Many of Lady Gaga's videos share the same narrative of a male trying to take advantage of her wealth and talent and as a result, she takes drastic measures to reassert her dominance. A similar plot structure is seen within the "Paparazzi" video in which her boyfriend tries to use her fame for money and tries to kill her by throwing her from a balcony when she does not comply with his wishes. After Gaga is pushed off the balcony, she is sent into a downward spiral reflective of how the paparazzi are more obsessed with the downfall of celebrities than all of the good things celebrities do.
Gaga glorifies the representation Disability within this video and tries to make wheelchairs, crutches and neck braces a fashion statement by covering them with expensive jewels and modeling them on a purple carpet, perhaps she is showing that even when celebrities are hurt or injured they are still expected to look beautiful and fashionable for the public in order to maintain their celebrity status.
Throughout the second verse there are shots of dead women that have experienced a death that symbolises different types of fame. The first woman is shown in a bathtub wearing bunny ears, a symbol often associated with Playboy, perhaps conveying the downfall of promiscuity. The woman in a diamond mask is representative of money and the dead woman wearing horns with a bullet wound in her head could be interpreted as the lure of cult like promises of obtaining fame. The woman hung from stairwell with an eye patch and a wine bottle in her hand explains how some people are blind to what ails them and in doing so bring their own early downfalls. The broken woman by the pool can represent the party life of most celebrities and the maid, who is bleeding gold blood, represents how a celebrity is valued and respected more when they are dead than when they are alive. Lastly, the woman with drugs in her hand lying on the plastic bed could symbolise the overdosing of both drugs and the fame lifestyle itself when you have money and power.
Gaga regains her dominance at the end of the video by poisoning her boyfriends drink and killing him. “I just killed my boyfriend,” Gaga admits to the operator and after the police investigate the crime scene, they arrest her and she is more than willing to play along. She has put herself back in the spotlight, and so, flaunts herself as she poses for the paparazzi who are taking her picture. This clearly conveys how celebrities who get caught doing illegal things and behaving illicitly use their arrests to contribute towards their fame and successes.
In conclusion, Lady Gaga uses symbolism and metaphors within her music videos to convey her thoughts and feelings towards the music industry to the audience which she clearly believes to be repressive, controlling and very heavily male dominated. Using extravagant imagery, she has shown the double standards that celebrities are given and how society in general find their downfalls and hardships entertaining and therefore are more interested in that and celebrity gossip than their music and talents itself.
The Lady Gaga “Bad Romance” video explores themes such as money, capitalism and the way women are treated within the music industry. The story line shows her being kidnapped by supermodels before being drugged, sexualised and sold to the Russian mafia.
The video opens to show six women being hatched from white pods. They’re wearing white costumes that could connote their innocence at this point in the video as the colour white stereotypically signifies purity and innocence.
The next shot displays Gaga lying clothed in a bathtub, with her eyes edited to be significantly larger than usual. Again this could be referencing her purity and cleanliness before the music industry began to taint her personality. Her “Wide eyes” connote the naïve innocence she perhaps entered the music industry with.
The shot of the models kidnapping Lady Gaga jump cuts to her with minimal make up on crying from a high angle shot, making her appear weak and vulnerable. Her helplessness is intended to trigger empathy from the audience.
The supermodels then surround Gaga and forcefully tear her jacket off whilst she struggles to keep it on, before dancing partially nude in front of the Russian mafia. She attempts to shield her naked body with her hands and this could be referencing the way the music industry sexualise women in order to make them appeal to a male audience. Women usually enter the industry with “Wide eyes” and are not aware of the things they will be persuaded to do in order to sell their music and we can inference that this is what Gaga is symbolising in her video.
Later on in the video, Gaga goes from wearing white clothes which connotes purity to red and black clothes to visually display the shift of her innocence towards darkness. Eventually we see Lady Gaga win the power battle by burning the man who tried to control her after sleeping with him and then smoking a cigarette next to his charred corpse.
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