Lady Gaga's Hollow Cultural Romance

Lady Gaga's performance on Oprah last week had fans scratching their heads, wondering how the songstress was able to mount the hood of a taxi, repeatedly swing a heavy ball and chain into its windshield and still belt out the lyrics to her single "Bad Romance"--the day after she canceled a performance at Purdue University due to illness. But neither that turn of events, nor the last-minute switch in venues for her recent Chicago performances, really bothers me. It's more that she's heralded as pop music's second coming when she belongs, in my opinion, in the same ranks as Christina Aguilera or Gwen Stefani. Does Gaga have catchy songs? Yes. The ability to routinely snare headlines? Utterly. But are her music and entire self-concept actually a rebellion against the oppression of celebrity and woman's place in it? So she'd have you think. The 23-year-old catapulted to uber-fame with 2009's "The Fame Monster." Its title pays homage to a topic that addresses Gaga's garish outfits and beliefs about media culture. Her wild get-ups and videos are really a statement about the ugliness of celebrity--a "crusade," according to her recent statement in the Los Angeles Times. "Celebrity life and media culture are probably the most overbearing pop-cultural conditions that we as young people have to deal with, because it forces us to judge ourselves," she said. "I guess what I am trying to do is take the monster and turn the monster into a fairy tale." And if that highbrow message just happens to make her millions, so be it. Gaga is glib about explaining her image, but the message behind it is conspicuously underrepresented in her music.

"Poker Face," which Gaga says is about dreaming of a woman while being in bed with a man, sounds more about being sexually coy than liberated. One of her videos is meant to pose a metaphor about women's bodies being treated as commodities, but its latex-heavy costuming just isn't nailing that message on the head. And then there are the unjust Madonna comparisons. Madonna was a Midwestern transplant who worked her way up in New York for years before achieving fame, and she boldly incorporated sexuality into her image when most female artists didn't dare do so. Gaga joined the musical community decades after Madonna first blazed these trails. One must applaud Gaga for bucking the trend of the sexpot pop star by at least aspiring to offer more, but ultimately it's just entertainment. By Genevieve Diesing. RedEye.com