Culturebox: Lady Gaga

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assessment Lady Gaga Pop's leading conservative. By Nathan Heller Posted Thursday, Sept. 8, 2011, at 11:56 AM ET Last week, Lady Gaga took the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards dressed in drag, her hair smoothed back into a greaser's coif and her mien recast into the swagger of a Sicilian tough. She was there to promote her new single, "You and I," the country-flavored number on the recent album Born This Way, but viewers could be forgiven for missing the musical sales pitch. Lady Gaga used the first four minutes of her time onstage to descant on another subject entirely, which was Lady Gaga. "She's such a star, a big, beautiful star in the sky," her male persona ruminated. "She's fucking crazy, too, right?" He continued, a bit more insistently, "I mean, she's fucking crazy!" Since Lady Gaga first exploded into public consciousness with her 2008 album, The Fame, no other star has rivaled her enormous, flaming ball of industry and histrionic style. Mostly, this is because no other object in this galaxy has worked up a matching velocity. Gaga is by all evidence the proverbial hardest-working person in show business, following a punishing tour schedule; micromanaging her wardrobe and stage act; and singing so much, and with such gusto, her speaking voice has taken on a chronic huskiness. In return for these exertions, she's won tens of awards, legions of fans, and a reputation as the industry's foremost provocateur. It's the last of these pop-culture laurels, the outlandish notoriety, that's most crucial to her public standing. Yet it's also the role that she least deserves. For all of her attention-getting gambits, gnomic utterances ("People take me both too seriously and not seriously enough"), and innovations in Xena: Warrior Princess-type lingerie, Gaga is basically a totem of the cultural establishment, an agent of the reliable old forms more than radical new ones. She claims to be a "monster," but she's in fact pop's leading conservative talent. To continue reading, click here. Nathan Heller is a Slate copy editor. He also writes the magazine's "Assessment" column. Follow him on Twitter. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate If Perry's OK With Mandatory HPV Vaccinations, Why Not Mandatory Health Insurance? The Recent Squabbles Inside Bachmann's Campaign Are Just the Beginning The 9/11 Memorial Is Beautiful--but Also Deeply Troubling	Advertisement
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