Memory, Monsters, and Lady Gaga

V I C T O R P. C O R O N A

WITH THE 2008 RELEASE OF HER ALBUM THE FAME, LADY GAGA

became the first recording artist in history to have at leastfour number one hits from a debut album.1 Although The

Fame and its 2009 expanded rerelease, The Fame Monster, earned pos-itive critical reviews, Gaga’s artistic reputation is also closely tied to anendless stream of avant-garde fashion worn in her music videos, per-formances, and public appearances. Proclaimed to be the ‘‘defining popstar’’ of 2009 by Rolling Stone (Hiatt, ‘‘Rise of Lady Gaga’’), Gaga wontwo Grammy awards in 2010 and was nominated for six a year later.She is followed by over seven million people on Twitter and was 2010’ssecond most Googled celebrity in the U.S. Gaga’s success also led to aninvitation to Queen Elizabeth’s annual entertainment gala and a per-formance at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, whereshe wore the first hat designed by the architect Frank Gehry. Althoughher music and sartorial flare follow in the tradition of artists like DavidBowie, Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Queen, Gaga has succeeded increating a glam-pop aesthetic aptly described as ‘‘neon noir’’ (Weiner2009), one that pursues a lasting presence in popular memory andcelebrates a monstrous Otherness.

In order to evaluate Gaga’s place in pop culture, this article exploresthe components of her distinct aesthetic, which can be described as asocial imaginary (Castoriadis 1987) that upholds much of Warhol’s PopArt vision yet twists it to reflect contemporary anxieties. Her activequest to produce the memorable and celebrate the freakish highlightsthe degree to which pop spectacle has been affected by a period ofunprecedented connectivity among consumers and cultural producers.The emphasis on creating the memorable reflects a new urgency for

The Journal of Popular Culture, Early View, 2011r 2011, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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stars’ differentiation in a period of ‘‘hypermodernity,’’ an acceleratedstate of western capitalism characterized by ‘‘the culture of the fastestand the ‘ever more’: more profitability, more performance, more flex-ibility, more innovation’’ (Lipovetsky 35). From this perspective, post-modernity’s progeny is a cultural landscape where any possible event ofinterest can be almost instantly tweeted, blogged, texted, uploaded onYouTube, displayed on social networking sites, and discussed on com-ment boards. The entertainment industries have reacted to this trendby recognizing that in a quickened state of cultural exchange, thediffusion and perception of a star’s image are the most importantbuilding blocks of a career.

Gaga’s pursuit of an enduring cultural presence responds to hyper-modern pressures not by conjuring images of the sincere and earnest, as‘‘girl-next-door’’ stars have traditionally done. Instead, her elaborateperformances and sartorial experimentation are deployed to create vi-sual impressions that are practically tailor-made for the age of viralmarketing and generate expectations of ever grander spectacles. Theurge to consciously make hypermodern memory in itself, however, doesnot fully capture Gaga’s aesthetic and its popularity. She complementsthis strategy by attempting to explicitly link herself to categories ofindividual Otherness. By celebrating the ‘‘monster,’’ the ‘‘freak,’’ or the‘‘misfit’’ in multiple expressions—not ‘‘fitting in’’ at school or beinggay—she is able to build a sense of subcultural membership amongfans while the catch-all liveliness of her music works to sustain massappeal. On Ellen DeGeneres’s talk show, the host commented on Gaga’suniqueness yet gently questioned the sincerity of her spectacle. Sheresponded, ‘‘I didn’t fit in in high school and I felt like a freak, so I liketo create this atmosphere for my fans where they feel like they have afreak in me to hang out with and they don’t feel alone’’ (air date,November 27, 2009). In other interviews, she described her 2009 – 11‘‘Monster Ball’’ concert tour in terms of ‘‘apocalypse’’ and ‘‘exorcism,’’while the album’s songs were said to reflect the ‘‘demons’’ with whichshe has wrestled throughout her life.

In order to effectively contextualize such narratives of purgationand self-affirmation, it is useful to incorporate an understanding ofwhat Castoriadis and others have defined as ‘‘imaginaries.’’ Mandokiwrote that they are ‘‘known to be fictional and yet, like fiction inliterature, theater, or movies, we lend ourselves as willing accomplicesto the worlds they offer hoping they can somehow transform the real

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through a utopic inversion’’ (602). It is precisely this kind of attach-ment of the fan to a star that the entertainment industry activelynurtures. Marshall referred to the industry as ‘‘an apparatus for thecongealing of emotions and sentiments into recognizable sounds, im-ages, and personalities that work to maintain the intensity of emo-tions’’ (167), essentially, the business of selling imaginaries.Acknowledging this willful and revenue-driven construction of con-sumer attachment does not diminish the power of celebrities and theirspectacles. Rather, hypermodern methods of disseminating celebrityspectacle illustrate that artifice, if artful, can be even more compellingthan the person behind the persona if it forcefully reflects the sulliedtruths of contemporary life.

