Lady Gaga put me off Cheerios for life
Kirsty Capes
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Name:Kirsty Capes
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Title: Cultural CriticJoined: Oct 2011Occupation: Creative Writing Student at Brunel UniversityKirsty's Full Profile
If you’re a fan of Lady Gaga, you should probably look away now. It’s not just Cheerios. I don’t think I could stomach any kind of wholegrain oat-type cereal ever again. Thanks a bunch, Gaga.
This woman churns out great dance songs and hit singles, but her music is mediocre at best. A classic example of popularity not equating to talent – what most attracts people is the artsy dramatic charade that is constantly being shoved in their faces.
I mildly enjoy Gaga’s songs. They’re poppy and catchy and easy to listen to. What I don’t like is her bizarre theatrical performances which just don’t fit her persona. Remember Just Dance? That was a decent song. The video involved Gaga at a house party in a glittery bra with Akon in a swanky suit getting stuck to girls on the sofa. Standard video material for the music. There were no giant eggs, meat dresses or headless mannequins. Eighteen months down the line and Gaga is wearing nothing but crime scene tape and having lesbian orgies in prison cells.
Judging from when she was still Stefani Germanotta, the woman is musically talented. She doesn’t need ridiculous theatrics to make her better; she’s good enough stripped down to her voice.
The thing that pushed me over the edge was her video for Marry The Night. Watching the video for the first time, I almost choked on my cereal.
It’s not immediately clear what the song’s about. Originally I thought that the lyrics were about overcoming a particularly painful breakup, I’m not gonna cry anymore, or alternatively, the empowerment of women, I’m a warrior queen (broad concepts, but that’s how ambiguous the lyrics are). I’ve since learned that it’s about how Gaga went from zero to hero, starting out as barely able to survive, trying to make it in the music business, and going on to become arguably the most successful artist in modern music.
Why, then, in the video, is she naked in a bathtub and smothering herself in Cheerios? It doesn’t just baffle me, it angers me. Lady Gaga’s greasy naked Cheerio-encroached body makes me want to punch something. It’s not art and it’s not avant-garde; it’s a dirty, disturbing, disgusting mess.
It’s ironic I thought the song was about empowering women when Gaga manages to degrade herself and the entire gender so thoroughly in just thirteen minutes. From a scene in an asylum where all of the patients are women, running around and screaming in their underwear, to pseudo-lesbianism, apparent object sexualism, and subverting mental illness through sexual connotations.
There is so much wrong with this video I could puke. Apparently Gaga thinks it’s okay to depict a “breakdown”, but in the process get naked in a bathtub, wrap her tits in some gauze-type stuff (hell, I don’t even know what that is); sexualise the nurses, the patients; and have sex with a car. I have no words. Considering that Gaga claims to be some kind of champion of equal rights, she’s made a pretty poor case for the equal rights of women in this video. She’s completely degraded herself and her body for the sake of what I’m guessing is supposed to be shock value and media attention (like she’s not got enough already).
This woman claims to be some kind of soldier for the minority, but she repeatedly makes sexist, racist, homophobic and ableist comments that completely contradict her whole mantra. She’s fake. Cathy Wilson of feministing.com explained in her April article why Lady Gaga is such a big fat contradiction when it comes to her equal-rights persona; from using “retarded” as a pejorative to throwing around racist slang. And these are only two examples. How can Lady Gaga call herself an ambassador for equality when she pulls stunts like performing a concert in a wheelchair?!
Her videos are crawling with these contradictions. Her lyrics talk about the empowerment of women (If you’re a strong female, you don’t need permission) but in Alejandro she’s got a bunch of men throwing her about, dominating her. And then she’s grinding on men tied to beds, with others tied to strings like puppets. The mixed signals are endless.
I’m assuming that Gaga, being the explosive creative force that she is, came up with those ideas. And I regret to inform you that putting men in heels and tying them to beds and puppet strings is not feminism, Gaga, it’s sexism. And let’s not go into the whole swallowing the cross thing. Yeah, it’s nice to know you can deep-throat, but it’d be nicer if you refrained from mixing sacred iconography with sex. Way to give every single thing you do sexual undertones. It’s nice that a woman can express her sexuality so freely in a world where female sexuality, believe it or not, is still oppressed horrendously; but please, please try not to offend every single community as you’re doing it.
Gaga has repeatedly perverted Christianity in her lyrics and videos – sporting a PVC nun’s habit, wearing a pair of knickers with an inverted cross where her vagina should be and sitting in a hot tub with “Judas” and “Jesus”, with Judas pouring alcohol over her rear end. I don’t think you could get more blasphemous if you tried.
