“M.I.A. beefs with Lady Gaga!” “Who needs misogynistic music crit when it seems like women musicians are content to tear each other down.” That was the first thing I thought when I saw that NME apparently had published a brief interview with the English-by-way-of-Sri-Lanka singer. She wouldn’t be the first lady musician to take shots at Gaga. But as soon as I thought about it, it was very clear that what was at stake in the discussion had less to do with sex than it did with art, ethics, and commerce.
Hegel (yeah yeah yeah) said ‘The truth of intention is only the act itself,’ and that’s partially right. An action is the most visceral description of a person’s intention, but that action cannonballs into the great teeming pool of human interaction where its merit and meaning is discerned by those observing the splash. M.I.A. made a splash yesterday, when a transcript of an NME interview hit the internet. MTV UK and Pitchfork made immediate comments about the interview, and my own personal Tumblr-sphere briefly lit up with ZOMG MIA VERSUS GAGA posts. In particular, Maura Johnston posted a particularly juicy quote:
There’s Lady Gaga – people say we’re similar, that we both mix all these things in the pot and spit them out differently, but she spits it out exactly the same! None of her music’s reflective of how weird she wants to be or thinks she is. She models herself on Grace Jones and Madonna, but the music sounds like 20-year-old Ibiza music, you know? She’s not progressive, but she’s a good mimic. She sounds more like me than I fucking do! That’s a talent and she’s got a great team behind her, but she’s the industry last’s stab at making itself important – saying, ‘You need our money behind you, the endorsements, the stadiums’ Respect to her, she’s keeping a hundred thousand people in work, but my belief is: Do It Yourself.
Fellow (very, very good) music writers Liz Colville and Tom Ewing immediately commented on the quote. Colville referred to a revealing moment of a piece in NY Magazine,
“On my tour,” [Lady Gaga] declared, “I’m going to be in my bubble dress on a piano made of bubbles, singing about love and art and the future. I should like to make one person believe in that moment, and it would be worth every salt of a No. 1 record.” She dropped the accent for a moment now—the real girl, unartificed, was right underneath—and leaned in. “I can have hit records all day, but who fucking cares?” she explained. “A year from now, I could go away, and people might say, ‘Gosh, what ever happened to that girl who never wore pants?’ But how wonderfully memorable 30 years from now, when they say, ‘Do you remember Gaga and her bubbles?’ Because, for a minute, everybody in that room will forget every sad, painful thing in their lives, and they’ll just live in my bubble world.”
There really is a weird interplay between art, pop, and permanence. One of the criteria for the old Is It Art? test has to do with whether it sticks in our collective craw for any amount of time. Gaga seems to be agnostic about the permanence of pop music and number one hits. They’re not ontologically important: The important function of her life and music is to bring joy to people. She brings a particularly sharp irony to the table by implicating effervescence and bubbles as harbingers of permanence. She comes off as funny and a little naive, but her aims are noble—and radical. There’s an explicit cultural assumption that suffering plays midwife to great artists. The artist births works of deep sadness and trenchant morality. Even existential-minded literature, by being largely unconcerned with the big questions, shows its overbearing moral largeness. And god, try listening to John Cage’s music. (Spoiler alert: sad and boring.) Great art less frequently comes from happiness, and rarely produces happiness in the normal sense. Gaga’s expressed goal of alleviating suffering seems more in line with humanitarian work and, of course, the blatant hedonism of pop music. But her music is no “Let’s Get Retarded,” so—
Look at M.I.A.’s critique of Gaga in the quote above. She criticizes Gaga on two grounds, aesthetic and ethical. On the former, she says Gaga’s music is stale and same-sounding, two criticisms that stand up fairly well. Gaga’s music, with a few bright exceptions, is pretty flat and generic. When M.I.A. says “She’s not progressive, but she’s a good mimic,” she’s absolutely right. M.I.A.’s backhanded compliment, “she’s keeping a hundred thousand people in work,” is one of many ethical criticisms makes of Gaga. It’s a theme of the interview, to criticize Gaga on grounds that she’s supported by her “team.”
