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.
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.
