!

I’m not a LG fan for one pure and simple reason - her music SUX. Maybe to an American audience this whole thing seems new and fresh, but to the European ear her music sounds AT LEAST ten years out of date. Madonna’s Ray Of Light came out 13 years ago, and trance-pop peaked in 1999. So why the hell are they using those touchstones as her musical template? Have they not heard of Timbaland? Did the Neptunes-years pass them by?
And come on, we have to be honest here - “Tic Toc” by Ke$ha is a much better song than anything LG has released.

Hmm, I hope none of my tranny friends see this or I will be ostracised. But if you do, girls I will leave the last words to the original FIERCE RULING DIVA, to the “artist” that Gaga so desperately wants to be, the one and only GRACE JONES.

What does she think of [Lady Gaga]? “I really don’t think of her at all. I go about my business.”

Has she copied her? “Well, you know, I’ve seen some things she’s worn that I’ve worn, and that does kind of piss me off.”

Is she talented? “I wouldn’t go to see her.”

So, did she ask to play with her? “Yes, she did, but I said no. I’d just prefer to work with someone who is more original and someone who is not copying me, actually.”

THat interview is form the Guardian and is linked above.

Oops, seems like that link never appeared, so here it is again: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/apr/17/grace-jones-interview

“Grace Jones” - two words guaranteed to strike fear into (and shut up) any Lazy Blah Blah fans.

I have just heard about the Lady Gaga but i want to know more about her just in around the world she is really have a fans so i am looking for more information.

That sentence is laden with more irony than you realise. IF ONLY Gaga represented some kind of sea change in music and pop culture.While interpretations of what Lady Gaga “means” may be interesting from what I’ve gathered, she as an individual is not. At least David Bowie made good music. Gaga seems more like the Chauncy Gardner character from the film “Being There”.

Over the last year Lady Gaga has come to embody for me and, I imagine, for her fans a kind of post human life strategy. She presents a response to the horrors of the 21st century that reeks, strangely, of absolute sanity the sanity of very archly embracing the most grotesque excesses of the materialist culture that is destroying the planet.

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Say what you will about how indescribable she is (in good and bad ways), she knows how to entertain.

This is one of the good article,I’ve read on this site. Whether Lady Gaga is a mutual hard worker for the sole reason of profit or if Gaga is fairly trying to express her art. I think a lot of readers are refusing to admit that no matter how well they think they understand their microcosmic world there are cultural developments, tendencies, and panic which are shared by the collective beliefs.

People who pray a lot, and while a bit crazy sometimes take the roles of gender neutral, and Lady Gaga wants to use gender-neutral clothes or mixed, so the only reason he would have preferred that the entire human population.

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I heard many songs of lady gaga. I like her album which is so popular. You give very good information through your post. I like it.
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The idiots like her, i don’t see them putting on their robes and realizing the transcendent when they put in a gaga cd. We, our kind, have some great imaginations, i will give you all that. But come off it, we’ve over saturated.

Lady Gaga is inspired by high-trolls, known as the Situationists, anywhere. This article is a brilliant and inspiring.
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She is absolutely aweful.It’s shitty music masked as high art.Lady GaGa is meat-less in the eyes of God. She needs to turn away from promoting a sin filled lifestyle and promoting Anti-Christian beliefs.She needs to repent of her sins and ask for God’s forgiveness.

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