The thing is, I wouldn’t have a problem with any of the crap Lady Gaga puts out there, but for the fact that she is a big fat hypocrite. She has offended just about everyone except her mind-numbingly oblivious fans, who worship her like the deity she scorns so openly. And this is coming from a woman whose “art” is based on human equality and learning to love yourself.
I think she’s even managed to offend the vegetarian community. I’m not sure they and animal rights activists would be best pleased that she slapped bits of dead cow onto her skin in order to make a statement about homophobia in the military, of all things. Why are celebrities, designers and models (rightly) condemned for condoning leather and fur in fashion, but when Lady Gaga wears beef it’s a political statement – it’s a work of art?! I call bullshit.
That meat dress, by the way, was preserved and made into a beef jerky. But they had to defrost it first – it had been in storage since Gaga had worn it for the second time on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. To put it politely, the dress was showing signs of decomposition between its defrosting and preservation; but truthfully we all know what that really means: just like her music, her persona and her stupendous publicity stunts, Lady Gaga’s meat dress stinks.
Originally posted on Glitterazi
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Lady Gaga is an inspiration, you may not understand the meaning behind what she does in her videos and so on, but she does everything with a clear agenda.
She is a strong woman, who is sexy, elegant and successful. She should be someone you look up to. She represents a normal person. We all strive to be a somebody, to stand out, to be admired. We all want to be the ‘it’ girl. We may deny this fact but it is true, and Lady Gaga does exactly that. She has formed an amazingly large hate base, which I find is even more inspiring than her attitude. She lives everyday with people hating her, because she’s weird. She represents women. She shows women from every angle, in Bad Romance she shows how women can be exploited, in Alejandro she shows that she is the commanding woman yet also can be commanded. She doesn’t put women above men nor men above women, she shows, in her videos, that she embraces her femininity, but that overall men and women are equal and both great forces.
I love Gaga, not for her music but for the fact that she has the nerve to do things that people don’t like.
“She represents a normal person.” seriously? go to the nearest weighing machine you find and tell me again that she doesn’t represent a wrong physical model. I strive everyday to tell my friends that they aren’t fat and don’t need a diet but if she has the ‘perfect body’ then I should consider a diet too being 132 pound per 5 6′…
She started her career as a person who wanted to change society and stand up against injustice (or did she?) but my opinion is that she degenerated into hypocrisy. Sure, she does have the nerve to do things that people don’t dare to but are we sure that in doing that she’s an artist at work and not just an insecure girl trying to get all the attention that she can?
Who ever wrote this is an idiot! Really… such dumb reporting!
Wow, you’ve (begrudgingly!) convinced me. Good argument. I think to begin with it seemed very artistic and daring (which maybe it still is I don’t know, need to think about it, and get up to date on Gaga info) but went towards simple attention seeking somewhere down the line, or a skewed perception on her part of the meaning behind the actions she choses to take. But whether it’s art or not, I think you’re absolutely right about her contradicting herself.
“They’re poppy and catchy and easy to listen to.”
I have contention with this statement, particularly how it is later used as a basis to imply that ‘clever music’ and ‘catchy music’ are mutually exclusive labels.
From some ideological cesspit (that I would conjecture is propagated most by the New Statesman), it has apparently become commonplace to suggest to one’s audience that the paradigm of the ‘artistic/banal’ dichotomy has already been constructed to include that which is both popular and obscure. It was a template applied to Bob Dylan in his hayday, to Nirvana in the 90′s and to Marilyn Manson for virtually his entire career.
But what has this rampant antagonism of the intellectually mainstream actually taught us? I would say very little besides that some in this world miss the point entirely. Lady Gaga’s music is, in my opinion, superbly crafted to generate her message. The song ‘Bloody Mary’, for example, utilises clever religious metaphor and wordplay in generating an intriguing view of love in society (rather contrary to your supposition that she scorns a deity; she is in fact a Catholic).
Indeed many of her music videos do leak pomposity and artsiness – on that I agree with you. Do these traits demean the visual experience of the video? I would say that they lend her videos a rather unique charm that accentuates the glamour of her purpose: that being to empower. In regards to your comments on the Alejandro video, I believe the evident androgyny of the men who dominate her serves as an intentional preface to the vagueness into which sexuality has regressed (note also in the video that said men are also dominated BY Gaga). Just my interpretation on it, but I felt it relevant to put forward.
Irrespective, an interesting article and point of view.