gagablog 61: Marilyn Gaga, "your lover and your mistress"

Ok, wasn't going to say anything about it, I was going to let it slide. But Gaga brought it up with her performance at the AMA's last night, ro rather the critics did by suggesting there was anything wrong with it. I wrote the last edition, "JFK-Obama-Gaga, Time and Timelessness" before the performance and just finally saw on the news some images of what she actually did. I would have to write something anyway, since my previous title implies I would say something about the performance itself. But I knew I would have to say something when I saw that haters are saying her performance was in "poor taste." Let me make is simple: if you aren't an artist, you really have no valid opinion on "taste" in art - it does not matter what you think, art is beyond you, just don't worry about it. I'm an artist myself and will be glad to share my opinion on it. But I am also male, so I felt a little awkward making any comment on some of the controversial issues around Kennedy, so I just focused on the idolized and idealized "spirit" that Kennedy represents, and the symbol fo the Eternal Flame. I am not part of a persecuted minority group, now that I live in Colorado where pot is legal, so I don't really have a compelling personal opinion about civil rights. Civil rights are justice and I think this should be obvious to everyone, but Kennedy has been described as having to be convinced to support Civil Rights, and I just can't idealize someone who could not see that on his own. Also, he was a womanizer. I have a naive opinion of womanizing, since I'm not a woman and don't know that side of the experience and I have not womanized so I don't know that side, either - I don't think it is necessarily the appropriate male role. But at least in our society, womanizing is not really a sin, or even really a misdemeanor. Not that our society is right, and not that womanizing is completely wrong. The good thing about womanizing is the sex -that's the fun part and I suspect why people get into this line of work. But our society has demonized sex, and demonized women, and this is the problem: the same double standards that apply to all sexual issues but judge men and women differently. I suspect the good things about womanizing are it makes men more charming, through variety of experience, and more attractive for being more confident or better actors. Whether it is from confidence of the man or some bad-boy-loving complex of the girl, womanizers are hot, by today's standards. Brittany Spears wrote a song about it in which she is supposedly criticizing a womanizer, but she is still paying attention to him and there was something about him in the first place that attracted her. I think it is something we only pretend to be upset about, while secretly fantasizing about the sex. And the sex is the good part - the bad part of womanizing is lying, betrayal, and hurting people. And the worst part is the way it perpetuates the unnatural idea that corrupts our civilization that women are property. The very worst outcome of this idea that men can own women is when men kill women over "infedelity", or kill their spirits with abuse, but the same idea that women are "disposable" objects for your pleasure is at the heart of the evil of womanizing. You did not have to look at Gaga's performance as disrespectful to Kennedy, you could have looked at it as honoring his relationship with Marilyn, as a tribute to them and their love. If there is something scandalous, a problem with depicting it, it is because of something scandalous and wrong in the historical events, not in something Gaga is doing. Our minds supply the ideas that Gaga is saying this particular thing or that, to even assume that R. Kelly represented JFK instead of Obama - because if "it doesn't matter" then it is a story about a presidential affair, no further details necessary. And if it is specifically about Kennedy, it did not get into controversy, just depicted sexuality and romance between people we know had a famous, one of the most famous, romances. Its not like she had Jackie O' Perry walk in on them or the MTV security murder her at the end. If we want to talk about performances being possibly offensive, what about Katy Perry appropriating Geisha culture in a likely disrespectful way, or Ke$ha dancing in a cowgirl suit with "Indian-style" backup dancers? But I'm not here to whine and complain, but to show why Gaga made some great art and what it means. Gaga "brought these issues up" by performing as Marilyn Monroe making out with the president, but she focused ont the positive, not the negative. Of course we can't help but remember and think of the the negative implications, too. And this is the point: I'm not the only one who glossed over controvery about Kennedy this weekend, that is how it goes when you honor a martyr. Gaga was not bringing up a sore subject, his relationship with Marilyn, she was bringing up something we were all basically jealous of him for and have soul-level issues with. She was touching our souls by connecting with this story, contributing to it's eternity (like a doppelganger on Vampire Diaries repeats a lovestory with a new character in a new age). Like I said, we can see Gaga's performance as honoring the love between them, or between any man and mistress. We can see it as "good." And if we think of bad things, they were there in the history of JFK and Marilyn, it's not like Gaga created these ideas to besmirch their memory. It's like when Craig Ferguson tells a joke about a scandal and scolds the studio audience for "ooooooh"-ing him by saying, sarcastically, "Oh, right, because I am the one who....