Lala, Gaga
A preface: This post is not about Lady Gaga. Even though, sure she’s crossed my radar with troubling transphobic/intersex-marginalizing comments in the past, this post is about us/we/people in general: how we consume pop culture and how we politicize those choices. I have absolutely no interest in debating her artistic merit, and will probably ignore your comments if you want to. There are many other places to do that if you like.
I’ll admit this, I have never been much of a fan of the sort of music Lady Gaga makes. My own relationship with dance music hit its apogee during New Wave in the early 1980′s, and once Simple Minds crossed over/was stolen into “bands the dudes who beat the crap out of me now listen to” category I was pretty much done (my own path of consumption wandering off into hardcore, indie, and other genres associated with Chuck Taylors and surly moods). As such, and as with many new artists in that genre, the emergence of Lady Gaga was something I was vaguely aware of but didn’t pay much attention to.
I did take note, however, when she seemed to be gaining a great deal of credibility in the lefty/feminist/queer communities I run in for being an important artist. I began to hear applied to her those terms the media loves to grant female artists who are ‘outside of the mainstream:’ “empowered,” “strong,” “taking ownership of her sexuality,” and so on. Eventually (inevitably?) people began comparing her to Madonna.
Not wanting to remain completely out of touch, last week I found myself watching the video for “Bad Romance” with a friend. Again, to make the point this isn’t a critique of Lady Gaga, I found the song catchy enough, the video was clever (if lacking the strong artistic narrative/vision I’d been led to believe it had from the reviews of peers), and, well, the YouTube feed didn’t underbuffer. Still, I didn’t see how the experience was any different from any number of other songs by any number of other artists. Lady Gaga herself seemed to me just another mainstream attractive, white, thin, cis person with an autotuned voice and a slick video.
As I thought about this Emperor’s New Clothes-like inability to get what the fuss was about, I began thinking about diversity and consumption, and expectations of the viewer. While Lady Gaga might seem like a shift from the standard white/cis/thin/able-bodied/mainstream attractive centre to someone whose own existence is closer to that centre than mine is, from my place out on the fringes of cultural relevance (I’m a trans woman, trust me, I know where I lie on the population distribution chart) I don’t see the shift as being that great. Once I began thinking in those terms it seemed a case of privilege and centering, and I came back to the realization that culture, by and large, is not designed for my consumption.
That Lady Gaga is positioned as a great shift away from, I suppose, less “radical” artists reaffirms the position of cultural consumer as one who exists close enough to those ideals as to see her as significantly different. For those of us who cannot claim for ourselves any part of that position, though, this quickly becomes about disempowerment and reaffirmation of marginalization, because ultimately this is about consumption in its most basic form: the bodies we as a culture declare as attractive or worthy of desire. Even if you cannot check the boxes of privilege Lady Gaga has, if you can check enough of them to envision yourself in the position of viewer/her audience your experience of her is going to be much different from those who cannot. And many cannot.
I’m not suggesting people stop enjoying Lady Gaga, or any of the pop culture they enjoy (I certainly consume my share of it). I do think a more nuanced analysis is always useful, however, and that a far more radical act than declaring something empowering might be to step away from it far enough to see how very little empowerment is has, and for how few.
lord, i am sort of horrified to think that there are folks out there who are really excited about lady gaga as someone really radical. she isn’t! her beauty is, if anything, her willingness to be weird within her context — i thought bad romance was good just because it went SO FAR into the normative world she exists. she’s not radical. she’s a showman, sure, but that’s different — she’s a normalized, americanized bjork who plays more accessible and less interesting music. she is radical only in the same way that, like, demi lovato is edgy compared to hillary duff.
i always feel torn about consumption of pop culture and how often i find it alienating vs how often i love it. i find with things like music i am more able to forgive it for “being really good” even if it is otherwise alienating. movies or tv i have a MUCH harder time letting go — i think the images make it just a little bit too difficult to let it be.
I agree about the consumption of pop culture, and that push/pull. I think if anything this post is the beginning of sorting that out in my head, and trying to figure a place to be both the person I am politically and the person I am in front of a TV screen.
I suppose with Lady Gaga I could be misinterpreting critical hyperbole as genuine assessment, but I have heard Lady Gaga discussed in ways that would have you think she just stepped off the Genius Train with the most radical approach to reclaiming sexuality EVAR! Seriously, it happens!
“Americanized Bjork.” That makes her make a great deal more sense to me, ha.
I’ve been thinking about this all day, and I think my snark-quote “radical” was misleading. What I really mean is “an artist of significance worthy of extended discussion,” which while it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue it doesn’t imply the things “radical” (snark or not) does.
Also, I think I didn’t get the focus right, this isn’t about Lady Gaga specifically, rather it is about the positioning of certain artists within the mainstream as being significant (she was an easy framing device, but there are many who I could include, e.g Christina Aguilera or Ani DiFranco). I suppose I’m picking at a point of when this is viewed against larger populations of marginalized people how it assertions of exceptional social or artistic merit sometimes work to continue the narrative of marginalization against those who aren’t included in the implied viewing group. A good portion of the process for me is how I engage with a pop culture which is actively marginalizing to trans women, and how I then engage with communities for whom that isn’t a concern.
