I made this art analysis for school work in an art history course. The purpose was to provide an analysis from a visual art work, film analysis was forbidden, but I used a loophole, the teacher did not remember to ban music video analysis.
Lady Gaga
Object (any) is a work of art, if and only if, there is an artist, who consider it as a piece of art of his/her own. Lady Gaga says she is a performance artist, and a performance was allowed to make an analysis from. Music video analysis wasn't specifically prohibited.
Censored version of the video:
Authors: Lady Gaga (artist, screenwriter), Jonas Åkerlund (screenwriter and director of the video)
Name of art piece: Telephone
Release date: 3.11.2010
Sort of art piece: Music video
Measurements: Definition: 1080 × 720 p, aspect ratio: 16:9, length: 9 minutes 31 seconds
Signing: Lady Gaga
Location and owner of art piece: Youtube, LadyGagaVEVO
Form analysis
Forms: Realistic forms, as it is a video image, which reproduces reality relatively realisticly.
Colours: The work has very bright and glaring colors, pure and saturated blue, yellow and red shows a lot. Primary colors create a more convivial and warm atmosphere. The prison scene at the beginning is in cold green tint, which creates a cold and intimidating atmosphere. Los Angeles sky seems gray and a little cold. The general tone of the picture will change only in the middle of the video when Honey Bee releases Lady Gaga's from prison and pick her up in her bright-yellow-red toned car. Also, only at that point Gaga's hair color changes to bright yellow. The color scheme will change totally when they leave the prison,and enter the diner-cafe. Honey Bee has an all-yellow outfit and hat, Gaga in the kitchen has yellow hair, pink lipstick, blue eye shadow and a light blue hat. A moment later, Honey Bee also has a blue jacket, followed by both of the women dancing in American flag outfits. For videos primary colors, however, could be raised blue and yellow, such as in the Swedish flag. Directed by Jonas Åkerlund, who is a Swede. His and Lady Gaga's previous cooperation video, Paparazzi, a mini-movie with a story to which Telephone-video is a continuation, is also blue-yellow toned.
Content analysis
Lots of people can be found in the video, 59 to be exact, the main characters, dancers, extras, stunts. In the video also appears one dog (Great Dane). Objects there are a countless number, product placement, intertextual references. Major ones to be mentioned are wide range of telephones: LG Mobile,two Trimphone-replicas in Gaga's telephone hat, three different colored fixed-line phones (green, white, red) used by Honey Bee, and the Pussy Wagon-named car, which is a reference to the Quentin Tarantino's movie Kill Bill with a female protagonist who drives the very same vehicle. In addition, the video shows a lot of food, including sandwiches, waffles and honey, eggs and bacon, etc. And, of course, worthy of special mention are the numerous extravagant outfits that we see particularly on Gaga, but also on Honey Bee.
Video starts with landscape pictures of Los Angeles. It is a cloudy day in the outskirts, a prison with barbed wire fences appear as soon as in the first picture. Lady Gaga is brought by two prison guards at "Prison for bitches"-female prison. She is wearing a prison-coloured, ie black and white striped dress with a high shoulder pads, as well as catlike sunglasses. The guard takes her sunglasses as they walk down a hallway with other prisoners shouting their insults. Lady Gaga is pushed into a prison cell where she is stripped down off her dress. The guards go out and close the cell door.
Lady Gaga is brought into the prison's excercise yard where the prisoners lift weights and wander around. Gaga is wrapped in thick chains, and she has her eyes covered with sunglasses made out of burning cigarettes. Se looks around and sits down on the table, next to her sits a manly looking woman and they kiss. Megaphone sounds an alert: "Lady Gaga, you have a call". Women continue their kissing, during which Gaga steals her partners mobile phone unnoticeably.
Inside the prison's inmates are gathered in a common space, where a dispute breaks out between two prisoners. They fight, and one kicks other in the stomach and she is left lying on the ground. The guards do not care about what has happened. The radio says: "Beyoncé on the line for Gaga" and a wall telephone rings. Lady Gaga, with spike studded leather jacket and soda cans in her hair walks to the phone and answer.
