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This might be a post about Lady GaGa. It might not. First a disclaimer; I have not yet watched the video. I didn’t watch the “Bad Romance” video until sometime last month. I get like that. I didn’t see “Titanic” until like 2007 when I was really high in front of my buddies HDTV and it came on HBO and I just said fuck it, I don’t feel like changing channels for a few hours. (Favorite scene? Slant deck Pachinko, of course!!!)

I will see this video sometime, and I’m sure the hyperbole will all have been so much wasted breath. This is just a video. One that IS A GROUNDBREAKING ARTISTIC STATEMENT THAT CO-CREATES AND AT THE SAME TIME DESTROYS AND CRITIQUES EVERY PREVIOUSLY HELD BELIEF AND RELIGIO-ECONO-CULTURAL VALUE SYSTEM THAT EVER EXISTED… deep breath…A CLARION REAWAKENING THAT MAKES RISEN ZOMBIES OF MARX AND KEYNES AND FORCES THEM TO GAYMARRY AND MAKE GHANDI – LENO BABIES THAT DON’T JUDGE AND ARE COMPLETELY PURE RAINBOW BRITE SNOWFLAKES OF AN AS YET UNEXPRESSED PLANE OF LOVE AND BEINGNESS…or some such nonsense. I don’t believe it. I’ve read a ton of the breathless recaps and interpretations and honestly they made me want to further avoid this work.

Let me state that I appreciate GaGa for what I see as an evolving and apparently continuous act of transgressive performance art. She is a favorite of “the gays.” (Can I call them that? If I’m quoting a lyric? PS – One of my friends is black AND gay. PPS – not Obama.) As a teen I worked in a piano bar in The Hamptons. For three of those years I was the only straight male on the floor staff. I had friends that were dead of AIDS before many of your parents even met. I was educated and enlightened about gay culture. I understand the love of flamboyant performance that the downtown crowd heartily embraces. So, I think I “get” GaGa, at least a little bit. I have also seen and appreciated her solo piano version of Poker Face from some Israeli morning show last summer. That was pretty good. I’m not likely to ever actually purchase a recorded work of hers. My guess is she’ll eventually find meaning in her life again and move on.

Here’s the thing, and it’s true of every artistic endeavor, there ain’t nothing new under the sun. Long and short of it right there. So yes, this video is a retort to all of the assorted haters, a smorgasbord re-mix of every critique of her person and work cunningly fashioned to blunt each of them at a fundamental level leaving all non-believers eviscerated and pointless in its ever expanding wake. But I’ve seen it all before. Madonna for instance (whom GaGa readily acknowledges as an important influence), released the “Like a Prayer” video waaaaayyy back in 1989. It had a black Jesus! That it was implied Madonna had FUCKED?!? JESUS IS WHITE, GODDAMMIT AND HE IS DEFINITELY NOT GOING TO FUCK MADONNA, OF ALL PEOPLE!!! Sure, he might go for a handy or something, but who wouldn’t, I mean Christ, it’s Madonna, just to be able to tell your boys “I got a ‘Handy-J’ from Madonna, I mean c’mon. (Here I picture a scene where in Beatle accents JC is all ‘SRSLY Paul I totally got a Handy from Madonna! I know MADONNA!!! Shhshhshssshhhhh here comes John, be cool, be cool don’t tell him he’ll get all fucking moody.’)

I feel GaGa owes a nod to Sir Elton as well. How about Genesis? I think there’s a good deal of Genesis in the mix too, at least in terms of stage shows and elaborate gaudiness being incorporated into everything (Of Montreal also pay homage to early Gabriel-era Genesis).

I should also note that I just finished reading Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not a Gadget.” One of Lanier’s theses is that re-mix / mash-up ideology has stunted, nay atrophied, creativity. The results are just a constant re-contextualization / re-appropriation of extant art. I buy this, and from the clips I have seen of “Telephone” it appears to revel in this trope. The Pussy Wagon truck from “Kill Bill,” and all of the freight that carries with it. Beyoncé (as Jackie Brown?), “Caged Heat,” QVC, “Iron Chef” (“Dune” and other Sci-Fi references in the recipe), and just a ton of other shit. It appears from the hubbub to be a lot of sizzle and very little steak.

And then there’s the pixelated portion of the show. I was all over the Jamie Lee Curtis rumor (hermaphrodism? Hermaphroditism? Fuck it I’ll go with J.L.C.) when it broke. Some saw this as a way to negate the power of our Lady by denying her an essential feminine mystique and also to both demean and diminish her talent by implying that she cannot be sexy (because god knows men were always disgusted by Jamie Lee Curtis in the 80’s/90’s until she started shilling for activia) because she’s part man? I don’t know. I jumped on that band wagon because she is a spectacle and that rumor, if true, just makes the whole thing more spectacular. Also, particularly given the manner in which GaGa performs, there is no way that this rumor does anything but raise her profile. I’ll go further and postulate that this allegation may have originated from her camp to begin with.

I will eventually see this video, like I said before. I’m fairly certain that it will be just another scrap of cultural flotsam that has very little enduring impact, I PROMISE it is not “this generations ‘Thriller,‘” shit, no one can moon-walk in heels. Show me GaGa moon-walking and I’ll start to believe, until then, throw the remix on the ones and twos and watch the dance floor fill with dancing shoes. GaGa has quite a ways to go to approach iconic status of those she cites as inspiration, I will watch and wait (and silently judge).