8 Oct 2013

Queens of the Wild Frontier

Lady Gaga             Princess Julia             Countess Alex Zapak

Female devotees of art-pop seem to have a fascination with aristocratic society and often assign themselves titles, constituting a false order of privilege, or what Adam Ant memorably described as a new royal family / a wild nobility.

But it might be asked if this ironic act of self-entitlement doesn't also betray a certain contempt for class.

For what we observe here is not simply nostalgia or a reactionary desire to return to a world in which everyone had a place and was expected to know their place, but an anarchic attempt to subvert all systems of hierarchy and caste; to construct a utopia in which breeding counts for nothing, miscegenation is celebrated, and everyone - whatever their origin - is allowed to sprinkle stardust in their hair.

     

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