“With Art Pop (her latest album) I
wanted to put art in the front to show that being a student is okay. I feel
that the knowledge that you’ve gained, every dancer that you’ve danced with,
every paint brush that you’v touched, every book that you’ve read, every music
bit that you’ve heard-if you channel that entire history into the thing that
you’re creating, there is an intention of the work that runs to the centre of
the earth.”
She is something else. Not very palatable to everyone, but brilliant
nevertheless.
In all the
Quentin Tarantino movies like Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs,
the audience is almost immediately introduced to the hyper-violent slaughter of
characters; the viewer’s reaction is seen transforming from absolute disgust,
to desensitization, to slow but sure realization of the utter ridiculousness of
it all. This is also the riding theory of Postmodernism, and, to an extent, the
theory that the pop sensation Lady Gaga has come to represent.
One of the
characteristic moves of Postmodern Theory, by the virtue of the prefix “post”,
suggests that there is a totalizing of history in which the postmodern is both
a stage in teleological progression, but also a final containment of history
into a null state. This null state has absorbed the past, present and future
into itself. (Johnathan Bignell, Postmodern Media Culture, Introduction,
Pg. 5). There is a determined resistance to the totalizing grand narratives of
history, which will mean the set ideals of all epics like The Iliad, The
Mahabharata and Paradise Lost no longer exist in the
new world which has survived two World Wars. This is a world that doubts,
questions and reconsiders everything. So the Postmodern Theory is both a grand
narrative and a means to claim that such grand narratives have lost their
legitimacy. The consequence of this is that the theory is marked by a sense of
self-refrentiality (which takes the form of narcissism in Lady Gaga) and the
power of theoretical discourse to produce it. The “centre” is now shifted to
the “self”.
What sets her
apart from the others is the fact that she’s a “Performance
Artist”. Performance art is nothing like traditional theatre- it rejects a
clear narrative, makes use of chance based structures and makes a direct appeal
to the audience. Like Tarantino movies, again, it forces its audience to pay
attention to the absurdities and idiosyncrasies of human behavior by making an
appeal to the physical and psychological needs for food, shelter, sex, and
human interaction; our very personal secrets and fears and our concern about
the world we live in. ‘Historically, performance art has been a medium that
challenges and violates borders between disciplines and genders, between
private and public, and between everyday life and art, and that follows no
rules’. (RoseLee Goldberg. Performance: Live art since the 60s, New
York: Thames & Hudson).
The biggest aim
of Postmodernism, Performance Art and undeniably that of Lady Gaga is
“Deconstruction.” The term was first introduced by Jacques Derrida, Paul de
Man, and others, but now as a result of the popularity of these techniques, the
word “deconstruct” is often used widely to criticize or demonstrate the
incoherence of a position. (Jack M. Balkin, Deconstruction) Lady
Gaga aims to deconstruct the very pop culture that has created her and now
worships her.
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