Is that girl a monster? Some notes on authenticity and artistic value in Lady Gaga

Abstract

This article will discuss a specific reading of Lady Gaga's image as something new and provocative in pop and celebrity culture. Since the release of The Fame Monster (2009), arguments for the postmodern ‘subversiveness’ of Gaga have emerged both in music journalism and scholarly writing. Such claims surprise me for one basic reason: the extent to which Gaga's star persona is related, in many media texts, to specific discourses about the cultural and social value of music. For this reason I will deliberately ignore the visual texts on which ‘postmodern’ readings usually rely (for example, Gaga's music videos), and will look at the discourses that emerge in Gaga's interviews, analysing one particularly long piece from the online music site Noisevox (Norris 2009). This example clearly shows the construction of a biographical narrative that relies on quite distinctive notions of authenticity. Drawing on Frith (1998), authenticity can be defined as a series of statements of truth about the value of music. More specifically, I am referring to what have been called a ‘romantic discourse’ about music as a non-mediated expression of the self, and a ‘folk discourse’ about music as cultural expression of a community (Frith 1998, pp. 21–46). Overall, I want to underline that more extensive studies on Lady Gaga should not ignore this discursive rhetoric, as it frequently re-frames Gaga's visual and allegedly postmodern ethos.