Talk about defining deviancy down. What beige days we live in, when mentioning Rilke, Warhol, and David Bowie are proof positive of edgy intelligence. Rilke isn’t exactly obscure, and Warhol and Bowie are two of the best-known brands in pop history. Gaga isn’t all that weird, despite her revisionist accounts of growing up feeling “like a freak,” as she told Barbara Walters. Can we get some context, here? Performance artist Leigh Bowery giving himself an enema, onstage, and hosing the front rows at one of his performances with an anal geyser is weird. Painter and curiosa collector Joe Coleman adopting a pickled anencephalic fetus as his son and naming it Junior is weird. Faking your own hanging at the Video Music Awards because you “feel that if I can show my demise artistically to the public, I can somehow cure my own legend” isn’t weird; it’s a time-tested career strategy, straight out of the shock-rock playbook.
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I’ll go ahead and say this is the best Gaga takedown yet, and all he’s really doing is calling her boring. He heads off claims of rockism and anything-phobia and somethousand words later, he’s just saying we deserve more. More weirder.
If you can get through the breathless prose and endless intellectual namedrops (a Dery cocktail is an acquired taste), you will learn something, guaranteed. It was fun getting cut off every time I developed the inklings of a counter-argument.
All I’m left with: Gaga for the hedonists, Gaga for the Lady Antebellum fans, Gaga for those who don’t give a flying fuck about semiotics, or at least not when they’re drunk. Gaga for the real thinkers won’t last, or at least doesn’t hold up, but she’s still the weirdest platinum artist and worldwide brand in decades, leaving Dery’s ending reference to her potential the real takeaway here. Let’s just not agree that everyone is whatever they claim to be, evidence or substance be damned, Dery seems to be saying. This piece feels late to the conversation, but it’s possible that if things go really right (or really wrong), it will end up being on the early side. Prescient, even.
(via joecoscarelli)
(via nicolele)
Notes:
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hndrk liked this
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aditir reblogged this from nukuler and added:
As someone who took class with both Joe and Nicole, and had Dery has a professor, everything above and below is worth...
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stevespillman reblogged this from nukuler
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jamiepeck reblogged this from joecoscarelli and added:
rockistbro totes stole my affectionate nickname for Lady...made it sound way mean
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ohrohin liked this
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ohrohin said:
It’s worth it to look at how Gaga made the entire world’s cultural dialogue all about her. She found a niche between giving herself a Bowery-esque on-stage enema and doing a song and dance. It’s resonated with the world, too. She did something right.
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nukuler reblogged this from joecoscarelli
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borninflames liked this
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joecoscarelli posted this
