I have a hard time putting my finger on why, but I quite like Lady Gaga (more so than Britney Spears or any other artist where I can enjoy a hook and a tune for a particualr song without being particualry engaged.) Maybe its the blatancy of how outrageous her lyrics and videos are that it seems impossibly pedantic to dislike it.

A friend of mine said of "Just dance" thats its an irresponsible song - shes lost her keys and her phone and shes still dancing! But I can't bring myself to bring that kind of literacy to it. And what are you supposed to analyse with "I want to take a ride on your disco stick" anyway? I'd never heard (I have literally been living in a caravan in the middle of the desert for the past 3ish years though.) that kind of blatantly explicit sex talk from a woman in a mainstream song before, so I just kind of sat back and enjoyed it.

this song is a bit dissapointing in that sense. Its not nearly as awesome as Lovegame or Poker Face - possibly becuase its sexualized images have turned (more) against women.

(I was actually a bit dissapointed to see a bit of an itnerview with her and see her as reasonably modest and well spoken. I was kind of hoping for some witty over-the-top diva antics. Nothing is larger than life these days.)

Have you seen The Brave One. In that film they splice scenes of Jodie Foster's character making love to her boyfriend with the hospital's intake procedures after she is brutally assaulted and the boyfriend is killed. You see her boyfriend slipping off her underwear, and then the doctors cutting it off of her bruised and bloody body . with removing the clothes of the rape victim at the hospital. It is horrifying.

Have you seen The Brave One. In that film they splice scenes of Jodie Foster's character making love to her boyfriend with the hospital's intake procedures after she is brutally assaulted and the boyfriend is killed. You see her boyfriend slipping off her underwear, and then the doctors cutting it off of her bruised and bloody body. It is horrifying.

That Dreamworlds excerpt is terrifying. I'm interested in watching the whole thing, but I don't know if I could take it. Those five minutes nearly had me in tears. Powerful stuff.

What is striking and strange about the "Paparazzi" video is that the song itself doesn't really seem to be about what the video's about. The roles are reversed in the song from the video, if we take Lady Gaga's persona to be the "I" in the song (which I think we should, as she's looking at/talking to/stalking a "boy").

I think that role/gender reversal in the video is a blatant move on the part of the video producers to use the sexual objectification of women and sexualized violence against women to sell the Lady Gaga image/song. Sexualized violence against and the sexual objectification of men just doesn't sell like women's dead yet hawt bodies. Depressing.

That Dreamworlds clip is very scary indeed.

I think the Dreamworlds clip needs a trigger warning. It made me physically sick.

That Dreamworlds clip was insane. I've NEVER seen anything like that. The music videos, yes, but that footage of the mayhem in the park just blew me away.

I've always maintained that the types of cultural images you are surrounded by directly affect the way you live in the real world, but I've never seen such a blatent example of it. That was horrifying.

Before I had seen the Lady Gaga video I had read a quote of her saying how the video deals with the effect celebrity has on society and I seen to remember her saying the effect on "little girls"

Having said that, I see this video as a dark satire of that concept; because of the extensive media coverage of Gaga's fall and the proliferation of the image of her on her back, the idea of violence and death becomes glamorous and inspires imitation. Thus, all the glamorous morbidity of the dead models and the Lady Gaga's reascension to fabulousness being a direct result of her murdering her boyfriend.

Are they showing that Lady Gaga video on MTV and VH1? Now THAT needs a trigger warning for sure. I expect to be astounded by anything Sut Jhally shows us (have you ever seen his movie Tough Guise, or Wrestling with Manhood, dealing with violent masculinity? Wow, it's intense!) but to watch a video like Lady Gaga's... it threw me. Very disturbing.

Gwen,

Thank you for posting this. I run a blog, Model Minority,
about Hip Hop and Feminism, and the Lady Gaga video reminds me of the ways in which sexualized violence is normalized in Hip Hop and Pop culture as well.

With regard to the Dreamworld three video, I remember the summer that those girls were harassed and assaulted in the Puerto Rican day parade. As a Black woman walking the streets of New York, I have a complete understanding of the ways in which young folks try and ACT out music videos as if it were real life. I am going to write about this clip, I just need to figure out what to say.

Again.

Thank you.

-R

I actually saw that video kind of as social comentary. The "boyfriend" was exploiting her to get a little fame from the paparazzi, the media/paparazzi are exploiting her, watching celebrities be destroyed is kind of sickly glorified (look at any magazine cover in the check out line at the grocery store). I think she was trying to show how insane all of that is. I mean, she kills the boyfriend at the end and the magazine claims "She's back!" as she's being hauled away by the police.

I don't think it was meant to be saying this acceptable. It's that the paparazzi are scary, and kind of sick.

