GAGAPOLYPSE: Criticism

By Devin O’Neill

I have become Lady Gaga, and she has become me. Long live the new flesh.

I’m having an increasing amount of difficulty, because of her, telling what’s good and what isn’t anymore. This is because, to me, she represents a personal evolution in aesthetics. Not a wide cultural one. I’m not comfortable generalizing this outside of my subjectivity.

But a personal one. I could visit the lush landscapes of her videos over and over. Not because they contain intrinsic value, but because I’ve allowed her to become slotted into places in my neurology usually reserved for religious worship. Though the images appeal to me, they appeal to me via her dimensions as a mythological creature. I want her to be the ultimate symbol of human potential, so she is. The transmutation of the Eucharist takes place.

This is not a difficult leap to make. She’s openly discussed her own self-conscious deification, and the role of faith in her becoming. She has said that her work is a lie so beautiful that her fans make it true. This is the very model of faith, a model to be transcended only when I become a god myself.

Yes, the dream of Fame has infected even me. She told me that we’re all superstars, and I believed her.

This is the new aesthetics: the transfiguration of personal object and experience by baptism in the hyperreal. We have the perfect machinery to make our own gods, and we’re each afraid to use it. You’re afraid to use it.

There is no media of personal power, despite what we’ve been told about the internet’s potential vis a vis the collective voice of the populace. We still don’t understand our power. We’re still afraid of it.

This lack of comprehension manifests as judgement. There are products of culture, and these products of culture are deemed to be either products of culture with merit or products without. Cultural products worthy of critical attention or products unworthy. Cultural products that fascinate and rivet us or bore and disgust us. We decide this, and we write our critical and evaluative thoughts, either in the form of catty YouTube comments or published academic papers, yet we have very little firsthand understanding of how these products get made. If we weren’t so afraid, we’d be producing our own cultural products. When discussing an entity like Gaga, published articles and Facebook updates are basically of equivalent value.

Into the midst of this frantic taxonomy, she stepped. She is irritatingly evasive, because she pretends to just enough violation of pop formula to be deemed interesting by those conscientious excavators of counterculture, academics. Also, academics want an excuse to enjoy pop music. She provides them that excuse.

But why do we need an excuse to enjoy pop music?

Here is where, for me, the situation begins to break down. I used to understand why Katie Perry was “bad”, why Ke$ha was “bad”, why Britney Spears was “bad”. I have unlearned that understanding. Have I been programmed, or deprogrammed? Have the marketers of mass culture gotten to my brain at last? Or has something far more sinister happened?

I vote the second thing. I have stopped seeing it as creatively productive to judge things the way I used to. I’ve become what they call a “fan”.

The above commercial reveals the missing link in people’s evaluation of Mother Monster: the experience of fandom. We want a superstar, so we’ve made one. Even she realizes that’s what’s going on; she talks about it all the time. But it doesn’t matter, because we still need it. We still need to believe this vision of a superwoman that she’s created, a person who gives everything she’s got to inspire the fans she cherishes. A person who exemplifies our best desires about ourselves. A person who cares. About me.

This is where the cynicism is supposed to come in, of course. She’s not doing this for you. she’s doing it for the money.

No. I’ve arrived at the point where I believe her mission. I believe her when she says she actually cares about her fans. Just doing it for the money? We’re all in it for the money. We would all like to be in her shoes, doing what we love for a paycheck. There are far more difficult jobs, but there are far, far easier ones, too. She’s breaking her back. What she does takes an enormous amount of ambition and puts her under an enormous amount of pressure. People act like she’s pretending not to be an entertainer. She’s an extraordinarily hardworking entertainer. And she knows it.

But let’s assume you think she’s lying. You’ll find it doesn’t matter: what’s important is that she projects the image that she’s a hardworking every-girl who’s managed to make herself into this extraordinary creature. In this context, even her flaws become signs of her humanity, evidence that we can relate to her, signals that she’s just like us.

Of course she wants fame and success and acceptance. She says she does. And so do you. And she knows you do. And what she’s telling you is, that’s okay.

I don’t feel I have the luxury of criticism. I’ve just graduated college, and I have no idea what’s going to become of me. I doubt everything from the security of my future to the authenticity of the human relationships I’ve formed over the past four years to the validity of my artistic efforts. I have nothing left to hold on to, and I’m apparently a much weaker person than I though I was. I’ll take whatever ray of hope I can get. I don’t listen to her ideas about hope and perseverance and loving yourself so much as I cling desperately to them.