Much of the literature on celebrity spectacle and American popularculture focuses on the Hollywood film industry, which nurtured star-dom as a matter of branding strategy. A star system served as a meansfor the early studios to differentiate themselves once they understoodthat a studio brand by itself was an insufficient builder of customerloyalty (Gamson 1994). Marshall also showed that it is difficult tounderstand celebrity culture without meaningfully conceptualizing themass audience made possible by printing, sound, and motion picturetechnologies—e.g., the production of sheet music—in addition to acertain democratic effervescence that these technologies helped to fos-ter. As he noted, ‘‘The images of possibility provided by films, radio,and popular music represented an accessible form of consumption. Thediscourse that surrounded these celebrities provided the evidence ofaccess to stardom’’ (9).

Dyer and others were correct to link celebrity success to the anxietiesof the historical and social contexts in which fame is acquired. Byframing Gaga’s aesthetic appeal in relation to the broader culturallandscape, a connection can be made to the turbulences thrown up by ahypermodern mode of culture production, a ‘‘hyperculture’’ in which‘‘entertainment is transformed from an occasional personal and groupdiversion to a way of life, occupying all the interstices between periodsof work’’ (Bertman 123). With the rise of today’s technologies, fans canlisten to their favorite stars on digital music players, watch musicvideos on camera-enabled phones, and discuss the latest news and im-ages of celebrity exploits on Web sites often run by other devotees. AsHerwitz notes, ‘‘Increasingly today the forms of aesthetic appreciationcut across individual media, and are the product of many in particular

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concert’’ (49), an observation not lost on pop stars eager to demonstratethe uniqueness of their identities.

The remainder of this article will examine the mass appeal andsubcultural allure of the aesthetic crafted by Gaga and her ‘‘Haus ofGaga’’ creative team, which she modeled after Warhol’s Factory andfilled with close friends. Using previous theoretical work on celebrity,cultural commentary, and statements by the artist herself, the articlewill contextualize Gaga’s fame in a period where the pace of culturalproduction redefines how a recording artist can establish a presence thatlasts more than the proverbial fifteen minutes. Of course, the accel-erated business cycles of creative industries in the postwar period havelong caused concerns over the meaningfulness and originality possiblein cultural production. Such pressures, however, may also generate newand innovative recombinations of aesthetic material in ways that mayshock today’s audiences but seem routinized in a few years. There areimportant cases where aesthetic recombinations of different perfor-mance modalities have led to new and enduring styles: ‘‘The rockperformance style emerged out of the confluence of black performancestyle with the need to express the sincerity of personality and indi-viduality of the performer/star’’ (Marshall 158). Therefore, it is possiblethat the kind of cultural bricolage with which Gaga is experimentingmay ultimately open new and enduring terrains of theatricality in popculture.

The Persistence of Memory?

The background of Lady Gaga, born Stefani Germanotta, has beenreported in numerous interviews and a biography published in 2010(Herbert 2010). Growing up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, sheattended the elite Convent of the Sacred Heart on Fifth Avenue andlater New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts before leaving topursue her career full-time. Despite having academic success, she hasrepeatedly stated that she felt isolated from other Sacred Heart stu-dents. Learning piano by the age of four, she wrote her first pianoballad as a teenager and later began playing at open-mic nights atclubs. While building her career in the Manhattan club scene, her voicereminded a New York producer of Queen’s theatrical lead singer,Freddie Mercury, and bestowed upon her a name inspired by the band’s

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nostalgic 1984 song, ‘‘Radio Ga Ga.’’ Aside from Queen, she has ex-pressed her admiration for David Bowie, Boy George, Judy Garland,Michael Jackson, Grace Jones, Led Zeppelin, Madonna, ConstantinStanislavski, and Rainer Maria Rilke (his famous ‘‘must I write?’’passage is tattooed on her left arm).

Perhaps few stage names in pop culture are as ironic as Lady Gaga’s.‘‘Radio Ga Ga’’ was a wistful lament of how radio was being displacedand made to appear antiquated by the novelty of television. By con-trast, the fame of Lady Gaga and other contemporary pop stars haslargely been sustained by technologies like Twitter, YouTube, andcamera- and video-enabled phones with which fans can almost imme-diately capture and upload news and images of celebrity sightings.Etymologically, the expression ‘‘going gaga’’ has ‘‘dual meanings ofbaby talk and adoration’’ (Purves 147) as well as lunacy. In the case oftoday’s pop stars, fans ‘‘go gaga’’ in part by compulsively using in-teractive technologies to connect to an artist’s aura and each other. Inorder to capitalize on this trend, industry leaders work to combinetheir resources with the power of viral marketing and drive the vigorand speed with which celebrity culture is consumed. According to aWall Street Journal analysis, Gaga ‘‘has made shrewd use of new digitalplatforms, while still leveraging the clout of a major label, an insti-tution deemed obsolete by many proponents of DIY [do-it-yourself]culture’’ (Jurgensen 2010). Just as the television signaled the advent ofthe pop spectacle once larger audiences could see performances and notmerely listen over grainy radio waves, the diffusion of digital mediameans that recording artists can tweet links to fan-made videos andmake followers instantaneously aware of new images and promotionalmaterial.

Given that Gaga has released albums titled The Fame and The FameMonster, it is not surprising that she is preoccupied with the perfor-mance of celebrity and the construction of a lasting artistic legacy. Asshe told Rolling Stone, ‘‘My true legacy will be the test of time, andwhether I can sustain a space in pop culture and really make stuff thatwill have a genuine impact’’ (Hiatt, ‘‘Rise of Lady Gaga’’). But EngelLang and Lang draw a valuable distinction between recognition andrenown in the building of artistic reputation. According to them, rec-ognition reflects the respect of an artist’s peers, while renown ‘‘is mea-surable by how well a person is known outside a specific art world anddepends on the publicity that only critics and dealer promotion pro-

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vide’’ (84). In terms of peer recognition, Gaga is reported to be friendlywith artists like Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, and Marilyn Manson, al-though she is usually reluctant to describe her relationships with olderartists. The more provocative elements of Gaga’s avant-garde projectare balanced by her collaborations with more conventional peers likeBeyonce. Gaga and her Haus advisers understand that in order to buildrenown, her image and music should have ties to other modes ofaesthetic appreciation. At a benefit for the Museum of ContemporaryArt in Los Angeles, she wore a hat made by Frank Gehry and per-formed on a piano painted by the artist Damien Hirst. At the event,she told the New Yorker, ‘‘The objective is to always be making some-thing that belongs in a museum. Even what I’m wearing right now’’(Goodyear 2009). A few months later, at Queen Elizabeth’s annualRoyal Variety show, Gaga was suspended from a swing and played apiano balanced on spindly dark legs that evoked the nightmarishlandscapes of Salvador Dalı and Tim Burton. As she explained to theLondon Times, ‘‘I don’t wanna be one song. I wanna be the next 25 yearsof pop music’’ (Barber 2009).

Gaga’s attention to the constant articulation of her aesthetic, espe-cially for fans in attendance at her concerts, should not be casuallydismissed. Vannini, among others, rightfully champions Denzin’s re-shifting of the question of aesthetics to the actual moment of expe-rience, that which is ‘‘found at the genesis of experience itself—theexistential moment of interpretation of one’s lifeworld’’ (48). Indeed, acentral feature of Gaga’s vision is her Warholian celebration of popculture, which has been derided as low-brow kitsch created purely forthe consumption of the undiscerning masses. By contrast, her officialWeb site biography states, ‘‘Pop culture is art. It doesn’t make you coolto hate pop culture, so I embraced it and you hear it all over The Fame.But, it’s a sharable fame. I want to invite you all to the party. I wantpeople to feel a part of this lifestyle’’ (ladygaga.com). In elaboratingthis as one goal of her enterprise, Gaga’s music seeks to bridge whattheorists have understood as the Bourdieusian distinction between asubfield of art where the highest reaches of symbolic capital are con-trolled by a small avant-garde and one where ‘‘an aspirant, bohemianavant-garde claims to shun even symbolic capital’’ (Hesmondhalgh215).

In this regard, Gaga has made repeated references to Andy Warhol,the Pop image-maker described by one philosopher as the ‘‘artist

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laureate of the American soul’’ (Danto 131). Like Gaga, Warhol’s bodyof work reflects a desire to tinker with the aesthetic power of the coresymbols of American culture. While musing about how the WhiteHouse would be decorated if he were elected President, Warhol wrote,‘‘Can you see the Blue Room with Campbell’s Soup Cans all over thewalls? Because that’s what Foreign Heads of State should see, Camp-bell’s Soup Cans and Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe. That’sAmerica’’ (15). Gaga’s affinity for the enigmatic Pop artist can be readas an appreciation for an artistic vision that can both champion andtwist the iconography of pop culture through a variety of media. Asshe told the Guardian, ‘‘I strive to be a female Warhol. I want to makefilms and music, do photography and paint one day, maybe.Make fashion. Make big museum art installations. I would be a bitmore mixed-media than him probably—combining mixed media andimagery and doing more of a kind of a weird pop-art piece’’ (Barton2009). The Warholian influence on Gaga’s music can also be traced toher desire to firmly install pop music in the realm of fine art. Shestated, ‘‘There’s been a lot of damage done over the past 30 years withartists saying that pop music sucks. It’s lowbrow, manufactured, fake,plastic. They say we need to go back to the ‘real music,’ so we’ve had tolisten to some really depressing singer-songwriters and indie-rockbands’’ (Hobart 2008).

