All of the lights

[rockmarooned]

After the Mountain Goats extravaganza on Friday, Marisa and I spent Saturday in Philadelphia with Bayard and Alex. We hit the Philadelphia Book Festival, which as a science-fiction-friendly and science-fact-averse English major I'm surprised to report was sort of upstaged by the Philadelphia Science Festival. Maybe some people dropped out due to

Comments

[freakjaw]

Like I said, I definitely defer to you about whether her music is boring, generic, or even not remotely personal or detailed. I assume that your criticisms of her music as music are well-considered (and I certainly always like reading what you have to say about music even if I haven't heard it). And maybe "on-the-nose" or "pandering" are more fair, but while us slick urban types might find her "less transgressive than meets the eye" I suspect pretty strongly that Apache Junction types' sole reaction to her antics would not be a yawn. I don't have anything really invested in her being the most transgressive or authentic or even progressive force in popular culture since whoever, but I still don't understand at all how the slogan "don't be a drag, just be a queen" is at all comparable to "please continue to buy my records". Is her message less authentic because she's made a lot of money with it? Ultimately I guess it doesn't matter much whether it resonates with you or me. We aren't closeted gay teenagers or people who have to deal with slurs snarled across the street at us on the way to work. But for those people, I don't see anything wrong with a clear, forceful, even simplistic message of hope or acceptance. It just seems to me that the "don't be a drag, just be a queen" sloganeering is maybe the least worthy thing to complain about her.

Now, you not only listen to more new music than I do but you also read a lot more music criticism, so perhaps there's something specific in either the pretensions she assumes herself or the way people write about her that rankles you, but like that there's somebody currently making an impact on pop culture with a "screw them, be yourself" message.

[rockmarooned]

So we've been talking about this and I didn't realize some people have even proclaimed premature backlash against Gaga for representing gay culture or representing it too stereotypically or representing it accidentally but annoyingly or whatever, which I found interesting on both sides, because I honestly thought most music-interested people were pretty much on board with her regardless.

Anyway, for me it's not a question of authenticity (or whether "gay culture" should have anything to do with her) so much as aesthetics -- much like the way T-Swift gets lauded for being a good role model (non-slutty, writes own songs) for qualities that I do believe are admirable but do not believe she embodies particularly well. I even don't think "don't be a drag, just be a queen" is a particularly well-written slogan; it's one of those things that I feel like sounds both more clever and more empowering than it actually is (what's the drag in this situation? Not being self-powered, I guess? It sort of makes it sound like she's saying, stop whining and being such a drag and just own it! Which may not be what she's saying, but the vagueness and simplicity don't go well together, lyrically speaking).

Of course, if it *does* empower bullied/harassed people, then it doesn't really matter if it's not well-written or, as you say, if a non-bullied thirty-year-old white dude in a huge city is really feeling it. I'm just surprised that she seems to get a creative pass from so many people more or less because she says so. I get a little suspicious when I hear a song that to me sounds totally boring and uninspired; then hear a bunch of interpretations that bend over backwards to explain why it's actually subversive or complex, and then essentially hear the artist say, yes, exactly, those people are right, that's what I was going for!! I'm sure plenty of artists I like have done this but there's a self-importance combined with a lack of content to her work that does bother me.

But I swear it's not because she spurned Weird Al!

[freakjaw]

I was just coming back here to mention that Weird Al thing! Not cool, Gaga!

This line from that backlash piece you posted seems to match up with your central complaint about Lady Gaga: "Her songs are too disposable to be highbrow, and her public persona too self-important to be lowbrow or camp." And that seems like a fair criticism of her music, the literary qualities of her writing, or even her persona as a pop-star, but that "condescending" swipe up top was about the message she's putting out. Even the parsing here of "don't be a drag, just be a queen" seems nit-picky to me since it's a play on a common phrase and the meaning is fairly obvious both in an out of the context of the song ("don't become self-loathing, withdrawn and depressed, or suicidal, be what you are and be proud/defiant about it...born this way, etc, etc"). The song we're talking about came out in a culture that just had like a half dozen nationally publicized gay teen suicides in the last six or eight months. So it may be nit-picky or oversensitive of me to keep arguing that she deserves more credit here, and unfortunate that I'm at least partly doing the "it's just not meant for you" argument when she's being played on Top-40 radio. But I do kind of think that it's not really meant for you, and that it's pretty cool that she's got a Top-40 song saying this stuff. That obviously doesn't mean you can't complain that her hooks are lame or her lyrics are simplistic, but you've got a trickier time of avoiding the actual content of the song if you don't want to rankle busy-bodies like me. It's super easy for me to say since I don't keep up on Lady Gaga criticism, but I think the price of some music critics getting more insufferable when writing about her is worth it when the bullied and culturally marginalized get to bop along to something telling them to hang in there and give some back.

[slightlyoffaxis]

I really shouldn't just jump in at the end of this, and I should probably keep my mouth shut because I really don't care about Lady Gaga, but isn't it kind of mean to call the opposite of the "queens" the "drags?" Sorry, all you closeted, self-loathing, or suicidal people...you're all just such a drag! Just snap out of it already.

[freakjaw]

Sure, maybe. I could understand if somebody said it was indelicate or insensitive. If somebody called me a drag in conversation it'd bum me out. But this isn't conversation, it's a riff on the phrase "drag queen" in a song that seems otherwise quite affectionate and supportive, by a person who very publicly identifies with the people she's singing to/about. So while I assume the LGBT community is varied enough that there have been plenty of different reactions, and this is an instance where mine actually isn't as valuable as theirs, my read is that the line isn't telling the "drags" that there is something wrong with them, but that there isn't and don't let anybody tell you different.