Lady Gaga & Pop Music

Before anything else, if you haven't seen these videos, you've got to watch them

(sorry these have disabled embedding which means I couldn't put them in the post, unfortunately)

1. Lady Gaga's acoustic version of Poker Face
2. Paparazzi
3. Bad Romance

Some of you might remember a post I had a while back about the Taylor Swift video for "You Belong with Me" (as opposed to its creepy stalker cousin, "You Belong to Me") in which I opined that pop music needed a shred of originality. Well, I take that sentiment back. There was a time in my life when I was the ultimate detractor of pop music. This phase was firmly rooted in my last two years of high school, when I wised up and started listening to indie rock like Interpol and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and all of the sudden, anybody who liked pop music explicitly was a philistine. Fuck no I didn't care if pop could include genres like hip hop or country or just plain ol' pop. It was lame. You are lame. Let me go to the Cat's Cradle and feel smug for a couple hours. Kthanxbai.

I guess this stance towards pop changed during college when I started caring about something else: parties. I think that's when I finally understood pop music--it's the shit you listen to when you wanna get crunk and then wiggle your body around, a delicious respite for the kids who went to my liberal arts college and all took everything so ironically and seriously. We liked pop music because it was unexpected for us to like pop music, so it was okay. I would literally salivate if that Kylie Minogue song "can't get you out of my head" ever came on during one of the many dance parties I attended. Pop music from all generations was fair game--I knew more people than I believed possible who were into the Shangri-Las or wanted to hear Motown music at our college's dance club.

So yeah, for a while now I have become a defender of pop music. This statement doesn't necessarily belie the fact that I like all pop, or that I think Nickelback is great (newsflash--they aren't--and I wouldn't call their music "pop" anyway). And I believe, sincerely, that past the superficial reasons that I started to come back around to pop music (the vague 90s nostalgia, the onset of partying and college life, a sincere desire to shake my tail feather), there are some greater forces at play that reveal a lot about our society. I mean, what is allowed in pop videos, what is popular, and what is controversial often says a lot about constructions of gender, conceptions of material wealth, and the collective daydreams of the American people.

All of this information is a set up for me to talk about Lady Gaga. I first began to care about her somewhere around April of this year, when I spent an hour forcing my boyfriend to watch "Pokerface" with me online. I couldn't believe what I had stumbled upon--the new pop wrecking force. I was coming around to Gaga kind of late in the game, but man, did I become one vocal supporter. I found that, even though she wasn't that palatable for a lot of people, I could generally bulldoze anybody who didn't care for her with my loud and avid declarations of her awesomeness without having to back up my claims even a little. Example "SHE'S SO COOL HAVEN'T YOU SEEN ONE OF HER VIDEOS THAN YOU CAN'T TALK IT'S NOT ABOUT THE MUSIC"....etc. Recently, however, I've entered a slow-brewing tete a tete with a friend about Lady Gaga's ultimate worth (and whether pop musicians are really worth a damn, but hey, one battle at a time folks).

If you've reached this point in the post I hope that you've watched those videos I linked above. I want to proclaim, above all else, that what Lady Gaga is doing as a musician is barely even worth mentioning. YES these songs are unoriginal. YES they are overproduced. and YES I agree that they don't exactly merit all of the hype (although Poker face is damn catchy). What makes Gaga great, however, is her role as a pop cultural phenomenon. And her worth, ultimately, lies in our society's conception of a pop star's body.

So to start off, watch this Beyonce video, Crazy in Love. Notice anything? Notice the fact that Jay Z is fully clothed the entire time, often with a cap that covers his entire face? Notice that Beyonce is barely wearing clothes at all for most of the video? Notice that she does all the heavy lifting in terms of dancing, looking hot, and being sexually available for the viewer?

At this point I posit that our pop stars are a) instantly recognizable b) hot as fuck and c) willing to offer their bodies to us for our consumption. Yes, South Park has it right in their episode about Britney Spears--once someone becomes famous, especially through pop music, they have sacrificed themselves for us on the altar of fame. In short, they are our possession. We can do whatever we want to them (and with them). We're upset with Chris Brown because, yes, he beat up Rihanna, but he also damaged something that was OURS when he hit her in the face. Now Rihanna has a new asterisk beside her name--she might still be America's Girl, but she's also Domestically Abused Women's Girl. That sort of asterisk is uncomfortable and we're pissed we have to deal with it. Hence all of the outrage and all of the bullshit that surrounded that one event which, pretty much, should have been kept private. I'm not saying it's not a good thing that Rihanna is willing to speak up for women's rights, but that shouldn't be a defining part of her image. Just as all women who are raped or suffered abuse have to live with that new reality the rest of our lives, Rihanna will be the Tina Turner-esque "abused famous woman."

All of this is to say that yes, we know exactly what bodies our pop stars possess, we have access to them photographically at all times and even the ends of their bodies are ours (michael jackson's death anyone?). What makes Gaga great, however, is that she has both willfully entered the Fame Monster (as she would call it) but also managed to avoid becoming Our Possession through her constant manipulation of her image. Don't believe me? Check out these pictures. (Each word is a different link).

Or better yet, rewatch Bad Romance. Now, can you tell me WHAT THE FUCK she looks like? If she took off all of her pop start trappings, would you recognize her on the street?

The answer is no.

The best anecdotal I have of this phenomenon is when I was watching video phone (embedded below) with my roommate and she said "I have no idea what this girl looks like."

Gaga has somehow managed to create a fame for herself that isn't inextricably combined with her identity outside of the fame monster (I'm sorry, Taylor Swift!) which shows an extremely high level of intelligence and an incredible understanding of the Pop Music Fame Making Machine. It's totally awesome. She's rolled right into the belly of the beast, winked at us, and asked "Do you see what I'm doing here?" She describes herself as a performance artist because yes, that's what she is, she's performing being famous. Her sexual use of her body in her videos is supposed to be aggressive; it's up in your face and it makes you uncomfortable. Her body isn't there for you to consume sexually. It's there so you think about the fact that all pop stars have to have certain bodies and have to look certain ways. She looks different around every corner because she's calling attention to our constant consumption. She offers up a new version of herself every day because we'll eat it up. We should feel gross when we deal with all the versions of herself that she presents to us because we're gluttons for it.

And above all else, her strongest allusion to the idea that we, the viewer, are there to consume the (female) pop musician's body is in her video, Paparazzi. She performs in a neck brace and she performs with crutches--she's still going although we have chewed her up and spit her out and broken her down and possessed every part of her.

I am not speaking about Gaga's future as a famous person. I guess only time will tell if I'm technically right, if this totally awesome meta-fame is actually regular fame and if Gaga is just the proverbial moose we're chasing around the lake until it drowns. But as of right now, she's doing the damned thing so well that people can't tell the difference, and to them I say: I'm sorry you're missing out on enjoying one of the biggest pop music scams of all time.

And if nothing else, at least her presence in the world made Beyonce look all crazy whacked out in this one video: