Going gaga over Lady Gaga
Hold it right there. I’m not a Little Monster trying
to defend the Mother Monster. I’m not into criticism either. I just don’t know
why I find myself defending her, somehow.
I’m not really into that ‘Paws up’ thing, if you know
what I mean. I don’t devote my playlist to Gaga music and I certainly don’t
watch her every show or video, but I do listen to Lady Gaga and I’m going to
tell you why she's worth listening to, for me, at least.
She’s Lady
Gaga. Anyone who has the same name as the Princess of Weird is worth the
attention. With all this talk about her, she’s certainly worth even a single
minute of your music time, even if it’s just to prove that she’s really as
offensive as some of your friends tell you. And with five Grammy awards and
several bestselling singles worldwide, you just got to know why they’re so gaga
over Lady Gaga. And for good reason too. If you don’t know what it is yet, wait
till you’ve listened to her.
She’s a
performance artist. There are definitely better singers than Lady Gaga but when
it comes to a show, a performance, I
believe there is only a handful who can compare. It’s one thing to catch the
ears of everybody; it’s another thing to engage their eyes, too. 13 MTV Video Music
awards tell you so. And it’s not just with music videos. Watch any of her live
performances in the Grammys or in Ellen and you’ll see how she’s got your eyes
glued to the screen. She dances her heart out and sings better than most artists sitting still. She gives her
all. And she also keeps your feet impatiently tapping the floor in time to a
tune, and makes you wonder how she will outdo herself the next time.
She’s got good
lyrics. Minus the so-called ‘controversial’ lines in some of her songs, I
would even say she’s got great lyrics. Her fame is not solely confined to her
singing; she writes the songs too. And what songs they are. If you go deeper
than the fancy beat, you’ll see she has some honesty and guts in her lyrics,
some truth that people want to listen to over and over. Who wouldn’t like to
hear ‘I’m beautiful in my way/ ‘Cause God
makes no mistakes/ I’m on the right track, baby/ I was born this way’?
She is controversial.
These days, her name is synonymous to white-hot shock and controversy. She
makes you talk about her, although some of the talks about her are certainly
created by the people themselves. She engages your mind, and your morals maybe.
And speaking of morals, I thought we might segue into
her trending concert. All this talk about her Manila gig is definitely over the
top for me. Last time I checked, her occupation is as a singer-songwriter, a
performance artist, a record producer, a dancer, an activist, and a businesswoman.
She’s a celebrity. And celebrities
thrive on exactly these kinds of controversies. Renen de Guia, head of Ovation
Productions which is the organizer of the concerts, recalls the rumors
surrounding Lady Gaga in her first Manila concert two years ago: "The talk back then was that
she's a hermaphrodite. Did she deny it? No. She went along with the rumor. Now
we all know that it was just rumor. Today she's thought of as evil who belongs
to a satanic cult. Again she's not denying. We should know better. The
controversy is working." If anything, it has stretched the original
one-day gig into a two-day concert, with fans prepared to pay up to Php15, 000
for tickets, and this is a country where the average monthly wage is just about
Php10, 000.
Christian leaders cite Lady Gaga’s songs ‘Born This Way’ which they said
encouraged homosexuality, and ‘Judas’, which they
claimed to be making a ‘mockery’ of their ‘religious beliefs and moral fiber’. Please.
If these songs mock the religious beliefs and moral fiber of the Filipino people,
what does this say on the faith of the Filipinos? ‘Her attitude seems to promote godlessness, offensive to any religion,’
Sorsogon Bishop Arturo Bastes, a member of the Permanent Council of the
Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, told reporters. ‘People have the duty to discern the quality
of entertainment. Christians must exercise self-censorship to avoid shows that
are harmful to their faith.’ The 20,000 or so fans that flocked the
two-night show just showed Lady Gaga’s brand of hyper-stylized visuals doesn’t
even make a dent.
I have
nothing against the religious groups who protested against this concert. Personally, I don’t very much like Judas either. But if we’re talking of
evil here, then why is nobody talking of vampires or werewolves in the same
way? I suppose it’s a matter of presentation isn’t it, oh, and commercialism,
of course. Maybe we all love our vampires in the form of handsome, loving
beings, and not in the stark, confronting light they are presented in by Lady
Gaga. To
me, Lady Gaga is just delving deeper into the darker side of pop culture. She’s
gone deeper than just ‘wanting your disease’ in Bad Romance, she’s hit the
point where she realized, ‘Judas is the demon I cling to’. Whatever happened to
metaphors anyway? And if they insist so much on the supposedly evil lyrics and
lewd conduct that is supposedly going to happen at the concert, what are they
doing to suppress the immorality that is actually happening all over the
Philippines? That can’t be helped. And this can’t be helped either. It’s a
little too late trying to stop Lady Gaga’s concert from taking place in Manila
just to stop poisoning the minds of our youth when the videos can be watched
freely in the Internet. Sen. Bongbong Marcos tweeted, ‘let’s keep it simple.’ As the concert won’t be “televised,” those
who feel disturbed about it shouldn’t watch.
Hudson Marquez posted on Facebook, ‘I just can’t get over the fact that so many
intelligent people don’t get the Gaga.’ Really, if we’re so intelligent as
to get the double meaning behind her lyrics, we must pause to think if we are
intelligent enough to know whether Lady Gaga’s performances actually exploit
and promote her own brand of (im)morality or comment on the times we live in
today. To be sure, there are ethical issues about precisely where to put the
line between entertainment and pure exploitation. But what exactly is it that’s
so objectionable about her videos, and why is it so objectionable even? What
ideas does she shove into our minds that we don’t like, and why don’t we like
them? If she makes us reconsider our morals, even ours, the young people, then
she must be doing something Corona’s trial wasn’t able to do. She must be doing
something right.
Cyndi Lauper wrote on Lady Gaga in the 2010 issue
of TIME’s most influential people, ‘An
artist's job is to take a snapshot — be it through words or sound, lyrics or
song — that explains what it's like to be alive at that time. Lady Gaga's art
captures the period we're in right now.’ Born This Way does exactly this, because we’re living in a world where a
third sex now exists. What’s wrong with it being a gay anthem? The
self-confidence it brought didn’t just affect gays or members of the third sex.
It affected everyone who took the time to listen. A friend once told me, “If you’re feeling down, just listen to Lady
Gaga. She’s the queen of self-love.” If Lady Gaga
convinces one kid that it’s okay to be the way he/she is, then to me, that
makes her undeserving of all the hate thrown at her.
Clearly, this is something that
challenges the values and morality of Filipinos like never before. This is bigger
than Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, which also received protests from religious
groups urging cinemas not to show it on the big screen because of its allegedly
faith-shaking ideas. This is bigger than CJ Corona taking the witness stand at
the impeachment trial. This is Lady Gaga, doing a concert in Manila.
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Oh, I thought
I might add some LOL moments too.
Charlene Gonzales’ commented (to which I strongly agree), “I really like Lady Gaga and I think you can choose the good and leave out
the bad…It’s all about having the proper discernment. If you are strong with
your core and your belief of who you are as a person, I don’t think if somebody
does something bad, magiging ganyan ‘yan if you listen to it everyday.” To which
Toni Gonzaga now infamously retorted, “No, but hindi ba, you are what you listen to? Kung ano yung pinakikinggan mo, eventually, subconsciously, nagiging
ganun na rin, it affects your mind,
especially music.” Then someone tweeted, ’pinapakinggan
namin yung bahay kubo. Ibig sabihin gulay kami?’
Love her or hate her, you gotta admit, the world would be a lot less
interesting without Lady Gaga.
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