GaGa gets complaints

You can always count on Lady Gaga to bring a touch of controversy with her wherever she goes…

We’re all well accustomed to the zany and often revealing costumes in which this quirkiest of pop queens tends to perform, from dresses made of meat to costumes made of thin air.

True to form, Gaga generated a gaggle of complaints as a result of her performance on last Sunday night’s X Factor results show, with some viewers taking exception to the considerable amount of flesh on show and the explicit nature of the lyrical content. Somewhere in the region of 200 viewers lodged complaints to Ofcom, with a further 60 complaining directly to ITV.

So what exactly was so especially offensive about Gaga’s performance that it warranted such a significant number of complaints, whilst many other TV shows and music videos routinely feature nudity without riling more sensitive viewers?

Clad in flesh coloured underwear and - albeit briefly - a pair of sea shells and blonde wig, the American star was certainly on the verge of nudity during her X Factor appearance, but still, no more nude than so many of her fellow pop stars on the music channels. Maybe what really made some viewers uncomfortable, was the fact that this performance wasn’t really sexy.

Lady Gaga is a demonstrably attractive woman, but she certainly wasn’t out to set pulses racing on Sunday night. It was the second track of her two-song medley, ‘Do What U Want’ that really summed up the message she was trying to get across.

Some viewers may have misconstrued the lyric ‘Do what you want with my body’ as promiscuously sexual, but we think it’s actually more of a statement about how the music industry uses up the bodies and souls of its starlets in the quest for money. When Gaga crawled across that X Factor stage in her underwear, she wasn’t playing the part of some kinky seductress. She was playing the part of a craven, desperate fame monster. It’s no coincidence that this song’s being promoted on such a huge stage just as Miley Cyrus continues to court controversy with her increasingly unfettered performances.

This was actually a pretty great performance from Gaga, with powerful vocals and an equally powerful theme. It put Sunday’s sing off contestants to shame, with the uninspiring Miss Dynamix limping out of the competition and Hannah Barrett doing little to improve her odds of winning (which you can check at http://www.freebets.org), despite scraping through.

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