Yesterday
Yesterday, you might have seen or read about CJ Renato Corana’s testimony at his impeachment trial and Lady Gaga’s Manila concert. You might have smiled when you read how some of the senators and congressman involved with the impeachment trials hoped that the testimony would end early just so they will still have time to view the concert. You might even have laughed out loud to hear how some clerics tried to have Gaga’s concert banned here. You might even have told yourself, “Now I’ve seen everything.”
But today the trials and the concert are just news. Yesterday becoming today’s news. Its just another day. The world has not changed drastically by any means. And it might be that people tend to make too much of a big fuss out of everything that could have passed simply as mundane.
Take the Lady Gaga “thingy.” Months ago, there had been much negative blogging about the singer-entertainer’s music being devil-worship and all that. It seemed at first like so much rabid fanatical rubbish. Some even came with links to sites where the actual video could be viewed. And indeed, there she was, horns growing out of her shoulders and gyrating onstage with a bevy of half-naked boys, amid flashing lights and stage smoke, serving us once again a salad of the latest remake of old faded symbol cliches, sex, crosses subliminal violence and of course the latest liberal morality messages, hidden just enough as to become obvious by the third time we listen.
It hardly seemed new, this music and the blogging and twits it drew in its wake. One expects these especially in the Internet. We have grown used to fast-food chains getting pilloried for killing chicken or for the quality of food they served. We buy and eat anyway. We have seen both truths and absurdities making their quick round, their 15 minutes of fame, on the web. They seldom ever last.
In the case of Lady Gaga, we observed, how so much bad publicity only fuels increased interest on their target. And true enough, by the time Lady Gaga’s concert was announced here, her name had become household brand. There was hardly any doubt her concert tickets would sell out. And we might as well make the conclusion that in today’s world, your enemies make you more famous than you deserve—which makes for wonderful irony. Your enemies are your best friends for as long as they talk about you in the net.
After all, Gaga’s music is hardly outstanding. It is not even a new act; we have seen it before. Its constructs are easy to identify. We have seen Sting in a music video making out like he’s Jesus Christ. We have seen Madonna wed sex with religious symbolisms. Such a mix is always meant to move the viewer into the edge of taking offense. This offense is obviously the key to success. And the marker of this success is always fame. In the net, it translates always to hits. How many viewers actually open the site to view its contents? The numbers never lie.
In today’s world, one can succeed as quickly by making enemies as by making friends. Which is probably why offensive language, offensive dressing and every manner of offense becomes the popular trend. The whole concept of entertainment is evolving with the web. But as ever before, entertainers still compete for public attention by whatever means possible. And often the most conservative society plays its critical and vital role. Elvis Presley, too, as well as rock and roll music itself was once attacked as devil music. Decades thereafter, hard-rock music as well as metal musicians would be accused of putting secret subliminal music into their songs. Always, there was the expected threat to ban the music and keep young kids from buying them. In the end, one must wonder if it is this threat that brings to the music its inevitable charm, its pull in the psyche of the young.
Still, it is worthwhile to ask: Do musicians do this on purpose? What purposes could it serve? And since musicians, especially pop musicians such as the aforementioned, always target their music for maximum sales, could it be that the public itself would rather buy “devil music”? Granting of course that it is really devil music as it has been accused of being. Is it only a coincidence that all these play so well with an observation made by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzche?
Nietzche deconstructed artists and their art into the Apollonian and Dionysan aspects with the Apollonian representing the rational while the Dionysan stood for its opposite. In a manner of reading, one might say, every artist has to contend with these two opposing extremes, which must work its way into every successful piece of art. When applied into Gaga’s music, this might explain why so much that seems apparently evil could still attract so many even in this day and age. Offensive, unfortunately, still sells. And when it does, it always sells like hotcakes. And if by now, you might also have seen how Corona’s appearance in court has improved his lot in the scheme of the impeachment trials, do not be surprised. These are not real issues of good versus evil. They are only popular art.
