The Gaga Act
or How the denunciation of a myth empowers the myth itself.
An essay about pop-art, the avant-garde and Lady Gaga.
Who shot Candy Warhol?
This is the subtitle of Gaga's video "The Heart", which was part of her first tour, the "Fame Ball Tour". It directly announces the dialogue between Lady Gaga and pop-art. What is pop-art? The exposition of popular culture as is, as a form of art. A playful yet serious take on what we define as art, and what we define as industrial mass consumption products. What Gaga does goes beyond that. She exposes the products of industrial consumption, but at the same time, she is one of those products. One could see this as a "Mise en abyme" of popular culture by itself. The product exposing itself, exposing itself, exposing itself... Lady Gaga acts as both the critic and the subject, while being the subject of critics for everyone else. An "everyone else" she also embodies and criticizes in her works. It is a double take on pop culture and fame, an embrace and a public hanging. In that regard, by not being external to the source product, Lady Gaga could be considered as "Post Pop-Art". A self-referencing pop-art act that goes beyond the exposure, that goes at the very source of it's subject. Andy Warhol being Marylin Monroe, or a soup can.
So, who killed Candy Warhol? The Lady herself? Or is it a suicide of pop culture? What made Lady Gaga? The Lady and her fans (and haters) cannot function without each other. Gaga is a fame monster. Her fans are fame monsters. She is giving the most synthetised, yet the most genuine pop-act of our time. Everything is about the illusion of fame, the illusion of originality, the illusion of reality. And her fans are craving it, fully aware of the monstruosity that it is. She is a self-produced monster, but devoid of existence outside of her public's psyche.
The transparency of lies.
The Lady is a lie. A living, walking lie. And never lying about it. This shows the hermetic duality of the persona. Everything about her, the costumes, the music, the videos, the public appearances are acts of theatrality, acts of lies. But then, if a lie is taken to the next level and becomes a full-time act, it starts blending the lines between truth and fiction, purpose and actions. The Lady Gaga is an entity that functions by itself, in it's own conception of the world. It does not need to be compared to the rest of the industry, as it synthetises everything about it. So the lie also becomes the truth, never stopping switching roles. It is a mirror placed in front of a mirror. If both mirrors were to break, it would be impossible to understand what piece is a reflection and what piece is not. Or, at least, a tough excercise of perception.
Is that paradox at the avant-garde of arts philosophy? Hard to say. Lady Gaga, using tricks and tools from the past, ended up creating a montage of schizophrenic proportions. A big thievery disguised as an offering. And she knows it, she admits it, and forces it down our perception. An offering to the world, and to herself. Her meteoric rise to superstardom shows this kind of illusion has been lacking in the pop horizon for quite some time, it seems.
Some persons adore the Lady, others loathe her. But she's all inviting us to the most perverse relationship we can have with superstars. She will willingly create lies that will feed both her army of little monsters and the rest, so that everyone keeps wanting a part of the Gaga. That's not a superstar, in fact, that's a supernova and everything gets sucked in. The Lady plays on all fronts: Fans are drooling for her persona, clubbers are high on her "four-to-the-floors", fashion critics are mesmerised by her clothes, conspiracy theorists have all they need of symbolism to keep thinking, concerned moms have all the sex needed to keep worrying, and so on. All of this being, as the Lady herself said, nothing but blatant lies, constructed needs and solutions. A new kind of mathematics where the answer and the equation are both false, yet still equal between themselves. In that regard, the Gaga act is at the very front of Avant-Gardism.
The implications of the act.
A collection of questions about and because of the Gaga.
Will we, as a public, still let place for non-self-referencial pop acts?
What will "kill" Lady Gaga? (As a reference to the first part of this essay)
Is the Gaga a masterwork of pop-art, or just the tip of "post pop-art"?
How a mirror of our time can produce new ideas.
Further readings.
