This video of old folks dancing to Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance has gotten a lot of circulation on the interwebs, and has been made fun of a lot. I’ll spare you the expected rants about Othering Asians by making fun of them, although I think that is a pervading element of it – by not understanding, it is easier to make fun, and make inferior another racial/ethnic group. Blah blah.
My good friend, Dawen, suggests that “ga ga” might be a way to say “elder” in some form of Chinese dialect, and that the song itself is nowhere near a direct translation of Lady Gaga’s song, and the song might be some sort of elder people showing of solidarity through song, a common commiseration. Why don’t my kids pay attention to me? Poignant?
Cynthia Wang 