Lady Gaga is a Freak and I Love Her

The video to Lady Gaga's new single "Bad Romance" just came out, and it is seriously something to behold. As usual, it opens with Gaga sitting in a chair surrounded by creepy, sexualized bodies wearing some crazy eyewear. The music video then goes on to show a certain resurrection of these odd alien creatures (that of course sing and dance). This might be a representation of her past failed romances, but the one thing that stuck out to me throughout the whole video was just what we have been talking about in class: the idea of orientalism and exoticism. In art, we generally talk about the portrayal of scenes like the Ottoman Harem as being very exotic, with this ignorant view fueled by colonial empires in the 18th and 19th centuries, but Gaga is going for something a little different. Instead of going for something that we can all recognize as iconic and taking a new view on it (i.e. Beyonce's "Single Ladies" as a remake of Bob Fosse's and Gwen Verdon's "Cupid Shuffle"), she uses herself as an exotic entity with ambiguous intentions. This is true to Gaga's style in creating something cutting edge, but when does being exotic and provocative turn into something that makes entirely no sense? If I had to really deconstruct the video and identify themes or ideas, I could easily make two valid cases. The video equally depicts Lady Gaga's failed relationships as it does a Martian landing on earth, and when the meaning is that misconstrued, how can she expect an audience to be affected by anything other than it's weirdness?

Having said that, I still think it's a cool music video worth putting on repeat and dancing to. Here's the link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACm9yECwSso. And for anybody who is interested, this is the link to the dance that "Single Ladies" was created from - it's easy to see the similarities: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9irO41BUXw&feature=related