From "Dance in the Dark, Little Monsters: On Gaga's Post-Goth Posthumanism"

By Robin JamesThe following is an excerpt from a longer article to be published in Gaga Stigmata’s forthcoming book. In that piece, Professor Robin James argues that Lady Gaga’s main aesthetic ancestor is goth. Gaga’s work not only has direct musical debts to goth bands, but also takes indirect visual and thematic inspiration from the goth genre. In the following excerpt, James examines how one of Gaga’s songs takes musical cues from the goth tradition,...

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Gaga Stigmata Updates

Gaga Stigmata was recently featured in an article by Victor P. Corona on Pop Matters. The piece, entitled "Gaga Studies," examines the ever-growing phenomenon of Lady Gaga as an academic subject. Corona also offers a defense against some of the most common criticisms of Gaga and her project. We wish to thank Davide Panagia for letting us know about this piece, and Victor P. Corona for crediting Gaga Stigmata. You can check out the article here.Also,...

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PISS GAGA: A CONVERSATION WITH KATE DURBIN AND JON RUTZMOSER

"mad props" invitation #6When visual artist Jon Rutzmoser submitted his first invitation to Gaga Stigmata back in September, politely asking Ms. Gaga to please piss on him, I was amused and intrigued. While we’d been garnering great creative work for the site, much of the artwork—poetic and visual—that had been submitted at that point operated either as creative “defense” of Gaga’s project, or as holographic, near-homage. Rutzmoser was...

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Gaga in Oz: Hearing The Woman Behind the Camera in Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi"

By Ayah Rifai [i]Whenever I watch a Lady Gaga music video, I cannot help but recall Richard Wagner. But what could a twenty-first-century shock-and-awe pop icon possibly have in common with a nineteenth-century German operatic composer? I believe that what distinguishes Lady Gaga (née Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) from all other artists on the pop music scene today are her aspirations for a modern day Gesamtkunstwerk, or total artwork,...

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