This explains a lot

[ccr1138]

I've been wondering why my 14-year-old thinks Lady Gaga is the bomb. Now I understand.

Excerpt: Generation Gaga doesn’t identify with powerful vocal styles because their own voices have atrophied: they communicate mutely via a constant stream of atomised, telegraphic text messages. Gaga’s flat affect doesn’t bother them because they’re not attuned

Comments

[juliet_winters]

Very disturbing and true I think. When I saw a Lady Gaga video, I thought it was a joke. A terrible joke. But people like her and she gets paid boatloads of money for it.
Marilyn Monroe wasn't especially talented either but she had stage presence.

[hippie_mamabear]

According to an NPR segment i listened to a few weeks ago, another big reason (and one that also makes sense) that she's so popular with kids is her big alter ego, and the fact that there are no illusions that she is a separate person on stage and in front of a camera than she surely is anywhere else

[ccr1138]

Totally makes sense.

A friend gave my son a book to read called Do Hard Things: a Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations. It's written from a Christian perspective, but a lot of it talks about how kids his age (and even younger) in the past accomplished amazing things because society gave them adult responsibility. One example my son loves to quote is about a 12-year-old who captained his own ship during a war. He usually brings this up when I am making him clean his room. :-)

It's a difficult age for both of us!

[hippie_mamabear]

Sounds like something that should be on our reading list!