The real question should be, Is it ethical?
Stefani Germanotta's conceptual art project in which she created Lady Gaga as a vehicle for the deconstruction of fame and pop music celebrity was interesting. Not least because Lady Gaga actually attained massive fame through, and in, the process of Germanotta and her collaborators' analysis and exploration. Of course Germanotta failed to destroy, or even permanently alter, the mechanics of pop music celebrity through her project. It is not a moot point whether or not such change was Germanotta's aim in the first place. The question of what her aim was goes to the morality of the continuing Lady Gaga project.
I don't speak Germanotta but I can if you like.
Several key concerns immediately arise when interrogating the Lady Gaga project. First, the celebrity's overt declarations and gestures that seek to elevate Gaga to more than just a pop-musician and her work to more than just pop-music. As if she would be ashamed if her art stood in isolation without insinuations of something deeper and more transcendent founding it. Second, Gaga's insistence on a "performative" conceptualisation of life (and its correlates): her facade, her various dissemblances, her patronising, potentially deleterious and reactionary message that "freaks" can transform themselves and their situations through mere iteration and projection of concept and discourse into a yielding "material" world. Third, product placement and commercial endorsements. And finally, Weird Al Yankovic's apparently unwitting expose on Machine Gaga.
The first concern is self-explanatory. While professing to respect the art that she is working with, Germanotta seems insecure and somewhat embarrassed about being just a pop star. Sometimes it feels as if she is giving a wink back to old colleagues and friends who expected her to excel in a field commanding more elitist respect. As if she is having a joke at our expense while making a lot of money from us. The term "little monsters" is downright patronising and mean-spirited to people who may not be aware of the "fame" project. It is hard to engender self-respect in people who have an insecure "Mother Monster". The overt declarations to which I refer include things like Lady Gaga's citing of her "favourite" philosopher's work on "solitude", deliberately implying that she comes from a rarefied elite of geniuses who can draw from a palette of various philosophical works to condole for the "solitude" that the greatness of her artistry imposes on them. She has also sought to trump Madonna thus: "She reinvents herself album to album. I reinvent myself week to week." Gaga has made also made preposterous (and possibly intentionally polarising) claims about the gravity of her work, like claiming that Born This Way comprises pop-music of an entirely new and revolutionary genre. The overt gestures include everything from symbolism-cramming to the meat dress to the lack of the slightest tone of irony in her voice in Gaga's voice during her philosophically dense account of the creation of the Universe at the beginning of the video of "Born This Way". We get it. You're deeper than the average pop star. The dread of being thought to be a sell-out or being stuck in a role that she truly doesn't respect herself is absolutely palpable and it's a shame. A lot of people actually like and revere the art form of pop music.
In an early blog post, Lady Gaga praised Paris is Burning, a film documenting marginalised, generally impoverished "freaks" attempting to salvage self-concept essentially through declaration of their own celebrity in drag balls. Apparently Germanotta is oblivious to the resultant accusations of the director's exploitation of the film's subjects. Or of some aggrieved subjects' subsequent filing of legal proceedings against the director. Performativity understood as a serious metaphysic and as a useful approach to the task of substantive liberation blushes in the face of these facts. Madonna's treatment of the same phenomenon in "Vogue" was honest in promising nothing more than escapism from "heart-ache" through hitting the dance floor and affirming that "you're a superstar". Germanotta's understanding of performativity purports to offer literal, concrete escape from marginalisation through such acts.
