Why I’m not gaga for “Telephone”

OK, so roughly half the Internet watched “Telephone” when it premiered last night. I know I did. And although I went in with really high hopes, I think it’s a big step backward. Why?

- The product placement. The product placement . Oh my fucking God, the product placement. Now, I understand that in an interview, Gaga meant this as “commentary” on how many ads people see. This is where people will argue “See? You just don’t get the art!” But look. You can’t do product placement ironically, because it’s still product placement. It accomplishes its goals either way. And you can’t do it satirically either for the same reason. You’ve either got to make up tacky fake products (like lots of speculative-fiction authors do) or take your real-world product placement to such vulgar extremes that you can’t see it as anything but as an indictment. And this is harder than it sounds — Idiocracy is about the only thing I can think of that pulls it off.

So what we have here is an extended ad for Virgin Mobile, Diet Coke, Coors Light, Wonder Bread, Plenty of Fish, Honey Buns, Polaroid etc — and the fact that I can remember all of these brands several hours after watching the video is proof of how damn insidious this shit is. Your video’s about diner poisoning? This is mind poisoning.

– The fact that the warden is on a dating site at all is a standard laugh-at-the-ugly-person and/or laugh-at-the-old-person joke. She has the GALL to want to find companionship, but of course she’s FAILING, because she’s so OLD and UGLY and has a MANNISH VOICE! Laugh, little monsters! Yeah, not cool. And you’ll also notice that damn near all the people who get to parade around in near-undress fit conventional skinny-blonde beauty standards. Which reminds me….

– In the video, all the men get clothes and all the women get outfits from a porn set. Same old, same old. This is where a lot of people are going to argue “But it’s not exploitative — it’s art!” Those things aren’t mutually exclusive, though. Look at art history, replete as it is with naked women and dudes posed to be stately. You can have both art and exploitation at the same time.

– It’s concerning how Beyonce basically plays the sidekick to Gaga here. Because this cliched racial dynamic has never, ever happened before. Yes, I know about Video Phone. But which video became a worldwide event? When was the last time you heard Video Phone on top 40? (On a related note, several commenters on the YouTube site pointed out that Beyonce’s “fuck” is bleeped while Gaga’s isn’t. Food for thought.)

So yeah. While I loved “Bad Romance” and think Gaga’s got tremendous potential as a performer, and the very fact that she’s trying to do creative things is (sadly) refreshing, this fell really short for me. Hopefully she’ll address some of these issues in a bit more depth, but for right now… they’re issues for me.

(disclaimer: post edited from my blog, Radio Overlord and originally written in a near-sleepless 2 a.m. haze. Hey, when you stay up until midnight watching music videos you’re going to get those!)