Lady Gaga is no Madonna. That some conservatives are conflating the two performers is yet another sign of the pop culture (and even religious) illiteracy of the right. I myself am a conservative, and it always demoralizes me when people on the right fumble the ball on popular culture, particularly in the field of pop music.
Robert Bork once referred to the industrial gloom freaks Nine Inch Nails as rap. Reagan-era Interior Secretary James Watt attempted to postpone the Beach Boys Fourth of July concert, thinking that the somnolent surfers would cause trouble. And, despite how much I’ve begged and pleaded, the Weekly Standard and National Review will not cover pop music, which I consider a beautiful form of spiritual art.
Now, taking a lead from Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, everyone is comparing Gaga to Madonna. To me Madonna will always be a mediocre talent, but one of her better songs is “Like a Prayer,” which came out in 1986. Many conservative culture warriors wrongly considered the video for “Like a Prayer” blasphemous, and are now juxtaposing it with a new video by pop star Lady Gaga. In the video for her song “Alejandro,” Gaga is dressed in a red latex nun costume. She swallows a rosary, and is depicted in scenes of sadomasochistic sex and Nazi marching troops. As night follows day, conservatives went nuts. Donohue called Lady Gaga a “Madonna wannabe.” The rest of the right wing photosphere fell into place.
They will miss a crucial fact: Madonna’s video for “Like a Prayer” is an intelligent and even devout meditation on grace, love and conscience. Lady Gaga's is lazy trash.
As I will explore in my forthcoming book “A Tremor of Bliss: Sex, Catholicism, and Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Madonna’s video is actually a powerful depiction of the vitality of the Catholic saints and their ability to intercede in our lives and give us gifts of courage. In the video, Madonna witnesses a black man falsely accused of a crime. Terrified of the racists in the town, she flees into a church, where she prays to St. Martin de Porres, a black saint. She falls asleep and in her dream the statue of the saint actually comes to life, becoming her lover. She wakes up filled with a new bravery. She fingers the real criminals, and ends the video jubilantly dancing with a gospel choir.
When “Like a Prayer” was released, it was completely misunderstood by conservatives. A bishop condemned it. So did Donohue. On the other side, liberals mindlessly defended Madonna without understanding the message of the video. The only truly coherent analysis came from Fr. Andrew Greeley, a liberal Catholic priest. “Like a Prayer” was blasphemous, wrote Greeley in America magazine, “only for the prurient and the sick who come to the video determined to read their own twisted sexual hang-ups into it. Only for those who think that sexual passion is an inappropriate metaphor for divine passion (and thus are pretty hard on Hosea, Jesus, Saint Paul, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and Saint Teresa of Avila).”
Lada Gaga’s video for “Alejandro” is not just slightly dissimilar to “Like a Prayer” – it’s like a fascistic antipode. There is no moral story, no call to conscience. The very language of the bodies is different. In “Like a Prayer,” Madonna and the gospel choir dance with freedom and individual joy. They are powered with the power of the Holy Spirit, which gave Madonna grace the courage to fully respond the call from her conscience. In “Alejandro” the dancing is militaristic, joyless. The scenes of sadomasochism are cold and dehumanizing; they reek of fascism. The entire thing is cold.
We’ve gotten to a point in our culture where we expect the “avant-garde” left to embrace absolutely anything that gives them the delicious frisson of transgression — no matter how tired and, well, conservative their tropes have become. Pop singer Katy Perry was right when she said “Using blasphemy as entertainment is as cheap as a comedian telling a fart joke.”
But I want better from my conservative friends. I became a conservative because of the ideas of the movement. Irving Kristol, Thomas Sowell, and Midge Decter are people who rely on facts, common sense, and age-old wisdom about the nature of the human person to come to conclusions about politics. But they are like the worst knee-jerk lefty when it comes to pop culture. I fear most of them have not listened to a record since Pat Boone was a star.
via Guest Voices: Lady Gaga is no Madonna – On Faith at washingtonpost.com.
Talk about Madonna and Lady Gaga if you want, but what about his claim that conservatives don’t understand pop culture? Is that necessarily a bad thing? I agree that there is quite a bit of fascism in pop culture–not to mention all kinds of free-floating violence, racism, and sexism–which the left seems to gobble up indiscrimately. Maybe the left doesn’t understand it either, while still embracing it. Can you think of other pop culture artifacts that, while seeming rebellious, actually have a conservative subtext?
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