Aileen: see this? [Jon Caramanica in the New York Times, 21 July 2010:]

It’s Halloween-costume empowerment, sure, but [Lady Gaga’s] fingerprints are all over the revised images of Christina Aguilera, Rihanna, Katy Perry and Beyoncé; and on new artists like Kesha, Janelle Monáe and Nicki Minaj. These performers might not cite Lady Gaga as a direct influence, but the work she’s done since her 2008 debut album, “The Fame,” has nudged loose conventional boundaries. The space for women in pop to try out new aesthetic identities hasn’t been this vast in some time. …. In many ways it is a bastardization of the Madonna model. From the start of her career Madonna was a savvy pop trickster, using outrageous imagery as a distraction while smuggling ideas about religion and social politics into her music. Most of the Gaga generation, however, is interested in distraction as an end in itself.

Aileen: the writer kinda does this lazy laundry list of other current female popstars and how they’re all supposedly copy gaga — but he doesn’t really connect any dots, other than to say that hey, pop is little more interesting today, at least visually. not sure if this has to do so much specifically with gaga than with the level of competition for sales and media attention… i mean aren’t there other things to attribute that to? like, the internet and a weaker monoculture in general? kind of like this conclusion though:

It’s probably the first time Lady Gaga has acknowledged that there’s a living, breathing organism beneath the hyperstylized exterior, that her flesh has any instincts of its own. Maybe she’s expended so much time and energy building up her outer shells that they’ve begun to reinforce her inner self too. This nakedness, this new assuredness — a Lilith ideal, perhaps — is a real step toward feeling. Or maybe the skin’s just another costume.

Michael: So “Madonna was a savvy pop trickster, using outrageous imagery as a distraction while smuggling ideas about religion and social politics into her music.” Could somebody remind me what these “ideas” were? The idea of Madonna as somehow more intellectual or political or engagé than Gaga is ludicrous. “post-sexual theater” seems right-on, though.

Zach: Not ludicrous, I don’t think, but certainly a stretch. “Ideas” is not quite right, but Madge was certainly angling for something; her wheeling and handling of her image brought around an overt acknowledgement of sexuality and proposed an imagining of a woman for the eighties. Certainly the power dynamics supposed in her big Prayer-era hits were a consistent, I think compelling reimagining of woman-in-pop. I don’t think this can be said for “Alejandro” and the rest. Presumably that is what the writer means. But then Germa is only on her (more or less) first record.

Richard: i think the thing is that they already matter, just not in themselves; but that there’s a tendency to think Madonna did. it’ll take a decade, if Lady Gaga ever experiences a similar canonization. but three of those miracles have to happen when you’re dead; the process isn’t self-willed. being superficially culturally relevant, the deepest impact they’re ever going to have is slow and inspirational — some thirteen-year-old now is going to listen to Alejandro and feel fine about their to-now conflicted homosexuality.

Michael: The mistake, I think, is in seeing Madonna’s outrageous imagery as a “distraction” from her true interest in Catholicism, social commentary, third wave feminism, whatever. Rather, Madonna and Gaga are only truly interested in outrageous imagery, which is itself the bearer of whatever cultural or artistic significance the two women might possess. What seems most superficial about them—their posing, preening, and peacocking—is the only thing that matters, if indeed anything about them matters (an open question).

Zach: Well you can argue it either way—imagery for distraction or distraction for imagery—but I don’t think it makes much difference. And you have a harder time saying that there’s any sort of nexus around which Gaga’s outrageous imagery congregates: I’m repeating myself, but so be it—it’s too heterogenous. Madonna doggedly did the Catholic / mores bits, so whatever the effect or lack thereof there
was at one point something, if not being driven at, at least indicated. And I think I would argue that the peacocking and that variety of cultural significance are not as extricable as you seem to want to believe.

Michael: Sure, but what was the “one point” Madonna was driving at about the Church? And even if you could identify some kind of coherent critique, which I doubt, would that really be what makes Madge important?

Zach: Yes, you’re right. The beauty of it is that the “critique” and the spectacle are the same thing, which is in its natural state neither critique nor spectacle. MY complaint is that there’s not enough contact between Gaga’s pop-symbolism and this world we actually live in, apart from that tired old Futurist line about art reflecting chaos which I never bought anyway. Madonna’s had, in my estimation, loads of contact throwing off sparks well into the 90s. That’s why she was Madonna. But then Gaga is sort of like Wallace Stevens in that respect, perhaps.

Michael: The Idea of Order at Madison Square Garden?