There's a Lady Gaga (and a Gypsy) Inside You

After my previous blog, one of the PT editors suggested I should write something on Lady Gaga, so I've been thinking about it since. During that time I must have heard Rihanna being played at least three times a day (all in public places of course), much more often than Lady Gaga. This led me to consider the rather catastrophic prospect that we may be witnessing the end of the Gaga era (and the idea of writing about Rihanna is obviously less exciting). But I suspect that Lady G is just taking a break or waiting for her next outfits to be ready, which may explain why Rhianna is so over-played these days.

In any case, I thought I should write about Lady G before she disappears or re-appears, and now that I've lost some of the more intellectual (or intellectually repressed) readers, I shall focus on the first point of this blog: the Lady Gagaisation of Trash TV.

As someone who has worked on the UK version of Big Brother for a few years I have witnessed not only the decay of the show, but also the anxiety of the network's producers and execs about how they could replace such a big hit (if you are outside Britain, all you need to know is that for over 10 years Big Brother was a much bigger sensation in the UK than anywhere else; if you are outside this world or a true intellectual, read this). Recent television-viewing figures suggest the channel may have found a perfect replacement for Big Brother in My Great Fat Gypsy Wedding, a documentary/reality TV show about British gypsies ("travellers") getting married: this, my friends, is trash TV at its finest.

It was when I first watched this show that I realised the profound impact Lady Gaga has had in our society. No, I'm not saying that Lady G has influenced gypsy fashion - if anything, it is probably the other way around - but she has clearly influenced the aesthetic preferences of mainstream TV viewers. I suspect the producers will achieve what they were hoping to achieve (other than big viewing figures): a prejudice-centred debate about discrimination in society, and all the usual clichés - which you will not find here.

But the more interesting and novel issue is the cultural connection between the viewer and this supposedly marginal group of society. Yes, the show may expose, and even legitimise, the viewer's prejudices towards gypsies, but the Gaga phenomenon has eliminated some of the psychological distance between the protagonists of the show and the average viewer. Indeed, if the show is so mainstream it is because the average viewer is now used to Lady Gaga. This Lady Gaga-isation of Trash TV has gone global. One of my favorite examples is Ricardo Fort - an Argentine millionnaire and reality TV sensation who is the male hybrid of Paris Hilton and Katie Price; and I'm sure my American readers will help me identify US examples (please do!).

Thus if you habituate to Lady Gaga your media preferences change, just like your taste buds change if you habituate to eating spicier and spicier food. Oscar Wilde famously noted that "Life imitates Art" - now that television imitates Lady Gaga, will she be able to rescue the TV industry from decay, just as she did with the music industry?

My second point is more psychological and relates to personality, which, after all, is the reason why I'm here. Media psychologists and social analysts have tried to explain the success of Lady Gaga in many different ways, but personality psychologists should ask a different question, namely why are some people more into Lady Gaga than others. Given that her latest youtube video is approaching the 400,000.000 hits, one has to wonder how many people are truly indifferent to her, and that is obviously the secret of her success: in the era of "conversational capital" and "you-vertising", the most important thing is that people talk about you (regardless of what they say): advertising - like sex, some would say - is best when it's free. And this is also what personality researchers should find most fascinating about Lady Gaga.

Any question or topic that polarises public opinion should be useful as a single-item measure of personality. In America, you can tell a lot about a person's profile (especially their values) if they tell you whether they are a Democrat or a Republican; in the UK, you will know a lot about a person's profile if they tell you what newspaper they read (e.g., Guardian vs. Daily Mail). For many years, watching Big Brother - or admitting to liking it - was a great single-item test of personality in Britain (how culturally-snobbish or intellectually-repressed you are), and that is true for most popular thrash TV shows. Moreover, you can even profile a nation's personality (how greedy and capitalist they are) by asking people a single YES or NO question.

What, then, can we say about a person's personality if they admit to liking Lady Gaga? The answer will probably depend on the age, gender, educational level and profession (in that order), more than personality. But the answer should also reveal important individual differences in personality, especially in Openness to New Experience. As some of you will know, Openness is an important driver of intellectual and artistic preferences, but it also relates to individual differences in sensation-seeking, preferences for spicy food, the tendency to have unprotected sex, and endorsing liberal rather than conservative attitudes. By definition, open people dislike anything mainstream and have unusual, culturally-sophisticated, and intellectual preferences - they should surely not like Lady Gaga then. And yet, if you are really open-minded and curious about the world, it is not just plausible but almost imperative that you consume Lady Gaga.

It therefore seems that there is a Lady Gaga inside everyone (and this would explain her success). People may not like her but they love to consume her - and media consumption is allegedly free now (so long as you advertise the product or consume the ads); they may not like her but they are fascinated by her (finding meaning is a fundamental human motivate and we always try to explain novelty). Although some of us live in what we consider liberal, largely permissive, societies, Lady Gaga may be to today's Western society what sex was to repressed Victorians: a guilty pleasure. What's next then? Find out what your music preferences say about you or get instant feedback on our latest personality test