Then, the Telephone song starts, Gaga sings and dances and the video moves to the prison hallway, where she continues dancing and singing with four other prisoners, all in studded underwear. Gaga is also shown in jail cell wrapped up in "Crime scene do not cross" tape. Hse slits her tongue with flick knife and possibly send a text message with the stolen mobile phone.
"It's your lucky day, some idiot bailed you out," says the guard, gets up from her computer to open the prison door to Gaga. Lady Gaga is wearing a very wide-brimmed black hat, black and white dress and round sunglasses. The prison gate opens, she walks into a car, and on the way a guard says, "You'll be back, honey." The car is Pussy Wagon and behind the wheel sits Beyoncé, Honey Bee. "You've nee a bad girl," she says, "a very very bad bad girl Gaga". Honey Bee takes a bite of honey bun, offers Gaga a piece too and throws the rest out of the car window onto the street. "M-mm, Honey Bee," Gaga says, and the car drives on.
Women discuss: "You sure you wanna do this, Honey Bee?", "What do you mean, am I sure?", "You know what they say, once you kill a cow, you've gotta make a burger," "You know Gaga, trust is like a mirror, you can fix it if it's broken","But you can still see the crack in that motherfuckers reflection". Then a notice from radio interrupts them and starts Telephone-song and Honey Bee sings her own verse. Lady Gaga takes photos with her Polaroid camera, one of the images is thrown out of the window, and the car brakes in front of a Diner. The plaque reads: "Diner: home style cooking".
Honey Bee walks into the diner in yellow dress and stetson. she sits down at the table where her boyfriend has been waiting for her. Their conversation appears in comic-subtitles: "Hi, honey", "Where have you been, B#?/7&?". The irritated man steps up from the table and walks over to a counter top. He is pushing past another man, who rises to his feet. However, he pushess him and says subtitled: "What the f **k is your problem?" While Honey Bee's boyfriend is dealing at the counter, she digs out a small bottle of poison and pours the blue contents of it in the mans coffee. On the way back, the man slaps a Japanese woman on the bottom, She says in subtitles "One Piece" and the man sits back on the table. The man snatch his coffee and coughs.In the diners kitchen Lady Gaga sings wearing a blue telephone hat, translucent white dress, and around her dancers in chefs garment carrying raw foods. At times we see Honey Bee in a motel room sitting on the bed next to a phone wearing a blue jacket. Image changes back into the kitchen and the text "Let's make a sandwich" appears on the screen. Gaga makes a sandwich and bite it. At the diner side Honey Bee's boyfriend continues coughing.In the kitchen Lady Gaga pours blue poison to a honey bottle and sprinkle white poison powder on the plates. During this, a logo for "Poison TV" appears as well as a "Cook'n'Kill" recipe: 1 ounce of rat poison, 1/2 ounces of a Meta-cyanide, 1/2 ounces of Fex-M3, and 1 cup of Tiberium. Shake and stir. Good luck!". Gaga walks into a dier side with white chef's hat tilted on her head and yellow telephone handset hairpiece on her one eye, carrying the plates. She serves to Honey Bee's boyfriend, who impatiently takes the honey pot and pour plenty of honey on his food. He eats greedily, coughs more and more, until he drops dead on his own plate. "I knew you'd take all my honey, you selfish mother******", Honey Bee says. Diners other customers eat their food, Gaga looks at the camera and says in German subs, one, two, three. People cought their food out and at number three, they all die in their tables.
After that, Gaga and Honey Bee dance in American-flag costumes on the floor with a number of dancers and the dead bodies around them. At times, Honey Bees motel room is shown, pand she is picking up the phone and hitting her head. Then the Pussy Wagon roars out of the diner yard, "Wroom" says a text. Then a cavalcade shows the car driving on the roads, and Gaga dancing in front of the Pussy Wagon, wearing leopard leotard outfit a hood, and a peaked cap.
Following TV news broadcast in which the newscaster says, "There's what appears to be a mass homicide. Police are on the search for two women, said to be fleen from the crime scene in Pussy Wagon". Pussy Wagon continues their journey, Gaga and Honey Bee dance behind the car wearing veils over stetsons, Gaga has light blue one, Honey Bee has black. While the police sirens roars, Gaga says to Honey Bee, who is driving: "We did it Honey Bee. Now let's go far far away from here". Honey Bee asks: "You promise we'll never come back?" "I promise" says Gaga, and the two shake hands. Pussy Wagon drive to the horizon and a police helicopters shadow follows it closely. In the screen appears a text: "To be continued ..." and the picture fades to black.