There’s more to think and write about this, for sure. I would be interested in reading other people’s process around consumption of pop culture (hint hint), and the positioning of artists as outliers in their genres vs any actual diversity they represent.
hmm. this is super interesting for me. i admit i am a lover of pop culture. and i am a lover of pop/dance music, exactly along the lines of lady gaga, madonna, christina aguilera etc. and i do spend a lot of time processing the ways i engage with/support/reclaim (?)/collude with the ideas and messages that are contained within pop culture. i don’t think i have any answers for myself, but i roll around with it again and again in my head.
now, to take lady gaga as a specific example of all this… i certainly don’t think of her as a huge shift from the mainstream in terms of pop artists, but a minute shift, yes. will this small shift make much of a difference for you & me? i sincerely doubt it. will it make a difference for mainstream audiences? who knows. perhaps. similarly, do i think she is empowering? no (well, certainly not for me). empowered? perhaps. i don’t think i can make that call. and i think it’s too complex to know or decide who is really empowered in the context of consumer capitalism. but do i think she is interesting and culturally relevant? yes. and is she a good site to talk about the ways marginal/progressive communities latch on to mainstream artists? definitely. and i guess in that sense, i do think she is significant and worthy of discussion.
for me, she is also worthy of discussion as a woman in the still incredibly sexist (among other things) world of pop music. obviously, as a cis, white, thin, able-bodied, etc., woman, she wields a lot of privilege. but i think she is doing more interesting things in terms of gender (and femininity in particular) than, say, madonna. i also appreciate the ways she talks about homophobia and “the gays” because it’s not really something any other super popular mainstream artists do. and i think little things like that matter, i do. i also think this is part of what differentiates her from someone like madonna or other artists (katy perry anyone?) who flirt with/co-opt aspects of queer culture/aesthetics. but again, i certainly don’t think of that as particularly radical or whatever.
i don’t know that i’m saying anything new here, but these are some of the thoughts that are flying around in my head after reading your post. anyway, so thanks.
These thoughts are awesome, thank you for posting that.
I think this is a discussion that probably goes beyond artists, and I think making her a focus was a mistake. It was just the thing that started me thinking about this stuff on a larger scale, from the perspective of wondering in what ways I might have privileges that I am invisible to, because I am aware of things I often feel othered by in larger groups. It is by no means a calling out, it is me discussing my own process out loud. I am a big consumer of pop culture, so I am trying to focus my own experience with all this.
I will probably write a follow-up in a few days. There is a lot swirling around in my head.
Lady Gaga is this generation’s Gwen Stefani. Nothing to see here, folks.
Haha, but Gwen Stefani never did anything problemat… ohyeah.
i’m extremely exhausted so this probably won’t be a very witty or nuanced reply so bear with me.
now didn’t emma goldman once say, “i don’t want to be part of the revolution if i can’t dance!” or something to that effect? honestly, if what’s played on my ipod gets me thrown out of the radical kid’s club then so be it. i don’t want any part of that.
also, if i learned anything from rock camp this year it was that music can be empowering and transformative no matter what kind of music it is. for example, pretty much every girl there under the age of 13 loved miley cyrus. frankly, i think miley cyrus is insipid at the best of times but for them she was totally a motivating force to get them into playing music. as much as i can’t stand miley and any other types of shitty tween pop stars i’m not going to argue with a 12 year old or anyone else for that matter about what’s empowering and revolutionary because its totally different for everyone. if singing miley cyrus or lady gaga songs makes a girl feel awesome about herself then really who cares about the music?
for me, lady gaga is empowering not because of the way she looks or what she represents, but because of what she constantly stands for. growing up, the only queer representation i ever saw was ellen and xena. now obviously neither seem particularly revolutionary from our current standpoint but at the time both gave me huge amounts of hope and helped me survive my horrible upbringing. now when i see someone like lady gaga saying that she does everything for the gays, well i can’t help but find that tremendously empowering. in an age where television networks are still censoring queerness (like the adam lambert scandal) i think its a big deal that someone is standing up for queers. i’m sure for tons of homos in little isolated towns, lady gaga is the only queer representation they ever see so i’m sure she’s pretty empowering for them.
also, lady gaga just makes me happy. i’m a ridiculously busy person that doesn’t have time for things that traditionally make me happy like friends, food or sleeping so i’m not going to apologize for listening to crap that makes me temporarily forget this insanity.
anyway, i haven’t really slept or eaten in the last few days so this probably doesn’t make much sense but i just don’t find it very useful to judge what’s empowering or not since its absolutely subjective.
I think much of my original post got off-focus by commenting on one specific artist, when this is really part of a larger group of ideas I’m working through. Also, the use of snark-quotes “radical” wasn’t clear, I should have went with something like “an artist worthy of discussion as having a sophistication above that typically expected in this genre.” I put the disclaimers in at the beginning and the end to try to defocus the discussion from one artist to the relationship of individual and culture as confirming or denying in-group membership.
I am working on a followup, in which I suppose my ideas fall along the challenge of finding one’s place in (even pop) culture as the member of a group for whom that culture was not created.
Thank you for the comments, though, they are part of my thinking this through. This post more than anything feels like it was a stirring of the pot to engage discussion and begin to figure out what I really have to say about my relationship with pop culture as a trans woman.
Because so much of pop culture actively seeks to other me, I’m grown tired of trying to meet it in the middle. It’s not enough if it’s empowering to someone else. It’s not good enough anymore. I deserve better.
Ha. Okay, this is why I heart you like whoa. Well that and turning me on to “Life on Mars” (UK version).