Lady Gaga Is Going Down or Breaking Out

Since a major theme of this blog is commentary on culture, it would be an injudicious oversight of me to not talk about the hottest cultural icon at the moment: Lady Gaga, aka Stefani Germanotta. In talking with people about her, the most comment remark I hear is, “Yeah, she’s cool, but weird. Really weird.” This is true, as she approaches stardom from, what some would say, far left field. Others would say she’s not even in a ballpark, that she’s off on her own planet. Regardless, her pop image, dance-oriented music, and rise to fame are worth examining, as is her worldview.

Since exploding onto the world pop scene in late 2008, Lady Gaga has fast become a household name. Her songs incessantly catchy and her music videos decidedly brilliant yet weird/creepy, she has garnered enough fame to work with numerous other artists, including Beyonce and Brittney Spears. She’s on pop radio twice an hour, TV loves her, and eight million of her records have found a place in households worldwide. But is she a legitimate artist, or just another flash-in-the-pan pop phenomenon?

It’s easy to draw parallels from Gaga to other pop stars such as David Bowie, Madonna, and the late King of Pop. Indeed, Lady herself connects those dots. Some could even claim that she a a gothic Christina Aguilera of the era when she was singing songs like “Fighter” and making music videos of boys’ kissing. Despite Lady’s professions of raw originality, however, her image is merely a glossy amalgam of her own pop idols. Outrageous fashions and the quirky appeal to the marginalized of early Ziggy-era Bowie, unabashed bad-girl sexuality and proto-feminism of Madonna, and the slick production, coordinated dance moves, and seamless choreography of MJ, are all fused together in a girl who can actually sing, produced by people who are thoroughly schooled in pop psychology, and dispensed to the masses radio single after radio single. A grueling tour of live shows, in themselves grandiose productions not un-derserving of a Tony Award, support her recent album, The Fame Monster. She proudly proclaims that she lives for the show, that she revels in the glitter and drama and sound of it.

For Lady Gaga, fashion and music are one and the same. She has said that she writes songs based on an image of an outfit she has in her head; her songs are an excuse to wear something outrageous on stage. Each of her music videos feature her in no less than five outfits, and her taste in dress ranges from avant-garde pop diva to back alley prostitute to haute couture fashion model. Nothing is off limits, from a faux-nostalgic 1950’s dress to her monster ball outfit evoking the image on anime princess, or even a bra that spits sparks, if it fits her vision for art, she wears it. Makeup, outfit, props; the whole shebang is planned and executed in style.

While this is all grand and exciting, I can’t help but wonder what the overarching goal is. Especially in light of her newest single, “Bad Romance,” I have an uneasy feeling about where her career is headed. There is an inherent danger in living just for the show and soaking up the pleasures of a hedonic lifestyle; if you go and paint the town red, you will eventually run out of paint. As much as Gaga admires Bowie and his artistry, Bowie now is a far cry from the Bowie of the Ziggy, Thin White Duke, or “Let’s Dance” fame. He ran out of steam by the eighties and nearly crashed, resulting in him toning down his pop star image. If Lady Gaga thinks she can have all of the fun and none of the consequences, she needs to think again, because as it stands now, I see three possible directions that her career could go.

First, and least interesting, is that, despite her claims, that she is merely a cultivated pop icon whose script is written by record labels, no different from Ms. Spears. This would be incredibly disappointing for her fanbase, and detract a great deal from her ‘raw’ image.

Much more interesting and, in my opinion, necessary for the survival of her music career, is if Ms. Germanotta played Lady Gaga like Bowie played Ziggy; a pop act, no doubt, but an act that arrived, gained fame, and then left. Ziggy was a monstrous success - one that would probably have destroyed Bowie’s career should he have continued to play him. Bowie no doubt lost some fans because of the move, as would Ms. Stefani, but considering the alternative, I think it would be a wise move.

