Last fall, while everyone was going gaga over Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" video, I found myself scratching my head. I had already paid penance and proudly secured my seat on the Gaga train, but the crowning of the pop singer as the music video medium's new queen seemed premature at best. Directed by the always reliable but often unremarkable Francis Lawrence, "Bad Romance" was like 2001 meets Alien meets an Alexander McQueen runway show; from Gaga's outlandish couture (dig that pre-coital polar-bear-rug getup) and a plot ostensibly warning about the dangers of hatching hot alien babes and trying to mate with them (which admittedly sounds pretty awesome on paper), the clip was a mishmash of ideas that simply didn't gel.
Gaga's previous video, the Jonas Åkerlund-helmed mini-film "Paparazzi," was similarly fixated on the macabre (call it "paraplegic chic"), but it cleverly put a twist on the star's favorite theme by satirizing our culture's celebration of—and obsession with—not just the famous, but the infamous. More importantly, it was coherent. The much-hyped video for "Telephone," Gaga's duet with Beyoncé, plays like a sorta sequel, assuming Gaga wasn't acquitted of murdering her boyfriend and was instead sent to prison:
Images of Gaga's costumes from the shoot have been floating around the net for weeks, and while they seemed to point to an artist who was quickly running out of kooky ideas with which to amuse us (Diet Coke can rollers in her hair?), the costumes make perfect sense within the context of the video's narrative. Stripped of her couture and forced to make due with whatever she could find (cans, metal chains, cigarettes), an incarcerated but resourceful Gaga refuses to be a fashion victim. Why she's wearing a completely different outfit between the time she's told she has a phone call and the scene in which she answers it, or how she manages to walk out of jail wearing a different dress than the one she entered with is beside the point. Who needs continuity when you've got fashion companies holding design team viewings of your video to research Spring 2011 color trends the day after it premieres? (True story.)
Likewise, Åkerlund crams the video with too many ideas, edits, and dubious product placements (though someone had to pay for the nine-and-a-half-minute clip and it sure as hell wasn't going to be the record label). It's probably fitting for a song that's piled with hook after hook after hook, but the result is disorienting and unfocused. Beyoncé's acting is terrible as usual, but it fits the campy tone of the video and the dialogue is to kill for:
Gaga: You know what they say. Once you kill a cow, you gotta make a burger.
Beyoncé: You know, Gaga, trust is like a mirror. You can fix it if it's broke...
Gaga: But you can still see the crack in that motherfucker's reflection.
The buxom pair go on a vengeful killing spree a la Kill Bill (complete with a replica of the Bride's Pussy Wagon), Gaga shows us how to make a sandwich, and she and B drive off into the desert. The homage to Tarantino is obvious, but it begs the question of why Gaga didn't just hire him to direct the video himself. As it stands, "Telephone" is another example of Gaga drawing inspiration from more recent texts than, say, Madonna, who mined comparatively ancient relics like Metropolis and Citizen Kane.
There's plenty to admire about "Telephone": Gaga confronts rumors that she's a hermaphrodite head-on crotch-forward, and she's singlehandedly injected new life into a medium—at least in terms of mainstream pop music—that has been on the decline for years. But paying homage to an artist who's made a career out of biting off of others—and I'm talking about QT here, not Madonna—makes for an exponentially meta work that, while immensely entertaining and leagues above her peers, is hard to consider very original or groundbreaking.
I disagree 100%. Bad Romance geled perfectly. It's not very hard to grasp Gaga being in a bath house trying to wash her away her sins, being kidnapped by models to be sold to a Russian leader only to have in the end her getting the last laugh and killing him with her spark shooting breasts. The fashion was just the icing on the cake but I digress.
As for Telephone I do agree when you mentioned that it was camp hence Beyonce's terrible acting. Yet it wasn't just the acting but how blatant the product placement was et cetera. I don't think Gaga was going for groundbreaking but rather doing what she has been doing and that is one upping her previous video. The pop culture references are very obvious from Quentin (who suggested to Gaga that she use the Pussy Wagon in the video after hearing the treatment of which she told him when the two had lunch together) to Thelma & Louise.
It's a great video from a great artist.
Yet another triumph of wardrobe and choreography maybe. But I too was unimpressed by the random campiness (even more so than ever in Gaga's videography) and execessive homages in "Telephone" especially from someone who's taken such great pains to prove that she's the most avant-garde of mainstream pop. I think "Bad Romance" Lady Gaga is more to my liking. No short film pretenses and some great operatic moments even if they don't mean much. I disagree that Gaga is peerless in the music video medium. Beyonce's had auteur aspirations for awhile and her minimalist forays have led to some ugly experimental stuff that stands out from the homogenized cinematic sheen that most music videos have, Gaga's included.
It's interesting that, going on three videos now, Gaga still feels compelled to murder her suitors.
She should have stuck with Francis Lawrence. Akerlund is grasping at straws here.
"No it's just more lock jawed pop stars
Thicker than pig shit, Nothing to convey
They're so scared to show intelligence
It might smear their lovely career
This world, I am afraid, Is designed for crashing bores"
-Morrissey-
And here's a pointless list about the video in question: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/10-hidden-surprises-in-lady-gagas-telephone-vid
I think the video's biggest problem is its failure to integrate any aspect of the song into the visuals. "Telephone" is essentially a blithe ode to a 'who-needs-boys?' mentality of sisterhood and female solidarity. But its 70′s 'new fish' women's prison dramatics and pointless killing spree kind of stretch that premise to the point of incomprehensibility. I guess you could say the product placement is a kind of Warholian nudge, but if so, it's kind of a lazy one.
I do cop to being a Gaga fan. She strikes me as the latest in that honorable tradition of Italian-American fierceness (first Madge, then Gwen and now Gaga). But though her defenders will point out that the derivativeness and self-referential aspects of her persona are all of a piece, I agree that she really can't be thought of as groundbreaking in any way. Madonna was a far more sophisticated, cultivated creative thief.
"Gaga confronts rumors that she's a hermaphrodite
head-oncrotch-forward"I think that's the first use of strikethru text I've ever enjoyed. Nice job.
I thought and still think even less of "Telephone," the video, than anyone here (save for "blurco" perhaps?). But let me join the chorus of those praising "Bad Romance." Even straight horror fans on one of the message boards I frequent who can't stand her stood up and cheered. Mishmash or not, the video worked- I'd say that constitutes a geling. And it's her finest to date.