Interpretation
Telephone-video contains a lot of symbolism and intertextual references. The music video is also a mini movie, which tells a story in a point of view of two strong females. They take the law into their own hands and revenge to the oppressing male society. The video is like a combination of Thelma and Louise as well as Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. The story continues from where the previous Paparazzi music video story ended, so it seems appropriate to explain briefly the events described which led to the Telephone video.
In Paparazzi video, Lady Gaga is with her boyfriend is a fanciful mansion in Sweden. Gaga's boyfriend carry her to the balcony, where they kiss, but he knows that paparazzis are following them, and he will probably get moneu from images the paparazzis can shoot of them. He prevents Gaga from leaving, so that paparazzi would get enough pictures, but this leads to a tussle and eventually the man throws Gaga off the balcony. Lady Gaga does not die, but heals, and eventually when recovered, she revenges to her deceitful boyfriend by mixing poison into his tea. The man dies and Gaga gets arrested.
From this continues the Telephone video, in which beginning Gaga is brought to prison. Her best friend, Honey Bee, however, pays Gaga her bails and she is to be released. Gaga and Honey Bee are strong female characters who can not tolerate themselves chained within the norms of male society. They travel with Pussy Wagon, a car that is a vehicle of the movie Kill Bills female main character, The Bride. The Bride wants to kill her husband, so did the Gaga, and now is Honey Bee's turn. Gaga and Honey Bee poison the latter's boyfriend, who is apparently a chauvinist pig in nature. At the same time, however, they accidentally kill all the customers in the diner. Gaga and Honey Bee are like Thelma and Louise, who stop at a roadside bar and kill a man, opposed to the society and try to escape from it by any means necessary. Both duo are driving away into the wilderness, but Gaga and Honey Bee will continue to continue their journey, even if the police are on their heels, while Thelma and Louise driove into a gorge in a desperate situation.
Intertextual references to popular culture from the video can be found in abundance. When Lady Gaga answers the phone in prison, she is wearing a leather jacket, which has logos of old punk bands as a tribute: "Doom", "Icons of Filth", "GISM Autonomy Anarchy" and "Dystopia". The jacket is completely covered with metal studs, which gives out the do-it-yourself mentality of punk, which Gaga too represents, at the beginning of her career, she made her own costumes. In the Poison TV-scene there is a poison recipe, which contains rat poison as well as three imaginary poisons: a meta-cyanide is borrowed from the science fiction world of Dune, Fex-M3 from Star Wars Universe and Tiberium from Command & Conquer computer game series. Diner's Japanese woman's message of "One Piece" is a reference to Japanese anime series'. Pussy Wagon is, of course, from Kill Bill. Honey Bee's name is a reference to Honey Bunny, a character from Tarantino's other movie Pulp Fiction. Gaga uses a Polaroid camera, she was elected as the Creative Director of Polaroid. Virgin Mobile, in a mobile phone displayed, is Gaga's Monster Ball concert tour sponsor. Videos diner-café can also be seen in NCIS-crime series. At the beginning one of the prison guards is Ms. Mann, from the film Scary Movie. Honey Bee use the "Mickey Mouse sunglasses", the same which was used by Gaga in Paparazzi while murdering her boyfriend. Gaga's leopard leotard outfit is a reference to a Canadian artist Shania Twain's music video "That Don't Impress Me Much", in which she uses a similar outfit. In honor of Michael Jackson, Honey Bee uses a pseudo-militaristic blue jacket, which is a very Jackson-style with chain ornamented epaulettes, and Gaga also makes a Jacksonesque dance move at the door before going out of the prison.
The overall interpretation of the work
Lady Gaga wrote Telephone song to reflect her internal suffocation fear, that she should be left alone, but attempts to reach her all the time, for example with phone, make her fear. Song's lyrics tell about a woman who wants to celebrate at the club, but her boyfriend is constantly trying to contact her, so she can't be alone. Video tells the story of two strong women who don't want to submit to mens world with it's asphyxiating and intrusive rules, but rather take the law into their own hands regardless of the consequences.