Equally interesting but decidedly hopeless is the possibility that Lady Gaga is all there is. I say ‘hopeless’ because, as I see it, her current persona - exemplified by the lyrics of (celebrating an emotionally parasitical and mentally unstable relationships) and accompanying video to “Bad Romance” - as unsustainable. That video (and other videos like it) is not the work of someone who is opening up new creative avenues; it is the aestheticization of a pop star’s destruction. Lady Gaga got the fame she wanted - the question is how long can she hold onto it? And if she does hold onto it, in which new, exciting direction will she take it?

_DZ

We Are Not The Twitter Generation!

In my article yesterday I dished out some elbows to the ribs of a Mr. John Pike. Today I will be throwing more elbows, but I have to be careful less I turn into a large, maleficent cephalopod. I don’t want to say that Mr. Pike is misguided, however I would not be surprised if he made it a habit of wearing camo pants that had zippers. I’m just sayin’.

The main source of my irritation is this quote that he had in a recent article: "I'm not sure it's true for the Twitter generation."

He called survey respondents under 30 “the Twitter generation.”

NOhohoho. Absolutely not. I refuse. You cannot take a free internet service that came out less than two years ago and use it to label a generation that lived for 28 years before it. My objections to this are two-fold.

First, my generation will not be defined by a convenient, free service. We were around when you had to pay for CDs to get music, before filesharing and BitTorrent. We were around before DVDs. We remember when playing video games with “good graphics” meant going to an actual arcade. Not everything was delivered to us.

Second, we will not be defined by anything on the Internet. We are not the Facebook generation, the MySpace generation, or even (heaven forbid) the Xanga generation. All of our formative years came before that time. The Internet was not mainstream when were were growing up, so calling us with time-appropriate names like the “Netscape generation” or the “dial-up” generation won’t work either.

So what are some names I am OK with? The Mario Kart generation. Perhaps the N64 generation. The Oklahoma City Bombing generation (I kid, I kid). The ADD generation.

We are a generation playing catch-up. The high-tech industry exploded, and we are led with promises of a new and faster everything just around the corner. When I was in seventh grade it was incredible that you could buy a complete and capable home computer for under $1,000. That was also the year that CPU speeds topped 1GHz. You can’t even give those computers away now. We are in a world where what we have is obsolete and what we want will be.

But whatever we are, Mr Pike is dead wrong. We are not the “Twitter generation.” The “Twitter generation” isn’t even old enough to read his quote.

_DZ

Isolationism and The Growing Disgust with Old Media

I want to highlight an article about isolationism today, not because I have particularly strong feelings about the subject, but rather to highlight poor quality journalism. I highly encourage you to read this article, written by Rick Montgomery and syndicated by the Pioneer Press, for a solid alternative to The Onion. It covers American public opinion of the USA being “world police” and is not only unworthy of front page news (which it was, right below a big picture of the Vikings losing), but is altogether unworthy of publication.

The article starts off in a wary yet reserved tone, saying that, “talk of a ‘new isolationism’ is spreading”, and that “it seems to be happening across the political spectrum.” Ok, so we don’t know anything yet. There are some rumors going around.

But wait, Montgomery claims that “public trepidation toward the rest of the world [is] spiking to historic highs”! On what research does he base this claim? Two poll questions were asked to Americans, and the results were, and I quote, either “[the U.S.] should mind its own business internationally” or “‘we should go our own way’ and not worry whether other nations disagree.”

But wait, you say, those questions are vague! Don’t worry, Montgomery AND the pollsters agree with you! So why is this an article if they’re reporting on vague questions? There is a qualifier: “But when similar questions were asked in 1964, not even one in five Americans thought going it alone or staying out were good ideas.”

This tells me only that people forty-six years ago were more hesitant to answer vague questions. That people today are more interested in expressing their opinion than wondering about whether or not they are making good sense.

