Analysis- Bad Romance (Lady Gaga)

Bad Romance by Lady Gaga tells the brief story of her becoming a ‘fame monster’ by developing a relationship with the music industry. In this post I shall only be analysing the first two minutes of the video. I will be looking at the micro-elements within the product and analysing why these are effective in relaying the message/meaning/metaphors of the song.

At the beginning of the video we see a large amount of people crowded around Lady Gaga in a white, tiled room. This establishing shot shows us that this will be the primary location for the video. These still dancers are dressed in a mix of white and black which makes Lady Gaga stick out more so. Gaga features in the middle of the shot wearing a shiny golden costume, earplugs and a blindfold. The central positioning of her suggests she is the centre of attention. The colour of the costume, gold, has insinuations of royalty, wealth and importance. It can be noted that her legs aren’t covered by this costume which adds sex appeal within the first few seconds. This idea is contrasted with the blindfold and earplugs she is wearing. These accessories, and the fact that nobody appears to be forcing her to wear them, denotes that she is incompetent of completing basic tasks like looking and hearing but connotes that she is naive. An electronic melody is playing as the camera zooms in and changes to show her facial expressions in an extreme close up. At first we believe this is non-diegetic sound until we see her click a button on a music dock. This melody stops and the song starts when we hear her start to sing.

Next we see a series of panning establishing shots as a spotlight pours into a room which we later find out is the ‘Bath Haus’. These shots are accompanied with Gaga singing a long but soft note, non-diegetically. A close up shot is used of a one particular pod which has the words “monster” and a cross sprayed on it which further brands the video as hers.  Crippled creatures are seen climbing out of these pods in a mixture of long and close up shots and we can hear the sharp words “Ra-ra, ra-ra-ra” sung in a mysterious, gothic manner. The background lighting is dim but just enough to see the contorted figures of the creatures with the rest of the shot in shadows. A contrast is seen between this scene and the following where we find Lady Gaga in a bath alone, in the main white room. This version of Gaga is depicted as innocent and wide eyed as she bathes herself. Due to other ecclesiastical symbolism used in the video, I believe this manner of bathing could be a religious reference to baptism, where the person being baptised is bless by a priest with holy water and is said to have been accepted into heaven and the faith by Jesus Christ and the Lord. This process is also known as cleansing. This further emphasises the feelings of innocence, purity and holiness. The juxtaposition of the two scenes means the audience automatically sympathises with her as opposed to the creatures.  One more contrast is also made here as we see the artist singing to herself in the mirror wearing a tight black outfit, sunglasses and a crown. The over-the-shoulder camera angle presents Lady Gaga as she lists things she wants from her lover. These things are negative features such as ugliness, disease and drama which to some degree explain the dark, visually negative colour coding of the costume. Metaphorically speaking, the things she wants from her lover are traits she already has where the mirror is just a visual prop for the audience to recognise this connection. When the camera zooms out, we see her in a dominant and seductive pose with one leg up. This further emphasises that Gaga herself is what she wants.

From this moment on, we see the innocent version of Gaga become more accepting of who she really this. We get to this conclusion as she sings along simultaneously with the creatures and certain body thrusts and hand gestures suggest she is changing as the music builds up to the chorus and she sings “I want it bad”. We see she has an extended tattoo stretching from her elbow to her armpit which had not been revealed before. This simply adds to the rebellious and not so innocent character we first believed she was. In the following sequence we see her being dragged out of the bath by two of the creatures and she is stripped down. In the other scene, all the lights turn on and we see the creatures dance synchronously to the chorus. We are then, for a split second, introduced to another Gaga who is not wearing any makeup and looks as if she had been crying. I believe this version is the true innocent artist that signs the most important and emotional words. This is opposed to the fake one that was dragged out of the bath. This stripping down symbolises the unveiling and acceptance of Lady Gaga as an independent artist into the music industry. The last thing we see is her being forced to drink vodka- a striking metaphor for the drugging of artists so the industry can manipulate them to do what they want. She spits this out in rebellion to make the statement that she would enter the industry under her own terms and conditions.

The entirety of Bad Romance uses camera angles and mise-en-scene to effectively emphasise or contrast the lyrics with editing acting as a juxstapositonal tool to further this. There is lots of imagery in the video and this is an element I would particularly like to toy when I create my own music video.