When asked how important are visuals to her work, M.I.A. responds, “Very. But it’s not like “Haus of Gaga” (laughs). Me blindfolded with naked men feeding me apples and shit.” It’s a little pot-kettle to implicate Gaga in the fetishization of the visual culture when M.I.A. has her hands all over painting, film, and fashion design. If M.I.A.’s criticism hinges on Gaga’s being supported by a team (the titular Haus), then it seems disingenuous. No one tours internationally, produces vast amounts of art, and records music by herself.
Not on the scale of Gaga or M.I.A. If M.I.A. objects to the specific visuals, “naked men feeding her apples and shit,” then it also seems disingenuous. That specific visual is very obviously about— What? It’s ambiguous and provocative. It’s certainly not something that has been repurposed by the public at large to beatify its vague signifiers. And this point is where Gaga and M.I.A. begin to diverge radically. Gaga provokes feminist- and queer-minded folk to discuss the relative merit of her actions, which are perceived broadly as expanding awareness for women and gays. Even the most crass assertions about her result in more awareness about trans folk.
Contrast the effects of Gaga’s popular image–construed, yes, broadly as raising awareness about sexuality, homosexuality, and transgenderedness–with M.I.A.’s politics. She’s a supposed supporter of a terrorist group, and a harsh, outspoken critic of the ongoing genocide in Sri Lanka. These are not frivolous causes. M.I.A.’s lyrics are revolutionary and visceral. The sound of her music is cut up and raw—generally. But M.I.A.’s music—because it is really fucking good—is often at the foreground of the discussion, and it is what sticks in people’s heads. People may not be talking about Gaga’s music in 30 years, but I can guarantee you that people will remember “Paper Planes,” one of the catchiest, most magical pop songs ever constructed. It is as addictive as the drugs it’s apparently about. You would think, then, that M.I.A. would take advantage of this platform—literally billions of listens—to get across some of her politics. But the New York Times article says,
Sri Lankans who have seen her videos say they interpret some parts as showing support for the [supposed terrorist group, the Tamil] Tigers, or at the very least glorifying their cause. But for those not familiar with the conflict, they might come across as generic third-world scenes.
“I kind of want to leave it ambiguous for my fans,” she said in the PBS interview, referring to the lyrics of her song “Paper Planes,” which was nominated for record of the year at the Grammys but did not win.
Instead of teaching the debate, raising awareness, and advancing her politics, this loud activist went the route of pop perfection. And she reached it. “Paper Planes” is a a better song than Lady Gaga could likely ever write in a million, billion years. In that PBS interview, M.I.A. makes scads of great points about how terrorism is fought and perceived, and she makes an impassioned plea for the Tamil people of Sri Lanka. She mentions social change, saying, “And I think we just kind of shy away from it because the pressure of being successful and the pressure of being sexy and standing up for nothing is just so big.” She speaks eloquently about being the sole western voice of the Tamil people. But what does she do with it? When I think of M.I.A., I think of the “Paper Planes” video, which does feature subtle tiger imagery and seems to do little to condemn gun violence. Music of social change doesn’t have to be as didactic as, say, Dylan’s “Hurricane,” but M.I.A.’s popular image is inexorably tied to “swagger” and gunshots—not to ending the genocide in Sri Lanka.
M.I.A. had a perfect chance to advance the discussion of violence and genocide in Sri Lanka when her record label (a label she shares with Lady Gaga) censored the gunshot sounds from the video for “Paper Planes.” But, instead of talking about how the gunshots could be taken as a symbol,she railed against censorship. And not in a particularly eloquent fashion.
