Manufactured Personalities

A favorite theme of mine since I began this blog is the utter ignorance today's generation has for the past, especially the arts. They know nothing beyond the latest craze. I'd never heard of Lady Gaga until a few months ago (and I've still yet to hear any of her music) but she seems to be constantly in the news these days - she's this summer's craze. And she'll fade without much fanfare once the next craze comes along to replace her. Popular music long ago became a venue for children and it seems to become more infantilized with each passing year.

Camille Paglia, one of our more interesting social critics, picks up on some of my complaints in her column in the London Sunday Times magazine. I often disagree with Paglia but when she is right she is a pleasure to read because the woman holds nothing back. Her impressions of this particular Gaga moment are well worth reading in full but allow me to quote this passage:

....[m]ost of her worshippers seem to have had little or no contact with such powerful performers as Tina Turner or Janis Joplin, with their huge personalities and deep wells of passion.

Generation Gaga doesn’t identify with powerful vocal styles because their own voices have atrophied: they communicate mutely via a constant stream of atomised, telegraphic text messages. Gaga’s flat affect doesn’t bother them because they’re not attuned to facial expressions.

Gaga's fans are marooned in a global technocracy of fancy gadgets but emotional poverty. Borderlines have been blurred between public and private: reality TV shows multiply, cell phone conversations blare everywhere; secrets are heedlessly blabbed on Facebook and Twitter. Hence, Gaga gratuitously natters on about her vagina…

This passage perfectly expresses my fears that we are raising a generation who are immune to the beauty and power of real art, that many of today's youth respond not to true emotional expression but rather to technology. I've blogged about the ignorance of today's generation to the glories of the past many times, even the great popular artists only a generation or two removed, and I wrote a long essay chronically my impressions about the damage technology is doing to character of the young. Clearly, this cultural decay has not gone unnoticed by Paglia. She calls Lady Gaga a "manufactured personality" but that's the public Gaga. What's she like in private? Is there even a personality there? Or is she as vapid as many in her fan base? What happens with this year's passing sensation matters little to me. The tragedy is that with each year those enamored with the sensation seem more of a neutered herd who think alike, dress alike, and talk alike; who cannot recognize real art or true beauty; who have no connection to the past, or reverence for tradition, or regard for history; who are stripped bare of the necessary tools to function as members of a cooperative society. This isn't just a problem for art. It's a problem for democracy.