Lady Gaga is fascinating.

[Antero]

I would be interested in hearing TSKS' defense of the "Telephone" video.  While there's certain aspects of "Paparazzi" and "Bad Romance" that made me stabby, I could at least understand their appeal.  This shit is just... a fucking mess.

It seriously plays like Virgin Mobile wanted to come up with a Lady Gaga parody/trend-cash-in/knockoff commercial, as advertisers often do, but they somehow got Lady Gaga to actually star in it. 

Defense? It's a music video!!! It's great, it got half naked ladies, 3 or 4 extravagant sets, mass murder, crazy costumes and dance moves, tarantino references, a few chuckles spread throughout plus it's pretty cool seeing the two biggest female pop stars together. really, if i want commentary i'll read an article. this is pop music and it only has one clear purpose: To get those hands-a-clappin', feets-a-stompin' and booty shakin'!

*high five*

+1.  Man, Babar does poptimism right.

[elpollodiablo]

she definitely has more edge and grittiness going on than most pop stars and that's why it's fun watching what she'll do next and i guess that's what makes her fascinating. but as soon we're talking high art and female empowerment it's like who gives a shit. some may think that, some may not. there's no high art-o-meter.

and what's with the distinction of fun and good? if something is entertaining and you enjoy it. it's GOOD. it's like "hey, how was Avatar?"
"It was really fun"
"ok, so it was really good?"
"no, the dialogue was such cliche, it's a terrible film"

Did you just give an example to disprove your own assertion?

[Little Sixes Little Nines]

nope - i think he's saying, like avatar, lady gaga is fun, not good. yes?

[dieblucasdie]

she definitely has more edge and grittiness going on than most pop stars and that's why it's fun watching what she'll do next and i guess that's what makes her fascinating. but as soon we're talking high art and female empowerment it's like who gives a shit. some may think that, some may not. there's no high art-o-meter.

TSKS gives a shit!  Which is why I was wondering how his elaborate house-of-cards has changed in light of this new development.

And I do think feminism actually means something, yes.  Maybe that's old-fashioned of me or something.

AGAIN, I'm not the one bringing this angle up.  If her boosters weren't constantly telling me how groundbreaking and provocative and blah blah blah she is, I'd have zero problem with her, and she'd be another pop star whose songs I found kind of amusing until they got overplayed.

[elpollodiablo]

she definitely has more edge and grittiness going on than most pop stars and that's why it's fun watching what she'll do next and i guess that's what makes her fascinating. but as soon we're talking high art and female empowerment it's like who gives a shit. some may think that, some may not. there's no high art-o-meter.

TSKS gives a shit!  Which is why I was wondering how his elaborate house-of-cards has changed in light of this new development.

And I do think feminism actually means something, yes.  Maybe that's old-fashioned of me or something.

AGAIN, I'm not the one bringing this angle up.  If her boosters weren't constantly telling me how groundbreaking and provocative and blah blah blah she is, I'd have zero problem with her, and she'd be another pop star whose songs I found kind of amusing until they got overplayed.

I think we're basically on the same page, except the music does nothing for me.

[Bernard]

"If you don't like this, you hate fun" is certainly one of the dumber platitudes.

Yeah, I figured that would happen. You can just skip that part. My bad for using slang from elsewhere.

[Bernard]

haha: http://vigilantcitizen.com/?p=1676

[elpollodiablo]

Yeah, that's pretty great.

[dieblucasdie]

http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/45685085.html

M.I.A. interview with NME for their lame "The State of Music" issue, where she (weirdly and hilariously) keeps bringing up Lady Gaga

Do we still need record labels?

Are they even interested in making money from music anymore? Lady Gaga plugs 15 things in her new video. Dude, she even plugs a burger! That’s probably how they’re making money right now - buying up the burger joint, putting the burger in a music video and making loads of burger money.

How important are image and visuals to your music?

Very. But it’s not like “Haus of Gaga” (laughs). Me blindfolded with naked men feeding me apples and shit.

also:

Would you ever make a record for a Twilight soundtrack?

They asked me. Luckily Jimmy [Iovine, chairmen of M.I.A.’s US label Interscope] had beef with the Twilight people, so he stepped in and told them to fuck off.

[coldforge]

R— just showed me this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haHXgFU7qNI

It's a music video made by a bunch of soldiers stationed in Afghanistan for "Telephone". It's amazing. I'm really kind of in shock right now. You want your feminism? These men are US soldiers! That is, the last place on Earth where it's kind of given a pass if you might still be a little retrograde in your outlook.