In order to pursue enduring reputations, other artists have alsocrafted flamboyant identities that pushed the boundaries of theatric-ality. Relevant cases might include the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper guise,Garth Brooks as Chris Gaines, Miley Cyrus as Hannah Montana,Beyonce as Sasha Fierce, and David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust, althoughthere is significant variation in the degree to which these personas havebeen incorporated into the performers’ artistic repertoires. The impor-tant point to highlight here is that this kind of theatricality can beused as a challenge to established definitions of identity and expectedforms of behavior. As Auslander noted, ‘‘Glam rock’s central socialinnovation was to open a safe cultural space in which to experimentwith versions of masculinity that clearly flouted social norms’’ (228).Theatrical alter-egos can also be seen as efforts to express an exagger-ated version of what Adler and Adler referred to as the celebrity’s‘‘gloried self.’’ This identity emerges as the result of a person being ‘‘thefocus of intense interpersonal and media attention, leading to theirachieving celebrity’’ (299). These authors, however, were primarily

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concerned with exploring the detrimental side effects of such a self,including a growing disregard for the concerns of the precelebrity self,e.g., detachment from family, and the rise of an unstable ‘‘dualism’’between the pre-celebrity self and the ‘‘gloried self’’ (306).

In her own displays of hypermodern theatricality, Gaga’s fashion is afundamental visual instrument in her quest to be seared into popularmemory. For a May 2009 cover of Rolling Stone, Gaga wore an outfitmade of plastic bubbles. A scene of the video for her ‘‘Bad Romance’’single features Gaga strutting in massive, glittering green ‘‘armadilloheels’’ designed by the late Alexander McQueen, at whose October2009 fashion show the song premiered. At the 2009 American MusicAwards, she was fitted with an illuminated headdress, top, and heelsmade to resemble bones, while the 2010 Grammys opened with Gaga’sduet with Elton John while both wore glittering vestments covered inash. Elements of other dresses have included plush figures of Kermitthe Frog and Hello Kitty. Other performances were conducted whilewearing black, geometric shapes resembling bat wings, clear plasticcrystals protruding from her shoulders and hips, and red lace witha blond hairpiece made to resemble a halo. The London-based millinerPhilip Treacy has designed some of her more memorable headpieces,including hats in the form of a sparkling lobster and a black, leatherytelephone.

The deployment of avant-garde fashion in the creation of a hyper-modern star should not be easily overlooked. As Mandoki claimed, ‘‘Itmay be frivolous, superficial, semantically empty, trivial, and flimsy; itnonetheless materializes urban values of fantasy, originality, novelty,and creativity’’ (612). For Lipovetsky, hypermodern culture is thefullest expression of a ‘‘society of fashion’’ in which ‘‘the cult of the newis asserting itself as an everyday and widespread passion’’ (37). Whilemost celebrities craft some sort of sartorial identity, Gaga is always cladin apparel usually seen only on Fashion Week runways. Such publicdisplays confront the strictures of fashion binding on the rest of thepopulation, the ‘‘vestimentary regimes [that] delineate the circum-stances in which a style might be deployed, as in clarifying the sit-uations in which different types of attire are appropriate or not . . .’’(Corona and Godart 14). Gaga’s aesthetic challenges the potency ofsuch regimes and affirms the hypermodern imperative of individualself-expression that is evident throughout venues in Manhattan’s clubscene (Colman 2010).

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In this devotion to fashion, there are echoes of Evita Peron, the wifeof Argentina’s controversial populist leader Juan Peron, and the tiebetween her maintenance of a loyal political base in the urban poor andworking classes and the glamour of her persona. In postwar Argentina,‘‘Her followers memorized the details of her every change of dress—thefittings, the designers, the gold lame, the hats, mantillas, even atiara—and never tired of the rainbow of images that spread over themedia of the time and continued glowing in the huge full-coloredphotographs of magazines still dedicated, twenty-five years later,exclusively to her’’ (Taylor 76). It was perhaps fitting that the 1996film adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical should featureMadonna in the starring role. Indeed, the Queen of Pop regnant is saidto have vigorously campaigned to play the role of a South Americanwoman who rose from poverty and obscurity into the limelight of fameand power. Ironically, although Evita would come to be swathed inCartier and Dior, her destitute followers were known as descamisados,‘‘shirtless ones.’’ Like Evita, both Madonna and Gaga understand thepower of high fashion to sustain popular imaginaries, whether they bein the service of a pop star’s legacy or the political agenda of populistreformers. As Mandoki noted, ‘‘Fashion opens up the curtains of socialimaginaries to a stage where each and everyone is invited, like Cin-derellas at the castle of Prince Charming, to the world of glamour andmasquerade. It is all a matter of adequate attire’’ (600). Because appareland appearance sustain the imaginaries tied to a star’s aura, it is perhapsno coincidence that Evita, Madonna, and Gaga, like the inimitable iconMarilyn Monroe, are all brunettes-cum-blondes.