I thought the dead women were women the boyfriend had killed before or after he pushed Lady GaGa off the balcony. Maybe because they wouldn't cooperate with him, just as she wouldn't. Which could be a statement about the way a male-run society treats women who don't *cooperate* and do as their told. I don't know if the violence was meant to be glamorized. I lean toward the point of view that Lady GaGa was saying Society glamorizes violence against women. But that could definitely be argued.

I understand the danger of blending sex and violence, especially for viewers who don't really analyze what they're watching, but for me the message of the video couldn't be clearer: he assaulted her, and for that, he died. If he hadn't been hurt, the video would have a totally different context. But from the moment he assaulted her, the whole video was moving toward his death.

The video does bring up something else important, though: women aren't just raped by strangers on the street. They're raped by boyfriends, husbands, men they trust. The man in the video asks her if she trusts him, and she says yes. There's a reason they put that in there.

Why isn't anybody talking about the fact that the video states men should be held responsible for their violence? When have we ever seen that in a mainstream video?

Oops. I meant "do as they're told." Doh!

This seems to me like some kind of subliminal messaging film designed to encourage the association of sexual arousal and violence towards women! Not what was intended, I'm sure, but still what it looks like to me.

I've spent a lot of time in the Arab world, and the saddest thing is that, despite the difference in culture (and general piety throughout the region), the music videos really just aren't that different and are clearly shaped on American ones. A "favorite" example is this 2006 video by Ruby (Egyptian): http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1341806/egyptian_singer_ruby_singing_leih_bedari_keda/

And that's tame by American standards.

(I should have added some lyrics:

For nights I was calling my darling and he did not come
He doesn't ease my mind and doesn't know what's happening to me
What can I do? I love him so much
Woe is me oh my fire
When I see his image before my eyes all day and night
What can I do? I love him so much
Woe is me oh my fire
When I see his image before my eyes oh what's with me?

Then why is he hiding his feelings like this
And he is unaware like this
And I don't know
Why is he confusing me
And why is he running away from me
And I never cross his mind)

I think that the world is coming to an end. Or what I actually mean, trying to psychologically analyze the social impact that the media has on our youth and society in general, I being female find it so disturbing that it is always women in every csi show that are having their throat slashed etc. Why is it that we don't constantly depict men suffering the same violent demise as women? And there is some sexual thrill that is enticed by these movies, videos and shows. From a religious standpoint I believe that this is part of satan's war to take humanity down, another one of his strongholds, he will try to get some of us by drugs, crack cocaine for the black community, "ice" for the white community, hip hop with sexually graffic lyrics for the youth and then for the young adults we have sexually explicit media. I really believe that the downfall of humanity is in satan's hands, I don't think that God is going to let him win this war and I don't want him to win so I will just do my part to maintain a level of sanity and sit back and watch the morals of society disintegrate until the next catclysm of our planet. Whoever disagrees with this and wants to take up for the dark side, be careful. I am a light worker.

u suck

To me the video shows that GaGa's character, not really herself, just a character in the whole story, had suffered a homicide attempt by her boyfriend, whom she deeply trusted. The boyfriend knew they were being photographed by a paparazzi and, knowing how disturbed the media is, threw her off the balcony so both could become more famous and appear on magazines headlines, but he only asked her if she trusted him, he didn't have her consent in the action nor did he know if she would survive or not, but all he cared about was fame, which is even the name of her album ("Fame"). But she really didn't like it since she almost died and he couldn't care less if she did, so she killed him and the media, once more, instead of talking about how sickening the whole situation is, only glorifies her and is glad "she's back".
I always thought Lady GaGa wasn't a role model and neither did she try to be, but that she had always tried to show how deeply problematic the media is by making these videos that don't obviously tell it as it is, but makes it in a gory way. She has also made a video that mocks the romours that she had male genitalia by showing off her female one and getting comments like "oh, so she doesn't have a penis" or something of the sort. The video shows her doing something she shouldn't do, just like "Paparazzi" when she kills her boyfriend instead of going to Justice, but she does it to mock the media and rumours and how society loves all of this sh*t. I just think this shouldn't be the way to mock it, but then I think her actions on videos are so blatantly wrong that she just thinks no one will think she is encouraging it and if anyone does think she is, they're just too stupid anyway. And now I'm the one making assumptions... but it'd be hard to believe that she didn't know there would be people thinking she does encourage such actions. It's easier for me to believe that she laughs at people who can't see all of the mockery she makes at the media and at our modern society. To me it seems like a way of coping from all the sh*t society and the media have become, as if having an "at least I have fun mocking the whole thing" attitude.

The difference with Lady Gaga's use of "convention" of sexual violence against women in music videos is the effect of her sensibility on how it comes off - stylized to such a hyberbolic degress that the reference is transformed into parody (which is always transgressive, when done successfully) and that to me, is the real genius, which is to say - genuine intelligence and originality of her shtick.

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