I have become very interested in—"obsessed with” seems a better phrase—a Web site called the Vigilant Citizen, which grapples with the “occult meanings” of pop songs and videos. It claims Lady Gaga’s songs are parables about selling her soul to the demonic entertainment industry, and that Rihanna and Jay-Z are trying to lull us into submission and pave the way for a new world order.
A typical paragraph discusses the shooting style and mise-en-scène of a pop video while referencing symbolism that would only be familiar to conspiracy theorists and Wikipedia scholars of freemasonry. Imagery of Masonic temples and “Baphomet, the horned idol of Western occultism” (which, curiously, does show up in Lady Gaga videos, if you look for it) forms such a corpus of information that it’s impossible to contest. It’s like debating politics with an Obama “birther”—you can’t really compete against an expert on facts that seem to come from a different universe. Of “Umbrella,” the anonymous critic behind the Vigilant Citizen writes, “We’ll see how the Devil tries and succeeds at possessing Rihanna in this song. There is a reason why the album is called ‘Good Girl Gone Bad.’” Okay!
I’m sure that I don’t understand all the justifications the Web site uses to prove its deeply held position. Yes, pop music can be insidious—remember the debate over Britney Spears’ midriff shirts corrupting America’s innocence? I guess we turned out okay despite her toxicity. But where does the chain of new world order-peddling pop stars lead? All the way up to the heads of the record industry? The Vigilant Citizen is silent on this, as well as what Gaga, Rihanna, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, et al. seek to accomplish through their pop-transmitted messages of occultism. Mainly the site promulgates the point of view that occult possession is bad. Which, you know, I can’t disagree with, although it seems pointlessly vague.
I’m also intrigued by my reaction. I feel the same way about the Vigilant Citizen as I did about the millennial literature and conspiracy YouTube videos I studied in my Introduction to American Studies class. One video was about the Bilderberg Group, some sort of shadowy forum that meets to control the world. For a while, all my YouTube suggested videos were about economic forums. I was inculcated into an understanding of this worldview early—my parents’ bookshelf is stocked with many books on the Kennedy assassination—and what faith in the U.S. government is (or was) to my parents, faith in pop music is to me.
The Vigilant Citizen makes pop music consumption easy, if a plunge into a terrifying unknown out of an Oliver Stone film. It provides an explanation for a pop scene that has gotten exponentially more bizarre since I came to college: I know now why Beyoncé created an alternate persona for her last album, or, as I wrote about in a previous column, why Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift at the Video Music Awards (it was all an initiation into the Circle of Chosen Artists!). Lady Gaga’s outfits, even, are diagrammed. I feel how my dad feels when he reads books on the Kennedy assassination: That everything unsettling and confusing and mixed-up makes sense. (Although despite how controversial Lady Gaga is or strives to be, I assume we can all agree it wasn’t a lone gunman. Right?)
Maybe I’m not all that different from the birthers—well, I’ll give myself a little credit in that I’m only intrigued by the Vigilant Citizen. I haven’t taken its bait. But anyone whose mind is attuned to look for conspiracies will find them everywhere, and this is certainly a moment to look. There are bizarre, horrible things happening all around: the collapse of the U.S. economy, the H1N1 virus floating in the air, Oprah leaving her show. Does it all go back to the Bilderberg Group? It’s easier to peg everything going on—including mysterious currents in culture that point to the rise of some sort of malevolent power in our society—on a convenient scapegoat. Lady Gaga has so many free-floating referents around her that she makes an easy target. It’s easier to hunt for conspiracy theories in pop music or to try to suss out the Bilderberg Group’s membership than to find a prescriptive solution.
In the midst of writing this column, I decided I needed to have some musical accompaniment. To YouTube I went for distraction. All my suggested videos were Lady Gaga tracks. (I never said I had good taste—I just know a good meme when I see one.) I put it on and had trouble finishing a sentence. My typing trailed off. I saw the head of Baphomet several times in the video, but didn’t really process it amid the lights and music. The Vigilant Citizen is right about at least one thing: I felt for a few minutes as though I were brainwashed.
Daniel D’Addario is a Columbia College senior majoring in American studies and English. He is the managing editor of the Columbia Political Review. The Unbearable LOLness of Being runs alternate Mondays. opinion@columbiaspectator.com
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