We Perform This Way

What Weird Al Taught Me About Freedom

Courage and Freedom

As the consensus on freedom of speech has eroded over the past decade—due largely to the doctrines advanced through the government-and-corporate-funded university systems and NGOs in the United States and United Kingdom—I’ve found myself looking back to a moment in music history that many of my younger millennial friends considered a defining moment of their lives.

In 2010, Lady Gaga released her song Born This Way, a robust anthem about freedom of sexual expression in which she argues that, since she was born with a rather queer bent to her sexual nature, she refused to conceal its importance to her any more than people born to racial minorities conceal their heritage(s). She called it a “Freedom Song” and it was a smash (also a damn catchy song).

For those of us who grew up in a world where those characteristics over which we had little-to-no control were frequently used as prejudicial tools against us (our family’s health and wealth, our race, our sex, our sexual proclivities, our disabilities, etc.) there’s a feeling of near-apotheosis in saying “You know, fuck it, ain’t no way I can not be who I am, so I’m just going to stop fighting for your approval and y’all can react however you want to.”

But the song does not keep floating to my top-of-mind because “it’s an anthem of freedom.” It floats to mind because it’s about the felt-freedom that comes from laying down the contradictions one feels in the dialectic between self and society, and embracing the simple one-ness that emerges from the core of one’s immutable characteristics.

It is, in other words, a song about the joy of conforming to the slot you were born into.

This “freedom” is, in a fundamental sense, as opposed to freedom of speech, expression, and action as one can get without actually attacking those concepts head-on. It’s a contradiction that an ardent fan of the song unintentionally threw into sharp relief with his bestselling parody track.

Weird Al’s Perform This Way is a celebration of the delightful nuttiness and ballsy (or ovarian?) eccentricity of Lady Gaga’s stage career. Whether she comes on stage nude, or in a dress made of raw meat, or covered with bees, or in body paint, she’s always an aesthetic and artistic force to be reckoned with—as Weird Al says (speaking as if he were Gaga): “I’m not crazy, I perform this way.”

This is an anthem of freedom and courage. None of the crazy antics Gaga gets up to on stage are things she was born to, they’re the things she’s grown into. They are exercises of her creative genius. They are fundamentally unique in the universe, and, love them or hate them, their singularity makes them a rare and valuable expression of the human experience.

The sentiment of Weird Al’s song is exactly correct:

We say the things we say because we choose to. Our opinions (left, right, and center, or off the map entirely) are those things we have come to believe because our life (and, one might hope, some degree of reflection) has led us to them. Directly or indirectly, we chose them.

We are not crazy—we perform this way.

This song lays out an aesthetic vision that embodies heroism and courage, risk-taking and exposure. If Born This Way was the anthem for queer millennials proclaiming their right to be who they are, then Perform This Way is the anthem for all of us who wish to speak our mind and live as we choose. This vision is what those of us in the arts and in the intellectual spaces must fight for, as we all, in our own way, attempt to move our civilization in the direction we most value. This determination unites us regardless of how violently we disagree with one another on whatever controversy rages at the moment.

The Post-WW2 era, including the Post-Cold War era, presented us with something of a world-on-pause. In America and Europe this was a long period of prosperity and stability, untroubled by war and domestic strife (at least when compared to historic norms). It’s easy to feel free when you’re wrapped in the blanket of prosperity and backed by consensus, in an era where dissent is tolerated because its presence demonstrates the unassailable power of that consensus.

The last decade-plus, however, has put us in a different position. The world’s Imperial hegemon—that beacon of freedom known as the United States government¹—has poured untold millions of dollars not only into propagandizing the world (a constant activity since World War Two), but into aggressively subsidizing (and extorting) the suppression of dissent. Whether in the arts, the sciences, or the political and intellectual spheres, dissenting voices have found themselves shadowbanned, de-banked, investigated, imprisoned, exiled, defamed, bankrupted, murdered, or quietly nudged out of the spotlight.

It would be a mistake to fancy that, just because the new administration is exposing the crimes of the old, it will refrain from such activities itself. That remains to be seen, but given the governing philosophy behind some of those close to the emerging power center, it’s reasonable to suppose that the censorship regime will re-make itself in the image of the new emerging power bloc.

Resting on our laurels is not a responsible option.

It is the time for people like Galileo (an insufferable twit who was unwilling to be the slightest bit reasonable, even as a favor to his friend the Pope) to stand up and face house arrest.

It is the time for people like Martin Luther (a sniveling wanna-be dictator with execrable views and rather distasteful personal habits) to stand in the dock and have their shining moment of integrity, even if it might mean exile and ruin.

It’s the time for the nascent Martin Luther Kings (a serial adulterer, sexual harasser, and possibly a foreign agent) to proclaim loudly their dreams, even if it means risking assassination.

It’s the time for a new crop of Malcolm Xs (a one-time friend of terrorists) to talk openly with their enemies and find common cause in the right to free discourse.

And its time for the rest of us—whether or not we have such dangerous skeletons in our closets—to stand up and be counted.

If we do not rise to this occasion, we may lose the last of a window of time in which persuasion and argument can be used to explore ideas, navigate disputes, and work out compromises.

We’re not crazy.

We perform this way.

As we must.

If we do not, we may yet find ourselves trapped again in the world of a Mao Zedong, where all power flows from the barrel of a gun.

1. Yes, this is sarcasm.