Obviously Montgomery was getting nowhere, so he decided to get an “expert,” Mr. John Pike, from GlobalSecurity.org (brought to you by Nissan and Google AdSense). His site is basically a news aggregator and military portal, rife with advertising and poorly designed site navigation buttons. Anyway, Mr. Pike has some interesting things to say, including that older generations are more likely to approve of American meddling in foreign affairs because of their experience with WWII. According to him, the idea that America had a right to get involved overseas was, “just self-evidently true.” Dropping heavy phrases like that, ladies and gents, is clearly the ticket to joining a “defense think tank.”

The fun doesn’t stop there! Take this short paragraph for another example: “Just five years ago, 45 percent of Americans in a survey for the Council on Foreign Relations said the nation's role as a "world leader" was more important than it had been a decade earlier. In a recent poll, only 25 percent said so.”

I always thought five years was a pretty recent poll, but it turns out I’m wrong. So how recent is this poll? They don’t say.

But not to worry, because Karlyn Bowman, poll tracker at the American Enterprise Institute, assures us that she’s "confident (the surveys) are tapping something real." Of course she’s confident! If the paper had actually done its job, you’d see that Karlyn’s employer’s full name is actually the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. If Karlyn isn’t confident, she has no job. She’s biased.

People wonder why big media is struggling, and why this hip, young generation gravitates towards blogs and shows like The Colbert Report. You want to know why? Because those outlets aren’t governed by a need to create news where there is none. A blog can report once a day or fifteen times. The Colbert Report culls stories that are interesting from other sources. Meanwhile, newspapers like the Pioneer Press need to fill space to justify all the advertising they run in their pages. The result is these kind of meaningless stories, and the result of that is me and others like me reading less newspapers. But wait, hold on, here comes a pollster asking me about my reading habits!

_DZ

SkyMall and Targeted Advertising: Are You a Target?

A recent flight to my parents house ( I wanted to avoid snow-filled ditches this Christmas season) reminded me how interesting traditional targeted advertising can be.

If you have ever flown, you have no doubt browsed through the SkyMall catalogue thoughtfully placed in the seatback in front of you. I’ve never ordered anything out of it, partly because I don’t know how, but mostly because everything in its pages is overpriced luxuries. Flipping through them you will find a replica of Tutankhamun’s chair, plated in gold leaf, for $900. Also featured is an ultraviolet dental sanitizer and, I am not making this up, a telekinetic obstacle course ($99.95). You can buy a Mt. Rushmore garden stature ($39.95) or even a 14k gold bracelet with Philippians 4:13 engraved on it. ($1,798). This stuff is beyond ridiculous.

Pictured enjoying all these products are neat, well-dressed people with plastic smiles. Every car you need to accessorize is clean and shining, and every home needing embellishment is bright, airy, and orderly. It’s almost like the people who live in them are never home.

But what if “people who are never home” is actually the targeted demographic? The question that every commercial should beg of us is, “To whom is this product targeted?” After all, marketers want to make money, and no money will be made if a well-crafted ad falls on an uninterested audience.

As I browse through the SkyMall pages I see three categories of luxury products: those to ease travel, those to ease business, and those to improve/enrich home life and atmosphere. Some of the items are no doubt intended as gifts, while others are for personal use. The catalogue houses all categories of products, from clothes and toys to appliances and collectibles. It is also placed on a plane, where the most repeat exposure will be to business travelers - some of whom fly three or four times a week. The main impression I get from browsing through it is that these are all items for people who have lots of money but no time.

This prompts two questions that need to be discussed. First, Do people actually need this stuff? And second, is this the kind of target audience I want to become? If having a lot of money, enough to throw away on luxuries, means not having enough time, do I want money? is it a fair trade? Everything in this catalogue is a meant as a substitute for time spent. Don’t hang out with your dog enough? Buy him a huge helmet-shaped dog house ($480). Missed your wife’s birthday on business? An expensive necklace should do the trick.

