Lady Gaga - Paparazzi

‘Paparazzi’ is a music video directed by Jonas Akerlund and was released in 2008. It is mostly a narrative based music video but also has slight themes of concepts and minor scenes where performance takes place as well.

The video has a long opening that all takes place without music, which is a very unconventional feat to a music video. Already the audience know to ‘expect the unexpected’ as the music video has already shifted and strayed past what you would consider to be a ‘traditional’ music video. This among many techniques also allows the video to appear much more cinematic and make the video appear almost more like a short movie than anything else. Another technique that does this would be the typography and the style of the font within the opening titles and subtitles, and the writing within the entire video in general.

It pays a homage to the typical 50’s styles of font that were existent in various movies within that era and it replicates the classic Hollywood movie title sequences of that decade too. Therefore this type of intertextuality makes it an example of pastiche as it is somewhat paying a tribute to the font styles. The opening introduction to the video also pays tribute to the classic 50’s movie ‘Sunset Boulevard’, as the setting also takes place in Beverly Hills, and just as with the movie it has an opening presented through the beautiful scenery of palm trees and is therefore a pastiche to this too.

There is even also another scene that has Lady Gaga spinning in a swirling, whirling, vertigo capsule which also has intertextuality to the famous movie released in 1958 called ‘Vertigo’, which was directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Further intertextuality is brought forth with the loosely based mini-mouse costume that Lady Gaga is wearing, and this is used to enforce the irony in the situation, as Lady Gaga is just about to poison her spouse and commit a sinful deed, which totally contradicts the sweet and cute innocence of the Disney character. It emphasizes on the twisted and perverse nature that the video takes on.

The music video is about a highly successful celebrity (presumably a singer or actress) who is almost murdered by her spouse by being pushed from the balcony. She survives yet just barely and the rest of the story is almost non-existent, until we learn her motives of taking revenge on her boyfriend. Due to the dark narrative, strong themes and imagery are created and brought forth in the video that shows the tone of it. An intentionally bizarre method used to illustrate the sinister atmosphere the video has are the use of multiple shots of dead bodies present in the video.

Another method is the effect of the colour purple that is often used throughout the video in order to represent the tainted and cursed vibe that is existent within the video, and it is also a colour often used to portray poison. There are mise-en-scene factors in the video such as costume attires that reveal strong tones of purple, and shots where purple has been purposely made be the most viviv colour in the scene.

There is a purple carpet instead of a red carpet, and the rose petals falling are purple instead of red as well, so although they both illustrate royalty, the colour purple makes it seem impure. It could relate to the tainted lives celebrities at times need to lead in order to get what they want from fame, and this is apparent by the fact that after Lady Gaga avenges herself and kills her boyfriend, the public seem to love her again and her reputation is restored, opposed from when she dies in the beginning and she loses all respect and status.

The reasons for this may have also been endorsed due to not only the narrative aspects of the video, but also for personal aspects of her life. This possibly being because she is implying to us the audience that being sweet and innocent has brought her no triumphs and rewards and has only lead to downfall, however when she resorts to becoming a darker, twisted and crazier character that’s when the publicity comes in and her popularity begins to excel, just as it happened in the video.

Another theme present in this video is a blurring of fiction and reality. There is a dance scene that has Lady Gaga dressed, as somewhat of a robot, while the rest of the dancers are all humans. This creates a vague sense of boundaries from the humans and this robot, which adds to the overall and total distortion throughout the video.

Additionally the whole narrative of the video is not based upon much literal truth at all to her life, however the presence of the paparazzi is indeed very true to her life; yet the directors of the video created a blur and link of the two factors. It formed narrative scenes being caused due to the paparazzi (Lady Gaga initially was brought discomfort to her alert of the paparazzi taking photos of her and her lover, which ultimately almost lead to her death)

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and paparazzi being brought forth because of the narrative scenes (due to Lady Gaga murdering her boyfriend and getting arrested, the paparazzi showed up)

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The video also happens to show themes of post-feminist readings as Lady Gaga has all the wealth, recognition and prominence in her relationship, which is reason for her spouse being jealous of her and possibly requesting paparazzi should take pictures of them whilst they are about to have sex to end up shaming her career. However in the end Lady Gaga still ends up prevailing over the man (regardless of how negative of a way she did it in).

This music video is very unconventional and irregular to music videos in general, as not many start with cinematic openings, take on old-fashioned styles and themes, and happen to last for such a long time where only half of the video is the actual song. However there are also actually some conventional feats to the pop genre that the song inhabit in as there are many performance scenes featuring a number of dancers at a time, which is a popular element in music videos of this genre.

In many pop videos there are also desires in artists, in countless of music videos, to have such eccentric and flamboyant outfits which allows them to appear very unique, standalone and distinctive and in this video we see no difference and she arguably has even more unusual attires in this video compared to many other artists of the same genre.

Overall I believe this music video has had an immense amount of thought put into planning and producing it as there is a massive variety of devices and techniques residing in it that all support the quality of the video in one way or another. Although I am personally not very fond of the video on a whole, I can still appreciate the amount of work and skill it would have taken to produce the video to such a high quality, which is needed in such a mainstream industry.