Lady Gaga and the Toddler Princess
When asked, she says, proudly, “I’m two and a half!” She is interested in distinct and indistinct. She is interested in the parsing of the world—letters, symbols, and time. Clocks. What day is it? What time is it? Where are we going?
She’s also interested in gender. She corrects herself. I am a big boy—I mean, a big girl. Her interest is so simple, so guileless that it pulls me in. How interesting bows are, and ribbons—the many ways we fasten our clothing!
“I am a princess! I am a princess!” is now often the first thing she says in the morning.
I’m thinking of all of this as I read Rachel Rosenfelt’s great piece on Lady Gaga in Pop Matters. Rachel writes: "With the rest of the would-be mass culture riding the greased slide of Web 2.0’s “long tail” into relative obscurity, Lady Gaga’s massive popularity suggests that the disappearance of the mainstream has been a deeply felt loss for culture at large. Gagaism has all the intensity of backlash, because that is precisely what it is: pop culture’s response to the disorientation of normlessness, the outburst of a complaint simmering in our collective unconscious."
Of course, the desire to be a princess is, at this point, primal, primary, atavistic. It infects the 2-year-old girl and must leave a lingering strain that can be triggered later in life by the reality shows we watch, Sex and the City, sparkles, high heels.
I YouTube Gaga videos; I watch. Madonna circa 1984 seems innocent in her challenging of female archetypes. There is something more cynical and desperate in these videos.
From Princess to Gaga, girls today have such a distance to cover.
She’s also interested in gender. She corrects herself. I am a big boy—I mean, a big girl. Her interest is so simple, so guileless that it pulls me in. How interesting bows are, and ribbons—the many ways we fasten our clothing!
“I am a princess! I am a princess!” is now often the first thing she says in the morning.
I’m thinking of all of this as I read Rachel Rosenfelt’s great piece on Lady Gaga in Pop Matters. Rachel writes: "With the rest of the would-be mass culture riding the greased slide of Web 2.0’s “long tail” into relative obscurity, Lady Gaga’s massive popularity suggests that the disappearance of the mainstream has been a deeply felt loss for culture at large. Gagaism has all the intensity of backlash, because that is precisely what it is: pop culture’s response to the disorientation of normlessness, the outburst of a complaint simmering in our collective unconscious."
Of course, the desire to be a princess is, at this point, primal, primary, atavistic. It infects the 2-year-old girl and must leave a lingering strain that can be triggered later in life by the reality shows we watch, Sex and the City, sparkles, high heels.
I YouTube Gaga videos; I watch. Madonna circa 1984 seems innocent in her challenging of female archetypes. There is something more cynical and desperate in these videos.
From Princess to Gaga, girls today have such a distance to cover.
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