Crime Stories and Music, Part 1 — The Crimes of Lady Gaga: Fame, Love, Female Empowerment, and Revenge

UPDATE: I found some excellent new blogposts abour these three music videos and I think I'll rewrite this post soon. I included links to these posts under each video. Look for the links to gaggajournal and blackberriesandapples. These posts bring up things I should have caught such as Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

You can find crime stories in unusual places, places you might not have thought of particularly if you are my age. I'm kicking off my discovery of crime and noir in music series with three music videos from Lady Gaga: Paparazzi, Telephone, and Bad Romance. I owe a student in a English class where I was a teaching assistant for bringing up the association of Bad Romance with crime stories —human trafficking in this case. It lodged Lady Gaga videos and crime stories in the back of my mind. Lady Gaga is a splashy way to launch this series and one my readers might not have considered.

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Lady Gaga's lyrics and music videos inspire an amazing range of interpretations. In addition to the normal and enthusiastic fan discussions, there are people who find the occult, the Illuminate, and MKUltra in Gaga's work. This is particularly true with Bad Romance. I, however, am only concerned with Paparazzi, Telephone, and Bad Romance as they relate to crime stories and am not going to consider the lyrics. All three videos have two major themes: female empowerment and revenge.

Paparazzi and Telephone are related and can be viewed as straight-out crime stories. Bad Romance is much more complicated and surreal but does have a crime element and the female empowerment and revenge themes mentioned above.

Paparazzi (from the 2008 The Fame album)

View the video here.

The Paparazzi music video opens as if it is a movie complete with a title sequence. A celebrity,

Lady Gaga, is nearly killed by her lover who goes into a rage when she doesn't cooperate with his narcissistic need to be photographed by the paparazzi. She is left broken and deserted by the public but recovers through sheer force of will and takes her revenge. In a cynical view of our culture, her revenge propels her back into the spotlight and is once again "loved". 

The story is framed within a narrative on the corrosive effects of celebrity and the fickleness of the press and public. There are scenes of artfully posed dead models who I interpret to be other victims of the paparazzi and/or who couldn't achieve the fame they craved.

Not surprising, this is a lavishly visual production with  the extravagant costumes you expect from Lady Gaga. In the revenge sequence, her yellow jumpsuit, black corset, round glasses, and black lips are disturbing, even scary, like a deranged and surreal Minnie Mouse. Her lover is played by Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård (Tarzan, True Blood).

There is a nice homage to Hitchcock's film, Vertigo when Gaga is pushed off the balcony. Take a look at the Title sequence from Vertigo and jump to the 1:20 mark in this clip from the film. The Wikipedia article on the video points out another film reference, Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

Wikipedia article on the Paparazzi video.

Meaning of Lady Gaga's Paparazzi.

Analysis of Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" as Her Critique on Society.

Gaga in Oz: Hearing the woman Behind the Camera in Lady Gaga's Paparazzi.

Telephone (from the 2009 The Fame Monster album)

The Fame Monster is a reissue of The Fame album and includes the Bad Romance and Telephone

tracks in addition to Paparazzi which was on The Fame.

View the video here. Explicit version.

Telephone is also a short crime film and begins with a movie-style title sequence showing the outside of a prison. It picks up where Paparazzi ended with Gaga now in prison. Telephone is the most playful and fun of the three videos I'm featuring. It starts with grainy black and white surveillance  camera view of Gaga being escorted to her cell by two butch guards. The guards strip her and we get a funny reference to the rumour that Gaga is intersex,  This first half of the film is a delightfully exaggerated homage to the girls behind bars trope with a nicely executed fight in the commissary and leather clad lesbians in the exercise yard. And, as always with Gaga, the costuming is pretty remarkable including sunglasses made from burning cigarettes and an outfit consisting only of crime scene tape.

Gaga gets bailed out of prison (I know, it doesn't work like that) and is met on the outside by Beyoncé driving the Pussy Wagon from Tarantino's film, Kill Bill and they speed off. When Gaga explained her concept for Telephone, he told her she had to use the Pussy Wagon and loaned it to her. There is a link below for more Tarantino references. They end up at a diner where Beyoncé  poisons her thuggish boyfriend(?) and Gaga takes over the kitchen with her poison recipe and murders everyone else in the diner. They take off pursued by law enforcement and the video ends in a Thelma and Louise moment.

Five Tarantino References Worth Catching in Lady Gaga's Telephone Music Video.

Wikipedia article on the Telephone music video.

Art of Lady Gaga: Telephone Music Video.

Lady Gaga's New Video Explained: Dead diners, Americana and Cigarette Sunglasses

"Just Dance" and "Telephone" as Two Sides of the Same Coin

The Reason Lady Gaga is an Artist and I Love Her

Bad Romance (from the 2009 The Fame Monster album)

View the video here.

Bad Romance is the most complex and surreal of the three videos and the one that generates the most

far out theories. I'm taking the straight crime angle where we see Gaga in the opening scene looking drugged and wearing glasses made from razor blades. She's been kidnapped and drugged by a gang of supermodels who sell her to the Russian mafia to be auctioned off. We see the bids in rubles registering on laptop screens; she is highly saught after. She overcomes her drugged kidnapped victim state and dances seductively for one of the bidders then incinerates him on the bed where he thought he was going to take his prize.

10 Gadget Sightings in Lady Gaga's Bad Romance Music Video.

2009 Gagadyssey: Lady Gaga: Bad Romance by Meghan on Blackberries to Apples blog

2010 Gagadyssey: Meghan Blalock on Gaga Stigmata compares with Stanley Kubrick 2001: A Space 
Odyssy and Clockwork Orange a followup to Meghan's post in previous link

Analysis of Music Video "Bad Romance" (bloggger hates her music, loves the video)

Wikipedia: Bad Romance Music Video.

The Art of Gaga: Lady Gaga's Bad Romance Music Video Explained.

Youtube: Gaga Explains Bad Romance.

Youtube: Decoding Lady Gaga's Bad Romance (The Whole Truth)

Lady Gaga's Bad Romance — The Occult Meaning.

There are some real stretches for symbols in the last two links. For example, in the chorus Gaga sings Rah Rah and Ro Mah. Some think Rah actually refers to the Egyptian sun god Ra and that Ro Mah might refer to the Roman Catholic Church. Lady Gaga says both are just short for the word "romance". Of course, that's just what a member of the Illumante would say. It is nonetheless interesting to see what people take away from the video. It certainly is rich with symbolism.