The first time I saw that television commercial, I started crying. Even though it’s a television commercial. Even though it’s supposed to be a cynical, manipulative appeal to my wallet, it made me cry. I actually teared up. Because at the end of the day, we’re all engaged in the commercial enterprise. We buy things at stores, we try to sell ourselves to employers. She’s on the same sinking ship that everyone else is on, but she’s managed to inject a little humanity into that world, and she’s trying to get us to do that same thing. You can call it crass commercialism, but I can wander around my neighborhood and go days without experiencing the kind of humanity she communicated through that television commercial.

I’ve read article after article and Facebook update after update concerning irritation over Gaga’s: “edgyness” (“she’s trying too hard”). Her “politics” (“she’s trying too hard”). Her “crazy videos” (again, “she’s trying too hard”). What nobody can tell me is exactly what it is she’s trying.

Fame, right. That’s what it is. She’s trying to be famous. Even she admits it. She’s such an attention whore. It’s so predictable. It’s so passe. So cliche.

And it’s working.

This is the kink in all that criticism: WHY IS IT WORKING?

If she has nothing new to say, then WHY IS THE ENTIRE WORLD OBSESSED WITH HER?

WHY ARE WE EVEN HAVING THIS CONVERSATION?

She’s a good pop musician. That’s one reason. Because at the end of the day, we like to watch her, we like to hear her, we like to experience her. Even if we’re just experiencing our hatred of her.

But beyond that: it’s because she cares.

This is really all just speculation. I’m just trying to justify the fact that I’ve watched the Judas video ten times, at least, since it’s been out. But I have, see. Watched it ten times, I mean. At least. It’s so stimulating, and the images in it are captivating. Sure, it’s the whole Mary madonna/whore thing all over again. Sure, dicking with biblical tropes courts cheap controversy. Every predictable, boring criticism we all knew was going to be leveled at this video has been leveled at it. Now that everyone’s shut up, I can finally watch the damn thing. Because the video is gorgeous. Because it’s her, my hero, kicking ass, again.

The fact that she’s only my hero because I made her that way is the most important part of the equation. Because in that world, I could be a hero to millions of people too. You could be.

See, all that cataloging of the itsy bitsy tropes and minutia in her videos pales in comparison to the reality of the fan’s experience. Because she doesn’t just represent the apparent symbols she uses, to us. She represents our own potential, and she’s said over and over that that’s exactly what she’s trying to represent. She’s crafted music and visuals and performances, but more important than that is the fact that she’s crafted a fan experience: something people can imitate, participate in, and project their own value onto. People that characterize her discourse as limiting aren’t listening to her, and they aren’t looking at her in the right way. It’s just like drugs: you have no business evaluating an experience you haven’t had. The only proper way to experience her is as a fan, because that is part of the work.

It’s all about faith. As the great George Michael put it, you’ve got to have faith.

To wake up in the morning, to create a life for yourself and your loved ones out of nothing, and to face a cold and uncaring universe with nothing but your tools in your hands and determination in your eyes. And then to go jogging with your headphones on. And then to dance.

You’ve just got to have faith.

Thank you, Lady Gaga, for giving me my faith back.

(Originally published on www.popocalypse.com)

Author Bio:

Devin O’Neill is a writer, performance artist, PR practitioner, and compulsive liar (what’s the difference?) based in Long Beach, CA. He enjoys things he shouldn’t, on purpose, and tries to get other people to enjoy them too. Some of his projects can be found at http://www.popocalypse.com/ and at http://devinoneill.blogspot.com/.

Click here to follow Gaga Stigmata on Twitter.

Click here to “like” Gaga Stigmata on Facebook.

GAGAGRAPHY: Gaga, "Judas," & Francis Bacon

Definition: Gagagraphy is the branch of Gaga studies that seeks to identify, describe, and interpret the content of images depicting Lady Gaga. A Gagagraphy studies all the various components of an image of Gaga, mining for meaning the image’s positioning of its figure, her gesture, her costume, her props (animate and inanimate), her facial expression, her makeup, etc. A Gagagraphy also studies potential visual precursors to images of Gaga, seeking to understand from where Gaga’s iconography draws its inspiration, its influences, its visual quotations. Gagagraphy often necessitates comparative analysis, drawing meaning from the exercise of comparing and contrasting Gaga’s images with her visual influences.

