Tuesday, 19 July 2011

lady gaga


  • Pastiche. The video has it in spades. It references other forms of media (Tarantino, exploitation films, Thelma & Louise) left and right, while parodying none of them. This is because parody relies on an underlying normative standard, which postmodernism categorically rejects. Instead it merely shows the audience a barrage of media, almost a celebration of how clever the director is for cramming so many references into a single video.
  • Consumerism. The product placement is obvious, but it is not portrayed as humorous. The camera lingers too long on each product, and the video knows it, but it still manages to avoid parody. Rather, the video uses these consumer images as an integral part of its aesthetic without any comment on their social context.
  • Self-reference. The blatant product placement shows a self-awareness in the video, but this particular brand of ironic detachment harms the video’s ability to make any sort of overall message on its own. Instead it implies that celebrating consumer culture is fine as long as we’re appropriately ironic about it, but this is a largely unintended consequence of the video’s aesthetic.
  • Appropriation of identity-based struggle. Lady Gaga is interesting for turning the male gaze back on men, and for portraying women as subjects rather than objects in her videos (albeit still scantily-clad subjects). However, the resistance to power on Lady Gaga and Beyonce’s part is purely individual and brief (it’s very telling that Lady Gaga is bailed out of prison rather than escaping) Behind this initial layer of feminism there is still an individuated desire to become rich, given that Lady Gaga was saved from prison by money. She maintains her glamorous image inside and outside the prison’s walls, an implicit message that “excessive materialism is empowering to women, somehow,” as Alyx Vesey observed. Therefore her kind of feminism is integrated neatly into the agenda of neoliberals, who love to talk about glass ceilings being shattered while heaping disdain on poor women. 
  • Incredulity towards metanarratives. Lyotard’s famous description of the postmodern condition applies even here, as it’s difficult to find an overall message or narrative in the video. There is a sequence of events interspersed with pop culture references and product placement, but little else.
 This shot is the beginning of the music video with Lady Gaga wearing cigarette glasses which shows her rebellious side and that shes not afraid to do 'unusal' things, also representing the society we live in today.

This is a close up of Beyonce, the first time we see her.


This is after they have both poisoned the people at the cafe, Beyonce in black is typical as its the colour associated with death, and Lady Gaga is dressed in opposite to this.  

This is a close up of Lady Gaga in prison, here she looks like Madonna used to, meaning she could be trying to convey the 'pop star' image and resemble Madonna. 


This shows the poison being made.






These glasses are what lady gaga wore in a previous video after killing someone, as they are mickey mouse glasses they could be trying to twist Disney in some way, as its again associated with death and murder in this scene too.

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