Lady Gaga and the Death of Sex

Cerpin Taxt · 09-16-2010, 12:58 PM

Lady Gaga and the death of sex | The Sunday Times

Quote:

Lady Gaga is the first major star of the digital age. Since her rise, she has remained almost continually on tour. Hence, she is a moving target who has escaped serious scrutiny. She is often pictured tottering down the street in some outlandish get-up and fright wig. Most of what she has said about herself has not been independently corroborated… “Music is a lie”, “Art is a lie”, “Gaga is a lie”, and “I profusely lie” have been among Gaga’s pronouncements, but her fans swallow her line whole…

She constantly touts her symbiotic bond with her fans, the “little monsters”, who she inspires to “love themselves” as if they are damaged goods in need of her therapeutic repair. “You’re a superstar, no matter who you are!” She earnestly tells them from the stage, while their cash ends up in her pockets. She told a magazine with messianic fervour: “I love my fans more than any artist who has ever lived.” She claims to have changed the lives of the disabled, thrilled by her jewelled parody crutches in the Paparazzi video.

Although she presents herself as the clarion voice of all the freaks and misfits of life, there is little evidence that she ever was one. Her upbringing was comfortable and eventually affluent, and she attended the same upscale Manhattan private school as Paris and Nicky Hilton. There is a monumental disconnect between Gaga’s melodramatic self-portrayal as a lonely, rebellious, marginalised artist and the powerful corporate apparatus that bankrolled her makeover and has steamrollered her songs into heavy rotation on radio stations everywhere.

For two years, I have spent an irritating amount of time trying to avoid Gaga’s catchy but depthless hits Lady Gaga is a manufactured personality, and a recent one at that. Photos of Stefani Germanotta just a few years ago show a bubbly brunette with a glowing complexion. The Gaga of world fame, however, with her heavy wigs and giant sunglasses (rudely worn during interviews) looks either simperingly doll-like or ghoulish, without a trace of spontaneity. Every public appearance, even absurdly at airports where most celebrities want to pass incognito, has been lavishly scripted in advance with a flamboyant outfit and bizarre hairdo assembled by an invisible company of elves.

Furthermore, 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…

Gaga has borrowed so heavily from Madonna (as in her latest video-Alejandro) that it must be asked, at what point does homage become theft? However, the main point is that the young Madonna was on fire. She was indeed the imperious Marlene Dietrich’s true heir. For Gaga, sex is mainly decor and surface; she’s like a laminated piece of ersatz rococo furniture. Alarmingly, Generation Gaga can’t tell the difference. Is it the death of sex? Perhaps the symbolic status that sex had for a century has gone kaput; that blazing trajectory is over…

Gaga seems comet-like, a stimulating burst of novelty, even though she is a ruthless recycler of other people’s work. She is the diva of déjà vu. Gaga has glibly appropriated from performers like Cher, Jane Fonda as Barbarella, Gwen Stefani and Pink, as well as from fashion muses like Isabella Blow and Daphne Guinness. Drag queens, whom Gaga professes to admire, are usually far sexier in many of her over-the-top outfits than she is.

Peeping dourly through all that tat is Gaga’s limited range of facial expressions. Her videos repeatedly thrust that blank, lugubrious face at the camera and us; it’s creepy and coercive. Marlene and Madonna gave the impression, true or false, of being pansexual. Gaga, for all her writhing and posturing, is asexual. Going off to the gym in broad daylight, as Gaga recently did, dressed in a black bustier, fishnet stockings and stiletto heels isn’t sexy – it’s sexually dysfunctional.

Compare Gaga’s insipid songs, with their nursery-rhyme nonsense syllables, to the title and hypnotic refrain of the first Madonna song and video to bring her attention on MTV, Burning Up, with its elemental fire imagery and its then-shocking offer of fellatio. In place of Madonna’s valiant life force, what we find in Gaga is a disturbing trend towards mutilation and death…

Gaga is in way over her head with her avant-garde pretensions… She wants to have it both ways – to be hip and avant-garde and yet popular and universal, a practitioner of gung-ho “show biz”. Most of her worshippers seem to have had little or no contact with such powerful performers as Tina Turner or Janis Joplin, with their huge personalities and deep wells of passion.

Generation Gaga doesn’t identify with powerful vocal styles because their own voices have atrophied: they communicate mutely via a constant stream of atomised, telegraphic text messages. Gaga’s flat affect doesn’t bother them because they’re not attuned to facial expressions.

Gaga's fans are marooned in a global technocracy of fancy gadgets but emotional poverty. Borderlines have been blurred between public and private: reality TV shows multiply, cell phone conversations blare everywhere; secrets are heedlessly blabbed on Facebook and Twitter. Hence, Gaga gratuitously natters on about her vagina…

Discuss.

