How to not be a person

Posted by yseult on May 25, 2009 in Issues, Philosophy, Philosophy and Pop Culture | 0 comments

Die or don’t. Be creative, be idiotic, be silly, be eccentric, but don’t be too smart about it, or you might reveal a bit too much about yourself…

I’m not really into the weirdness that the current charts are subjecting us to, but not even I can completely cut myself off from the hype around certain things. Lady Gaga certainly falls into my category of ‘annoying’ and ‘heap of mental debility’ or even ‘be original at any and every price’. I won’t go into the difference between ‘being original’, ‘having a personality’ and ‘having an image’ of all the above here.
No what I am far more interested in is something the Queen of Over-the-top stated a couple of weeks ago in either a press release or an interview:

“You know, I have such an appreciation for where I am in my life because I’ve struggled and because I couldn’t get signed, and because I couldn’t get played on the radio,” … “There are times when it can be a lot to deal with but always when I get up in the morning I try to find that very joyful place that reminds me that I would die if someone took it all away. If someone did that I wouldn’t be a person anymore.”

cf. Contactmusic News and a much longer, twisted version in The Independent

That strikes me as odd. Well, to be completely honest, first thoughts are ‘oh dear’… then a touch of ‘how stupid can you get’ comes in. Once those signs of rejection subside, I get down to the philosophical problem that arises.

What makes us persons in the first place? Is it what we do (ie. the good)? What we don’t do (ie. the evil)? Is it where we come from? From who we are born? From what we’ve been through or haven’t been through (ie. the good and the bad)?

Or rather: is it what we want to project to the outside? Or rather that unveiled, harsh reality that we don’t want anybody to see? Is it the friends that cherish us? The people we love? The ones we despise?

Truth be told, what looks like a stupid quib by an equally stupid person, after scrutiny, actually is the true and profound expression of Gaga’s gagaism and true existence. She is what we make her to be. We give her the canvas on which to draw her meaningless existence out into something glamorous, something eccentric, something we in our everyday trot would never dare to do. Truly, if someone were to take that away form her, the icon would die. Just as any of the megahyped media models starting from an oversexed Marilyn Monroe to a slightly disgustingly exhibitionist Madonna. They exist because we see something in them. Because they dare to drag out the craziness that our reason cannot live out. Why? Because it’s not meant to be lived out. When craziness becomes the everyday role you play, then you lose what really made you a person in the first place. Or with the terms of Lady Gaga: if you make your ‘box of insanity’ your only kingdom, what’s left in the evening when you lie in bed alone, only turned on yourself?

Now of course, such a reasoning presupposes thought and self-critique which frankly I doubt Lady Gaga has enough of to even recognize a ‘bon mot’ when it would jump under her wig and ate directly at her brain. Chances are she really believes that losing her constructed image and fame would really kill her. The humiliation clearly would be enough to stop that superficial heart of hers.

But that leads me to a comforting thought: you can be what you want, wish and dream of. You can even construct your pseudo-memories about it all and make it real for us. And with the reinforcing strength of the perspective of people around us, we can even legitimize it until we completely and utterly forget what it was to be different or before.

Comforting or terribly unsettling?