Video continues the darl story of Paparazzi, and the entire The Fame Monster album, with the Telephone song in it, is dark themed, all the songs describe Lady Gaga's deepest fears, monster, as she calls them. Telephone reflects the anxiety, from which she got released by the song and the video. Gaga's debut album The Fame, images the rich life, The Fame Monster all the related fears. Lady Gaga wrote songs for The Fame album before she became famous, but when she got the fame, she no longer wanted to write about it.
Evaluation
Telephone-video is one of Lady Gaga's best works. She herself said before it was released, that the video will be better than Bad Romance, Gaga's previous single and video. In my opinion, and many other fan's and critic's view, the Telephone is not just above Bad Romance-videos level, but that is such an immensely stylish, stunning and epic that it may never be exceeded. Telephone is easily Gaga's second best video. Visual design is breathtakingly beautiful, bright colors, costumes, set design, all matches greatly with each other, creating a unique fairytale atmosphere, which I'd like to watch longer. Telephone is a long-form music video, as opposed to Bad Romance, and it tells a mini-movie story, which Paparazzi began, which still shall get a continuation in one of the next albums songs.In Telephone-video Lady Gaga shows great transforming abilities, as the previous Bad Romance video was an epic greyscale-toned video, only sometimes enhanced with a red-color images, while Telephone is more earthly, in a different way a fairytale-ish than Bad Romance, but still great entertainment.With her videos Lady Gaga has influenced greatly to contemporary art, other artists copy her styles and elements from her videos and try to be equally interesting and controversial personalities, though without success. Telephone video is hugely popular on Youtube, it is watched at present a total of more than 170 million times (134 million times a censored version and 36 million uncensored). It is one of the most watched Internet videos ever, but Bad Romance is still a lot more viewed with it's 450 million Youtube views.Telephone video was well received by critics and in 2010 it won MTV Video Music Award for best collaboration in music video (with Beyoncé), while Bad Romance captured awards from almost all the other categories in the gala.Fans gave great response to the video of course, and it gave birth to a number of imitations, but not all liked Telephone. Just as not all art can always be pleasing to everybody, each artist has lovers and haters, with varying amount. In this case, some parties spread rumors that Lady Gaga would be a member of Illuminati, a secret society, to conquer the world and corrupt or minds (actually the Illuminati was disbanded in 1700's, and it didn't even allow female members). Then they present synbols as "evidence", which they found in videos, such as Lady Gaga's often used "OK" hand gesture, through which she looks with one eye. They claim this to mean "All-Seeing Eye", as well as Gaga's kissed prisoner's shoulder tattoo, which is a picture of demon Beelzebub. Such theories crash, of course, to their own impossibility, and to the complete lack of real evidence.In my opinion, Telephone is the world's second best music video just after Bad Romance. In particular, I love the cheerful colors of the video as well as the costumes. I think the video will last a long time and it will far be a model for other artists who want to create something great. Telephone is not an ordinary music video, it is a mini-movie, it is a happening in pop culture, which was stiffened in it's old patterns before Lady Gaga came to fame. Telephone should not, and can not be passed, it is a part of modern pop culture's general education.
Sources:
Telephone-music video
Telephone: Behind the scenes-video
Wikipedia.com
Gagapedia.com
LadyGaga.com
Helia Phoenix, Lady Gaga: Just Dance: The Biography
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This feedback I got from my teacher:
Well, here it came, the first music video for judging. Music video does not fit the context of course, fine arts, especially movie-likeness move it more to the methods of film assessing, and then of course there is the musical side. Lady Gaga is an exception, because she really is close to the performance art genre, especially in her public appearances are often that (meat costumes, etc.). This is, however, a music video and a bit difficult to analyze as visual art.
It is still bravely attempted and experiment is interesting, and in some places it has been successful. In particular, "art piece's" color scheme, and other means of expression analysis is apt. The actual focus is, of course, in Lady Gaga's outfits and in the intertextual references, for example, towards popular and consumer culture. Also, all the major objects includes a variety of similar messages. They are also perceptively drawn for analysis from the flood of pictures.
In this form a music video is in my view, however, its own genre and has its style laws, that as visual art, even as modern art, evaluating it is too challenging. Nice try, however, and formally the analysis is done according to the guidelines. Rating 3 (on a scale of 1-5).
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