THE BLOGGERS WHO ARE LAZY ENOUGH TO FOLLOW THE MTV LINK AND POST UP AND COMMENT ON THE SOUND WHEN THAT HASNT BEEN COMPROMISED AND THE GUNSHOT ARENT REPLACED AND EDITED MAKES ME SAD. I DID FIGHT FOR THE SOUND , BECAUSE PUTTING MEANINGS IN YOUR VIDEOS, IN MY OPINION IS A DYING ART. I CAN FILM MY SELF ANYWHERE ANYTIME AND LET YOU KNOW THE TRUTH , BUT THE SONG IS WHAT I WANTED TO PRESERVE IN THIS CASE.TO ALL MY FANS, LOOK, ITS LIKE THIS,IM LEARNING THINGS ABOUT THIS WORLD WITH YOU, I WANT YOU TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS TO ME , I WANT YOU TO SEE HOW PEOPLE WILL SIT AND SPEND ALL SUNDAY TEARIN ME DOWN FOR SOMETHING I DIDNT EVEN MAKE OR PUT OUT, SO PEOPLE WELCOME TO MODERN DAY PROPAGANDA MESSAGE MANGLING.IN 2007, AN OUTSIDER OPINION WILL BE CONFRONTED THIS WAY , AND THIS IS HOW THE BATTLE GOES, MY MESSAGES AND IDEAS AND MEANING WILL ALWAYS BE BROUGHT TO YOU WITH SLIGHTLY TAINTED CHANNELS. IF YOU SUPPORT ME BE SMART, AND KNOW THAT.I LOVE YOU, U KEEP ME GOING.XXXXXXMAYA
She mentions (and basically only in this quoted section, which is less than half the all-caps MySpace blog post) the meaning of her video and truth, but she comes off more as a churlish, narcissistic artist who wanted her entire aesthetic vision presented to the world unadulterated. She objects to the aesthetic rather than ethical truncation. She’s a pop singer and a pop artist. It entirely eludes her that gun violence in America is an epidemic that kills thousands of people a year. She’s the nihilistic punk band with the swastikas behind them. Gunshots sound sexy. Her song is sexy.
Look at the ways “Paper Planes” has been used. Watch the Capitalism: A Love Story trailer. Boy, that’s a lot of anger and a lot of gunshots. It draws implications eerily similar to Glenn Beck’s hatemongering and the Tea Party’s latent hatemongering. It’s an irresponsible deployment of the song. To the people who say that it’s symbolic, or that it doesn’t matter, I respond, look at “Swagger Like Us,” performed at the Grammys, which repurposes the beat of “Paper Planes.” It features two rappers who are in or have been in jail for fucking gun charges. How does a song that features gunshot sounds, that has been used by rappers who have gone to jail for illegally possessing guns, not irresponsibly glorify guns?
M.I.A. responds in the NME interview to a question about selling out,
Back in 2003 I was in a bedsit, hand-spraying every 12-inch and just wanting to make art. Everybody gets turned into a product push so fast – these weird fucking ‘hipster’ parties promoting Red Bull or whatever. There’s a difference between saying ‘no’ to everything and ‘yes’ to everything. I’m not fucking Coldplay because I said ‘no’ to certain things. When I did my ‘selling-out’ show for MTV they made me a hundred grand and I built a school with it in Africa.
Whether the claim that she built a school in Africa with her “MTV money” is true (I haven’t found any evidence for the claim, and the previous claim she made was that she was opening two schools in Africa, so it has evolved), M.I.A. has seen a lot of success based on selling her music to companies. By selling “Paper Planes” to Pineapple Express, a few things happened: Her profile rose immediately, “Paper Planes” became the #1 song on iTunes, and she got again to glorify gun violence in an extremely popular, infectious way.
The general tension underlying all this, though, is that an artist’s intentions are only as good as the way in which the world receives them. For all her apparent vapid, ham-fisted imagery, Lady Gaga gets people talking about the things she wants them to talk about. Her music might not be that great (ed. note: we loved it), but it’s good enough to be popular. She might have full team support behind her, but she’s up front about it. M.I.A. comes from a revolutionary background, grew up in a place torn apart by violence, and advocates loudly for the cessation of that violence. But the way the world receives her music directly belies her intentions. She’s made gunshots sound sexy. She helped draw people to (b)latent misogynist’s film. She helped incite class rage. She did nothing to speak out about gun violence or censure the gun possession crimes of her cohorts. And time and again, she’s displayed a gobsmacking amount of self-absorption and simultaneous self-unawareness. M.I.A.’s music became the automatic soundtrack to many summer parties. She is the better musician by far, but Lady Gaga has a much stronger claim to ethical merit.