Having just watched it, I am compelled to comment about the new Lady Gaga video. It is, by the way, incredible. This is my love letter to Ms. Gaga.
Over the last couple of months Lady Gaga has come to embody?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùfor me and, I imagine, for her fans?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùa kind of posthuman life strategy. She presents a response to the horrors of the 21st century that reeks, strangely, of absolute sanity?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùto very archly embrace the most grotesque excesses of the materialist culture that is destroying the planet. At once clinging to a very human New York hoodrat identity and also becoming indistinguishable from the inhuman culture machine that promotes her, she is the perfect evolutionary advance, designed to outlive the cockroaches themselves.
Ezra Pound once said: “And round about there is a rabble?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùof the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor. They shall inherit the earth.” And so she has.
Lady Gaga is the Devil card of the Tarot: the lie that there is nothing but matter?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùthough the card is inverted, tongue-in-cheek. She is a successful gray alien hybrid, stripped of all human emotion or compassion, a thing made to flourish in this grim, mechanical age. She is the newest model android from the MTV fembot assembly line. She is the latest and greatest Terminator. She is Skynet. She is self-aware.
Lady Gaga is everything that terrifies us about the Coming Race: Absolute destructive materialism and complete lack of identity past a 140-letter Twitter quip. Female sexuality inverted into male sexuality and weaponized. Did they build her in an underground laboratory, like the one featured in this video? They must have, for what other perverse, mutated perfection of the human form could be better equipped to succeed in this most horrible of world climates?
While the rest of the world spirals into economic degradation, environmental pestilence and complete systems failure of ALL of the old world models, Lady Gaga reigns above the flames. Pay attention to the lesson: Lady Gaga is the ONLY person prospering in this cultural climate. Therefore she has done something RIGHT. She is the necessary evolutionary adaptation to our times and THIS is why people are disturbed by her: This is what we must all become.
come now, isn’t that all a bit excessive? she is merely this decades cindy lauper, a high fashion regurgitation of the same ol’ pop crap, albeit catchy and flashy.
fancy-tastical video! too bad her music sucks zebu dingus.
Nov 10, 2009
elzzz says:
I think you’re overegging the Gaga pudding. She ain’t no posthuman robotelligence, her Haus of Gaga crew have just got great radar for audacious, hilarious, super-trashy, attention-grabbing fashion. They read their japanese fashion mags and british celebrity rags. You can’t take her seriously…
I’m with you right up to the “Indestructibly empty” line, JL.
This is the first Gaga video where we get even a glimpse of a vulnerable Gaga/Stefani Germanotta. The post-cry, make-up that doesn’t look like make-up Gaga.
As much as Marlyn Manson has rubbed off on her (and rubbed off TO her if Rolling Stone is to be believed), there is a hint of Eminem’s triple identity to Gaga’s shtick, and I have the sense that we are going to see her play with the “secret identity” pose more and more.
Nov 10, 2009
zeebeezee says:
shes a calculated pop act. nothing more, nothing less. we’ve seen this sort of thing before in the countless transgressive pop idols of the past. trying to prop her up as anything else is just wasted energy imho.. i might be willing to consider another perspective if she decides to start making music that isnt completely banal..
Nov 10, 2009
mgoodfel says:
Yawn.
Nov 11, 2009
dog stardom says:
Check the short doc. “before the music dies” on google vids. decent insight on this senseless drivel.
Nov 11, 2009
Bx2 says:
There’s a little Cremaster Cycle in this video, too.
I find Jason Louv’s moral outrage to be typical of male feminism. It’s a male-liberal, back-handed apology for years of aggressive sexuality. I say back-handed because Louv says that Lady Gaga exhibits “[f]emale sexuality inverted into male sexuality and weaponized”. It’s ironic that a male expresses moral outrage about a female’s “weaponized” sexuality. It’s typical of male feminism that seeks to apologize for the past, but feels threatened by the future.
More here: http://melvillain.blogspot.com/2009/11/misplaced-moral-outrage.html
Lady Gaga is definitely the product of committee groupthink, but I’m not about to pretend that I’m above the end-product. In spite of her music clashing wildly with my usual menu of listening, there’s something so decadent about what she does that it becomes confrontational on par with black metal (with 100% less murder and church burning).
She dives in head first and embraces the waste and byproduct of civilization rather than take some kind of moral stand against it. You can categorize it as art, if you want, because it is a pretty strong statement about culture but really, it just seems to me like a great way to sell a shitload of albums. Lady Gaga is just the logical extreme evolution of Madonna, if you ask me, but she’s upping the ante so quickly that she’s bound to burn out sooner than than later.
Nov 16, 2009
23 Wolves says:
None of you like this song? The chorus just pushes my buttons like crazy.
Nov 18, 2009
Fleurdamour says:
She is totally reflective of New York City - in the worst possible way. To wit, a cynical amalgamation of the most shallow aspects of fashion, art, porn and global media.
Nov 20, 2009
23 Wolves says:
“To wit”...oh, too much, too much. I’m driving away in my motorcar!
Nov 20, 2009
Fleurdamour says:
Blow it out your tailpipe, Wolfman, and show Louv and Amour a little more respect, why don’t you?
Nov 21, 2009
23 Wolves says:
Vis-a-vis!
Nov 24, 2009
jessica says:
why is it when women act overtly-sexual it’s masculine? cut it with the drooling, man, you look pathetic. if she was doing any form of music besides popular dance music no one would care.
Nov 24, 2009
Marck Adrian Fedor says:
Wow. Can’t wait to see how she offs the next guy she has sex with!
@jessica—have you ever seen ‘la la la human steps?” canadian dance company from the 80s, 90s… very muscular dancing, gymnastic. the women were also always termed, “masculine” and often accused of being transgendered!
Nov 27, 2009
Marck Adrian Fedor says:
@talmadge—what can i say? even smart people can be distracted by shiney objects.
Mo sislak had one of the greatest definitions for “post-modernism” - ‘Weird for the sake of Weird’
Yes Ma’am, Ms. GaGa!
yeeeeas she’d make a fine receptacle for my DNA juice with her nice little bubble tits. frankly i haven’t gotten a good look at her face until i saw this video.
“Indestructibly empty,” huh?
don’t you think that’s a little dramatic? and negative sounding? so she took a dip in the abyss (333) lost her identity and regained it through pop-culture assimilation ... big deal ... everyone gets 15 minutes… i guess the big deal to some people is that she’s arty about it - like M. Manson was. Is GaGa going to do a duet with that Taylor girl or Get Danny Carey to produce her next video. is one choice over another going to make you like her more or less? Is GaGa really indestructible? were you just being sarcastic? do you think she’ll like my company?!
Jan 24, 2010
The Laughing Hyena says:
I agree with you re: GaGa. I think she’s upping the ante, and I’m all for it. I can’t wait to see what comes next!