Directions: Meditate upon the following image of Gaga, taking into account its various components. Then compare and contrast Gaga’s image with Bacon’s artwork. Leave your analysis in the comments.

Fashion Credits: 

Purple catsuit and gloves by Mugler 

Cape by Perry Meek/Haus of Gaga

Fashion director, Nicola Formichetti

Francis Bacon, Figure With Meat (1954)

About this artwork, the Art Institute of Chicago notes:

Permeated by tormented visions of humanity, Francis Bacon’s paintings embody the ethos of the postwar era. Beginning in the late 1940s, Bacon created a series of works modeled on Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1649/50), in which he transformed the celebrated masterpiece into grotesque, almost nightmarish compositions. In this version, he replaced the noble drapery framing the central figure with two sides of beef, directly quoting Rembrandt van Rijn and Chaim Soutine’s haunting images of raw meat. By linking the pope with these carcasses, Bacon allowed the viewer to interpret the pope alternately as a depraved butcher, or as a victim like the slaughtered animal hanging behind him.

Diego Valázquez’s Pope Innocent X (1649/50) was a direct influence on Bacon’s painting, as was Rembrandt’s Carcass of Beef (1657):

“I kinda like this one, Bob. Leave it.” – The Joker

ECHOGRAPHY OF CHANGE - LADY GAGA & JULIE ANDREWS

by Saul Zanolari

Artist Statement:  Saul Zanolari presents his brand new portrait "Echography of Change" before the 2011 scheduled shows in NYC and Rome.

The subjects of this work are Lady Gaga and Julie Andrews. The artist plays on the oxymoron between tradition and transgression as represented by these two icons. This portrait has a Disney background but on the lower side the reading key becomes surgical and medical with an echography of a new Gaga "creature."

The original artwork is 79'x70' (200x180 cm), digital painting and acrylic on canvas.

Soon available a 100 limited edition print on paper 20'x18' (50x45 cm) on www.wollipeye.com.

Artist Bio: visit www.saulzanolari.com or www.wollipeye.com for more details.

Marketing Mother Monster

By Cheryl Helm

When Lady Gaga announced her deal with Zynga to create her own virtual playground (GagaVille) within Facebook’s popular Farmville game, there was a great deal of muttering about whether (a) she’s jumped the shark or (b) she’s sold out and has become just another commercialized pop product. My reaction was, “It’s hard to go off the reservation if you were never on the reservation to begin with.” In fact, Gaga has a pretty solid track record in circumventing the conventional marketing machinery of the music business when it comes to sharing and distributing her work, summarizing her philosophy in the interview with GoogleTalk:

“I don’t want to be a part of the machine. I want the machine to be part of me.”

The music business machine has a long history of mass-producing pop stars and teen idols who were, indeed, packaged and sold. Pop music early on acquired the cachet of a corporate product much like the Hollywood studio system (and built on that model), manipulating pop singers like puppets: choosing their clothes, styling their appearance, selecting their songs, managing their public appearances and performances, and handling all the advertising, including photo shoots and trade media ad campaigns. Disney was one of the earliest, and, one of the most (in)famous, pop-star factories and continues to be one today. It began in the late fifties when Disney figured out a way to capitalize on the rock-n-roll craze and still protect its brand as good, clean, wholesome fun (as a counterweight to the perceived sleaze and satanic temptation of rock n roll). Their formula was quite simple: find respectable, pretty and handsome white teenagers who could sing well enough not to inflict pain, and dance well enough to perform simple dance routines. Then record some bloodless, but virtuous, insipid pop songs and ta-da: Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon. The brand was Disney, and the product was a morally upstanding teenage role model and a sure-fire moneymaker until s/he was no longer so cute, or thin, or pliable.

There are certainly conventions to be observed in how a pop star is imaged and promoted – much like any brand. Photo shoots are utilized to create and enhance the star’s image, and to appeal to consumers to buy their records and attend their concerts. Brand endorsements are lucrative but even more importantly, they reinforce the pop star and hir music as products to be consumed. So in terms of music marketing and promotion, there is a reservation and most pop stars are on it.

And then there’s Gaga.