Germanotta glibly ascribes "freak" status to herself and propagates the idea that Lady Gaga is the result of constructing an image and simply becoming it. Lady Gaga calls other pop-stars "lazy"; the corollary is that her "freak" "little monsters" who haven't attained self-realisation must be lazy for not embracing their own "inner superstar". Germanotta was born this way: beautiful, talented, intelligent and privileged. But her message goes thus: I did it, so why don't you? Which is another form of the grand, uniquely American deception that all are born with equal opportunity and that there is space for all to realise the American dream. Gaga says that "the show is life itself". She says that "no-one can make the music of your life for you". Perhaps not, but the ruling classes can set limits on the range within which you can play your instrument, while convincing you that things are otherwise. If you are fat or ugly you certainly won't appear in their music videos, as pointed out in Pop Matters. If you are gay, however, "Mother Monster" can be that kind of "freak" too, and even accompany you through this kind of freakdom - whether you like it or not, as Joseph Alexiou points out. Gay is just on the borderline of general public acceptance and controversy, and is kinda cool right now. (I wonder if I need to divulge that I'm queer here?) As cool as not being bullied. As cool as just being yourself! (Or inventing that self to subsequently stay true to.) And finally, well, apparently starving Africans must just have issues honing their performative iterations, but let's not talk about that.
Consummation of the complete performance of the pop celebrity requires liberal entry into product endorsement deals and profligate product placement in music videos, according to purveyors of the Lady Gaga performativity narrative. Some point out that Gaga shows blatant disrespect to some of her placements, undermining any positive positioning for them. She also head-scrambles by mixing real product placements with fictious ones (an extension of her general culture-jamming tactic embodied in her successful ploys to make observers question what is "real" about Gaga/Germanotta herself and which of her utterances can be taken as truthful).
Speaking of truth, the tampering of which, for the purposes of the Gaga project, is not actually objectionable in itself, the Weird Al Yankovic "Gaga-Saga" has been the most revealing thereof in Lady Gaga's career. Yankovic never releases parodies without the original artist's consent. After being tortuously frustrated by Germanotta's manager's micro-managing and eventual rejection of Yankovic's proposed parody of "Born This Way", the comedian declined to release the parody, except on the internet. The parody went viral and forced Germanotta's hand in immediately (and studiously cheerfully) granting permission for fear of appearing overly-precious, or, in the alternative, not in absolute control of Lady Gaga's career. Gaga insisted she was unaware she had been approached for permission, but the huge glitch in the narrative thus caused could not be repaired by her scrambling. Control over career and self-generated reality is a central, untouchable part of the Gaga brand that is not meant to be subject to speculation as other aspects of Gaga are actually required to be. It should be noted that Yankovic has been an erudite scholar of the pop music celebrity phenomenon for far longer than Germanotta.
Academics can be Gaga apologists all they like in their own textual performances: in their own quests for academic acclaim or career furtherance. But this will not change what should be perceived as objective truth in a real, material world, whatever variations in phenomenological experience obtain amongst its observers. Reversion to the acrobatics of a particular version of performative theory is just plain reactionary and oppressive. It is irrelevant if even Germanotta's acts of oppression and pursuit of personal gain end up being explained away as performative attempts to provoke discussion about these phenomena emanating from other celebrities. I aver that the objective effects of Germanotta's actions have been harmful so far and will continue in this vein.
Before ending this piece, I'd finally like to contend that rigorous academic enquiry requires some disclosure of writers' personal investment in the face value product. If you need to dance every time you hear "Born This Way" then it would be dishonest not to mention this in say, a piece critiquing its positioning in contemporary Marxist dialogue. So here's my broad disclosure: I really like and sometimes love most of Lady Gaga's music though do not consider it revolutionary or innovative (her hooks sometimes reach genius level and the production is excellent), find her voice serviceably powerful and versatile, am aware of its range but find it otherwise unremarkable, love most of her videos, think she is an excellent actress, find fashion in general boring and am occasionally irritated though sometimes amused by her clothes, think her face is aesthetically pleasing but her body a bit on the thin side, find her asexual, and think her persona is generally endearing.
Anyway, from now on I propose to acquit myself from any further audience of either Lady Gaga or her army of pseudo-academic supporters. Others are free to continue to "love this record" though they "can't see straight anymore", but not me. I'm going back to listen to The KLF. Over and out.
