Dear Academia, Church, Government, Pop Culture, and other ISA’s,
This is hard for me to say. I know we talked some time ago about my upcoming union, and you all had something to say on the matter with my peers. Adam and Eve gave you something to talk about, and Adam and Steve gave you even more. We argued over feminism, mannism, the LBGT community, the celibate community, and every reference ever in literature pertaining to sex.
Well, here is my final decision. Pop culture, you have finally won, and I have decided to be in a loving committed relationship with … myself.
Yes, I know, we’ve all heard this joke before, I know what I like and agree with myself when it comes to discussions, beliefs, activities, food, movies, and every thing else… but the thing is, is that I have to agree with pop culture, and see, autoeroticism is just ultimately better than any man or woman could be. What people like Britney Spear, Madonna, Blondie, Billy Idol, The Violent Femmes, and Gaga have taught me is that I am the best beau I am ever going to find. Victoria Secret tells me that I should look hot for my own confidence. Magazines tell me I should be healthy for me. Psychology tells me that narcissism is healthy part of development. Facebook tells me…well that I am important enough to notify everyone I know what I had for breakfast and how I feel about the weather. (Even if that video says that narcissism isn't normal. Whatever! These symptoms have nothing to do with me or my generation)
So we, that is I, are leaving for a life of happiness and success
Love,
Sarah
Yes, self-love is funny. However, what I’m really interested in is the playing out of other sexual orientations/the role of attraction in our lives. I loved Adrienne Rich, and I found Wittig and Kristeva to be fascinating, but I’m still curious. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” brought up a lot of fascinating thoughts, but I’m not sure it captured everything. For me, Rich downplayed other types of attraction, or rather, she sexualized a lot of things that I’m not sure need to be sexualized. Yes, I am attracted to both men and women’s personalities, charismas, ideas, or styles. That’s not all sexual though. Which I know isn’t the point, but I think some of the critics we read simplify attraction to be a matter of Yes, I’d have sex with them, or No thanks.
Back to sexuality, I have been reading a lot in the last few weeks about the asexuals and autoerotic folks. It’s a big topic, and the easiest way to narrow it down to an individual for me, is found in this article about Lady Gaga. Camille Paglia wrote an article for The Sunday Times a ways back, that discussed how overt sexuality is turning our culture into first a self-obsessed but then asexual culture. Now, asexuality is the same as any other orientation, for many asexuals, it is not something that they choose to be or are socially conditioned to be, however Paglia has some interesting ideas. She says:
“Gaga has borrowed so heavily from Madonna (as in her latest video-Alejandro) that it must be asked, at what point does homage become theft? However, the main point is that the young Madonna was on fire. She was indeed the imperious Marlene Dietrich’s true heir. For Gaga, sex is mainly decor and surface; she’s like a laminated piece of ersatz rococo furniture. Alarmingly, Generation Gaga can’t tell the difference. Is it the death of sex? Perhaps the symbolic status that sex had for a century has gone kaput; that blazing trajectory is over…
Gaga seems comet-like, a stimulating burst of novelty, even though she is a ruthless recycler of other people’s work. She is the diva of déjà vu. Gaga has glibly appropriated from performers like Cher, Jane Fonda as Barbarella, Gwen Stefani and Pink, as well as from fashion muses like Isabella Blow and Daphne Guinness. Drag queens, whom Gaga professes to admire, are usually far sexier in many of her over-the-top outfits than she is.”
“Peeping dourly through all that tat is Gaga’s limited range of facial expressions. Her videos repeatedly thrust that blank, lugubrious face at the camera and us; it’s creepy and coercive. Marlene and Madonna gave the impression, true or false, of being pansexual. Gaga, for all her writhing and posturing, is asexual. Going off to the gym in broad daylight, as Gaga recently did, dressed in a black bustier, fishnet stockings and stiletto heels isn’t sexy – it’s sexually dysfunctional.”
