MTV bans Gaga and Beyonce's 'Telephone'

[schmevil]

MTV bans 'Telephone'. Few people notice. But serious faces now people, let's do a poll (yes, another one). Why did MTV (bother to) ban the video (considering it doesn't actually air videos)?

View poll: lolbanned!

The ~shocking video can be found under the cut, for all two of you who haven't seen it yet.

Comments

[schmevil]

I like Madonna, so that should tell you something. :) I don't think that art need be inauthentic or noncommercial to be art, and I don't have a problem with considering Madonna and Gaga to be very successful pop/performance artists who specialize in shock and seamless showmanship. Not saying that there's a ~deeper message to be found in their work because both are very much about the surface message (fashion, gender, sex, power). But I've always had a tremendous amount of fun picking apart these kinds of performances - I find them fascinating, as well as fun, even when I can See What They Did There.

And as cliche as it is, I don't think you can dismiss the social influence that performers like Madonna and Gaga have. Gaga's a pop cultural bellwether - I mean, there's a reason we have Gaga now, and not ten years ago - and some of the thorniest knots of contemporary sexual politics are being mapped on to her. Her lack of deeper public identity makes that possible, but I don't think that means we should discount her... artistic agency in the process.

I don't know, I'll get back to you on this. I have a lot of Thoughts On Gaga that I'm slowly hammering into some semblance of argumentative order.