When the image of someone like Gaga becomes so closely associatedwith spectacle, the question of authenticity inevitably emerges. Van-nini and Meyers have explored this problem in the cases of pop starsAvril Lavigne and Britney Spears, respectively. Vannini analyzes onlineconsumer reviews and offers an excellent account of how the authen-ticity of ‘‘pop-punk’’ star Avril Lavigne was belied by her ability to playthe guitar and the extent to which her entire artistic persona was‘‘carefully managed by Arista as those of any other popular persona’’(55). Along similar lines, Meyers examines the authenticity of ‘‘popprincess’’ Britney Spears and the obsessive interest in her failed mar-riage and child-rearing ability. Meyers noted, ‘‘The never-ending questfor the ‘real’ celebrity bestows upon her persona heightened culturalsignificance that is disseminated through all forms of celebrity media’’

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(896). The question of authenticity is rendered almost meaningless,however, given that the star’s day-to-day life is thoroughly consumedby the mechanics of performing. Meyers concluded that ‘‘being Britneycan never really be an ordinary experience. She is constantly followedby paparazzi, spends much of her life either preparing for or perform-ing on stage, and rarely has a moment to herself away from her fans orher entourage’’ (902). Gaga has avoided the authenticity dilemma byaffirming that she is the persona she inhabits on stage. Unlike othersuccessful female singers like Beyonce and Taylor Swift, her stagepresence does not use any version of her birth name. In early 2009 sheclaimed, ‘‘The largest misconception is that Lady Gaga is a persona or acharacter. I’m not—even my mother calls me Gaga. I am 150,000percent Lady Gaga every day’’ (Scaggs 2009).

The Monsters Within

Since her first album’s release in 2008, Lady Gaga has enthusiasticallyplayed with the trope of monstrosity. Her rerelease of The Fame withnew tracks, The Fame Monster, includes a song titled ‘‘Monster’’ thatdescribes a male love interest with ‘‘evil eyes’’ who, she sings, ‘‘ate myheart and then he ate my brain.’’ Her 2009 – 10 tour is called ‘‘TheMonster Ball,’’ a term that evokes the ‘‘monster’s ball’’ tradition ofEnglish jailers in which they would celebrate on the night before aprisoner’s execution. She consistently addresses her fans as ‘‘my littlemonsters,’’ a term which they eagerly use among themselves. The word‘‘monster’’ is thereby used to indict past relationships and fame and tocelebrate the products of that fame, her fans. Monster becomes a met-aphor for the maddening swirl of images, anxieties, and fads in hyper-modern life. As Gaga explained to Ann Powers of the Los Angeles Times,‘‘Celebrity life and media culture are probably the most overbearingpop-cultural conditions that we as young people have to deal with,because it forces us to judge ourselves. I guess what I am trying to do istake the monster and turn the monster into a fairy tale.’’ Gaga offeredadditional explanation in an interview with Rolling Stone:

Each one of these songs on my album represents a different demonthat I’ve faced in myself, so the music is much more personal. I don’twrite about fame or money at all on this new record. So we talkedabout monsters and how, I believe, that innately we’re all born with

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the monsters already inside of us—I guess in Christianity they call itoriginal sin—the prospect that we will, at some point, sin in ourlives, and we will, at some point, have to face our own demons, andthey’re already inside of us.

(Hiatt, ‘‘Inside the Monster Ball’’)

One of the best examples of this narrative in Gaga’s aesthetic is prob-ably the video for the first Fame Monster single, ‘‘Bad Romance.’’ Thevideo was made by the film director Francis Lawrence, whose moviesinclude Constantine (2005) and I Am Legend (2007), both of whichfeature ghoulish characters. The ‘‘Bad Romance’’ video is built around astory of sex slavery in which Gaga is sold to the Russian mafia butultimately destroys the man who purchased her. Animals are used tolend a bestial flavor to the video, which includes a furless cat, a furlessbat and a taxidermied rat used as hairpieces, mounted antelopes on themafioso’s bedroom walls, and a coat whose train ends in the head of theclassic polar bearskin rug. The dance moves recall the clawed fingers ofthe dancing undead in Michael Jackson’s ‘‘Thriller,’’ while one set ofcostumes appears to be inspired by Maurice Sendak’s Where the WildThings Are. The lyrics make reference to the films Psycho, Vertigo, andRear Window, directed by the master of cinematic macabre, AlfredHitchcock. The video concludes with Gaga lying beside the charredskeleton of her buyer, her chest emitting the electric sparks thatvanquished her captor.