[Ignatius]

Somehow that's the first time I've been able to recognize that it's a pretty good pop song.

[Bernard]

R— just showed me this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haHXgFU7qNI

It's a music video made by a bunch of soldiers stationed in Afghanistan for "Telephone". It's amazing. I'm really kind of in shock right now. You want your feminism? These men are US soldiers! That is, the last place on Earth where it's kind of given a pass if you might still be a little retrograde in your outlook.

I'm afraid I don't see the connection to feminism? I had to watch it with the sound off because the baby's asleep. Is the audio just the song, or does it include some kind of feminist commentary?

[Ignatius]

I don't know the direct link to feminism, either. I guess because the men involved are presumed to be extremely masculine but because it's a dancey pop song recorded by two women it renders their enthusiasm transgressive in some way, but I don't claim to know what cf meant by that exactly.

[coldforge]

I was using 'feminism' pretty loosely. But I was just really deeply struck by the fact that these guys were engaging in behavior that should by all rights be considered, in the US Army of all places, as deeply sissified. I mean, let's be fair. This wasn't simply enthusiasm there. They were specifically dancing with each other in a very intimate and feminine manner, that would give so strongly and monolithically macho and conservative a culture as the US military about a thousand momentary excuses to censure and suppress whichever crazy dude suggested that they all make a video where they all enthusiastically mimic either characteristically feminine or characteristically gay dance styles, seemingly with an apparent absolute minimum of the distancing drag play you traditionally see when very masculine cultures include female dress up—like, say, Pirates of Penzance.

In any case I'm sure something along the lines of 'a truly unexpected refutation of heteronormity (and concomitant masculinity) in one of its most enduring refuges' is more accurate than my drunken 'feminism'.

[coldforge]

IE: Highly feminized behavior in an all-male context, if it's couched in obviously fake wigs, unconvincing falsettos, and tongue in cheek mimicry, is pretty thoroughly normalized and a great way for men to affirm their masculinity by demonstrating just how badly they fit into the feminine sterotype. But highly feminized behavior in the absence of female signifiers is HOMOSEXUAL behavior, and much more striking and surprising in the aforementioned conext.

[Antero]

I feel like heterosexual males playing at femininity in homosocial contexts is so age-old that it's entirely compatible with the oppression of women and gays.

[Ignatius]

Fair enough. I just had trouble leaping to feminism from a 'refutation of heteronormity,' which on its own I would agree with. On the other hand, the absence of wigs doesn't automatically indicate a genuine embrace or identification with whatever part of gay or feminized culture that likes to dance to pop songs. But it was a fun video, whatever the political content.

xpost

[elpollodiablo]

Kill to Make It True -- The US Army

[dieblucasdie]

I feel like heterosexual males playing at femininity in homosocial contexts is so age-old that it's entirely compatible with the oppression of women and gays.

Yeah, fake-gay-for-the-lulz ain't nothing transgressive; it's a time-honored military tradition, running the gamut from I Was a Male War Bride to Abu Ghraib.  And, you know, stop for a second and consider that you will get kicked out of the military if you're actually gay.

The video's amusing for sure, but it's, you know, the kind of thing bored dudes in the military with a ton of downtime have always done.

[Bernard]

Ok, that explanation makes more sense. I just didn't see the connection.

[dieblucasdie]

Also, on topic, I wasn't gonna post this, since it was on Metafilter, but I see GI is reading the thread:

http://www.ladygaga.com/forum/default.aspx?cid=454&tid=335735

When we view something contrary to custom we assign them a monstrous quality. We infer based on something’s lack of ordinariness that it is disgusting or somehow linked to something inhumane, in some cases one might say uncivilized. In light of Montaigne’s theory, that we assign the unordinary with a monstrous condition, we can see the viewpoint from which art critics, the government, and the public, condemn Spencer Tunick’s work with naked bodies. Because it is not socially ordinary; it is irregular to see that many nudes amassed at one time„the art possesses a grotesque quality for the viewer.

This assigned foreignness can be designated as a kind of artistic racism, a public perception that handicaps from seeing and experiencing different forms, whether artistic or natural. There is an error in our perception„that our perception of the human body is somehow flawed. We call contrary to nature what we call contrary to custom (Lopate 58) We are trained only to be accepting of the regular, and it is this blindness that prevents us from seeing the prodigy in that which we have never seen before.