Making fun of a lavish lifestyle is all well and good, but there is an important point to be made here. There will always be more stuff to buy. There will always be no shortage of people trying to separate you from your money. But amidst all of that, it is vital to realize that you are always a target market. And what you decide to watch, listen to, and browse will reflect what type of advertising you are exposed to. The question is, Do you want to be the person that advertisers think you are?

_DZ

If you understand this sentence, sasuga

A recent blog post by jibtv blogger Anna Kunnecke got me thinking about uniquely Japanese words. Her deconstruction of the word bimyou highlights what is so hard about the Japanese language - that is is full of words that represent abstract ideas. Bimyou is definable, but depending on the context will mean different things. Anna has already written about that word, so I will turn my attention to a different word: sasuga (流石).

Sasuga is one of those words that Japanese ex-pats love to drop when talking with other ex-pats. (One of them even uses it as a clever title for his blog.) It can be an adjective or an adverb, and is defined something along the lines of “clever, adept, good, expectations, as one would expect.” Example dialog: “Did you just see what Gary did!? He climbed that 50-foot fence using only his arms!” “Ooh! Sasuga Gary!”

This use of sasuga would be appropriate if Gary had a penchant for climbing things with only his arms, but had never attempted something as tall as 50 feet. You would expect Gary to top his old record.

Sasuga also carries the connotation that you would not expect anything less of a person, and in this context can be used to create a humorous situation out of a decidedly maladroit action. If you already expected someone to screw up, uttering a sarcastic "Sasuga!" when they do something like this is appropriate.

It’s this dichotomy that makes sasuga a joy to utter and a bane to hear, because the the word can either be praising or belittling with no audible difference in intonation. You just don’t know. You don’t know if your friend is praising you or veiledly saying, “Surprise surprise, you lived up to what we thought you could do.”

In this way sasuga is brothers (or sisters, if you prefer) with the term atarimae, which means ‘expected’, ‘reasonable’ or ‘blatantly obvious.’ In Tokyo, for instance, it is atarimae that the trains run on time. Knowing the connotations of atarimae is extremely helpful, because if someone does something that is atarimae only to receive a reply of “sasuga,” then it is likely a sarcastic comment.

All this to say that when a foreigner new to the country hears the phrase “sasuga gaijin(foreigner),” they have no way of knowing whether or not it is a complement, because they have not yet learned what is atarimae and what is not. It’s one of those things you have to, as Anna says, take as a quicksilver-kind of word and go with the flow until you can determine the context. And if you figure out the context more quickly than your other gaijin friends, then I have one thing to say.

Sasuga!

_DZ

Dann writes from his home in snowy Minnesota, where sasuga is the correct response to -15F weather.

My Top Six Albums Going Into 2010

Chelsea Walls Soundtrack - Jeff Tweedy

I bought this CD over two years ago for ¥100 in Tokyo only because it had the words “Jeff Tweedy” on the side of it. I have still never seen the movie it was made for, nor do I own any Wilco albums. Nonetheless, this album is very enjoyable to listen to, with its mostly-instrumental lineup punctuated by poignant songs. Highlights include Jimmy Scott’s cover of Lennon’s “Jealous Guy” and Robert Sean Leonard’s contribution on “The Lonely 1”. Overall a very relaxing album to put on after a long day.

Electric Tears - Buckethead

After an initial listen I discarded this instrumental album as uninteresting and unworthy of Buckethead. After I let it sit on my shelf for a while I gave it another chance. Color me impressed! The whole album has almost no accompaniment, with Buckethead instead choosing to layer acoustic and electric guitar tracks to create a hollow and dreamy soundscape which he then fills with peaceful melodies and gentle guitar noodling. Standout tracks are “All in the Waiting”, “Mustang”, “Witches on the Hearth”, and “Kansas Storm”.