In popular culture as a whole, the blending of the beautiful with themonstrous is a well-established motif. The contrast of beast and beautyis used to provoke a reckoning with prevailing ideals of appearance,tolerance, justice, and sexuality. As Ingebretsen argued, ‘‘Monstersshow us what happens—to them, certainly, and possibly to us aswell—when the always vulnerable line between civility and incivilityfails. In the language of Aristotle and the ancients, monsters are monere,and monstrare, warnings and demonstrations—‘signs and Portents’’’(26). Rock stars like Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, Rob Zombie, andMarilyn Manson also built their careers through a keen sense of thepower of the morbid spectacle to attract audiences and provoke mediachatter about their albums. The popularity of the Twilight films andtelevision shows like The Vampire Diaries and True Blood also highlightsthe renewed vigor of the monster motif in pop culture.

The image of the monster in memorable music videos has also beensuccessfully deployed in the past. One of the most popular songs of all

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time, Michael Jackson’s 1983 ‘‘Thriller,’’ had the star himself takingthe forms of werewolf and zombie. Mercer has astutely captured howthe ‘‘Thriller’’ video’s depiction of monstrosity was inextricable fromthe overall development and perception of Michael Jackson’s sexualidentity (werewolf as hypersexual, zombie as antisexual). As Mercernoted, Jackson’s transformation into a werewolf (albeit one with felinefeatures) is triggered by his coy comment to the female love interest,‘‘I’m not like other guys’’ (308). Experimentation in music video im-agery alone will not garner commercial success, although it is certainlya powerful mode of expression: ‘‘Videos are often filled with surrealism;they represent avant-garde filmmaking that serves to associate thepopular star with the style and romantic connotations of the innovativeartist’’ (Marshall 163).

Gaga, however, puts a distinct take on the trope of monstrousOtherness. Weiner has described how ‘‘Gaga debuted already-defiled,’’in stark contrast to the purity ascribed to Britney Spears before thestory of her virginity and its loss became mainstream news. If, as Dyerargued, successful stars touch upon certain ‘‘social resonances,’’ thenGaga’s lyrics and videos have successfully touched upon a hypermoderndisenchantment and appetite for the raw that continues to be fedby entertainment formats like reality television. Gaga’s first hit,‘‘Just Dance,’’ is essentially about being drunk at a club but remainingconfident in a happy conclusion to a night of drunken stupor.Gaga’s Grammy-nominated hit, ‘‘Poker Face,’’ deals with her bisexu-ality and desiring a woman while she was with a boyfriend, while‘‘LoveGame’’ raised eyebrows with her reference to a phallus as a ‘‘discostick.’’ The playfulness and earthiness of earlier pop stars is passed overin favor of a more realistic sense of youthful urban revelry. The song‘‘Beautiful, Dirty, Rich’’ recalls her period of drug use as a strugglingupstart in New York’s club scene. Even her bubbliest video, for ‘‘Eh, Eh(Nothing Else I Can Say),’’ is an homage, via pastiche, to her Italian-American roots, complete with her sitting on a Vespa in frontof ‘‘Guido’s Meat Market’’ and serving spaghetti and meatballs to herhusband.

Gaga’s aesthetic vision is perhaps most vividly elaborated in her2009 – 10 ‘‘Monster Ball’’ tour, which she calls a ‘‘truly artistic expe-rience that is going to take the form of the greatest post-apocalyptichouse party that you’ve ever been to’’ (Hiatt, ‘‘Inside the Monster Ball’’)and has been described by a Canadian theater critic as ‘‘at least twice as

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entertaining and infinitely fresher than any stage musical written overthe last decade’’ (Nestruck 2009). Relating the sold-out ‘‘Monster Ball’’concerts to the success of the Twilight films, Andrew Lloyd Webber’sThe Phantom of the Opera, and Michael Jackson’s ‘‘Thriller,’’ a New YorkTimes theater review claims that Gaga’s show turns ‘‘the conventions ofpop stardom into a fully realized gothic musical that aims for thecommercial sweet spot at the intersection of horror and romance’’(Zinoman 2010).

A broader audience was exposed to Gaga’s ‘‘neon noir’’ imaginaryduring a live performance of her song ‘‘Paparazzi’’ at the 2009 MTVVideo Music Awards, where a Romanesque stage draped in pink andwhite was the site of a bloody simulation of her demise. In the video forthe single, she is thrown from a balcony by a lover trying to ensure thatpaparazzi capture a photograph of their embrace. She somehow sur-vives, fatally poisons the lover, and is arrested at the conclusion of thevideo. While the song itself deals with being a fan obsessed with a malerock star, the video features images of dead women that recall Hol-lywood’s most famous murdered ingenue, the Black Dahlia. The storywas continued in the nine-minute video for the 2010 ‘‘Telephone’’single. In the video, Gaga is jailed in a ‘‘Prison for Bitches’’ until she isbailed out by Beyonce. Together they poison a diner full of people andescape in the ‘‘Pussy Wagon’’ featured in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Billfilm. Throughout the video, Gaga and Beyonce are adorned with es-sential artifacts of Pop America: soda cans, leather jackets, Americanflags, cowboy hats, and, of course, a telephone.

