Lady Gaga: People Pleasing as a Maze With No Exit

I’m telling you, Stephen Marche is brilliant. In this article over at Esquire, he just summed up the end results of people pleasing, the fear of man, actual creativity vs. mimicking, and what that reveals about a generation in a few devastating key strokes.

Why did we all laugh at Björk when she wore a swan but cheered Gaga when she wore Kermits?

Was it because Björk’s radical openness is terrifying in its boldness and uniqueness whereas Lady Gaga’s subservience — her obvious posiness — is reassuringly slavish?

Don’t we all enjoy, in a sick way, how obviously she would do anything for our attention?

Why do we want that?

What is wrong with us?

Is it that Lady Gaga is representative, outside of whatever private crisis has led to her deep need to please, of a generational shift?

Isn’t it telling of the millennials that even their most radical pop star, their rock ‘n’ roll monster, is fundamentally a pleaser?

So doesn’t Lady Gaga represent, in the end, a profound closing of the collective soul rather than an energetic bursting-forth?

A maze with no exit rather than a path to new worlds?

Or in 2011 has everything worth saying been said and everything worth doing been done and ripping off the recent past will have to do?

That there is no escape from the maze and so all we can do is expand it?