Everything That Happens Will Happen Today - David Byrne and Brian Eno

Prompted to buy the album by the hit single “Strange Overtones”, this was one of the my favorite albums of the year. It sounds like it belongs in the 80s, back when Byrne and Eno were making ...Bush of Ghosts. (Not being able to buy that album this year might drive me nuts.) The song-writing is top-notch throughout, as is Byrne’s tone and Eno’s sonic atmospheres. Best of all, this doesn’t sound like two guys collaborating because they know that anything with their name on it will sell. It sounds fresh; like they exploring new avenues. These guys have worked together for close to twenty years, and are still able to produce a fun album like this. Go them.

Mr Big - Mr Big

This might be the only album I bought because of the bassist. After hearing Billy Sheehan’s work on David Lee Roth’s Eat’em and Smile, I wanted more bass. I own all four of Mr. Big’s albums, but this one still stands out, mainly because of the top-notch musicianship of Sheehan and guitarist Paul Gilbert. Their hallmark song, “Addicted To That Rush,” is four-and-a-half minutes of them trading solos and trying to out-shred each other. Overall, the songwriting is unremarkable, with popular themes being sex, partying, adolescent irresponsibility, dramatic heartbreak. Gilbert’s tone is flawless throughout, particularly during the solos of “Had Enough” and “Anything For You”, where it is nearly tear-jerking because, unlike his contemporaries, he chooses meaningful phrasing over trying to cram as many sixteenth-notes into a measure as possible.

Tales of the Inexpressible - Shpongle

Psytrance affectionado Shpongle’s sophomore effort, coming after their already-impressive debut Are You Shpongled?, is one of the best $5 AmazonMP3 deals I have bought. It’s trippy, it’s catchy, it’s playful, and, dare I say, it’s even more organic electronica than anything Infected Mushroom can produce. Granted, IM makes faster paced music that takes you with it, while Shpongle are more interested in creating engrossing electronic worlds for your mind to explore. Some might say that this makes Shpongle less focused, but I don’t think so. This whole album is a seamless experience, perhaps best described by a snippet of the lyrics from the “StarShpongled Banner”:

I am a shaman, magician

The sun is purple

3D dimensions

I am for mental extensions.

Ki - The Devin Townsend Project

Ki is the start of a new era for Townsend, as he, in his own words, “has stopped drinking and stopped smoking marijuana.” His previous work, notably with extreme hate-metal band Strapping Young Lad, was offset by the much more mellow Devin Townsend Band albums, one of which I reviewed last year. The two projects showed very different sides of Devin, perhaps rightly, as he had been diagnosed bipolar. SYL was, what Devin callled, “happens when someone who is predisposed to mental illness takes steady amounts of mind-altering drugs.” Devin has since has a life-changing experience, and hence the DTP and Ki. Devin is a man who makes half-albums, and by that I mean his albums are a seamless experience for half of the record. On Infinity it was the first five tracks, on Ocean Machine/Biomech it was the last half of the album, while on Terria various tracks are crafted around and link back to the nine-plus-minute long epic “Earth day.” Ki more or less follows the pattern, though the album follows more of a sensory-experience-type of curve, building with the first six tracks to the holistic set of tracks eight through eleven, with the final two tracks being a comedown. The climactic title track, clocking in at over seven minutes long, is a microcosm of the album, building layer upon layer of sound until the music explodes in all its glory (Devin’s operatic voice does the honors).

_DZ

2010: Goals for the New Year

Not buy any new music (really this time!)

Not drive my car (this should be interesting)

Study the works of Marcus Aurelius, David Thoreau, and Thomas Hobbes

Ride my bikes like crazy

Spend at least one hour a week in meditation (Thursday, perhaps)

Write a novel (50,000 words), or at least half of one.

Study the Biblical books of Philippians, Ecclesiastes, and John

No plans for the blog this year, as I want to be able to dedicate more time to writing on paper with a pen. I also plan to spend less time on the computer in general; hopefully Sunday-Tuesday can be computer-less days, or at least internet-less.

We’ll see what the year holds.

Ready, go!

_DZ