Author Karen Spears Zacharias blogged about Lady Gaga yesterday. I like Gaga’s music, but I’m not an über-fan or anything. I only noticed the blog post because a Twitter friend tweeted about it.
Zacharias says that “Lady Gaga’s a Fake & You aren’t great” (capitalization hers). Specifically, she finds Gaga’s over-the-top appearance and performances fake. Zacharias says that this is nothing new — it’s been done before, by artists like Madonna. And she points out that Gaga isn’t just like the rest of us — she comes from a fairly privileged background.
Okay. I can understand that. I frequently find Gaga ridiculous. I do recognize that she’s not the first to embrace the outrageous (and that “Born This Way” sounds an awful lot like “Express Yourself”). And I would agree that Lady Gaga doesn’t have a real rags to riches story.
But she goes on to say that the message of songs like “Born This Way” is wrong, too. That Lady Gaga’s going around telling people how great they are, and to embrace their greatness, and that this is somehow wrong.
Apparently, teaching kids to value themselves leads to “self-obsessed, pot-smoking, whoring-around delusional little monsters.”
Really? That’s what encouraging self-esteem leads to? Huh. I guess I’d better pull my kids out of Girl Scouts.
Zacharias suggests that we embrace humility instead, and “appreciate the wonder of being ordinary.” After all, we can’t all be stars. Most of us are, and will continue to be, ordinary.
Absolutely! Humility is an excellent quality, and a Christian value — but I think it’s possible to have a healthy sense of self-esteem and humility. It’s not either/or.
And ordinariness? Yes. I am ordinary. I’m not a genius of any kind, although I do have my own talents and gifts. I was born this way, and I can embrace that. I think that goes along perfectly well with the message of “Born This Way,” which is to embrace who you are! You don’t have to apologize for your race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, hairstyle, OR ordinariness.
Finally, Zacharias makes a big mistake by playing the Hitler card.
But imagine for a moment a world in which future little Hitlers, Pol Pots, Stalins, or Osama Bin Ladens go around singing the chorus of Gaga’s Born this Way:
I’m beautiful in my way
‘Cause God makes no mistakes
I’m on the right track, baby
I was born this way
Don’t hide yourself in regret
Karen, megalomaniacs are going to be crazy no matter what pop songs they listen to. Songs that encourage people to value themselves simply aren’t going to create dictators or terrorists.
Don’t like Lady Gaga? Fine. But the idea that encouraging people’s self-esteem is somehow bad for society? I don’t get it.
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
June 8, 2011 at 2:43 am
abandonculture
I think the whole point is that the ‘everyone is special’ kind of message promoted by GaGa, Madonna, Katy Perry etc etc is a fraud. It’s a cynical ploy to sell music and the same one one that is used by any other advertisers to sell their products.
For example car adverts are often ‘inspiring’ in a way, so are mobile phone adverts … even adverts for banks these days are likely to offer us an inspiring vision of human cooperation, or endeavor such as having the guts to set up a small business and thus achieve some life long passion and turn a dream into a reality.
But it’s all just marketing at the end of the day.
Our culture is sooooo full of this kind of inauthentic manipulation of the human psyche that we are fast becoming unable to recognize or express authenticity. People might talk about GaGa (or whoever) as having a great ‘attitude’ and ‘message’ yet if you pressed them they wouldn’t really be able to tell you what it actually was or back it up any such claims with anything substantial. And where their message is more defined it is often completely contradicted by all the other messages they promote. Such as promoting being an ‘empowered’, independent woman while crawling about on all fours in S+M gear
GaGa is the ‘best thing to hit the music scene since sliced bread’ and the ‘saviour of youth culture’ because she is *marketed* as such. That’s the brand which has been created for her. If the industry had not decided to promote her, create this ‘product/ brand’ out of her and make her famous she would still be like a million other decent enough but not extraordinary aspiring singer songwriters (as she was previous to the industry picking her up).
And in a sea of total inauthenticity and totally manufactured bands, the mere fact she can play the piano, sing in tune and dress up in fancy costumes makes her appear like a modern day Stravinsky/ Picasso to most people. She is not.
The irony is that the actual coherence and sophistication in the themes, symbols and messages she promotes (most of which are I suspect decided by other people) bypass most people’s conscious minds completely. (see articles linked below).
Because beyond this cynical marketing actually lies something much more disturbing. GaGa is also being used to promote a bunch of indoctrination messages to the youth – just as all the other industry sell outs (I mean fame monsters) are used too.
Jay-Z, Rihanna, Madonna, Minaj, Spears, Cyrus etc they all have their own version of corporate propaganda to sell – that is their job! That is the deal and why they got made famous. It’s their payment to the industry if you like, to promote its messages to the youth.
If you can;t see it it is because you are under the spell of seeing it all as mere ‘entertainment’. Entertainment is the vehicle and not the underlying message though.
Whatever you want to call it – propaganda, social engineering, indoctrination, psychological warfare, demoralization etc – it is very real and becomes so obvious when you eventually see it for what it is.
Check out thesearticles if you are interested
June 8, 2011 at 6:10 am
kmcdade
Well, I can agree with you about marketing. It’s certainly a component of the music business, although none of us can really assume to know the true motivation of the artists.
However, I did click through on your link, and…well, I’m not a conspiracy theorist! So we definitely don’t agree on WHAT they are marketing.