Lady GaGa- Paparazzi

Paparazzi is a music video directed by Jonas Akerlund and was released in 2008. The video starts with a long opening with no music in the background. The opening is a pastiche/ homage as it shows conventions of a Hollywood golden age movie.

The video begins wiping in slowly from a circle from the centre. The next scene is a long shot of a white mansion with a circle balcony on the top floor in the centre. There is a gate around the mansion with plants and flowers surrounding it. These two scenes reveal the location of the music video to be expensive and luxurious. The first thing that the audience hears in these opening shots is the sound waves, which lets the audience know that this video is located near the sea. The audience then hears soft piano music which sets the scene of a peaceful, happy home. The shot which follows this is a close up of a pink flower with ‘starring Lady Gaga’ written in bold white font next to it. It is significant because most women see flowers as sources of power. It can also make Lady Gaga appear feminine. “Lady Gaga in Paparazzi” is written in large font, informing the audience of the song and the artist. The look of the opening does not look like a music video but a movie instead which can show this music video is narrative based music video.

We see Lady Gaga and her lover in bed speaking Swedish; the video not only plays homage to subtitled foreign films, but also lets the audience know that the couple are saying to each other. As the couple kiss, there are cuts to objects around the room. The first is what looks like a dollar bill, but instead of the American figurehead, there is a picture of Lady Gaga. Written on the top right hand side of this bank note is “The United States of Lady Gaga”. So it makes Lady Gaga the figurehead of America. The next cut is to a fictional newspaper called Evening Star with the headline “Lady Gaga Reaches the Top Yet Again, with a picture of her and three men.

As the couple continue to kiss, they start to notice the cameras. Lady Gaga tells him to stop and tries to push him off of her, but when he continues to kiss her, she smacks him in the face. A mid shot is used to show her hitting him and a close up is used to show his reaction to her outburst of violence. As he continues to try and kiss her, she grabs the champagne bottle which is lying next to her and hits him around the head with it. Furious at her actions, the boyfriend pushes Lady Gaga off of the balcony which is caught on camera by the paparazzi. After he pushes her, the camera looks up at him from below, showing the power he has after trying to murder his girlfriend.

An example of a post-feminism method was in the beginning of the video when Lady GaGa was wearing a tight corset. The corset allowed her to show off her figure and shows a lot of flesh to make her look sexually attractive. However, the colour white shows innocence and pureness but she also has on black leather fingerless gloves, which makes her look less pure. The way that the colours swirl against one another and the way that Lady Gaga moves slowly gives the illusion that she is falling. The hypnotic background is homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological thriller, Vertigo. The background draws the audience’s focus towards Lady Gaga because she is in the middle. As she falls, the audience can hear her ragged breathing and the sound of a heartbeat.

The next scene is a long shot of Lady Gaga lying in a pool of her own blood with men in black standing around her taking photographs. I think this really shows the wickedness of the press as they continue to take pictures of her instead of helping her. There is another cut to six men crowding around the camera looking downwards and taking photographs. This shot is told from the point of view of Lady Gaga, looking up at the paparazzi. There are then two more newspapers which appear one after the other. The first saying “Lady Gaga is Over” and the second saying “Lady No More Gaga”. These headlines, along with the fist newspaper which appeared, which said “Lady Gaga Hits Rock Bottom” could infer that she has lost her fame.

When Gaga was shown getting out of a limousine being carried by male dancers to a wheelchair, it is during this scene, that the song starts. When one of the male dancers lifts her out of the car and sits her down on the wheelchair, there is a high angle shot revealing Lady Gaga to be wearing leopard print tights and high heeled shoes. The way the camera is looking down on Lady Gaga makes her appear vulnerable; due to the fact she is being carried and put into a wheelchair. As the dancers gyrate around her, she starts walking down the purple carpet with the help of a pair of crutches while wearing a metallic bustier and a matching helmet. The metallic outfit is a reference to the film Metropolis.  The colour purple is constant in this particular scene. It is the colour associated with royalty. The colour purple also associates with power and wisdom.

The following scene is a long shot of Lady Gaga and her boyfriend sitting on a white sofa. He reads the paper whilst Lady Gaga, also reading a magazine, watches the house maid leave a tray of drinks and ice on the table at the far end of the room. The boyfriend is wearing an eye patch over his left eye, which it could be due to the fact that he was hit in the side of the face with a champagne bottle and some of the glass might have gotten into his eye.

Another method that is used is the colour purple that is often used throughout the video which can portray poison as she did towards the end of the video. Lady GaGa is shown wearing a ‘Minnie Mouse’ and this is used to enforce the irony in the situation, as Lady Gaga is just about to poison her boyfriend and commit a sinful deed, which contradicts the sweet and cute innocence of the Disney character.

The next scene is of Lady Gaga being taken by the police and being hounded by the paparazzi. Mimicking the scene from earlier on in the video, super imposed newspapers appear with the headlines “She’s Back”, “We Love Her Again” and “She’s innocent.” This makes the audience believe that the press didn’t care for her after she had her accident, but now they know that she killed her boyfriend, they want to have her.