From the beginning, she was her own creator and her own advertiser. “Just Dance” got airplay because she promoted it herself, tirelessly and ceaselessly. The Fame succeeded because she was touring and campaigning for it before the first single even dropped. With precious little help from the music industry, she created her own brand, and the product is Gaga: her art, her vision, her passion, her conviction.

So it’s hardly surprising that most of Gaga’s promotional efforts are self-defined, self-controlled, and seldom conform to the industry models. That is, her promotional efforts are often art forms in and of themselves, part of her life’s grand performance, and/or what she perceives as her vocation to help bring about social justice for all. Even her records are largely promotional rather than end products; the real product is Gaga herself, on stage where she can be experienced, not consumed. In most of her promotional efforts, there is not a firm separation between the promotional activity and her performance project.

How does she do it?

Leveraging technology has always been part and parcel of Gaga’s aesthetic. She uses technology the way a painter uses watercolors, oils, acrylics, fabric, multimedia collages – as a medium for expressing and conveying her artistic visions, of which music is only one dimension, albeit the most important one. In other words, technology is only one palette, one of many avenues for both creating and sharing her work with her audiences. Her earliest shows were distinguished by the use of avant-garde films as interludes that also conveyed some element of her performance project, and also by such props as the now-famous GaGa glasses constructed with iPod LED screens to articulate part of her artistic message. The deployment of such technology has only become more extensive as her show has grown into a full-scale spectacular extravaganza.

Gaga uses social media to an unprecedented degree, and no other living artist has been as successful as she in employing Twitter and Facebook to build and support a growing fanbase that is fiercely loyal and willing to promote all her ventures. While other pop stars (Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Justin Bieber et al.) have followed suit, they tend to use Twitter as a virtual billboard to hawk their wares – asking their fans to buy products, attend performances, etc. Gaga simply announces that a new release is forthcoming, or an interview or performance has been scheduled, and her fans take on the responsibility of promoting it.

This type of viral marketing by word-of-mouth allows Gaga to completely control the content of her marketing AND builds a greater sense of unity, a sense of “us-ness” or “we-ness” that many of her fans don’t experience in their daily lives. Her fan base is built upon an army of disaffected, bullied, rejected, ridiculed, and socially-isolated people who are cut off from the normal experience of belonging within their peer groups. Her fans have embraced Gaga so avidly because she is one of them, an outsider who is still socially isolated from the mainstream music community and who is subject to a barrage of hateful comments on every media site that posts a story about her. Even though she has reached the heights of artistic achievement in pop music (and her trajectory is *still* climbing), she’s still the odd girl out, she’s still the misfit. Her fans know exactly how that feels and embrace her for it, creating a place where SHE belongs, in a spirit of love and acceptance.

Because in Gaga’s case there is mutual identification between the star and her fan base, her marketing efforts are driven by a desire to serve the community of “little monsters” as much as they are propelled by the need to sell her music, her art, her vision. GagaVille is an excellent example. With GagaVille, she has created a virtual playground for her fans and other users of Farmville who may not be familiar with her music – a place where her fans can create a virtual world of their own and populate it with elements that are personally meaningful. GagaVille reinforces the sense of community within the Gaga fan base as more users join the game, become neighbors, and share and exchange rewards and goods.

With its initial launch, Gaga used GagaVille to distribute exclusive content (songs from Born This Way), but the site has a limited shelf life, through May 26, 2011. However, given her passion for social justice, it’s quite possible that she may choose to extend GagaVille and use it in the future as a way to encourage her fans to become more active in fighting for equality, for their own rights and the rights of others. The potential for GagaVille to become a medium for motivating political and social activism is certainly there.

Additionally, by pre-releasing songs from Born This Way on GagaVille, Gaga managed to cut most leakers off at the knees, and thus did not experience the creative death of a thousand leaks – she employed GagaVille to release and distribute her songs before leakers could steal and post them. Although the album did eventually leak, one day before Gaga was to stream the entire record to fans in the UK through Metro (where she also, by the way, served for one day as a guest editor, a position she used as a platform to promote her educational program about bullying), the net effect has been to drastically undercut the leaking subculture that spoiled the rollout of her previous album, The Fame Monster.