Rather than subsume these dark displays into another brooding,moody celebrity demeanor, Gaga claimed that the Frida Kahlo-inspired‘‘Paparazzi’’ performance on MTV was actually an attempt to preemptthe tale of a tragic celebrity demise that has now become a fixture ofpop lore, as in the deaths of Princess Diana, Judy Garland, Grace Kelly,and Marilyn Monroe. Gaga told Elle, ‘‘I feel that if I can show mydemise artistically to the public, I can somehow cure my own legend. Ican show you so you’re not looking for it. I’m dying for you ondomestic television—here’s what it looks like, so no one has to wonder’’(Purves 147). Using a performance of the song ‘‘Paparazzi’’ to commenton the insatiability of the public gaze is interesting given that pho-tographers’ images so often capture stars as they perform the mostmundane of activities, like shopping for groceries or walking theirdogs. The images captured by paparazzi therefore lie in a gray area that

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rubs out the Durkheimian separation of the sacred (stars and theirglamor) and the profane (the drab, everyday lives of the nonfamous).Casting aside this sacred/profane division, Gaga’s vision may prove thatthe more important delineation in hypermodern pop culture is betweenthe monstrous and the merely mundane.

One benefit of this branding strategy is the ability to solidify thedegree to which Gaga can associate subcultural membership with hermusic and thereby activate enduring allegiances. As Marshall describes:

The star’s cultural power depended on a very close affinity with aspecific and loyal audience. The star, then, was actively engaged inthe construction and differentiation of audience groups, in terms ofstyle and taste, and in authenticating their elevated position. Thepopular music star, more than other forms of celebrity, had to bea virtual member of his or her own audience in order to sustain hisor her influence and authenticity, and the commitment of thefan (161).

The power of the ‘‘monster’’ motif lies in being able to attract otherself-identifying outcasts to her music and aesthetic, an effort that Gagahopes will ultimately empower them to express the ‘‘monster’’ withinthem. The possibility of self-empowerment via a celebration of one’sOtherness is a powerful function of public and televised spectacles. Forexample, Smit praises the display of children afflicted with musculardystrophy during the annual Jerry Lewis telethon, claiming that the‘‘event actually offers power and agency’’ to the children themselves(688). In a comparable way, when interviewed by Barbara Walters asone of the ‘‘most fascinating people’’ of 2009, Gaga claimed that shehopes to ‘‘liberate’’ her fans from their fears so that they can ‘‘createtheir own space in the world’’ (air date, December 9, 2009).

Like other female pop stars, Lady Gaga marshals her femininity inher performances. An open bisexual, she vigorously defends the gaycommunity and, despite explicitly gendering her stage name, has attimes mischievously fed rumors that she is a hermaphrodite. The ca-reers of other female pop stars demonstrate the challenge of negotiatingthis aspect of the celebrity identity. Judy Garland, for example, em-bodied three distinct identities that struck a cultural chord: ‘‘the all-American small town girl-next-door; the personification of showbizgood humour and bezazz; the neurotic woman’’ (Dyer, A Star Is Born132). Garland thereby captured key elements of what Britney Spears,

14 Victor P. Corona

Beyonce, and Courtney Love each represent individually. An ‘‘alterna-tive’’ rock star of the 1990s, Alanis Morissette colored her display offemininity with a seething rage aimed at former lovers and authorityfigures before undergoing an artistic transformation that yielded songslike ‘‘In Praise of the Vulnerable Man’’ and ‘‘Giggling Again for NoReason.’’ More recently, Britney Spears cultivated a ‘‘girl-next-door’’identity before a torrent of news about premarital sex, drug use, andirresponsible parenting largely deflated her rise. By contrast, Gaga’steasing lyrics, shocking outfits, and outrageous comments at concertswarp the kind of sexualized performance introduced by Madonna, whofamously attracted attention by writhing on the ground in a weddingdress and celebrating sadomasochism in the music video for the song‘‘Erotica.’’

Yet despite Gaga’s distinctive mark on pop music early in her career,she is not storming the gates of American cultural mores. She had arather conventional, affluent upbringing in Manhattan in a two-parenthousehold. Despite being an open bisexual, she told Elle thatwithin ten years she hopes to be married with children (Purves 172).In contrast to celebrities who are estranged from parents, Gagarepeatedly talks about being close to her family and states that shewrote the song ‘‘Speechless’’ from The Fame Monster as a way to convinceher father to undergo heart surgery. Her own career narrative proudlyproclaims that her upward trajectory was respectful of the appropriateconventions en route to stardom: ‘‘I did this the way you are supposedto. I played every club in New York City and I bombed in every cluband then killed it in every club and I found myself as an artist. Ilearned how to survive as an artist, get real, and how to fail and thenfigure out who I was as singer and performer. And, I worked hard’’(ladygaga.com).

