Has the World gone Gaga?

What would this blog ever amount to if it did not say anything about our dear Miss Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta – that is Lady Gaga to you!

On Sunday night, she collected her eighth MTV music award, attired in a dress made of red meat. This is absolutely LOGICAL… given that recently she wore a meat bikini in a photo shoot for Japanese Vogue… and, of course, this follows on well from her wardrobe of the past: lobsters capite, sunglasses made of cigarettes, bird-nest chapeau just to name a few. Well, the girl’s got style, but has she got substance?

As a rising gay icon, reclining over an empire of ‘little monsters’, proclaiming herself as the new Bowie, Warhol, Madonna and Spears – she is not modest, to say the least. The demure young lady – now 24 – is soon to become immortal according to some. I look forward to her apotheosis alongside Heracles and the Roman emperors. But, is there room for a spoilt little girl (who attended the same private school as Paris Hilton), popping some sweat, in a meat dress? The young Gaga has unequivocally worked very hard to get where she is – this is not doubted – but how authentic is she?

Promoting a sexual image publicly, while having asexual proclivities privately. Her spangled lifestyle is a set of paradoxes and lies. Last July, in an interview with Caitlin Moran she told the world: “[I am] not what straight men masturbate over. It’s not for them. It’s for us.” As to whom ‘us’ refers to, that is a mystery. But isn’t the whole point of her act, the sexualisation of Pop? Imagine Gaga looking in her mirror every morning. Does she grin and cackle over her image? Look how fake I am, but look how sincere I appear towards my fans. But the two are incommensurable for a true star. Gaga is horribly, cataclysmically and whimsically insincere.

Shortly after she scooped up her latest MTV award, she proved this point again in an interview with Ellen Degeneres (who happens to be her ‘favourite person’). This is what she said:

‘I wasn’t used to not performing [at the MTV Awards ceremony]… and so much of what I stand for is really hard work and being yourself and busting your ass, and it was really difficult for me and I kept thinking I can’t let my fans down tonight because I’m just another bitch in a dress at an awards show.’

The language of equivocation is a difficult skill to master. We have an expert here. She is exactly what she says she is not. In fact, she is ‘another bitch in a dress at an awards show’, but the sad truth is that she has the world hooked on her on her bony, emaciated Gaga claw.

‘If we don’t fight for our rights, soon we’re going to have as much rights as the meat on the bones’ she continues further in the interview.

So she’s also a social commentator? This is not the message that Jonathan Franzen is projecting. In fact, it is totally contrary to one of our greatest social commentators of all time. In his new novel, Freedom, he shows (with a large bolus of support and an academic mindset) that now we have too much freedom and it does not help our happiness in the slightest. A few decades ago, this could not be said as liberal democracies were still very much in their making. Having evolved from a carapace of repression and inequality, it has now become unfashionable to fight for our liberty. Go back to the 19^th century if you want to do that:

So, can someone please explain to me why we are watching that piece of meat waving her gawky legs and Nosferatu visage!