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 PrintableVersion Lady Gaga and the church of selfA new pop culture iconWe can’t ignore it any more: the world is infatuated with the ubiquitous Lady Gaga. Recently the annual Forbes ‘Celebrity 100’ list named her the most powerful person in showbiz.1 She played editor-in-chief of the news franchise Metro.2 Her latest album, Born This Way, has gone straight to number one in both the UK and the US3. And she shows no signs of slowing down. Lady Gaga — her name suggests the mishmash of sham feminism and brazen insanity which has catapulted her to fame. In the three years since she released her debut album she’s become a musical sensation, a fashion curiosity and a powerhouse brand. She’s worth an estimated $90 million, has a record number of Facebook followers, and is being hailed as the next Andy Warhol. Big ambitionsWhile some are questioning the stickability of her trademark oh-so-catchy, pump-and-thrust dance music, Gaga has big ambitions. In a controversial Guardian interview, she claimed to be about more than energetic showmanship: ‘[My show] is a religious experience […] It's like a pop cultural church’. Surprisingly, she hasn’t yet faced much opposition from Christians. (Granted, there were a few raised eyebrows over the Alejandro video, in which she is seen to almost swallow a rosary; she’s ramming religion down her own throat.) The new album mentions both Jesus and Judas, and Gaga has a new name on her list of inspirations: ‘Mary Magdalene fascinates me because she was, in my belief, both wholly human and wholly divine. So can I be fully magical and fully human?’ Promoting NarcissismDespite her fascination with biblical characters, she’s not simply preaching a warped version of ‘Love others as yourself’, as some have claimed. Her editorial for the Metro set out her latest manifesto: ‘Let Identity Be Your Religion… At her concerts she urges her young congregation to join her in an ecstatic frenzy of self-worship. At the core is her ‘be yourself’ mantra. She claims repeatedly that God does not make mistakes; we should celebrate the fact that we’re all born unique. Plenty of other artists are getting swept along by this new wave of poptimism. The Spice Girl’s ‘Girl Power’ refrain has grown up and now Katy Perry, Pink and Ke$ha are offering their own bite-sized portions of positivity. Even ‘Loser Like Me’, the first original song from the hit TV show Glee, is communicating the same empowering contradiction. To quote Gaga, ‘We are all different, and it is this fact that makes us all the same’. (Perhaps the self-help rhetoric is something that she inherited from Oprah, who she replaced at the top of the Forbes 100.) When she’s not being compared to Warhol or Oprah, Gaga is hailed as a new Madonna. Madonna empowered her female fans to defiantly ‘express themselves’. Gaga wants to promote something much more warm and fuzzy: ‘I’d like to posture the possibility that… pop culture can push the boundaries of love and acceptance… Love is the magic ingredient… to the giant petri dish of life’. She’s tongue in cheek about the way her shows explore love, life and reproduction: ‘Cellular procreation [is something that] I have theatrically interpreted in many of my performance pieces’. She writhes around shamelessly, championing the underwear-as-outerwear fashion — the woman is seemingly allergic to trousers. But she’s confused the critics because, for all of this suggestive talk, she’s determined to appear repulsive. Born again and again and again...Gaga never wanted to be a sex symbol; despite being a figurehead for self-esteem she was ‘insecure for a very long time’. She’s made her name, and her fortune, by relentlessly selling her personality as a brand — and yet she’s not confident about her identity: ‘[I’m] struggling to understand how I can exist as myself… I don’t think I ever want everyone to ever know fully who or what I am’. Her fluid sense of self does not stop her from fulfilling her own mantra — ‘Let identity be your religion’. In fact, she’s able to tie it all together in a single deft linguistic move: ‘I … believe that you can be reborn over and over… again’. Rebirth is another religious parody, perverted to become a theatrical spectacle. At this year’s Grammys, Gaga famously entered in a giant egg and was ‘born’ from it on stage. Speaking on Lateshow with David Letterman, she stretched the gimmick to mystical proportions: ‘[The egg is] a place where I can meditate and experience rebirth. So I just get inside… and close it and then when I feel that I have been reborn spiritually, I just come out’. All of this is big talk from a star who claims: ‘I’m not walking around in some romanticised idea of what it means to be an “artiste”’. Pseudo cultInstead, she’s the acting-leader of a new pseudo-cult. She creates quasi-religious worship experiences, promising to lead her followers to a brighter future and throwing in some references to institutionalised religion along the way. But what good is a saviour who will be thrown out when pop culture changes its tastes? Thankfully, she’s got an answer for that: ‘You cannot destroy me. Because I am an art piece’. Lady Gaga seems to have it all worked out, despite being confused about ‘who or what’ she is. Perhaps she’s bluffing and it’s all part of a carefully managed act. After all, she tells her fans: ‘It's best not to ask questions and just enjoy’. Or maybe, while her fans moot Gagaism as a new religion, she’s keen to avoid the blame: ‘[My fans] are their own religion… I don’t say this… with intent to take ownership over this community’. Gaga may be the latest icon of the pop culture church, but she’s refusing to be its head. Rachel Thorpe writes about culture, art and faith for magazines, newspapers and blogs. Many of her articles, including another on Lady Gaga, are available at www.rachelthorpe.com. In 2009Ð2010 she worked with Christian Heritage, Cambridge. Footnotes1. Published May 18
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