This week I've been in attendance at the Erotic Screen and Sound: Culture, Media and Desire conference held at Griffith University, Brisbane. Part of the overall (largely fantastic) experience of being at this conference involved sitting in on a presentation by keynote speaker Judith (Jack) Halberstam, titled 'Going Gaga.' Tiara The Merch Girl has a point by point summary of the presentation over on her blog, as well as some of her thoughts about it (and some other things) over here.
The following are some of my thoughts and reflections on the presentation.
There is no doubt, whether she does manage to have a long career or not, that Lady GaGa has had an impact on how we look at pop music, the music industry, women in the music industry and cultures of fame/celebrity, etc. Love or hate her, people seem to feel not only a need, but an obligation to share their thoughts on the latest crazy stunt that GaGa has pulled, or how much staying power she's going to end up having. She is, all comments about her music aside, a media sensation.
One of my main problems with Halberstam's presentation was the notion that while GaGa's sensational engagement with various mediums of representation (the media, music, the internet, music videos, television, her choice of costumes, etc.) have somehow made her worthy of critical and academic attention, there was a clear lack of willingness to engage with other female music artists based on what seemed to be fundamentally a matter of personal taste. During question time, artists such as Rihanna, Beyonce and Erykah Badu were essentially dismissed; Halberstam "didn't make much" of Badu's Windowseat music video and thought that Rihanna's S&M video was "not much." Most confusingly, Halberstam also insisted that she didn't think there was anything authentic about Beyonce as we (the public) know her, but showed no interest in discussing this issue, despite the fact that GaGa's lack of authenticity was heralded as being a matter of extreme interest. Katy Perry ("Kate Perry? Is that her name?") was also dismissed, again despite her highly and obviously self-conscious engagement with the inauthentic stereotypes about not only women in the music industry, but, more broadly, women in general.
Putting aside the example of Katy Perry for the moment (sorry Katy, I still love you), there is a clear theme of race evident in the examples raised and then dismissed. Rihanna, Erykah Badu and Beyonce are all women of colour. While there may not be any explicit or conscious racism involved in Halberstam's lack of engagement with these artists, there still needs to be an acknowledgement of the fact that GaGa has come to the scene long after each of these artists, who have variously engaged with issues of their own subjectivity, sexuality, sex/gender and embodiment (as women and particularly as women of colour) in their song lyrics and music videos, as well as in the media surrounding their careers and personal lives. For GaGa, as a white woman, to be held up as a beacon of light in contrast to these apparently easily dismissed black women, well...it's unquestionably problematic.
At this point I'd like to bring Katy Perry back into the discussion, as she serves as a perfect example of another problematic aspect of Halberstam's discussion about the positive aspects of inauthenticity in GaGa's public persona. Katy Perry is arguably the most recent example of the busty brunette bombshell that has cropped up again and again in the music industry, using her body to sell her(self and her) music as much as her voice. Her image, though, crosses over the line into parody more often than not, with a focus on the hyper-femininity of her body and her clothing choices being a prominent part of who she is in the public sphere. Lady GaGa, while approaching these issues from a different angle, does very similar things with her image, folding parody and hyper-everything into her public image in a way that is meant to be (and, to varying degrees, is) confronting and controversial. Again, though, GaGa is worthy of attention, whereas Halberstam can't even remember Katy Perry's name.
I think that Halberstam's lack of engagement with Katy Perry (as an example) in contrast to GaGa has, in large part, a foundation in the fact that, while GaGa's image is inauthentic, Halberstam sees her musical ability as extremely authentic. This focus on the authenticity of her ability as a music artist can be seen in Halberstam's engagement with the example of her performance with Yoko Ono, where it was clearly pointed out that GaGa was able to fold herself into the "avant garde" nature of Yoko Ono's musical style without taking away from it by making the performance about herself and her musical style. By "going gaga" and involving herself in a musical style that is considered more valuable than pop music (culturally speaking, at least) GaGa was able to prove that she can be authentic; she just chooses not to be in her pop career. The same, however, cannot be said of someone like Katy Perry - and, failing to therefore be authentically inauthentic, she can therefore be ignored.
Finally, at least as far as this post is concerned, there was Halberstam's assertion that there were elements of GaGa's music that were 'new' and therefore a point of interest for analysis. The example used was GaGa's Telephone, which incorporated a ringtone into the music and, according to Halberstam, also engaged with the 'stuttering' of loading a video on youtube with a slow internet connection. Now, I'm not a musicologist or in any way, shape or form informed in this respect, but I'm pretty certain that neither of these elements is new, let alone fascinating. In fact, I'd go as far as to suggest that they've been tropes of music for a while now, particularly in remixes of songs. Again, I won't go into a lot of detail on this point, because I don't want to pretend I have any kind of expertise when it comes to sonic soundscapes or anything musical, but I see it as problematic that these elements have been held up as new and exciting when I'm pretty sure they aren't. To me, along with a number of other points in the presentation, it showed a lack of critical engagement with the areas being discussed and, ultimately, what can really be described as sloppy academic work. Anyone else would've been called up for not being rigorous enough in their research on something so glaringly obvious. This didn't happen with Halberstam, though.
Now, I'm going to be sloppy in my own right and publish this post without a proper conclusion. Lunch calls and I'm currently sitting in a room at the end of another session of presentations, typing away while everyone else has wandered off. I'm sure something else will inspire me to make a post before the conference is over and done with, though!
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