The most interesting element of last week’s SNL was, of course, Lady Gaga.  Gaga is Andy Warhol meets Andy Kaufman.  She is perhaps the only pop artist in history who could write a master’s thesis on her own significance as a post-modern pop icon and what it means for our celebrity-obsessed society; furthermore, I am convinced she has already written that thesis–it’s called her career.  In this, she is different from any other pop artist.  Most pop artists, like Miley Cyrus or Rihanna, don’t seem to understand their own fame.  Sure, they understand how to deal with it, and the basics of manipulating the press, but they don’t seem to have much awareness of the process of celebrity.  They probably think they are famous because they are talented, and that if they continue to work hard, they will always be famous.  They wear what they are told to wear and they go where they are told to go; but they are only tiny acorns springing from a mighty oak composed of thousands of handlers and press people and stylists and executives.  It takes 250,000 blossoms hand-picked at dawn to make a single ounce of jasmine essential oil; likewise, these stars are the distillation of the uncountable labor of a million A&R execs.  At this point, everybody in America secretly suspects that they will someday be famous; it’s just a matter of time.  Your Mileys and Britneys and Jonases are not surprised by their fame.  To them, fame is the great untangible, something that just happens to you when the time is right, like weather or God or pregnancy.  They don’t know how to keep fame because they haven’t grasped yet what it is.

Other pop artists, like Prince, Madonna, or Christina Aguilera, understand that fame is a thing.  This is a great leap forward in the evolution of the pop star.  Once you understand that fame is a thing (a tangible, measurable, touchable thing), it is but the tiniest of jumps to realize that fame is the great thing-ifier: once you are famous, you are not just a celebrity; you are Celebrity.  You are not an individual, you are a thing and a product.  As such, your image is paramount; it’s not just your image, it’s you.  This may sound very basic, but in fact many celebrities seem to have difficulty in understanding that they are no longer individuals.  The person they are in private is who they think they actually are.  That might be true, as far as the relationship they have with themselves (maybe), but in terms of every other interaction they have with any other person for the rest of their lives, they are, in fact, their image.  Who the world thinks they are is more important than who they think they are, perhaps not in a “moral” sense, but in a pragmatic sense.  Of course, this is the situation that all humans are in, which is basically the basis of existentialism.  However, for the celebrity, life is a constant existential crisis.  Your Madonnas and Princes and Christinas are aware of this; this is why they like to do constant rebrands of their entire personalities.  Their rebrands are not just rebrands, however–when they change their image, they understand that they are actually changing their lives.  For brief moments, these celebrities actually seem authentic, because they are smart enough to do a bit of image control.  But there are only so many selves we are each allotted.  These stars cycled through all of them, finally succumbing to the cold white arms of religion, religion, and motherhood.  In other words, these quintessential sexual and religious rebels could only feel safe once they gave up everything that had originally defined them.  Finally, they were so far from themselves that they could forget who they had been, and become someone new–someone, in a sense, private, for the public will always see them as purple bisexual sex dragons or cone-boobed bisexual sex dragons or drrty bisexual sex dragons.  They would not recognize the skinny, yoga-panted souls that pad around silent mansions, scuffing their flipflops and talking to God.

These sex dragons died to make Lady Gaga.  Michael Jackson died to make Lady Gaga.  Britney Spears died to make Lady Gaga.  Gaga is the only celebrity who understands how to be a celebrity.  She is extremely good at it; it is her talent.  She has other talents, but those are not important–she would have found a way to become Gaga regardless, and that is why she matters.  Gaga likes to say her role model is Britney Spears; this is extremely telling.  Britney Spears is not pretty or talented or smart or magnetic or interesting.  She can’t sing; she can dance a little.  Britney Spears’ songs may be good, but they have nothing to do with her–they are the product of a host of other talented people.  They have nothing to do with the Britney product.  Britney could have sung entirely different songs, and yet our perception of Britney would remain the same.  What if Britney had sung “Umbrella” instead of Rihanna?  Would that change your perception of her?  The answer is no.  Now, what if Hemingway had written “The Great Gatsby” instead of Fitzgerald?  It’s impossible.  The legacy of Hemingway would be entirely different.  This is because Hemingway is his work, in a way that Britney Spears is not because her real job is not singing.  Her job is to be a famous person.  Ol’ Gags’s job is to be a famous person as well, and she takes it very seriously.  Gags has probably read Roland Barthe and Jacques Derrida and maybe Foucault.  She could have a productive conversation with you about signs and signifiers, and you would probably learn something.  Gags is playing the game on a different level.  The blogs like to make fun of her outfits, as if she were a Julia Roberts or a Meg Ryan whose purpose, when being photographed, is to look attractive and stylish.  That is not the point of Gaga.  It’s hilarious that people don’t get this yet, especially since she throws the clues in our faces and lights them on fire.  Her biggest hits are “Pokerface” and “Papparazzi,” songs which are explicitly about the manipulation of image and the craven desire to become transcendently good at it.  People try to criticize Gaga by calling her an “attention whore,” as if she didn’t take the entire concept of attention whoring and satirize to within an inch of its life.  Gaga is a great artist.  Her medium is herself.  She is the first new media artist and she will hopefully save future artists from the pain of authenticity.  I am only somewhat tongue-in-cheek regarding this.  Watch the below performance and see if you don’t agree.  Hail Gaga, who is both more like herself and less like herself than any other pop artist.  Marvel, for everything old is new again.

Lady Gaga destroys America.

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