Also, check this article out.

Inaugural Post: Blogging Gaga and Theatre Studies

Established as part of a continuing dialogue between disciplines concerning the nature and impact of popular culture, this blog will utilize the music, imagery, and persona of Lady Gaga as a frame for exploring broader cultural topics such as gender, identity, celebrity, and performance (to name only a few). Doubtless, such a discussion has already been going on in the halls of academia- but a continuation of the discourse in a forum as open and fluid as a blog would seem to allow for the organic, real-time flow of ideas and cultural news-items in the same way that Gaga's persona (and that of other pop stars as well) represents a constantly shifting fabric of identities and constructions. 

Why Gaga? While I do not hazard to speak for the other authors of this blog, I would say that Gaga's meteoric rise to superstardom, her self-conscious invocation of a pop "persona" in her work, and her manipulations of gender and the press, all coalesce into a fascinating set of tools for analyzing the problems and possibilities for cultural creation. Gaga is a piece of meta-theatre, an identity in a constant state of metamorphosis and thus, to use a Deleuzian term, is always "becoming." Further, I would posit that the intentionality of her identity construction exceeds that of other contemporary pop icons, and so has a definitive use value for disciplines that deal heavily in subjects with political and cultural cache (e.g. Shakespeare, Queer Studies, Feminism), not as a means for replicating them in a pop-cultural format, but for a new, a post-human, means of construction and dissemination relevant to the futures of our respective fields. 

This is my academic justification for studying Gaga. On the other hand, as a graduate student in Theatre, there is always something interesting (and tongue-in-cheek) about turning a critical gaze on to songs like Gaga's "Money Honey" or "Just Dance," or for that matter towards Eminem's ubiquitous single from Recovery or Ke$ha's undeniably silly anthem "Tik-Tok." Some of these songs are important for no other reason than that they are popular, and justifiably so. Suffice it to say that approaching this material with a completely sober eye strips them of their silliness and occasionally, of their fun. I think studying this stuff means spending a lot of time on Google Reader, and maybe one too many unproductive moments in the office pondering a new costume piece, a ridiculous interview, or a new music video. Putting a productive spin on this "unproductive" time is also part of what I'm about here. So, at the outset, I'm outing myself as a fan of all this silliness at the same time as being interested in what it does. 

Well, let's see what turns up. To begin with, let me put this piece of news out there for your perusal and comment. Oh yes...Please comment! Discuss the postings! Submit your own musings/links/whatever! As long as we can relate it to the topics on the blog (which will no doubt be many) and it isn't offensive, it will be considered/posted.