Gaga at the Gogo

Popular art is always a challenge for the professional intellectual. Even if they like it, they might be afraid to admit it. If they don't they may catch Seth Colter Wall's disease and write a pretentious and fatuous article like this one in Newsweek.

French intellectual Claude Lévi-Strauss died at the age of 100 last month, before he could comment on the latest single from Lady Gaga. If you think this an absurd notion, note that Lévi-Strauss's major project—discovering the common aspects of myths from different eras and continents—has influenced many pop scholars, including Greil Marcus. In our American Idol-ized culture, few myths loom larger than pop fame, which is why the philosopher and anthropologist might have had something to say about Top 40's self-professed conceptual artist of the moment. In a way, he still does.

...The problem with Gaga is that she refuses to add any concrete value, while also wanting us to think she has something to say...

...Gaga may want to have it both ways, but that doesn't mean we should let her. Inscribing Rilke's question—"must I write?"—on your arm and then hiding behind a nihilist's superficiality amounts to a pretentious form of bulls--t. As the 20th century drew to a close, and postmodern critics of Lévi-Strauss gained clout, the idea of whether we can "know" anything about artistic texts became its own cliché. But Lévi-Strauss's death gives us a chance to remember what it's like for a writer to bear the risk of intending to mean something. Gaga shows no appetite for this. Instead, she is content to give us thesis and antithesis, because the contrast sparks commentary (and, yes, her fame). She writes strong melodies and gives us great photos, but unlike Madonna—who was willing to tie provocation to a discernible purpose in "Like a Prayer"—Gaga offers no synthesis. Of course, bubblegum music can get a pass from needing to say anything if it's philosophically modest: rocking all night and partying every day. But with due respect to the swear-word police, pop also becomes offensive when it puts on airs it has no intention of earning.

WTF. Does Levi-Strauss have any connection to this story beyond being the subject of a lecture the author once attended in a drug induced stupor? More to the point, why does the author insist on putting on airs he has no intention of earning?

By contrast, Shana Naomi Krochmal's NPR story is a small delight.

Lady Gaga is scary. She writes dangerously catchy songs that sound like nonsense but eat their way into your brain. She's always dressed in some combination of wigs, sunglasses and — if she wears much else — what looks like half a museum of modern art on her back. At the American Music Awards, she set her piano on fire and belted out a heart-wrenching ballad while smashing wine bottles on the keys.

... We're just not used to turning on the TV and seeing performance art. Pop stars tend to be very straightforward; that's what makes them so likable, how easily they fit into one box or another.

Gaga got her start in the college coffeehouses and underground bars where avant-garde performances are par for the course. But the more albums she's sold, the more she's pushed that artsy aesthetic on a popular audience. It's not just the look that's unexpectedly complex. Even the most dance-floor-friendly Gaga hit has a black hole of fear at its center.

...

At 23, she's already broken Billboard records and sold millions of albums. She writes all her own lyrics and music. She carefully curates her image along with a handpicked group of stylists and artists she's dubbed the Haus of Gaga. She's quite suddenly a very powerful woman in what's still a man's music industry. She's not just selling sex; she's selling art — which may be the most terrifying idea of all.