Her latest promotional venture with Starbucks is, at first glance, a much more commercial campaign. Beginning May 19, 2011 and continuing through June 7, 2011, Starbucks is conducting a scavenger hunt featuring Lady Gaga. Store customers scan QR codes to obtain clues to use in the seven-round game, which involves math, logic, and reading skills, as well as pop-culture knowledge to decipher the clues. The game is designed to encourage group play, much as GagaVille is. The first players to solve all the clues in each round receive Starbucks merchandise and Lady Gaga promotional items. Much like Fuse TV takeovers featuring Gaga for a day (and for the Born This Way roll-out, an entire week), Gaga took over Starbucks’ digital network for a day on May 23, 2011, allowing visitors to stream the entire Born This Way album, obtain a digital download of “The Edge of Glory,” and view an exclusive video by Gaga.

Obviously the chief benefit to Gaga in this business deal is to promote sales and airplay for her album and its current single. The album was played in all Starbucks stores on May 23, 2011 (a first for the corporation), and is among the albums sold in the stores. But this deal also achieves an important social goal for Gaga by providing another technology-based means for her monsters to visit and participate as a group by discussing the clues and messages, which further fosters a sense of community among her fans.

In creating and advancing her project, Gaga also differs dramatically from her peers in the area of product endorsement. This technique in and of itself is not unique to Gaga; many pop stars are used as front women (and men) to market everything from clothing to perfume. But Gaga’s choice of what products to endorse, and her involvement in the creation or purpose of those products, are often strikingly different from her colleagues.

Corporations will often hire celebrities as “Creative Directors” to market a product that the celebrity has no actual involvement in creating. Their role is strictly that of a figurehead, putting a familiar face and name on the product. But not Gaga. In her own fashion, Gaga has inverted and reversed the role of such celebrity endorsement deals by creating her own product line (The Grey Line) for Polaroid. When Gaga accepted the position of “Creative Director” for Polaroid, she dove right in to the entire design process.

Together with the Haus of Gaga, she designed a pair of camera sunglasses that could record video or still photos and display them onscreen, a product that recalled her famous iPod glasses from The Fame era. Thus her own performance project bleeds into the design of a new product that is clearly directed, first and foremost, at her own fan base. You can be sure that in next year’s tour, she will look out into the audience and see hundreds, if not thousands, of Polaroid camera glasses displaying messages and images that are significant to her fans. And with this new product, her fans can create and literally reflect their own personal visions, media, and messages to Gaga and the world. This is creative empowerment at its best.

She also redesigned the iconic Polaroid camera for the digital age and incorporated inkless technology into the printing process. She rounded out her product line with a Bluetooth digital printer that can print images from the camera glasses, the Polaroid camera, and a cell phone. These products reflect Gaga’s personal and aesthetic commitment to sustain, re-imagine, reinvent, and reinvigorate iconic pop culture by recreating something that is both ever so familiar and yet so forward-looking at the same time. And it puts the power to create directly into the hands of her fan base.

The conventional marketing model for fragrances – another major product line often endorsed by celebrities – has been turned on its head with Gaga’s involvement in developing her own fragrance for Coty. While it’s likely that celebrities have some say in the fragrances developed for the product lines they endorse, Gaga chose the essential ingredient herself: the molecular structure of her own blood. Talk about bleeding one’s aesthetic into a product! This revelation certainly perpetuates Gaga’s reputation as a quirky, eccentric star who never trods a predictable path if she can avoid it.

It also explains a rather cryptic remark made during her ShowStudio interview in May 2010. Asked what was the nerdiest thing she’d ever done, she giggled and said that she and her Haus were trying to discover the effects of the smell of blood on people. Now we know why. And again, Gaga is creating something both unique and deeply personal directed toward her fans. It’s not just a fragrance for your skin. It’s the essence of Gaga herself….the ultimate bonding between star and audience.

Gaga’s passion for humanitarian and social justice causes is well-known, so her willingness to serve as spokesperson for the MAC Viva Glam products to raise funds for AIDS prevention and treatment is a natural extension of her personal commitment to such causes. In addition to using the products herself, she’s made several personal appearances to promote the cause that the products fund. In an interview on Good Morning America, she leveraged her fashion aesthetic by wearing a Mugler latex outfit, which she said was “condom inspired” because she wanted to talk about the issue of safe sex.

She also created a short video with Nick Knight for MAC Viva Glam that is itself a work of art. It features the Viva Glam products, uses a non-verbal message to promote safe sex, AND foreshadows several elements of the video for “Born This Way,” which was released some time later.