Lloydy · 09-16-2010, 01:00 PM

Id hit it

farmergiles · 09-16-2010, 01:07 PM

More plastic pop pap. Yawn.

Grieves · 09-16-2010, 01:13 PM

Flamingnun · 09-16-2010, 01:19 PM

Cerpin Taxt · 09-16-2010, 01:35 PM

The Rev · 09-16-2010, 01:41 PM

To label Gaga as the death toll of the sexual revolution is to give her too much credit. The revolution was DOA the second AIDS arrived on the scene and replaced sexual repression by morality with sexual repression by responsibility. Sex is play. You take it too seriously and you ruin it, and we've been taking it too seriously since the late 80's, early 90's.

Lady Gaga is just another creation of music industry marketing. There's no conflict between the mainstream pop star and the marginalized artist image she portrays, because everyone feels marginalized, especially young people, so heroic marginalization sells to the mainstream. She, or one of her future marketing clones, will be the one who is parodied in every movie about this time period for decades to come.

The Rev

Waves · 09-16-2010, 01:42 PM

shes alot like her music. shes loud and flashy but she doesnt really have much substance. she seems unintelligent to me.

to call her the 'death of sex' seems overkill to me, like calling file sharing the 'death of music'

**AlteredStateGrl** · 09-16-2010, 01:43 PM

i was waiting for waves' reply.

edit: well, not really "waiting"...but, you know.

Waves · 09-16-2010, 01:47 PM

witty reply: the only revolution that lady gaga has anything to do with is the half-of-a revolution that happens when a man sees her stinky vagina and turns 180 degrees to get out the door

09-16-2010, 04:14 PM

It's almost like the "Wacko Jacko" with a quicker metomorpasis.

09-16-2010, 04:15 PM

ooops lol.

Dr. Nick Nasty · 09-16-2010, 04:16 PM

the death of taste maybe....

Captain Cannabis · 09-16-2010, 04:18 PM

she is not different from any pop icon. i didn't read the whole article because i can't be bothered to care that much, but saying she is the first major star of the digital era.. its not flattering to the author to start an article with a false statement

09-16-2010, 04:21 PM

she kind of just does what the other majors did before her. With better digi digi.

she sucks....and her music should be used as a torture method in thrid world countries. I thoroughly believe this.

Cerpin Taxt · 09-16-2010, 05:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Cannabis

she is not different from any pop icon. i didn't read the whole article because i can't be bothered to care that much, but saying she is the first major star of the digital era.. its not flattering to the author to start an article with a false statement

HOW DARE YOU BELITTLE MY BELIEF IN HER BEING A REFLECTION OF EVERYTHING THAT IS WRONG WITH SOCIETY TODAY AND NOT TAKE IT WITH THE SERIOUSNESS THAT I DEEM WORTHY BECAUSE MY OPINION IS THE BEST BECAUSE ITS MINE!!!?!?!

Captain Cannabis · 09-16-2010, 05:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cerpin Taxt

HOW DARE YOU BELITTLE MY BELIEF IN HER BEING A REFLECTION OF EVERYTHING THAT IS WRONG WITH SOCIETY TODAY AND NOT TAKE IT WITH THE SERIOUSNESS THAT I DEEM WORTHY BECAUSE MY OPINION IS THE BEST BECAUSE ITS MINE!!!?!?!

revolution is here!

**Jimmycube** · 09-16-2010, 05:55 PM

eh i dunno....the death of sex lol....thats pushing it.

however...i would prob fuck her if she had a lot of heroin

Cerpin Taxt · 09-16-2010, 06:28 PM

People looking too much into the title and not the article...

**Jimmycube** · 09-16-2010, 06:29 PM

i read the article.....but....i dunno, dint get much from it that i dint already know i am afraid

09-16-2010, 01:00 PM	#2 (permalink)
Lloydy KTF Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: England Posts: 11,976 Thanks: 533 Thanked 2,477 Times in 1,138 Posts	Id hit it __________________ Keep the red flag flying high

09-16-2010, 01:07 PM	#3 (permalink)
farmergiles Yahookan Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Sick of the hatred and the lies Posts: 7,801 Thanks: 2,281 Thanked 3,746 Times in 2,551 Posts	More plastic pop pap. Yawn. __________________ Cultivate a stoic calmness *Fuck the Monkeys* Every Kind of Vice

09-16-2010, 01:13 PM	#4 (permalink)
Grieves The Worst Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Interstate 8 Posts: 12,082 Blog Entries: 1 Thanks: 2,569 Thanked 3,114 Times in 1,709 Posts	__________________ "And no matter what they said dollar is not your friend and it's the feelings that are hard to know are the feelings that all come slow No matter what they said dollar is not your friend and these feelings that so hard to know are the feelings that wont let go No don't let go, till you find a home World Unite and I'll love you forever"

