Lady Gaga - Bad Romance

Artist: Lady Gaga

Track: Bad Romance

Year: 2009

Director: Francis Lawrence

Genre: Dance/Pop

Main Audience: Teenagers

Type: Performance/Narrative

 

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta also known as superstar Lady Gaga is well known for her outgoing fashion, her never ending hits and her outrageous performances. She relesed the song Bad Romance as her first from her 3rd album The Fame Monster. "The track was inspired by the paranoia that Gaga experienced while touring the globe from 2008 to 2009. After a demo version of the song was leaked, Gaga premiered the finished version at Alexander McQueen's show at the Paris Fashion Week in October 2009. The song, containing elements of the music from the 1980s and the 1990s and influences of German house-techno music, has been described by Gaga as a pop experimental record. The song reached number one around the world and was also ranked the ninth best song by Rolling Stone in their list of "25 Best Songs of 2009" and received the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. The accompanying music video features Gaga inside a surreal white bathhouse. There, she gets kidnapped by a group of supermodels who drug her and sell her to the Russian Mafia for sexual slavery. The music video ends with Gaga killing the man who bought her. The video received positive responses for its artistic treatment and visual imagery; critics complimented its provocative and symbolic plot. It was nominated for ten awards at the 2010 MTV Video sic Awards, eventually winning seven of those, including the Video of the Year.The video also won a Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video."

  Some of the content was found on Wikipedia

 

  

"The main idea behind the video is that of Gaga getting kidnapped by a group of supermodels who drug her, and then sell her off to the Russian Mafia for a million rubles. It takes place in a fluorescent white bathhouse.[68][71] The video begins with Gaga sitting on a white throne in a brightly lit white room. The scene shows her wearing the razor blade glasses and surrounded by people and a harlequin Great Dane. She has her finger on the mute button of an iPod speaker, and as she releases it, "Bad Romance" begins to play and a dimly lit bath house is shown. A bright light pans across the walls, activating fluorescent lighting, that shines through a sign reading "Bath Haus of GaGa". As the first hook of the song begins, a group of female dancers wearing white long-sleeved leotards with knee high boots and matching crowns crawl out of white, coffin-like pods. The center pod has "Mons†er" written on it, and Gaga emerges wearing a similar outfit to the others, who begin to dance behind her. A pastiche of following scenes alternates between Gaga singing to herself in front of a mirror and lying in a bathtub.

When the chorus of the song begins, two women pull Gaga out of the bathtub, rip her clothes off and force her to drink a glass of vodka. As the second verse begins, Gaga, wearing a diamond-covered outfit topped with a crown, seductively dances for a group of men bidding for her. She straddles one of the men, played by Slovenian model Jurij Bradač,[72] and performs a lap dance for him. Afterwards, the man raises his bid and becomes the highest bidder for her. When the chorus is played for the third time, Gaga is shown wearing a faux polar bear hide jacket. She walks towards the man, who is sitting on a bed and unbuttoning his shirt, while drinking a glass of vodka. Gaga has a look of indifference on her face and removes her jacket and sunglasses. Suddenly, the bed spontaneously combusts with the man still sitting on it and Gaga sinisterly sings in front of the flames. The video ends with her lying beside a smoldering skeleton, on top of the destroyed bed, covered in ashes. With soot smeared across her body, she calmly smokes a cigarette, while her pyrotechnic bra activates"

Wikipedia 2011

The relationship between the lyrics and the visuals is not very related. The video is about her being taken and forced into the world of sexual slavery where as the lyrics are talking about she just wants a romance thats naughty and dirty for herself and someone. On the other hand there is a relationship between the visuals and the music because pop and dance videos usually have this kind of theme, all crazy and fun, Lady Gaga is well known for her crazy ideas and they don't always make sense, this can be a good thing.

Within the video there are many different shot types. At around 3.40 the clips cut each second into three different scenes, theser are all fast straight cuts to signify the urgancy in her getting out of there.  There are zoom ins 0.03, close up of Gaga's face, a good use of lighting, in the bath scene the light from the windows light up the baths. The clip very rarely stays on the setting for more than 5 seconds, very common aspects of dance/pop. There are many dance routines and risque clothing (again Gaga is known for this, for example, when she turned up to an award ceremony in an all meat dress and hand bag, She likes to cause controversy). All the dancers are dressed the same where as Lady Gaga is obviously dressed more glamerous to stand out (typical convention). There is also a special effect of diamonds falling from the sky as Gaga is frozen.

This video addresses issues that are around in the world. Young girls get kidnapped everyday in the human trafficing business, it also shows Lady Gaga's feminist look on life, most of her videos and lyrics have many messages. Most of her other videos are similar to this, they don't really make sense abut can be watched over and over again.