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CLASSIC CENTER
Call 706-357-4444 visit ClassicCenter.com
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ANTEBELLUM POP
Since we're all friends here, I'll just come
out and say it: I love Lady Gaga. Being pri
marily a rock-and-roll guy, it's not her music
that does it for me, though she chooses her
producers well and kicks out singles with more
texture and blessedly Auto-Tune-free produc
tion than most of her top-40 contemporaries,
and the bit of dance-pop genius that is “Bad
I Romance" more than makes up for the occa-
l sional stumble like “Alejandro."
What I love about Gaga is that she, moreso
than her peers, understands the two funda
mental rules of pop superstardom. The first
is that being a pop star is a 24/7 job, with
no dinner or bathroom breaks, and the job is
to be as unlike the rest of us as possible. The
person gives way to the persona, and every
waking moment is an opportunity to self-
promote. Stefani Germanotta from Jersey may
be lurking around somewhere in that psyche,
but we'll never see her doing those things that
you and I do: walking the dog, picking our
noses, whipping into
the convenience store
for a Ho Ho and a Big
Gulp. Try to imagine
Madonna ironing or
Prince eating Cheetos
and watching the
Vikings in his assless
purple sweatpants
and you'll see what I
mean. Gaga is Gaga,
alien and fabulous,
and Gaga is always on.
The second rule is
that the biggest pop
stars are all transgres
sors. Popular enter
tainment likes ruts,
I grooves and pigeon-
i holes. It seeks out the
look and sound of the
; moment and then tries
I to crank out as many
I artists in that mold
' as possible. The diva
vocalist a la Mariah
! and Christina is the model for “American
{ Idol," for example, but it's telling that the
! most successful former contestants from the
[ show are people who lost—Jennifer Hudson,
Chris Daughtry—while the only winner who
i approached the level of fame promised by the
show is Carrie Underwood, a country singer.
Superstars shred genre boundaries, confound
expectations, borrow from radical sources and
dare to offend, in the end synthesizing new
entertainments and evolving from freaks to
pioneers. Michael Jackson knew this. Elvis
knew it. Sinatra knew it. Josephine Baker
knew it. Houdini knew it.
Adah Isaacs Menken was (arguably) the
first American pop star, an international
phenomenon as infamous for her transgres
sions as she was famous for her considerable
talents as an actress, poet and sex symbol. In
the course of her meteoric career in the mid-
1800s, Menken married five husbands, among
them the heavyweight boxing champion of the
world, cross-dressed onstage, posed nude for
public consumption, was an outspoken Zionist
and was arrested as a Confederate spy. Walt
Whitman, Charles Dickens, Algernon Swinburne
and Alexandre Dumas were her close friends;
Mark Twain was among her admirers, and
Arthur Conan Doyle used her as the model
for Irene Adler, the woman who bewitches
and bests Sherlock Holmes in A Scandal in
Bohemia. Hers was a truly remarkable life,
chronicled in a new biography by Michael
and Barbara Foster, A Dangerous Woman:
The Life, Loves and Scandals of Adah Isaacs
Menken, 1835-1868, America's Original
Superstar (Lyons Press, 2011).
In her day, as one of the most celebrated
actresses in the country—back when being
an actor meant working for a week at a time
and performing a different play every night
before hopping on a train to the next city—
Adah Isaacs Menken's private life was no less
complex than her public one. Born in New
Orleans of a black mother and a white father
whose identity is a matter of contention,
Menken passed for white, skirting the strict
miscegenation laws of the day, and distin
guished herself as a performer early, barely
out of childhood when she joined a Texas
repertory company. At this time it is strongly
believed that she formed the first of several
brief relationships with other women, but she
married a producer
from a well-to-do fam
ily, friends and sup
porters of Rabbi Isaac
Mayer Wise, the father
of Reform Judaism in
America. Under his
tutelage, she became
a zealous advocate
for Zionism and cut
her teeth as a poet in
Jewish newspapers of
the day.
Her marriage was a
rocky one, particularly
after her husband's
envy turned to heavy
drinking and her eye
turned to John C.
Heenan, an Irish boxer
and major contender.
Obtaining a rabbinical
divorce, Menken mar
ried Heenan and the
two appeared to be
a golden couple, like
Marilyn and DiMaggio. On the eve of Heenan's
celebrated bout with the English champ,
however, Menken's ex began to slur her in
the press, claiming their divore was illegal
and invalid. The resulting scandal caused
Heenan to disavow their relationship to avoid
bad publicity and did devastating harm to
Menken's career. Always regarded as a sensa
tionalists actress rather than a good one, she
pulled herself up from the depths of ignominy
in what is now the time-honored manner of
pop stars: she embraced her infamy with both
arms and proceeded to live the glamorous
life as out-there as possible, becoming inter
nationally celebrated as the public eagerly
watched for the next escapade from Adah
Isaacs Menken.
Biracial, bisexual, outspoken and will
ing to bare all. Menken was the model of
transgression as living art, and the Fosters'
biography presents her story in a lively mix of
'solid scholarship and enthusiastic prose. The
Fosters are Adah Isaacs Menken fans, and their
frequent lapses in reportorial distance can be
forgiven because of the life they breathe into
what would be dryly academic in any other
hands. A Dangerous Woman has a modern feel
and goes down very easily—a pop read for a
pop pioneer.
John G. Nettles
10 FLAGPOLE.COM • SEPTEMBER 28, 2011