09-16-2010, 01:19 PM	#5 (permalink)
Flamingnun Shpadoinkle Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: roflmao Posts: 17,491 Thanks: 1,046 Thanked 2,633 Times in 1,185 Posts	__________________

09-16-2010, 01:35 PM	#6 (permalink)
Cerpin Taxt Yahookan Zealot Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Canada Posts: 7,213 Blog Entries: 1 Thanks: 843 Thanked 1,919 Times in 1,011 Posts	__________________ Step Back. Evaluate. Recognize. "All memory is really a form of regurgitation of undigested experience." -Alan Watts

09-16-2010, 01:41 PM	#7 (permalink)
The Rev Clear Light Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: In my head, somewhere. Posts: 17,864 Thanks: 5,015 Thanked 5,419 Times in 2,864 Posts	To label Gaga as the death toll of the sexual revolution is to give her too much credit. The revolution was DOA the second AIDS arrived on the scene and replaced sexual repression by morality with sexual repression by responsibility. Sex is play. You take it too seriously and you ruin it, and we've been taking it too seriously since the late 80's, early 90's. Lady Gaga is just another creation of music industry marketing. There's no conflict between the mainstream pop star and the marginalized artist image she portrays, because everyone feels marginalized, especially young people, so heroic marginalization sells to the mainstream. She, or one of her future marketing clones, will be the one who is parodied in every movie about this time period for decades to come. The Rev __________________ Budforce - My Friend August 29, 1973- May 25, 2012

09-16-2010, 01:42 PM	#8 (permalink)
Waves Duderino Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: chiburbs Posts: 15,405 Thanks: 991 Thanked 4,036 Times in 2,224 Posts	shes alot like her music. shes loud and flashy but she doesnt really have much substance. she seems unintelligent to me. to call her the 'death of sex' seems overkill to me, like calling file sharing the 'death of music' __________________ On this life that we call home The years go fast and the days go so slow

09-16-2010, 01:43 PM	#9 (permalink)
AlteredStateGrl (òÓ,)_\,,/ Join Date: Sep 2004 Posts: 10,426 Thanks: 2,181 Thanked 1,823 Times in 1,115 Posts	i was waiting for waves' reply. edit: well, not really "waiting"...but, you know. __________________ The sweetest kittens have the sharpest claws.

09-16-2010, 01:47 PM	#10 (permalink)
Waves Duderino Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: chiburbs Posts: 15,405 Thanks: 991 Thanked 4,036 Times in 2,224 Posts	witty reply: the only revolution that lady gaga has anything to do with is the half-of-a revolution that happens when a man sees her stinky vagina and turns 180 degrees to get out the door __________________ On this life that we call home The years go fast and the days go so slow

09-16-2010, 04:14 PM	#11 (permalink)
turmaline Guest Posts: n/a	It's almost like the "Wacko Jacko" with a quicker metomorpasis.

09-16-2010, 04:15 PM	#12 (permalink)
turmaline Guest Posts: n/a	ooops lol. Attached Images

09-16-2010, 04:16 PM	#13 (permalink)
Dr. Nick Nasty Reactionary Radical Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: New York/New Jersey Metro Wasteland Posts: 1,049 Blog Entries: 5 Thanks: 653 Thanked 364 Times in 232 Posts	the death of taste maybe.... __________________ "I do not wish any mass at all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished women only."-Emma Goldman

09-16-2010, 04:18 PM	#14 (permalink)
Captain Cannabis safety word: more Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: m.i.a. Posts: 13,922 Thanks: 2,705 Thanked 3,174 Times in 1,812 Posts	she is not different from any pop icon. i didn't read the whole article because i can't be bothered to care that much, but saying she is the first major star of the digital era.. its not flattering to the author to start an article with a false statement __________________ fuck the monkeys

09-16-2010, 04:21 PM	#15 (permalink)
turmaline Guest Posts: n/a	she kind of just does what the other majors did before her. With better digi digi. she sucks....and her music should be used as a torture method in thrid world countries. I thoroughly believe this.

09-16-2010, 06:28 PM	#19 (permalink)
Cerpin Taxt Yahookan Zealot Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Canada Posts: 7,213 Blog Entries: 1 Thanks: 843 Thanked 1,919 Times in 1,011 Posts	People looking too much into the title and not the article... __________________ Step Back. Evaluate. Recognize. "All memory is really a form of regurgitation of undigested experience." -Alan Watts

Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)

Thread Tools
Show Printable Version Email this Page
Display Modes	Rate This Thread
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode	Rate This Thread: