The Gaga End of Music Video?
I like lists. So here’s one of the product placements in Lady Gaga’s ten-minute ‘Telephone’ video (feat. Beyoncé), which, by the way, is the first video in ages that really makes people want to talk about it (so what IS the state of music video?).
Anyway here’s the list:
Virgin Mobile cell phones and contracts
Diet Coke
Plentyoffish.com dating website
Quentin Tarantino (by way of Kill Bill Pussywagon car)
Honey Bun breakfast pastry
Double Breast Drive Thru (though that one is fake)
Polaroid cameras
Wonderbread white bread
Miracle Whip mayonaise
Monster Heartbeats by Lady Gaga headphones
Lady Gaga feat. Beyoncé – Telephone – MyVideo
What I like is how the actual obvious product placement is made obscenely obvious to the point where it becomes self-destroying. But maybe that’s just me because the supposed allure of products like Honey Bun and Wonderbread is beyond me. The video and the music is indeed gaga: closer in spirit to Sasha Baron Cohen than Madonna, actually (even though the prison hallway dance scene is very ‘Express Yourself’). I’m not exited about that. The references to lesbian subculture (feat. a Drag King sparring partner for Gaga) feel a bit lipservice. But there is something strangely satisfying in some of the video’s moments: the cigarette-glasses (how weirdly absurd and uncomfortable is that, smoke gets in your eyes?!); the typewriter-bell sound accompanying a raising of the eyebrow, and the short tapdancing Michael Jackson move when she leaves the prison; the way Beyoncé says “You’ve been a very bad, bad girl, Gaga” (with this odd accentuation of the consonants) and then munches on the plastic of a HoneyBun rather than on the bun itself. That’s about it. Nevertheless, given the sorry state of the high production value music video clip (or actually the sorry state of music video per se) this is a welcome pièce de resistance. Something to chew on. But is it really fundamentally different from television age video of the ’80s and ’90s? We had long videos with the music fading in and out before (Michael Jackson defined that genre); we had postmodern quote-hell-videos before; and though there is an argument to be made that the way this video works with close-ups is suited for small screens (youtube, phones) there’s plenty of panoramic shots as well to counter that.
Ultimately there is no budgets any more for high production value videos, even for Gaga, this video seems to say in the way it tries to expose its product placements as sexy prostitution (as if saying to fans: ‘sorry for all that Virgin mobile and Miracle whip crap, we’re trying to make fun of it, because even we couldn’t have afforded to shoot this video without them’).
So is there anything out there that foretells any kind of interesting future for the visualization of pop music?
If for example, as pitchfork.com has it, these are the top videos of 2009, that’s really, really depressing. The Dead Weather video by Jonathan Glazer – someone who does have a record for a couple of strong videos such as to UNKLE’s ‘Rabbit in Your Headlights’ – is really embarrassing.
I’m not a huge fan of Bat for Lashes, but I like the way this video of 2007 was held on the brink between haunting and ridiculous (the video of 2009 on the Pitchfork list is a lame rehash of this earlier work):
So please, can anybody point me and us to recent break-through videos?
Or are we for once to declare the confirmed and serious end of something, actually meaning it, the end of music video?
I like lists. So here’s one of the product placements in Lady Gaga’s ten-minute ‘Telephone’ video (feat. Beyoncé), which, by the way, is the first video in ages that really makes people want to talk about it (so what IS the state of music video?).
Anyway here’s the list:
Virgin Mobile cell phones and contracts
Diet Coke
Plentyoffish.com dating website
Quentin Tarantino (by way of Kill Bill Pussywagon car)
Honey Bun breakfast pastry
Double Breast Drive Thru (though that one is fake)
Polaroid cameras
Wonderbread white bread
Miracle Whip mayonaise
Monster Heartbeats by Lady Gaga headphones
Lady Gaga feat. Beyoncé – Telephone – MyVideo
What I like is how the actual obvious product placement is made obscenely obvious to the point where it becomes self-destroying. But maybe that’s just me because the supposed allure of products like Honey Bun and Wonderbread is beyond me. The video and the music is indeed gaga: closer in spirit to Sasha Baron Cohen than Madonna, actually (even though the prison hallway dance scene is very ‘Express Yourself’). I’m not exited about that. The references to lesbian subculture (feat. a Drag King sparring partner for Gaga) feel a bit lipservice. But there is something strangely satisfying in some of the video’s moments: the cigarette-glasses (how weirdly absurd and uncomfortable is that, smoke gets in your eyes?!); the typewriter-bell sound accompanying a raising of the eyebrow, and the short tapdancing Michael Jackson move when she leaves the prison; the way Beyoncé says “You’ve been a very bad, bad girl, Gaga” (with this odd accentuation of the consonants) and then munches on the plastic of a HoneyBun rather than on the bun itself. That’s about it. Nevertheless, given the sorry state of the high production value music video clip (or actually the sorry state of music video per se) this is a welcome pièce de resistance. Something to chew on. But is it really fundamentally different from television age video of the ’80s and ’90s? We had long videos with the music fading in and out before (Michael Jackson defined that genre); we had postmodern quote-hell-videos before; and though there is an argument to be made that the way this video works with close-ups is suited for small screens (youtube, phones) there’s plenty of panoramic shots as well to counter that.
Ultimately there is no budgets any more for high production value videos, even for Gaga, this video seems to say in the way it tries to expose its product placements as sexy prostitution (as if saying to fans: ‘sorry for all that Virgin mobile and Miracle whip crap, we’re trying to make fun of it, because even we couldn’t have afforded to shoot this video without them’).
So is there anything out there that foretells any kind of interesting future for the visualization of pop music?
If for example, as pitchfork.com has it, these are the top videos of 2009, that’s really, really depressing. The Dead Weather video by Jonathan Glazer – someone who does have a record for a couple of strong videos such as to UNKLE’s ‘Rabbit in Your Headlights’ – is really embarrassing.
I’m not a huge fan of Bat for Lashes, but I like the way this video of 2007 was held on the brink between haunting and ridiculous (the video of 2009 on the Pitchfork list is a lame rehash of this earlier work):
So please, can anybody point me and us to recent break-through videos?
Or are we for once to declare the confirmed and serious end of something, actually meaning it, the end of music video?