(insert scandalous activity here)". People shoot the messenger when something "gets to them", when they can't just digest something as entertainment but it actually effects them somehow, when it is art. Gaga's great artistic message with this performance is to show how we love the scandal, we fantasize about the naughtiness, but don't allow ourselves to admit it. Then we repress those details in order to memorialize someone in an ideal way. But it is not actually ideal to be unsexual, it is ideal to be sexual, and in fact JFK had sex with one of the most ideal women in history - yet it was a scandal. And it may have been the worst kind of scandal, and the very worst of the evils of womanizing, if someone killed her to cover it up. That would sum up everything that is wrong with the ideas of using women, women being disposable, and men being more important than women - its the most classic example. But leaving that aside, giving Kennedy the benefit of the doubt, he still was responsible for putting her in such a difficult situation, and other women as well, by being dishonest. This is the essential reason why Gaga is a more perfect liberating figure than JFK or Martin Luther King, Jr - neither of them were personally sexually liberated. The certainly were great lights on the path of liberation for society, inspiring people to great things, but the "dark side" is that they cheated on their wives and could not be honest about it, that they likely used their influence over women to take advantage of them - and that is not the worst part because lets hope everyone liked the sex, but it shows a lack of satisfaction and fulfilment and wholeness - not to want to have sex, we always want sex, but to not be able to be honest and strong enough about being completely open about it. Even Jesus spoke to a sexually repressed audience in terms they could understand, so his liberating ideas about sex are only available to those "with ears to hear", in parables. But we don't know about Jesus's sexuality, other than we can assume if he was a "man" he had some form of sexuality - maybe because it was taboo, then too, if he was gay, or because of later rewriting Mary out as his lover and trying to imply negative things about her by associating her with prostitution, to make him fake-perfect asexual. Yes, it was a different time then, people would not accept the president doing naughty things like they do in Europe and even a generation later - look what happened to Clinton compared to what happened to Burlesconi (that's not really his name is it? I'm remembering it funnier, right? too ironic!) That whole scandal could have just been a needed lesson to the country on the greatness of blowjobs, instead of impeachment and leading to the election of Bush and all the evil that entailed. But what if the president, even Clinton, had just come out with the truth? Maybe we could have shifted, faster, as a society. Because of course we will reach a more liberal, tolerant future, someday. There is no other possibility than that soon we will look back with wonder on this time when people felt that had to hide being gay, etc. Gaga's message in "Do What You Want" fits perfectly with the Marilyn Monroe story - even the idea that she was likely killed, her body martyred, but her message and influence and power as an icon remains strong. They can bury and repress her body but her spirit will shine even brighter, her voice can't be stopped. Gaga herself was echoing the Voice, the Spirit of Marilyn, reviving her for us at this perfect time when the man is honored but we keep forgetting the women. If we don't want to look at this performance as positive, then it is because we notice something wrong, but it is not something wrong with Gaga but with our society, or with the way Marilyn was treated. That might not be something we want to adress but it is real and it matters. Gaga is an artist, it is her role in this world to bring up things in special ways and remind us of the magic and meaning we are missing out on, and she did this brilliantly - and I've only seen seconds of the song so far, without sound, on the news - but so hot! And what better way to honor JFK and Marilyn - because thier hotness is immortal, a great example of the immortality of beauty. All the greatest efforts in human history have that element of striving for or becoming eternal. Gaga overflows with eternity in everything she does and it is no wonder her timelessness would line up with the timelessness of JFK/Marilyn on this 50th anniversary, that is the magic of being "timely", because even the eternal comes to us in moments. Gaga may have the most potential and power to liberate the most people in the most ways in the history of mankind. Some of this is thanks to technology and improved global awareness, and some of it is due to her own personal genius, divine inspiration, and reaching her full potential, including being a sexual goddess. If we have problems with her being Marilyn Monroe it is because we still can't quite handle the sexual goddess archetype and couldn't handle it half a century ago. But Gaga is getting us ready, because when we can handle it the world will transform. They can say what they want about Gaga's performance and can try to bury it under less artistic, more sensational reporting, on cat-videos, etc. Yes, Miley keeps creeping in and I will soon make good on my promise to write the Gaga/Miley/Weed edition. The media can handle talking about Miley controversies, kind of, though revealing their biases, but Gaga's art is so complex, statements made about it will trigger responses like this one and we will learn a lot about human nature if we continue to talk about it, so the forces of status quo want to ignore it, realizing the mroe we talk about it the more we learn and improve. But the truth is, like everything Gaga does, this was a landmark performance and those who don't get it yet will be able to understand when they look back on it from the future. Do we actually honor men who have msitresses? I mean, we obviously do, but if we repress the fact that we honor them for having mistresses, that keeps the mistress in a negative role. If we don't admit that it kind of or really turns us on, that energy comes out as hate or jealousy or confusion. If we honor a man for having a mistress, and admit it, then we can give the mistress the honor she is due. And if these things could be more accepted then they would be less hurtful because people would work out more honestly what is acceptable between them. My lover will always understand if I ever have a chance with Gaga, because she loves her too. Love can take us out of the restrictive categories, love can cure us from treating people like property. Art is love given to all of us, and Gaga's AMA performance of "Do What You Want" is a fabulous present that can free us from hang-ups that are deeply rooted in our society and psyches. She is freeing our minds from the repression that says sex and women are bad, and the world we will create when we make that change will be phenomenal.