“Compare Gaga’s insipid songs, with their nursery-rhyme nonsense syllables, to the title and hypnotic refrain of the first Madonna song and video to bring her attention on MTV, Burning Up, with its elemental fire imagery and its then-shocking offer of fellatio. In place of Madonna’s valiant life force, what we find in Gaga is a disturbing trend towards mutilation and death…
Gaga is in way over her head with her avant-garde pretensions… She wants to have it both ways – to be hip and avant-garde and yet popular and universal, a practitioner of gung-ho “show biz”...
Generation Gaga doesn’t identify with powerful vocal styles because their own voices have atrophied: they communicate mutely via a constant stream of atomized, telegraphic text messages. Gaga’s flat affect doesn’t bother them because they’re not attuned to facial expressions.”
“Gaga's fans are marooned in a global technocracy of fancy gadgets but emotional poverty. Borderlines have been blurred between public and private: reality TV shows multiply, cell phone conversations blare everywhere; secrets are heedlessly blabbed on Facebook and Twitter. Hence, Gaga gratuitously natters on about her vagina…”
I have never read the asexual school of criticism. I have never read a school of criticism (other than Descartes) that focuses on a narcissistic read though of literature. And while I have read a number of articles on how exposure to sexual rhetoric DOOM us to all be promiscuous, this is one of the few articles I’ve read that links pop-culture with sexually dysfunction and an almost post traumatic stress syndrome view of what Lady Gaga is doing to us. What say you?
Sarah,
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure Lady G. is doing anything. As you say above, she seems to be a comet--bright, flashy, temporal/periodic, and substantial as a small space rock. For the art world to proclaim her as avant garde is just silly. You're right. She is a 2010-12 Madonna, she writes insipid songs, and we are forced to read all sorts of profundity into her music/act. Aren't we silly? Or, is this the future of art--in that messages or profundity are supposed to last 10 minutes?
I am not sure that asexuality is necessarily equatable with narcissism or autosexuality. A lot of asexuals do seem to be more narcissistic than other people, but I wonder if that is just part of the stereotype working its wonders on personality (in the same way that a lot of women like to be subjugated quiet mousy housewives-- some of them are really like that and others are just bowing to what society tells them to be). Of the asexuals I've known, many of them are somewhat Nietzschean figures, but others just don't really have a drive for sex. Again, this is why I think we have to be careful to not that categorizing people by sexual orientation is just as limiting (or at least similarly limiting to) categorizing them by sex.
ReplyDelete(Side note: asexuals are apparently so underrepresented that blogger doesn't recognize the plural form as a word, which means it probably is recognizing the word only as an adjective [for describing an animal?] and not a noun [for delineating a certain kind of person].
"Side note: asexuals are apparently so underrepresented that blogger doesn't recognize the plural form as a word."
ReplyDeleteHmm. Women tend to be defined by men according to their sexuality (e.g. their looks, sex appeal, etc.). This gauge is on a continuum, meaning that those with less sexuality, as perceived by the men, are of lower value. So, because they lack sexuality by definition, it makes sense that asexuals represent the absolute low, here.
It seems to me that pop culture tends to work with the particular kind of power given to women in patriarchal society. While women are looked at as sexual objects or objects of desire, women in pop culture play to that by being visually stimulating, but not actually promising sex. It is a tease that gives them power over men.
ReplyDeleteSarah I loved this blog and for the most part I agree with you about sexual dysfunction and asexuality being a result of pop culture. In response to what Doug said about Gaga "doing" anything intentional, I think Fred would disagree. In Postmodern we talked about her behavior as very intentional. Whether is is profound or only shocking is another question altogether. I think that for the most part she is shocking and the way I have come to understand it, is that she does this because she was a weird girl left out when she was in school and she wants (a) attention and (b) to make weird the new cool.
Jacq and Doug--People who went to school with her actually say that she was quite normal. Whether they're telling the truth, I suppose we'll never know, but it's worth considering that she was actually (or was capable of appearing) Totally Normal. Then her actions would be even more deliberate.
ReplyDeleteBridger-- That could be. I'm more inclined to think that asexuals tend to care less about sexual definition because they often don't care about sex itself, so they just don't point themselves out or put up a fuss when they are marginalized.