Viva Mac Lotus

"BTW" Lotus Spirals

Left: Viva Mac, Right: "BTW"

Spilt/mirrored-image face

Left: Viva Mac, Right: "BTW"

Backbends

Top: Viva Mac, Bottom: "BTW"

Stripteases

Once again, Gaga managed to blend her performance project with the endorsement of a commercial product line that promotes her own social and humanitarian values. Much like her music videos, Gaga uses every marketing opportunity to articulate some element of her overall aesthetic, to build layers of cultural references and commentary, and to nurture her community of fans – to intensify the personal bonds and create a larger, deeper sense of belonging and identity, a sense of us-ness that liberates them from their social isolation, out of which is born a new sense of freedom and creativity. She is nurturing the next generation of artists and designers, and the next generation of political activists and leaders who will change the world, one (commercial) project at a time.

Click here to follow Gaga Stigmata on Twitter.

Click here to “like” Gaga Stigmata on Facebook.

Holy Fool • Holy Scheiße

By Meghan Vicks 

The following is a companion piece to STIGMATAVISION 1: Holy Fool. 

Cause it’s a hard life, with love in the world.

And I’m a hard girl, loving me is like chewing on pearls.

When Lady Gaga sings “I’m just a holy fool” in “Judas,” she succinctly articulates the status she now occupies. Meaning, the role of the “holy fool” fittingly describes Gaga’s aesthetic and, especially, how the public reacts to her. Traditionally, the holy fool embodies the most squalid and debased of men, and, at the same time, the most godlike and perfect of men; what is most glorified is present in what is most sullied. Likewise, as we’ve written ad nauseum here at GS (we believe in honoring our vomit, too), Lady Gaga is another such figure who places sacred and meaningful aspirations in the most dismissed and illegitimate of today’s cultural figures, the pop starlet.

As artists, we are eternally heartbroken.

But the “holy fool” may also perfectly describe this phenomenon of academic and creative studies on Lady Gaga, which, in the first place, seek to take Gaga seriously as a subject of academic discourse (that is, we bring what is often regarded as the trash of culture [e.g. pop music and performance] into the space of high culture [academia]), and, in the second place, aim to challenge our own epistemological foundations, to reconsider what legitimate scholarship looks and reads like, just as Lady Gaga has forced us to reconsider (once again) what legitimate art looks and sounds likes. And as Lady Gaga’s spectacle, like the Holy Fool’s, often ignites people to outrage, to throw stones at such a figure who would dare to challenge the lines between the sacred and the profane, so we here at Gaga Stigmata provoke our readers to lash out just by engaging in an academic project that studies Lady Gaga. Stones are thrown from both sides of the line: by those who think we’re reading “too much” into Lady Gaga, who think we should just enjoy her project for what it is (meaningless but fun! pop music, they say); and by those who think we’re misappropriating theory, sullying that sacred thought by applying it to Lady Gaga’s hairbow or her video for “Born This Way.” These are the ones who advise us to use our talents for something that “matters,” or who tell us how disappointed they are that all this energy is being spent on a figure like Lady Gaga. How many times have we been offered the philosopher’s straightjacket? We’re writing our way to Bedlam, sullying with glitter the Ivory Tower, or spoiling the lighthearted pop party with our persnickety analyses that unearth much more in “Just Dance” than a simple party song.

Do you know the feeling, when your heart is so hurt, that you could feel the blood dripping?

However, we maintain that people’s reactions to Lady Gaga and our readers’ reactions to Gaga Stigmata say a great deal about how challenging and meaningful a figure like Lady Gaga actually is, and tell us much about what academic study like GS does: that is, both Lady Gaga and Gaga Stigmata make us uncomfortable precisely because they dare our epistemologies to uphold themselves, they challenge what we know about culture, knowledge, art, politics, gender, academics, music, etc. They threaten our precious borders, forcing us to encounter the abject – that impossible and unthinkable ambiguity that resides on the outside, in “the place where meaning collapses” (Kristeva 2). Gaga and GS bring us face-to-face with “a ‘something’ that [we] do not recognize as a thing. A weight of meaninglessness, about which there is nothing insignificant, and which crushes [us]. On the edge of nonexistence and hallucination, or a reality that, if [we] acknowledge it, annihilates [us]” (ibid). So we revolt (vomit), rage against their abject that so threatens our knowable world.

Of course, such reactions speak volumes about the public’s expectations of the pop star and academic discourse, but they are also, at times, a kind of sin. People self-righteously judge, call names, wish misfortune upon, condemn, censor, and lament both Gaga and GS. They throw stones, but do not pause to consider that maybe these stones are part of the point.