It is possible that in our naked form, in our deformed, that we are not only exposing our vulnerability, our skin, our scars, our flaws, and our genitals. But we also are exposing our secrets.

In spite of Montaigne’s great idealism, this perspective that allows us to choose the way in which we view the body, there is still an unavoidable clause that needs analyses. Sexuality manifests most physically

My only real thought on it is, "I'm fucking glad I'll never be famous enough that people will be posting my undergrad essays on the internet"

[Good Intentions]

Almost nobody is, thank god, but John Rawls's undergrad dissertation got the full Harvard University Press treatment a few years after he passed away. No, I'm not going to read it.

Damn, that's some clunky writing.

[coldforge]

GI, What do you think of Alasdair MacIntyre? I'm becoming interested in Virtue Ethics lately. But the assumption that you need to establish a (presumably universal) telos for VE to be intelligible is a sticking point for me.

[Good Intentions]

MacIntyre is very good, and 'After Virtue' is a very, very interesting book about ethics, virtue and otherwise. But he's not the main figure in virtue ethics: that probably is Rosalind Hurtshouse. I know virtue ethics (and her) very well, since she's at Auckland. So is Christine Swanton. The other main figure in that field is Michael Slote. The three of them have given (competing) full-bodied theories of right action in terms of virtue ethics (MacIntyre never did). Hursthouse is a full-blown neo-Aristotelian, telos and all, and her book 'On Virtue Ethics' is probably the standard text. There is, on Hursthouse's view, an informative story (a normative story, not a biological one) you can tell about what type of creatures humans are (rational, social animals) and what type of life is appropriate for such creatures. Slote has a very different view, developed in 'Morals from Motives', who pushes the rather hard line that only the motive behind an action matters when you decide whether it's the right thing to do or not. Swanton is the exact opposite: the virtues have targets, states of affairs that they characteristically bring about, and you are acting virtuously when you hit those targets in accordance with virtue (both the means and the ends matter). There's no overarching goal to human life in her view. She sounds like the one who might strike a chord with you. I frequently recommend her article A Virtue Ethical Account of Right Action as an excellent piece of work on that topic. Hurthouse's article at the SEP is an excellent and thoroughgoing introduction to the question.

I can tell you a lot about this topic (which we should do in a thread of its own, if we're going to do that), on account of the fact that I ended up, by pure blind accident, in probably the best place in the world to learn about virtue ethics. I can also email articles in case you don't have JSTOR access or the like. I must warn you that a lot of the treatment VE gets in surveys, introductory textbooks, etc, is really lacking, largely because it is so foreign to the way ethics was done up until 1958 or so (the publication of a fantastic article by Elizabeth Anscombe, Modern Moral Philosophy, where she pointed out that ethics as a discipline is useless until philosophers get a far better grasp on the philosophy of mind than they had at that point).

[coldforge]

I think one of the reasons that virtue ethics (or at least AlMac) appears—at least at first glance—very interesting to me is because I am very uncomfortable with the notion of 'the world' as a sort of staging ground for moral agents, or as a collection of happiness states (in the consequentialist view) or behavioral flow charts (in the deontologist) that the individual acts upon—and in either case the primary scope and point of view in evaluating moral value. It seems to me that too much thinking about any given moral agent in a behavioral framework tends to blow the agent in question out of proportion, while minimizing the agency of the people he's interacting with. I suspect that the ethical and moral content of actions tends to derive much more from the interior of ALL the agents in question than is generally considered. That is to say, classic questions about runaway trains and fat people and levers aside, most of ethics is not a two-body problem, but the interaction of multiple moral agents. But I find a lot of ethical thinking slipping into the perspective of a single moral agent, and then one or many moral patients. I'm not really sure the ethical world exists.

Which is why I am unconvinced of the degree to which behavior itself can be moral, and why I find myself much more personally interested, in my day-to-day, with the character of the people that behavior extends out of. Also there are my lasting and only very slowly draining Casablancean tendencies.

Slote has a very different view, developed in 'Morals from Motives', who pushes the rather hard line that only the motive behind an action matters when you decide whether it's the right thing to do or not.

I'm sure there is one, but I don't see a Virtuist angle to this position as described. Isn't that just classic deontology?

I'm happy to decamp to a thread more custom-fit but to be honest I sort of think having this conversation in a thread about Lady Gaga makes it better.