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Tracing Gaga

I’m starting to come to terms with my fascination with Lady Gaga. I’m realising that it isn’t an interest in Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta the person, but the whole enterprise, the Lady Gaga hype machine.

I should start this off by saying that I know next to nothing about the music video business.

I’ve been following the links between the videos. The most obvious ones are the product placement shots, these seem to be common across most of the videos, especially the eats heaphones (in ear, and over ear). It’s worth noting that Jonas Åkerlund directed Telephone and Paparazzi whereas Francis Lawrence has only directed the Bad Romance video; there are common themes between these videos, but there are also offshoot themes too. the dating site PlentyOfFish shows up in Telephone, but it also makes a prominent appearance in Britney’s latest video Hold It Against Me which is also directed by Åkerlund, so it would seem that directors have deals as well as artists.

More subtly there are thematic links that run through the videos. The harlequin Great Danes show up briefly in Paparazzi as well as having a leading roll in Poker Face, the clear dress and cross pasties that Gaga wears in Bad Romance also shows up in the sandwich making scene in Telephone, and just for the sake of making good things come in threes, the flip up Minnie mouse glasses that are so significant in Paparazzi make a showing in Telephone. This seems to imply that the Haus of Gaga actually has quite a lot to do with the content of the videos.

The thing that initially interested me in all of this was a post on the Gaga Stigmata blog about similarities between Bad Romance and 2001:A space odessy –  2010: A Gagadyssey. A lot of the costumes and themes from the videos fell like they have some root in costumes from the sorts of films that architecture students are made to watch. The most obvious being Metropolis

but Zhora the exotic dancing replicant from Bladerunner makes a quick appearance at the start of LoveGame.

The real point of this post was that I saw the blue outfit in Poker Face, and it made me feel that I’d seen it before, but I couldn’t think where. It’s a bit TWA/britney-toxic/Thunderbirds. There are also scenes that feel a bit like the cosmetic surgery scenes in Brazil, but I can’t pin either of these things down.

Sorry to leave you without any sort of conclusion to this, but if anyone feels like pitching in with suggestions for other links then please do!