Below is my abstract for the 2015 BABEL Working Group conference:
Lady Gaga is fabulous. She came out
on the scene with a fabulous single and a fabulous album about being fabulous,
and we were all starstruck; we were also seduced by her illegibility. We wanted
her to be a man, dressed as a woman. We wanted evidence of a penis behind the
layers of glitter, makeup, wigs, and bubbles. Gaga performed femininity in a
way that recalled and surpassed drag queens, and we were, ironically, confused
at her female body—What could it mean for a woman to play at being a woman?
Starting from this illegibility, Gaga carefully cultivated a persona that not
only performed the fabulosity she articulated in her music, but also exposed
the mechanisms of legibility in what Benjamin has called the age of mechanical
reproduction—Gaga became intertextual with herself, and we began to feel like we understood her without fully
understanding her.
Terence
Koh is fabulous. When the artist was asked to explain his fabulous appearance,
he responded, “That is my nature. Perhaps we shouldn’t interview with what
happens most naturally.” Koh’s fabulosity is natural, and it is artificial; it
is truth, but, in his art, truth is deception and self-deception: “I get scared
and don’t want to know the truth…. I tink [sic] this way there could be world
peace. And really people would just be more happy.” Koh has cultivated a look,
a phonetic/homonymic writing style, a form of artwork featuring “layered
insincerity,” and the slopes of his performed self are always a bit slippery—his
natural artifice (or artificial nature) blurs boundaries between legibility and
illegibility. Sometimes not asking questions reveals the most answers. Maybe, Koh
teaches us, the essence is not as important as the meaningfulness of the
surface.
[1]
Pearls
are fabulous. Terence and Gaga collaborated on a fabulous video and a fabulous
performance featuring fabulous pearls—88 pearls to be in/exact (which might
mean something)—and these fabulous pearls might also remind us of many fabulous
people’s disease and death.
[2]
Un/like
Gaga and Terence, the Pearl-maiden is fabulous. She lives in a jewel-encrusted
world of numeric complexity (which also might mean something). She reminds us
of daughters and statues, idolatry and death. She reminds us of the kingdom of
heaven and wealth, whores and lambs. Can we ingest her, or does she resist
consumption? All we know, by the end of the poem, is that we have never seen
anyone more fabulous.
* *
*
Frustrated and confused at my
writing style, my professor recently wrote to me: “[Your] essay sometimes feels
merely clever rather than substantial. It is charming, but it entails too much
rhetorical performance, too little sustained analysis.” Exploring the
meaningful absurdity of Lady Gaga’s and Terence Koh’s fabulous resistances to
legibility, I would like to consider what might be gained from reading the
maiden in Pearl through the lens of
clever and charming rhetorical performance and what might be lost if we care
too deeply about traditions of “substantial…
sustained analysis.” My talk will be fabulous.
[1]
“Down the Bunny Hole,” interview by Kathy Grayson <http://terencekoh.com/hole/down-the-bunny-hole>
[2]
Lady Gaga and Terence Koh collaborated for the American Foundation for AIDS
Research. After sipping from a teacup on top of a piano, Lady Gaga spits out a
mouthful of pearls, which Koh describes as “puking out beautiful things.” <http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/lady-gaga-salutes-elton-john-with-special-set-at-all-star-amfar-gala-20100211>
