Mystic Post
By Daniel Klimek
Katy Perry, like many popular music artists, is no stranger to controversy. The 25 year-old’s lyrics and music videos are often occupied with sexually provocative themes, colorful situations and dark, innuendo-filled humor. Her widely popular song “California Gurls,” which reached the # 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 List, making it one of the fastest rising singles in music history, is accompanied by a music video which features Snoop Dog and which watches like a playful, but provocative, sexually-charged modern admixture of Alice in Wonderland and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory – throughout the video, Katy walks through an ultra-bright, candy-filled fantasy world, surrounded by giant walking gummy bears, a ginger bread-man, enormous cupcakes and endless treats, while Katy herself is featured prominently in not the most modest of positions – at times lying naked in a purple cotton-candy cloud that matches the color of her hair.
Katy’s earlier musical endeavors have evoked controversy from each end of the ideological spectrum. Her song “I Kissed a Girl” met with reactions from certain conservative groups that the artist is promoting lesbianism while, inversely, another song of Katy’s, “Ur So Gay,” met with criticisms from left-leaning gay groups that Katy’s critical of homosexuality. See has denied such allegations, and sees much of them as misinterpretations of her work. To the latter charge, Perry explained: “It’s not a negative connotation…It wasn’t stereotyping anyone in particular, I was talking about ex-boyfriends.”
While clearly no stranger to controversy, or provocative ideas, there is one area that Katy Perry won’t toy with, there is one area that she knows needs to be taken seriously: the sacred realm. Perry understands that there are certain things that shouldn’t be taken lightly. There are certain things that deserve the utmost respect, which should be free from any form of exploitation. That is why Perry has recently made powerful comments about the need to show proper respect for religious symbols.
She has voiced criticisms of fellow pop artist Lady Gaga—real name: Stefani Germanotta—whose music video “Alejandro” mixes religious symbols with highly sexualized, often deliberately perverse, imagery. The 24 year-old “Gaga” is, in the video, dressed in a nun’s habit, clutching a Rosary in her hands while she sucks on it and eventually swallows the Rosary. She does this while laying in a coffin. Other highlights of Gaga’s video include Gaga with a man in bed: the two partake in a fiercely sexualized dance that imitates sodomitical acts like very rough and animalistic anal sex, all while a big Christian Cross stands in the backdrop of the music video. Further exploitation of the sacred is noticeable in the way that Gaga’s video tries to place a homoeroticism alongside religious symbols. Juxtaposed with images of the Rosary and the Christian Cross are men wearing fish-net stalkings, while Gaga appears in the center of what looks like a gay orgy as she wears a cross-emblazoned robe – perhaps the most prominent place that the cross is featured, on this robe, is on Gaga’s crotch.
Katy Perry has responded to such tasteless exploitation of sacred symbols with strong words. She has written: “Using blasphemy as entertainment is as cheap as a comedian telling a fart joke.”
Perry, who has recently been featured on the cover of RollingStone Magazine, has explained that sexual entertainment, particularly sexual exploitation, and spirituality do not mix, it is a dangerous combination that should be avoided. In some of her comments, Perry has displayed a very mature sensitivity toward spiritual matters, explaining that, in addition to exploits like Lady Gaga’s, she even feels an uneasy awareness whenever her fiance, the British comedian Russell Brand, uses the Lord’s name in vain.
“I am sensitive to Russell taking the Lord’s name in vain and to Lady Gaga putting a rosary in her mouth. I think when you put sex and spirituality in the same bottle and shake it up, bad things happen. Yes, I said I kissed a girl. But I didn’t say I kissed a girl while f-ing a crucifix.”
The latter comment is aimed at critics who have accused Perry of hypocrisy, explaining that Perry is in no position to criticize someone like Lady Gaga for sexually provocative material in her videos when Perry herself has applied sexually provocative themes to boost her music career.
However, what such criticisms ignore – and which Perry rightfully perceives – is that there is a difference, an important distinction, between the ways in which Perry uses sex and the ways in which Lady Gaga uses sex in her music videos, in her career. Both women, of course, are well aware of the maxim that sex sells in our culture and, therefore, have attempted not to shy away from sexually-charged material in selling their music. However, there is a major difference between the two.
Perry uses her sexuality in a light-hearted and colorful manner, encompassing a playful creativity which, adding a sharp sense of humor, almost makes fun of itself. Hence, she’s able to create an Alice-in-Wonderland-like fantasy world, in one of her videos, that’s not to be taken too seriously, an ironic spin on a popular fairytale which makes a fun summer song more amusing. She does not seek to pretentiously shock her viewers by profaning serious and sacred subjects, like Gaga does. She does not position herself (or her dancers) in animalistic sexual positions before religious symbols, but simply shows a lot of skin without revealing too much, without revealing what should be veiled. Perry surely knows that sex sells, but she also has the mind to know that there’s a difference between tasteful sexuality and mere pornography. Gaga hasn’t caught on yet.
Unfortunately, Gaga’s material feels too much like the latter – mere pornography. While stimulation may be the key, watching Gaga’s “Alejandro” video offers no such reality. It is not tasteful, but dirty – trashy even for today’s popular standards. Her use or, more aptly, blatant misuse of sacred symbols alongside perverted sexual acts displays nothing more than an obvious immaturity, on the artist’s part, that really is nothing new in the entertainment industry, becoming an old cliché. Perry, while being only a year older than Gaga, has enough sense and maturity to see that there are certain things – like the sacred realm – that deserve more respect than to be subjected to pretentious (and attention-seeking) exploitation. Perhaps one reason for the sensitivity that Perry possesses for sacred things is found in the fact that her parents are devout Christians. Her father actually comes from a Charismatic tradition and, growing up, Perry was no stranger toward seeing people speaking in tongues. Her first album was, actually, a gospel album.
It is no secret that, like many young female pop singers, Gaga is very influenced by Madonna, often appearing like an exact copycat of the singer in her videos. Madonna, of course, has a dubious history of exploiting sacred symbols in her work – often she used to perform in concerts while hanging from a Cross, as one example. However, with Madonna’s recent religious turn to the Kabbalah, a mystical form of Judaism, one hopes that the singer (with all the young people that she influences, especially) has acquired a more mature and sophisticated appreciation of religious tradition, one that does not lead to pretentious exploitation but sincere devotion. From such an example, entertainers like Lady Gaga can learn much.
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