Embrace Your Inner Monster

Writing for NPR , Elizabeth Scalia (aka, The Anchoress ) analyzes the semiotics of pop-music/marketing phenomenons Madonna and Lady Gaga:

Nearly 30 years ago, we were told that Madonna was a “genius,” particularly at marketing and reinventing herself, but time has not borne that out. Her music has held up well, but Madonna herself has been a dead-bore for decades, largely because her marketing and reinventing always come down to sex. But sex — thanks in part to Madonna, herself — has long ceased to be a daring or provocative subject.

Madonna tried standing conventionality on its head with an idea that began and ended with embracing the inner sex object, but her art flowed along very conventional lines of what bad and good (or chastity and promiscuity) meant. Madonna’s exploration of human sexuality lacked real depth; after her cone bras and pinstriped girdles, she had no more tricks up her sleeve.

Gaga, on the other hand, is advising the world to embrace the inner monster, and this is a much more daring proposition; our objectifying ourselves as sexual beings might be easier to cop to — in any age — than the admission that we each of us house “inner monsters” of ego, selfishness, rage, manipulation or superior disdain. Lady Gaga has assigned herself the role of monster’s cheerleader. She says, “Be the monster! I love your monster!” What she does not say — because she cannot yet know — is where the unleashing of millions of pent-up monsters may lead.

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