“Telephone” is possibly the most violent mainstream music video I have seen in a while. There are no knife-fights or shoot-outs because it’s violent in a less obvious way. This is where I was talking about people definitions of violence. It might be because there are simply more dramatic ways to kill people which make poison look like child’s play. In short: we’ve been desensitised. Imagine if Lady Gaga and Beyoncé had walked into the diner with shotguns and shot every patron in the face. Regardless of the method, they have still murdered two dozen people.
Every single act of violence is followed by a dance sequence. Fight in the games room, then dancing. Poisoning your cheating boyfriend, then dancing. Committing mass murder, then dancing. As Lady Gaga poisons the food of the eaters in the diner we hear applause, eager voices and gasps of excitement. Violence is no longer an expression of anger and hatred. Violence is entertainment. Like everything else it’s been bastardised and homogenised by commercialism.
Hell, an alien could read this and understand the cultural context in which Gaga exists. And you should too.
I always thought the biggest consequence of Gaga’s scattered, constantly referential postmodern visual aesthetic was the sheer difficulty of determining HER intent, as opposed to the potentially stronger subjective inferences and prejudices the viewer takes away from it. That is, if they’re open to comprehending it at all - or dismiss it as mere “entertainment”, below “art”. But the article confirms, like every other video’s less intentionally blatant use of product placement, that we may just be recognising the cultural cues subconsciously - even if you haven’t seen Thelma and Louise, the ideas of sisterhood and vengeance are still there. Perhaps the average person already sees everything Gaga intended with Telephone; they just need to, if not write a 7000-word analysis, be made to sit down, deconstruct it mentally, and take it seriously.
But to be honest, I still consider Alejandro a big void of meaning. I’ll revisit it - and I sound like I’m contradicting everything I just said, but I wonder… if, not to speak too highly of myself, I can’t make sense of it, what about everyone else? Is there even anything to make sense of or are we all waiting for that definitive deconstruction of its imagery?
