homotronic:

The best i can figure it has something to do with her ascension in her fans minds to messiah-like levels. Her whole “I’m a vehicle for my voice, but i’m also a vehicle for their voices” thing is just a bit cult-like for me.

I appreciate that there are lots of people out there who haven’t been confronted with the frankness of a lot of her imagery, or speech, who are absolutely blown away by her, or people who have felt marginalized within the queer community for a long time who have never had somebody talk like she does “for them”, without the knowledge of how to be comfortable being their own advocate in that way. I really do get that and respect it.

However, this doesn’t raise this pop artist to deity levels for most of the world, and it really shouldn’t for you.

The messiah-complex within a pop star’s mind isn’t a new thing. We’ve seen it in Bono, we’ve seen it in Chris Martin from coldplay, we’ve seen it in lots of members of popular celebrity culture. They connect their fame with an issue they want to see solved or aided, and the success of that resolution tends to inflate their personal sense of their worth to popular culture.

It’s hard to say where their supported issues would be without them, mostly because that’s not the universe we live in at this point. We have no idea where the african AIDS crisis would be without Bono and we have no idea what kind of funding OXFAM would have with Chris Martin, and frankly we have no idea where DADT would be without GaGa’s last minute support on the matter, so i’m not here to speculate on that. This is merely meant as a thoughtful, open commentary on popular culture as a whole, specifically relating to pop stars who have developed a messiah complex, and how that complex is supported by their fandom.

The contrast i see is that Lady GaGa’s fans are as devout as they are. If you openly criticize bono, you don’t get a flurry of rude, anonymous tumblr messages level all sorts of nasty accusations and name calling at you. You so much as present the idea that GaGa’s interest in the gay community wouldn’t be as great if she weren’t largely profiting from it’s adoration of her, well, that’s a different story, as i can tell you from personal experience.

What i want to see is NOT the demise of lady gaga (although if you believed her interviews, any of her detractors seems to wish this, and believe me these statements have not escaped my attention as further incitement of her followers fanaticism), Hell, i don’t really even care what she does, She can make music for the next 50 years and i’m okay with that. What i’d like to see is a higher level of criticality within her fans. I’d like to see people not being so excited to have a mainstream “voice” that they don’t call her to the mat for transphobic language, overtly racist language, or imprecise language that, whether intended to or not, hurts and damages not just the queer and sexual minority communities, but undermines everything we’ve worked for in our lifetimes. I’d like to see an acknowledgement that, no matter how much people enjoy her music and albums, that she is just a pop star, she’s not the gay messiah, she’s not important beyond her current contributions to popular culture and that she IS responsible for watching her language and actually contributing if she’s going to call herself a queer ally.