Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame

<p>What does it say that as I sat with my morning coffee and the NY Times and came across this story, that my first thought was that I needed to post it on CC, particularly for the benefit of JHS, who has mentioned that his D is a real fan?</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/us/29gaga.html?src=twrhp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/us/29gaga.html?src=twrhp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>PMK jr is a real fan as well. For his senior talent show, he wrote and performed a medley of three of her songs and it was a huge hit! </p>

<p>Not only that, he’s a sociology major…luckily he already loves his college, so I’m not worried about a request to transfer.</p>

<p>48-year old male college professors should not be obsessed with 24-year old women. Little good can from it. It is part of my job at a University to deal with these kinds of things.</p>

<p>Interesting course. However, I find myself wishing it was taught by a neutral prof rather than one of her “groupies.” :D</p>

<p>I have to admit that most of my best courses have been taught by groupies; they were just groupies of people who most have never heard of and/or are long dead.</p>

<p>this course happens to be an offering for the Spring 11 semester at S’s alma mater and we read about it onthe U’s website.I passed the info along to my D who is finishing a PhD in Musicology at another very respectable university.she says Gaga is “definitely a subject of scholarly concern” ( I thought she would poo poo the subject!) She said people had submitted paper proposals to the AMS (American Musicological Society) conference committee and she is taken seriously.</p>

<p>I wouldn’t call my daughter a real fan of Lady Gaga. She’s about as indie as they come. Not so much she, but her friends are the sort of people who stop listening to someone if she gets too popular . . . and in her crowd, that means being able to quit your day job, a line Stefani Germanotta crossed long ago. </p>

<p>I think it’s more that my daughter feels she completely gets Lady Gaga’s art project. They are the same age, similar social background, similar interests. So to some extent she feels represented by Lady Gaga.</p>