Thursday, 01 April 2010
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Gaga, Cher, Bow, Tut
I didn't know what else to name this post, so I'll start off with what inspired me to write [as I incorporate pix from the original post, Cher Was the Original Lady Gaga...And She Did It Better.
I won't go heavy into material - I'll let the readers, should they choose to do so, follow up on my post to find more information on their own.
First, a few pictures. We're already familiar with King Tut, so I'll eliminate that one. Let's start with:
Clara Bow
Cher
Lady Gaga
Now, to my comment I posted:Bob Mackie creations were Cher's thing - and each rocks [for their time frame] a great thing. Not to say one thing or another, but every generation of performance art and music had a muse to start with. Mackie was inspired by 1920's portraiture of art deco - embellished glamor - decadence with dripping ironic finishes in elegance, if that makes sense.
1920's fashions followed up from ancient egyptian artifacts finds - the discovery of King Tut's tomb brought on the fads alongside the up-and-coming silent film boom nestled in the heart of the timing of the decade of the approaching boom of the Great Depression and the inherent need for escapism within the emerging folds of Hollywood Glamor.
Gaga isn't anything new, nor was Cher, nor was Clara Bow, nor, I suspect, was King Tutankhamun...but I suspect, like all things, glamor evolves, borrowing from its past.
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Comments (6)
You know the saying....everything old is new again.
You just proved it.
I used to say it often, but the kids wouldn't see it. When I got to showing them...Eldest would get a kick out of it, but Youngest would get annoyed. Figures, right?
Cher rocked. Clara Bow rocked,..for her time!!
Lady Gaga....sucks!!
@Stanelle - Actually [and I know I'll get quite a bit of ribbing on this one] - Gaga does have surprising vocal range, and actual ability to play musical instruments [piano, for instance]...both are surprising, considering that [in today's music] much of the talent seems to be electronically modified, synthesized, and otherwise formulated to where the honk of an ostrich hopping on a guitar can be repackaged to sound relatively melodic.
Gaga seems to have no need of those enhancements, which is the surprising part - even though she has much of the earmarks of prepackaged fame/glamor/shock value, "modern-day artist".
I'll be the first to admit: her music isn't something I'd actively seek out on the airwaves, but I can listen to one of her tunes through without feeling the urge to turn off the source of the sound.
Dear Max,
I'm a subscriber to Lady GaGa's YouTube channel, and I've favorited some of her videos. I called her "the love child of Mark Mothersbaugh (of DEVO) and Madonna. True, Cher could be classified as one of the arbiters of the kind of "style" evident in GaGa's ouvere. Mackie's gowns were quite wonderful, and Cher did display some extravagant and eye popping outfits on the old Sonny and Cher show.
I do like GaGa's videos. The music isn't original. Madonna, Christine Aquilera, Beyonce, dozens of pop soul r&b techno girl singers sing the same kind of music. It's enjoyable, and you can dance to it, but none of it is really original. (Now the Roches, THEY were original, but possibly before your time, although Cher was famous in the late 60s and 70s. but she's gained iconic diva staus) I think GaGa's videos are the most original thing about her. They are reviving the music video artform (I never thought I'd write something like that sentence in the 80s!) MTV doesn't even rotate videos anymore, and I guess you could say OK-Go really revived the form, but GaGa's are like little movies, and I credit the video team who produces them (shame on me for not remembering their moniker) as much as GaGa for her fame (monster).
I was really amused by a mock feud I read on one of the Yahoo sites (possibly OMG) The commenters were saying that people like Christine Aguilera and (of all people) Grace Jones were "copying" GaGa's "style" instead of the other way around. Sometimes reading comments from clueless youth on the internet is wildly entertaining .
I've dubbed the cultural mishmash on the internet, which is fueling fame nowadays (that and American Idol, LOL) the "Cultural Blender". I even set up a website dedicated to the blending of cultural trends back in the early 00s but I haven't updated it in a long time.
BTW: I have a couple of Clara Bow's movies in my vast movie library. She was called "The It Girl" another phrase which has been passed down to other stars.
Michael F. Nyiri, poet, philosopher, fool
@baldmike2004 - I hopped over to The Cultural Blender...and, in the sidebar, I noted that you wrote:
and buying every
media software
ever invented, (including quite a few that don’t exist
anymore)
I giggled, thinking to myself, "Beta? LaserDisc?" [Note: I have access to two fully functional LaserDisc players, and four still-functional VCRs. Sadly, though, the BetaMax died better than ten years ago...]
At any rate...on the mention of OK Go, I couldn't help but remember their This Too Shall Pass video that crossed my desktop [see here] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w
The music video as an art form is slowly making a comeback. Believe it or not, I missed epic videos - when Mtv first played "Video Killed the Radio Star" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwuy4hHO3YQ , ours was the first house to have cable, and I was sucked right in.
As time progressed, though, the art part of it was beginning to get lost in stages...and videos began to lose a lot of what made the entertainment engaging.
It's good to see it re-emerging nowadays, a little at a time. I guess it's another matter of style evolution.
I remember seeing perhaps two Clara Bow films when I was a kid - they showed condensed versions as a sort of time frame reference to the evolution of film as an art form. I remembered her wild wardrobe more than I remember her films, to be honest - and I remembered watching the Sonny and Cher show as a kid - and making the equation. It was later in life that I heard about the emerging flapper styles of Clara Bow's time, and the various inspirations that went into couture - and I sort of figured out the rest.
It's fun, especially for a thrift store junkie like me ;) My Halloween costumes [as well as the grotesque palatables] have always been, if nothing else, creative.
Creative, possibly because I inspire from other creative talents of several eras. It's all good.