I don’t want the 5 dollars in your pocket, I want your soul.

A spectacle – either in pop music or in academic discourse – that forces people to react, that challenges basic assumptions, that merges the sacred and the profane. It is in this way that both Lady Gaga and Gaga Stigmata are reminiscent of the holy fool. For he resides precisely in the neverland between the sacred and the profane: he is the spectacle that performs against a Janus-faced background of official pomp of the state/church (//s academia) and ribald culture of folk laughter (//s Gaga). This notion of performance is central to both the hagiography of the holy fool, and to the popular understanding of the figure: his foolishness was often seen as his choice, as a willful acceptance of humiliation and suffering. His folly was therefore a deliberate spectacle of self-debasement, an intended kenotic performance through which his self was emptied and relinquished for the sake of the salvation of others.

The effects of this spectacle were many in form and single in intent – to variously bring the spectators closer to the divine. One desired effect was to lead the audience directly into sin, to encourage their taunts and abuses of the fool. The fool would then ask God’s forgiveness for their sins: “The ‘madman’ prays for forgiveness for his fellow ‘madmen’” (Murav 25). Another effect was to unmask and stage the degraded state of humanity, and its concurrent need for redemption. Again, the fool’s performance and spectacle comes to the forefront. A third effect was to provide a site of resistance against official culture in the figure of the fool. In all, the holy fool’s inverting and inverted figure and performance do not simply intend to demonstrate the relativity of existence, but endeavor to draw the sacred to the debased human world.

We are not just Art for Michelangelo to carve, he can’t rewrite the agro of my furied heart.

In the past few months leading up to the release of her sophomore album Born This Way, Gaga’s been repeatedly saying, “let the cultural baptism begin.” It’s time, she tells us, to clean culture of its sins, and Gaga herself is the kenotic figure through which this will happen. Like the holy fool whose spectacle reveals society’s degradation and actively affects its spectators, drawing them in and forcing them to react to the degraded culture embodied in the holy fool, ultimately rousing them to sin against him so that he can pray for their redemption, so Gaga provokes and challenges us, causes many of us to sin against her precisely so that the culture as a whole may be baptized – emptied of its sins through Gaga, who forces their release upon her figure. She invites us to stone her: rage against Gaga, so that she can cry for us. Empty your hatred upon her, so that she can pray for your redemption. The point is, the stones are necessary for the baptism to take place – the cultural baptism cannot occur if people keep hidden their various sins, prejudices, and hatreds. All these must be purged (vomit, again) in order for cultural cleansing.

I want the deepest, darkest, sickest parts of you that you are afraid to share with anyone because I love you that much.

We perform the role of the holy fool as well, finding the highest, most sacred meaning in this free bitch who makes millions singing pop music and trotting her bare ass all over creation. Our writings threaten some readers, forcing them to sin. And we shed tears. It therefore happens that stigmata of Gaga’s wounds have begun to bleed through our writings, strangle our words. Gaga Stigmata is shedding its italics, becoming literal, corporeal stigmata. We embody her – our criticism takes on her flesh and tears; we vomit her puke.

Like Kate in STIGMATAVISION 1, we break out in Gaga’s rash. It’s physiological, not just mental, this reaction/relationship to Gaga. This art/criticism makes us anxious precisely because it forces us to dress in our former wedding attire and confront those ideas/people/ideals to which we were once wedded and now can no longer be. We’ve evolved, and the blood spilling from our words and onto our wedding dresses is proof of the growing pains.

We work, so maniacally, to reconsider and revise what academic writing does and looks like, while loving so sincerely (like a spouse, maybe) the academy. We also love Lady Gaga, so much that when she bleeds on stage we feel blood soaking through our shirt, replacing the ink in our pens as we write our research. But we remember that love is like a brick, which is a lot like a stone – it can also build a house or sink a dead body.

Prejudice is a disease. And when they come for you, or refuse your worth, I will be ready for their stones. I belong to you.

So throw your stones: give us this day, our daily Scheiße. We’ll take it to the Electric University, light it up in those ivory halls. Let the academic baptism begin.

Click here to follow Gaga Stigmata on Twitter.

Click here to “like” Gaga Stigmata on Facebook.

