Lady Gaga- Telephone

Lady Gaga’s ‘Telephone’ music video is 9 minutes and 31 seconds long. This is unusually long for a music video, with most videos lasting between 3 and 5 minutes. The music video starts with ‘retro’ style writing as if a title for a film. Throughout the video there is also split screens which insinuate that this part of the video was taken through the eyes of a security camera which gives viewers the idea that it could result in a pseudo-reflexive performance. The security camera view also gives the impression that women need to be kept tabs on as it is mainly women that are seen through the view of the camera.

Throughout the video it is very dark and black colours which are portrayed, this sets a negative and dull feel to the video, however later on in the video when Gaga is dressed in her outlandish and unique costumes, and very bright colours are quickly introduced. Although the music video is 9 minutes and 31 seconds long, the music doesn’t actually start until 2 minutes and 55 seconds.

This video mainly represents women, and uses very revealing clothing to create a somewhat sleazy effect on the women. The first part of the video is also based in a prison which insists that women are bad and need to be locked up. Throughout the video there are lots of costume changes, and each one is a just as unique, outlandish and different costume. The whole video uses the singer and dancers to portray women as sexual object

The music doesn’t start until 2 minutes and 55 seconds of the video as previously mentioned. The singing is built very well into the music video, with it starting when Lady Gaga picks up the phone and responds to the phone call with her lyrics. When she starts her singing, she uses very overdramatic lip movements which not only are good for the audience to understand what she is saying, but this sums up the video very well- overdramatic and dramatised. There are a number of props used in the video such as keys and a laptop, but more importantly the various headdresses which Gaga changes into, again, mostly very unique and different but also most include a telephone. With the telephone headdresses, Gaga has followed one of Andre Goodwin’s convention and linked the lyrics of the song with visuals. In the kitchen scene of the video, Gaga is surrounded by men. This has two representations of women, one very traditional representation being that a woman should be doing the cooking in the kitchen whilst the men supervise which is shown in this video. The other representation is the one woman is overpowered by all the men in the kitchen, making the women seem somewhat vulnerable. Before Gaga serves what she has made in the kitchen, a retro looking recipe flashes up to the right of the screen. This leads into the next scene when Gaga serves the food. When the first man who eats her creation starts choking, Gaga gets blamed by the others portraying women as sly and evil. Following this is a news flash which again backs up that women are seen as evil creatures. The whole music video finishes with credits, which once again makes you think this whole video has been created too look like a film or video. The women throughout this video experience voyeurism which represents them as sleazy sex objects and sly, cunning and evil creatures. Gaga has created and developed an iconography which is specific to her video through the weird, wonderful and different costumes she uses in her music videos. The Gaga costumes are easily recognisable and so if people cannot recognise the artist in the lyrics or signing, they can see the costumes and instantly recognise it is a Lady Gaga video.