Music: A contemporary wave of Feminism
What is a medium? It outlines as the necessary channel of communication which allows the transmissions of message to a receiver. The medium of Music operates similar to Hall’s suggested four-stage theory of communication: production, circulation, distribution and reproduction.
As Hall writes in his essay Encoding, Decoding:
‘Every visual sign in advertising connotes a quality, situation, value or inference, which is present as an implication or implied meaning, depending on the connotational positioning.’ (Page 513)
Media culture embodying the medium of music feeds substance of which we construct our identities; the belief of being classified on the Sexual Spectrum; recognition of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality. It shapes our view of the world and our deepest values: reflects on good or bad, positive or negative, moral or evil. It specifies the symbols, myths, and resources through which we compose a common culture and through the appropriation of which we insert ourselves into this culture.
Halberstam’s Gaga Feminism presents an overview and a straightforward interpretation of the new wave of feminism that has evolved from the music and public performances of Lady Gaga. The impression of Gaga feminism advances authors’s argument that Lady Gaga is a symbol of popular culture, as well as a political activist challenging dominant discourses of gender, sexuality, and normalcy through music.
Deciphering Lady Gaga’s Telephone (2010)
The video circles around how Gaga goes to jail for having murdered her boyfriend. The women’s prison is brimful of lesbian and tranny inmates, which portrays otherness. The ringing wired phones not being received sketches failed communications. At the end of receiving the cellular phone, Gaga exits to find Beyonce waiting for her in the Pussy Wagon. After a homicide at the diner, Gaga and Beyonce drive the Pussy Wagon, travelling on a highway similar to Thelma and Louise. The explicit stress on fixed wired phone and cellular phone is of value.
Halberstam comments, “While the easy gloss on the gendered meaning of ‘telephone’ would cast woman as the silent receiver, patiently waiting for a call, and would picture the man as the active caller deciding when and where to push the buttons, in actual fact the song and the video refuse this gender scheme.” (Page 62)
The advancements of Mobile technology facilitates the alteration of gender-layout.
Halberstam comments“(While) wired phones are fixed in place, not mobile, wearable but also restricting…The mobile phone is a player in the battle of lovers, and so Lady Gaga and Beyonce decide to unleash themselves from the tyranny of the phone — instead of hanging on the telephone, they become the telephone.” (Page 64)
In conclusion, Gaga and Beyonce’s closing conversation shows them running far away, and under no circumstances will they return back, in consequence, heterosexuality fades away into the past.
Halberstam contends the hypothesis of “pregnant men,” disrupting traditional social ideas associated with reproduction and redefined the nuclear family as a model of normality. Gaga feminism redefines the accepted conventional concept of family by including alternative kinship bonds such as single-parent households, same-sex parenting, and blended families. Author encourages the development and use of a new gender classification system embedded in the idea of hetero-flexiblity.
Overall, Halberstam elaborates on redefined conceptual frameworks, thereby presenting the influence of Lady Gaga on conventional notions of gender theory, feminist theory, and queer theory. Deducing via numerous outlook, the author envisions a World enabling individuals or groups to reposition themselves in larger societal dialogues, while bringing their marginalized discourses to the center of larger societal conversations. Halberstam also draws attention to the relevance of a world with gender-fluidity not only for theoretical classics but for provident advancements.
References:
Halberstam, J. (2012). Gaga feminism: Sex, gender, and the end of normal. Boston: Beacon Press.
Hall, S. (1980). Encoding/decoding. Culture, media, language, 128–138.

