Lady Gaga: the corrupter of youth?

Lady Gaga’s sold-out concert in Indonesia was cancelled following protests by Islamic hardliners, conservative lawmakers and politicians. The authorities revoked her permit to perform at Jakarta’s 52,000-seat Gelora Bung Karno Stadium, after they deemed that her outlandish costumes and dance moves corrupt the youth.   In the Philippines, Christian hardliners as well as conservative lawmakers and politicians also called for the boycott or cancellation of her two-day concert for similar reasons. However, despite the organized religious protest and vigil near the concert venue at Mall of Asia, the show went off without a hitch.   Why are some people afraid of Lady Gaga? Is it because her lyrics are blasphemous? Is it because her attires are provocative? Or is it because her choreographers are erotic? Is her art really that dangerous so as to corrupt the minds of our allegedly impressionable and excitable young people? I don’t think so.     Whatever reasons some people hold against her, one wonders whether she is the kind of person worth banning from performing in any country.   What strikes me the most about this whole affair is that what would otherwise be a matter of artistic expression is now being turned into a battle of good and evil. What would otherwise be freedom of expression is now being turned into a fight between what is moral or immoral.   Why is this so?   I think the controversy is not so much an issue of what is right or wrong, but who defines what is right or wrong. This is why conflict occurs, for the simple reason that when influential religious figures, political functionaries, or media organizations lambast an artistic genre with utter prudishness, the herd mentality simply goes haywire.   The thing is, the banality of such a hyper-censure from the so-called conservatives does not surprise me at all. In fact, the charge of corrupting the youth as a rationale for forbidding people from freely expressing themselves is an old and familiar story.     Two examples come to mind: the denunciations of Socrates in 399 B.C. and Elvis Presley in the 1956.   Socrates was tried and convicted in an open Athenian court. His punishment? Death by hemlock poisoning! What was his alleged crime? Corrupting the youth for his impiety!     Socrates is one of the greatest Greek classical philosophers. He did not leave any writings at all, but his ideas and influence were made known to us from the writings of his two disciples---Xenophon and Plato.   According to Plato, Socrates was a social gadfly whose efforts "to sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth" could not be silenced.   His preoccupation with exposing intellectual contradictions and challenging popular beliefs, through the process of a questioning technique known as the Socratic method, did not endear him to authorities and other people in positions of power. In effect, he became an uncomfortable goad to the Athenian political scene.   On the other hand, Elvis Presley, the rock 'n' roll sensation of the 1950s whose gyrating hips, shaking legs, sultry looks, and dynamic vocal style drove young people wild, was heavily denounced by the Catholic Church hierarchy and TV critics of that time.   The Catholic Church hierarchy warned believers in its weekly magazine headlined “Beware Elvis Presley” that the popular singer’s “devil music” is a promoter of juvenile delinquency and changing moral values. Meanwhile, TV critics slammed the singer’s performance for its allegedly "appalling lack of musicality, vulgarity, and animalism." In fact, Ed Sullivan, whose variety show was one of television's most popular in the United States at that time, declared that he’d never hire Elvis Presley. It was a decision he eventually reversed.   Just like Socrates or Elvis Presley, I think Lady Gaga is an impious irritant to the so-called religious conservatives, be they Indonesian Muslims or Filipino Christians. By pushing the current limits of performance beyond the commonly accepted boundaries, she not only challenges the insecurities of moral entrepreneurs, but also upsets the status quo.     But precisely, it is in the upsetting of the status quo that our minds are opened to ubiquitous novel expressions as well as to a world that is unavoidably not static.   And so, if Lady Gaga sings about Judas, what’s the big deal? Is there something that can be literally or figuratively learned about his character? I think there is. Or, if you don’t like her music at all, don’t listen to it or patronize her concert.   It is that simple.