LADY GAGA - “CHANGING THE WORLD ONE SEQUIN AT A TIME”

An electric mix of musical pop-art, an elaborate display of rock and roll aesthetic and the meanest electro-burlesque sensation to throb through the massive vibrating dildo that is the music industry, I introduce to you, the acclaimed LADY GAGA.

As you may have gathered from my last post, I am a celebrator of the 80s as one of the most explicitly creative and equally whimsical epochs in social and cultural history. It was an era that lured us from the sublime to the utterly ridiculous, a time where bathos reigned over the culture industries. So why did we love the 80s? The answer is simple; it pushed us to get over ourselves. It was a time of satire and irony, the fashion industry deployed ‘shock and awe’ tactics, allowing little modes of escapism to seep into our everyday lives. Now, in a similar economically depressive and self-obsessive time, the 80s esprit de corps has manifested itself in the multiplicitous embodiment that is Lady Gaga, who beckons us to look at our pathetic, dim little lives and to electrify it with the escapism of art and aesthetic.

Since the music industry has always had its cock in our arses, there’s no wonder why we felt empty, emotionless and used for most of the 90s, just look at what they gave us, shit boy bands, shit girl bands, depressing lyricists in indie bands and scary rapsters, whose music was riddled with the hardships of real life. Needless to say, of course we had our triumphs in the music industry of the 90s, but for the most part it was shit and waaaaay to self-reflective. So we kind of felt a bit like cheap ass hookers, the industry got its bit, we took it hard, we faked orgasms of pleasure when N’SYNC came out with a new hit single, and then felt further degraded when they threw us a measly manufactured pop group from such shows as POP STARS, as a reward for our sweaty, sexual efforts.

So when Lady Gaga came rippling through the industry in a wave of ecstasy and controversial pleasure, it felt like the 80s all over again. With the mantra of “Why not?” of art and beauty and fuck-ups, and sexuality and satire, we had ourselves, at last, a genuine artistic freakshow that we couldn’t take our eyes off. Britney almost had it, but we knew her too well, it was as disturbing as watching your sister grows breasts and her exploits were just too...familiar. Gaga on the other hand arrived on the scene like a gyrating, sexed up avant-garde pornstar, so it was all groovy when the music industry stiffened its flaccid self up a bit, we certainly felt the tweak and boom the era of unfulfilling heavy petting and seedy massages were over, with Gaga here, we were all getting much more pleasure.

That is why we love her, our Lady Gaga. Who doesn’t love that which gives them a tingling pleasure in their nether regions? And while the industry vibrator is whizzing at maximum force, you simply can’t but scream “YES...MORE...YES...MORE..OH.YESSSSSS”, now can you? So sit back, stick on a porno and enjoy it while the battery life lasts, my guess is that she’s packing energizer, rechargeables.

Let Fashion Fuck You

Has anyone ever looked back at the style of the 80s and said to themselves, “Fair balls”? It has to be said that the 80’s was the decade of the Frankensteinian designer. Outfits defied nature, laws of gravity were flouted and the lunatic creative genius had its ravishingly wicked way with design. Many would argue differently, but the era of 80s fashion was one big, hideously funny joke made by the industry at the dumb-witted mongs that were the public masses. The designers said, “You need stupidly big shoulder pads”, the public ran out and grabbed every padded item available, giving us a comical display of pumped, rippling shoulders, quivering close to the jaw line. There’s nothing hotter than no-neck appeal. It was the blessed age of the fashion victim and as Aesop once said, “The lamb began to follow the wolf in sheep's clothing.” Fashion was fun to be the slave of and we all had a rollicking great laugh. In fact, we’re still laughing now, hair styles were ludicrous, make-up was epically dramatic, clothes were whimsical, bright, innocuous and we followed these fads in glorious succession. What was on the catwalk was in the shops, simple.

It was all so much fun, being the fashion victim, the dry humping gimps that we were, giving it some good old heavy petting and letting it ejaculate its glittering sequins and dragish make-up all over us. It wasn’t beautiful, but it was art, it was rampant, tasteless, obnoxious art, it was wonderful. Then some knob-jockey had to ruin it all by saying that faddishness was bad and that fashion victims had rights or something. Fashion became a democracy god damn it, it even got its own police force, everyone stopped taking LSD and cleaned up their act. All because some fat assed bitch wore leggings that were stretched beyond recoil across her corpulent, cellulite enriched thighs, exposing a red thong through the now pitifully transparent material. The masses revolted and wanted everything to be practical, comfortable.

Now everything’s gotten so damn boring, even Manolo Blahnik noted that, “About half my designs are controlled fantasy, 15 percent are total madness and the rest are bread-and-butter designs.” I mean seriously, you boring bitches out there condemning Mr. Blahnik to produce “bread and butter designs”, those beauties that you see in the window of his store on Sloane Street, they’re nothing, they’re pieces of shit in comparison to what he could create. Since the public has had a say in determining what sells in fashion, we have drained the life out of the creative industry. The acid-dropping, booze-inducing, vomit-inspiring, gender-fucking, sex - sex-sexing frivolity of fashion is dead, we’re grown up and sensible now. Models parade up and down catwalks in fantastic examples of creativity and fun: Galliano, Gaultier, Mc Queen take me now. It causes saliva to seep onto my tongue in a hungry, panting desire to attain and follow. I begin to quiver, I’m ready, I’m ready to run into a store and have fashion stick its big, wet tongue in my ear and say, “take it!” Just as the lady next to me is getting it up the ass, a siren screams and someone says “No”! Clothes are reformed and edited, make-ups are customised for practical every day wear and it bothers me.

      

That boring old sack over there has infused all our minds with the ideology that things need to be more practical, more wearable, more functional and more acceptable. That’s fine, let her have her way, I just feel that we’ve stopped caring about our image, how we put ourselves together and the visceral relationship we have with style. Yes the 80s brought us from the sublime to the ridiculous, but at least we had a laugh with it on the way. Now, as I traipse through the crowded streets of what was once a fashion hub of the world, I see well dressed people, well put together, pretty, attractive, but what the people of London lack is that rawness of emotion, that connection with creativity and style. It’s banal. London has become that 40 year old woman who was glamorous in her youth and has grown weary and tired of making the effort. Where’s the fun gone, the impracticality of madness, the joy of wearing something ludicrous? So let us don our lion heads and throw on our Kermit capes, slap a few steaks across your chest and paint those lips Mc Queen style. It’s time to get frisky with fashion again, go on a bender with it and let it let it touch you inappropriately. Let it make you feel naughty, wake up the next morning with the filthiest hangover and regret the night before with every sensible bone in your body. But every time you see that piece, it tickles you in the pit of your stomach and reminds you of the time you grabbed fashion by the balls and gave them a good, hard, raunchy squeeze.