Thursday, November 19, 2009

Lady Gaga, exploiting the economy

When most people hear of a situation that involves someone ‘exploiting the economy’, our minds usually paint an image of a poor, but talented, underpaid worker, or an evil corporate giant laying off people just to save a buck. In this unique situation, Lady Gaga has been exploiting the economy but in a much different way…

We can talk for hours about all of the bad themes generated by the economic crash, but many don’t realize that this economic crash has done some really awesome things for the world. The crash has thrown the world into a dramatic, yet much needed, restructuring period. Everything that we once knew about the world is radically changing and being ‘flipped upside-down.’ This period has also nearly eliminated the ‘coolness’ associated with having tons of money. Now, how one chooses to spend their money is so much more important than having it at all. It seems almost natural that the major trend of creativity and self expression would be birthed from these situations. How creative we can be well overrides how much money we have. In general, anything different or unique is sought after/cool and the more idiosyncrasies one can project the better.

Enter Lady Gaga:

While it’s true that this woman is a forerunner behind the shift of music from hip-hop/R and B to techno, Lady Gaga has taken this ‘unique is cool’ trend to the fucking extreme. From her outlandish videos, to her borderline scary, un-functional style; this woman has been taking any opportunity to express to the world how ‘different’ she is. By blatantly purging pop culture to the extreme, she has carved a unique place for herself in the ‘different is cool’ trend.

All in all, her extreme attempts to stand out are only ‘cool’ due to the restructuring of the world. In general, she is using this ‘economic based’ trend to produce mass amounts of money and fame for herself. If that’s not exploiting the economy, I don’t know what is.

All in all, Lady Gaga needs to chill out and shut the fuck up.

2 comments:

  1. Very intelligent observations. I have become so disenchanted with media trends and fads that I would have just gone on thinking that Lady Gaga was just annoying because... she does it so well. lol. Now I can see there was a motive! But yes, I agree, for your reasons and mine, that Lady Gaga "needs to chill out and shut the fuck up." She's not really adding anything of substance to society, in my opinion. Nice blog, Alex. Hope you don't mind but I'm a follower now.

    -Heather-

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