STIGMATAVISION 1: HOLY FOOL

By Kate Durbin

STIGMATAVISION EPISODE #1: FORTHCOMING FRIDAY MAY 20

Untitled Painting

by Jarrad Dickson

Artist Statement: The use of blood from a so-called "mentally ill" person, mis-diagnosed with schizophrenia, fits a significant theme in Lady Gaga's work: to rectify those with disabilities. Jarrad Dickson has painted Lady Gaga in his own blood, in an effort to reclaim what is his. This painting was created in mid-2010.

Artist Bio: Jarrad Dickson received his BA in Latin at the University of Auckland. He is the author of Rose Blood: Chapter of Rose Croix (Chipmunkapublishing, 2010-one of three books being literary endearments to a suicide), The Chamber of Diseases (Dark Harvest Occult Publishers, 2011-forthcoming) about psychiatric corrosion of the ego leading to selflessnes of the mentally ill. He also has written a work named Mystical Metaphors: Psychotic Pathways to the Source on what Deikman labeled mystical psychosis with Dan L. Edmunds, a psychotherapist from PA. He is an aspiring author, artist, and occultist. He has his own Lady Gaga academic project forthcoming, on the occult references in her work. He was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia, and has been incarcerated for over one year in psychiatric hospitals altogether since the age of 20, now 24, and was chemically lobotomised by the typical antipsychotic Haloperidol. He is writing his first commercial novel, Stop, the Ambulance with a ex-Scottish Rite Freemason of 32degree being its symbologist about the cabbalistic "crossing of the abyss" in a horror setting. He has visions, and induced them into books to form a new term of his "literary psychosis." He lives in New Zealand.

GAGAGRAPHY: Gaga & Fellini

Definition: Gagagraphy is the branch of Gaga studies that seeks to identify, describe, and interpret the content of images depicting Lady Gaga. A Gagagraphy studies all the various components of an image of Gaga, mining for meaning the image’s positioning of its figure, her gesture, her costume, her props (animate and inanimate), her facial expression, her makeup, etc. A Gagagraphy also studies potential visual precursors to images of Gaga, seeking to understand from where Gaga’s iconography draws its inspiration, its influences, its visual quotations. Gagagraphy often necessitates comparative analysis, drawing meaning from the exercise of comparing and contrasting Gaga’s images with her visual influences.

Directions: Meditate upon the following image of Gaga, taking into account its various components. Then compare and contrast Gaga’s image with Fellini’s. Leave your analysis in the comments.

Interview Question

We've been asked the following question in an interview:

Why should we care about Lady Gaga?

Please share your answer with us in the comments (we would like to share your thoughts with our interviewer!).
xoxo
Gaga Stigmata

Judas Gaga: Five Scenes from a Motorcycle Fellini PopArt Fantasy Film

By Andrea Quinlan

The following piece is the seventh in our series on “Judas.” For the first piece, click here; the second, here; the third, here; the fourth, here; the fifth, here, the sixth, here.

1. Entrance of the Motorcycle gang

JUDAS
white letters on the back of a black leather jacket
JESUS
a crown of gold glittered up thorns
LADYMARYMAGDALENEGAGA
blue cape aviator heart shaped gaze
Together we'll ride into the sunset

2. In the Electric Chapel

We don’t yet have a bride

But a lady with crosses on her velvet bra/heart

And her red plastic heart on blue leather

As she sings and dances

Judas looks at her like a meat dress

Before bumping, grinding and fighting

Jesus looks on with a glassy stare

3. Lipstick Betrayal 

Three times and still you betray me

Now it is my turn
With my gold gunshot lipstick kiss
I make my mark

I smear it across your cheek
The one I love the one I betray

It is written JUDASJUDAAA

4. Water Baby

A Golden Madonna standing on the shore
As the waves crash on the shoulders of her GucciChanel
In a Felliniesque dress drenched by the water 
This fountain gives life as it takes it away

5. Our Lady’s Second Video Death

The first time he threw her off a balcony
Now she is dressed for a white wedding away from the flashlights
In a time of stones and fire

A sacrifice

A collapse in makeup

A jewel and a tear

Author Bio:

Andrea Quinlan has an MA in Art History. Her work has been published in Defect Perfection Literary Review, Delirious Hem, and Gaga Stigmata.

Click here to follow Gaga Stigmata on Twitter.

Click here to "like" Gaga Stigmata on Facebook.