Sex, God, and Katy Perry... Hypocrisy, OCD, or a sad, sad, sorry as old as time?

Teenage Dream - a Modern Day Lolita?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alright, so, first of all, I have to admit that this is way off topic. Katy Perry has very little to do with the GRE subject test in literature (basically nothing, as far as I can see). However, I’m taking a break from my normal topics because I read the Rolling Stones article yesterday while sitting through my 8 hour shift with nothing to do, and it inspired an amount of empathy that surprised me.

    Here’s the deal: I think “California Gurls” is only slightly more obnoxious than “I Kissed A Girl”, judging both for vapid lyrics and painful tonality. “Teenage Dream” makes me want to have more nightmares, and (let’s face it) “Hot N’ Cold” is the worst of them all. Further, I’m quite a fan of Lady Gaga, who I think is a feminist in her own right (“Teeth” is empowering in an altogether unique way; less about bondage and more about criticizing the idea that a man is the answer to everything, it’s both musical and poignant, as is the more famous, popular, and easily understandable commentary on sexism, “Bad Romance”). To my mind, Lady Gaga has heart in her music whilst Katy Perry has the desire to sell in hers. Just once, compare “Speechless” by Gaga to the casual experimental tonguing described by little miss rebellious.

    However, I was bored yesterday, and I wanted to find out whether or not Katy Perry is really as blonde as she comes across, so, while ‘working at’ (sitting at the desk of) my undergraduate library, I read the piece done by Rolling Stones. I came to the conclusion that journalist Vanessa Grigoriadis, at least, believes her to be that blonde: the article is most definitely not flattering. Katy is portrayed as a slightly insecure attention whore who knows her music to be sub-par but is willing to do what it takes to be famous after suffering through the I-did-Christian-music-and-failed-years. Further, Katy is dumb and more eager to manipulate the media than most other stars; in fact, there is a subtle attempt on Vanessa’s part to imply that Katy’s relationship with star Russell Brand is a faux romance created for media attention. Not that this is true of her music. After all, says Vanessa, “though some may consider [Perry’s] music to be highly processed pop, for Perry, it’s the most edgy and dangerous art she can think of making... that’s because Perry, for all her talk about her porn name, has embraced a version of femininity that is more innocent than any other female pop star except for Taylor Swift” (Rolling Stones, August 2010, pg 42).

    So I have to admit that what I’m about to say is inspired by Vanessa’s write up: her talk of innocence compelled me to sympathy for this girl that I previously disliked. What is it that drives Katy Perry to speak of kissing girls and then say that she has never done it? Why do her songs contain the sweetness of teenage love together with the odd creepy (pedophiliac?) undertones of being a man’s “teenage dream”? (I mean, I’m surely not the only person in America who thought of Humbert Humbert and his teenage dreams about Lolita, right?) And why does she take offense at her fiancé's rude discussion of sexuality and Jesus, or Lady Gaga’s oral use of a rosary, when she is willing to pose suggestively with the same piece of jewelry? 

    Ultimately, what I saw between the lines was a Katy Perry who is much like many of the people I have met who have grown up in extremely conservative homes: questioning. I went through that stage, certainly, but my rebellion was different, with appeals to the ontological argument, months of immersion in deeply troubling theories of various natures, and appeals to the most strictly rational aspects of logic, mathematics, and neuroscience that I could find. I wanted the concrete eventually if it meant pain immediately. Katy Perry, however, seems to have gone where her talents (and the encouragements of those she knew in her youth) led her: towards pop stardom, the catchiness of empty statements that hit the numb button somewhere.

      Writes Vanessa of the singer: “Perry even gets afraid at disaster movies, because they remind her of the apocalypse she was taught to fear, though she doesn’t know whether that exists anymore. ‘I still believe that Jesus is the son of God,’ says Perry. ‘ But I also believe in extraterrestrials, and that there are people who are sent from God to be messengers, and all sorts of crazy stuff...I’m just mindfucked.’” 

  

    And I feel pity for this woman speaking these words. I’ve known girls like the Perry I read about in this article, and in too many ways, I am one of them. I don’t say that with pride, or with the feminist side of me roaring, or anything like that. I just read about her and thought “Wow. She is vulnerable and she doesn’t know what to believe anymore, but she is scared of the stuff she used to believe.”

      What I see in Perry is a feeling I have felt myself: a sort of desperation that drove her to make the only choice she saw, and go crazy to save herself from going mad. If those don’t sound different to you, read the sentence again. She is a wild girl, losing herself in her music, “finding her Jesus,” to quote Gaga, but she has not hit rock bottom like she admits she was once going to. She had to reject the fear and desperation she felt at one point, and so she turned away from the beliefs that were driving her towards insanity. In other words, obsessive compulsive disorder and the threat of hell are a dangerous mix; the strictness of religion and the looseness of the world drive every conservative youth I have known to question on some level, at some point. Katy Perry is one of us.

    Is this article relevant? Perhaps not, but so be it.  I respect Lady Gaga, because she tells the world that a woman deserves respect, and she is not afraid to be herself. But I also want to acknowledge a pity and respect for Katy Perry that knows sometimes you have to work with what you’re given, even if it is only naivete and doubt and fear and the will to survive somehow.