Conclusion

In September 2009, the author stood not far from the red carpet at theMTV Video Music Awards in Manhattan and spotted someone wearinga glittering gold mask and a wide-brimmed black hat. The figureslowly meandered past camera flashes and ascended a small stage to beinterviewed, just a sidewalk away from the evening traffic flowinguptown on Sixth Avenue. Nearby, a young woman muttered, ‘‘That has

Memory, Monsters, and Lady Gaga 15

to be Lady Gaga—only she would wear something like that.’’ Theonlooker was correct. It then became evident that Gaga’s escort for theevening was Kermit the Frog, whom she repeatedly kissed while beinginterviewed on MTV. Presumably, Gaga would have been pleased tohear the onlooker’s statement. She would have likely taken it as ev-idence that she had successfully established an easily recognizableidentity on a cultural landscape brimming with performers desperatelytrying to stand out.

In order to begin unpacking the meanings behind the aestheticactively constructed by Gaga and her creative team, this article hasargued that her unique spectacle says much about the hypermodernpace of cultural consumption and the heightened requirements forlongevity on the public stage. As Engel Lang and Lang wrote, ‘‘Survivalin the collective memory is closely tied to the survival of tangibleobjects that recall the deceased’’ (80), to which those living in the ageof Google, Twitter, and YouTube would add video, photos, and tweetsdiffused via the BlackBerrys and iPhones always ready at the con-sumer’s side. It remains to be seen, however, if Gaga can continue tosurpass the quality of ‘‘intimate strangers’’ (Schickel 1985) that inev-itably characterizes the celebrity – fan encounter, based as it is on a‘‘fundamental asymmetry of knowledge’’ (Ferris 28). Also, Gaga is notwithout her vehement critics, who see only empty spectacle and pomp-ous airs without any substantive content. Wondering what the lateClaude Levi-Strauss would have said about Gaga, a Newsweek musiccritic wrote, ‘‘The problem with Gaga is that she refuses to add anyconcrete value, while also wanting us to think she has something tosay’’ (Colter Walls 57). Although she has publicly acknowledged thecriticism that she is only a pretentious attention grabber, Gaga projectsconfidence that her ‘‘little monsters’’ are meaningfully connecting withher aesthetic and are now ‘‘spreading the book of Gaga around theworld’’ (Barber 2009).

As early as 1998, scholars began lamenting the rise of a ‘‘hyper-culture’’ that today Gaga best represents, whether or not she also crit-icizes elements of that culture. Bertman, for example, bemoaned theidea that ‘‘each successive invitation to superficiality and transiencebecomes a further distraction, keeping us from pursuing the quest fordeeper and more enduring truths’’ (47). Given that, for him, hyper-cultural devices included pagers and microwaves, one can only imaginehow egregious he would find music-playing, email-enabled camera

16 Victor P. Corona

phones and the connectivity they provide. Today, it appears that eventhe recession will not slow the ‘‘culture of the fastest.’’ A socioculturalcontext inundated by information only emphasizes the urgency withwhich stars seek to activate and sustain mass interest and fan loyalty forreasons other than visits to drug clinics (Lindsay Lohan), adoptionlitigation (Madonna), unseemly sex scandals (Tiger Woods), ‘‘wardrobemalfunctions’’ (Janet Jackson), or a sudden, suspicious demise (MichaelJackson). Bertman and other critics might instead find solace in theidea that the dizzying pace of hypermodern culture may ultimatelyaugment the effervescence enabled by celebrities, the power to provide‘‘some sense of community—common idols, if not common ideals’’(Schickel 275).

As the first hypermodern pop music star, Lady Gaga’s brand ofcelebrity emerges during a period beleaguered by recession and war, atime that yearns for the occasional glimpse of the sublime. The adventof hypermodernity has only heightened the persistent longing for thespectacle of stardom as a ready escape from the tedium of everydaylife. With organized religion in decline throughout much of the west,celebrity culture has become a means of social integration in acontext where ‘‘the public secretly longs for that rare charismatic figurewhose auratic values are not reduced but magnified. The desirefor someone around whom to make a cult gets greater and greater’’(Herwitz 134). To sustain such devotion, however, a captivatingvoice, an ingenue’s smile, and dizzying dance moves may no longerbe enough. A hypermodern cult seeks a grander pose, a more thoroughmeans of dazzling the spectator and holding her attention via anarray of images and media. It is this role that Lady Gaga seeksto fill. The ‘‘Manifesto of Little Monsters’’ pronounced at her concertsdeclares, ‘‘It is in the theory of perception that we have established ourbond. Or, the lie, I should say, for which we kill. We are nothingwithout our image. Without our projection. Without the spiritualhologram of who we perceive ourselves to be, or to become rather, inthe future.’’

Note

1. The Jackson Five’s first four singles, also hits, were spread across multiple albums.

Memory, Monsters, and Lady Gaga 17

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