Hold the Phone: Pop Culture Vulture Reviews Lady Gaga’s “Telephone”

, by Jocelyn Spencer, Pop Culture Vulture

I know I mentioned in my last article that I only write about the bad stuff in pop culture, but I just cannot contain myself with respect to the masterpiece that is Lady Gaga’s video for “Telephone”. Admittedly, if I was not so smitten with Lady Gaga (or, as she is known in some circles, Godga) and her ridiculous outfits, her camp sensibilities, and irresistibly catchy music, this would probably be one of my run-of-the-mill snarks. But it isn’t. Because Lady Gaga has read my pokerface, eaten my heart, and left me speechless.

If you do not enjoy a woman whose primary appeal is her ability to make songs with little to no social message (though she has raised awareness about the great need to take a ride on someone’s disco stick) and pretty much a sole purpose of making people dance and sing wildly inappropriate lyrics about penises, stalking, and rough sex, you will absolutely loathe this video. Double this loathing if you also don’t like Quentin Tarantino, gratuitous crotch shots, purposefully bad acting, or large doses of cheesiness. But I love all of these things despite the fact that as a Wesleyan student I am supposed to be cultured and have an appreciation for free-form jazz and movement artists. But like the uncouth neanderthal I try ever so hard not to be, I say “screw that” to things that actually have cultural value and hunker down to watch a woman swathed in crime scene tape sing about not wanting to take calls while she’s clubbing. Baby Boomers, you may commence weeping for this generation.

But what is it exactly that I find so amazing about this video? I think its appeal lies in its self-awareness; Lady Gaga knows that everything she’s doing is completely absurd and over-the-top, but she doesn’t care. Bears relieve themselves in the forest, and Lady Gaga considers telephones and Diet Coke cans to be acceptable cranial accessories. The video revels in its sheer weirdness, and Gaga and director/co-writer Jonas Akerlund’s glee is palpable as the video goes up yet another level in absurdity. The video’s synopsis reads like a pop culture surrealist dream: Lady Gaga goes to a prison full of hot women, gets bailed out by Beyonce, they drive off together in a pickup truck named The Pussy Wagon, they speak in cryptic metaphors, Lady Gaga makes a sandwich, and then Beyonce and Lady Gaga kill everyone in a diner for no apparent reason. Then they dance. To sum up: think all the works of Quentin Tarantino on enough acid to kill a large mammal, with a sprinkling of manga and 80s kitsch aesthetic. In spite of my efforts to be so high above all of this ridiculousness, I love every second of this video. Why? Because any other artist given this song would hear the lyrics and hear words like “I’m up in the club” and such, and decide to make the video one of those run-of-the-mill “in da club” type videos where attractive people gyrate in a nightclub and little else happens. But Lady Gaga manages to turn an otherwise above-average but nothing special techno-pop song into an acid-trip through a world that’s half Tarantino/exploitation film pastiche, half anime, and all Gaga.

I’m not going to call her the next Madonna/Cyndi Lauper/Jesus just yet, but I think this video proves once again that Lady Gaga is a consummate performer. Clever, catchy songs (and if you dispute me on “clever”, listen for the Hitchcock references in Bad Romance: I want your psycho, your vertigo stick, want you in my rear window, baby you’re sick), a powerhouse voice even without Auto-Tune, and unmatched showmanship, at least since Michael Jackson has left us. I genuinely hope she’s here to stay because the music world sure can use her unique brand of fabulous.

26 Comments

  1. JT Mark

    Cheers. It’s nice to know that even the most adamant of skeptics can appreciate an artist fighting against the normalcy of today’s pop music visuals. Gaga is, for lack of a better word, a genius. :)

  2. Kevin

    To the writer of this article, all of GaGa’s songs have social messages and commentary on media and society. All of her songs have a meaning and a message so either you’re stupid or you’re not listening to her songs. And the whole video is commentary on how media is used to control and influence people and the kind of people we’re coming because of it. Everything is very symbolic and referenced to several different things. Plus, they don’t just kill people for “no reason”. GaGa kills her boyfriend in “Paparazzi” for several symbolic reasons and in “Telephone” she convinces Beyonce to do the same. I agree with the first commenter that GaGa is genius, but you need to think about what your writing before submitting such a shitty review. Thank you.

  3. Ema

    I would have been interested to hear the commenter above elaborate on how “the whole video is commentary on how media is used to control and influence people”, and on the symbolic reasons for the killings in “Telephone”.

    I really liked the article, and although I’m not a huge Gaga fan, I do have a certain degree of respect for her as an artist.

    That said, I don’t know enough of/about her songs to critically analyze them, so I really would have been interested to see the previous commenter’s explanation.

  4. Kevin (Previous Commenter)

    Gaga herself was quoted saying that the video was about “the idea that America is full of young people that are inundated with information and technology and turn it into something that was more of a commentary on the kind of country that we are.” Her lyrics for ‘Telephone’ are symbolic with the beliefs that the media is reforming what people do and how they behave. The line “I left my head and my heart on the dance floor” is saying that people’s minds get dissociated from reality. Also by saying “can call all you want but there’s no one home”, she’s supporting the same thought. The two women kill the group at the diner with poisoned honey. The honey represents the media, sweet and attractive, and the poison represents the media’s effects on the masses. In the beginning of the video when GaGa’s in jail, she’s actually enjoying herself. The different scenes and locations show her structured day which represents the media’s influence in what people do, in other words how the media controls people. Other little symbols that support this are sprinkled throughout the video such as Beyonce’s flip-up sunglasses that were also featured in ‘Paparazzi’. They are meant to look like Mickey Mouse who was Walt Disney’s way of “controlling” the media. He used Mickey in his cartoons to express his beliefs and spread them subliminally among the masses, which is exactly what GaGa is commenting on in ‘Telephone’.

  5. Kevin (Previous Commenter)

    Gaga herself was quoted saying that the video was about “the idea that America is full of young people that are inundated with information and technology and turn it into something that was more of a commentary on the kind of country that we are.” Her lyrics for ‘Telephone’ are symbolic with the beliefs that the media is reforming what people do and how they behave. The line “I left my head and my heart on the dance floor” is saying that people’s minds get dissociated from reality. Also by saying “can call all you want but there’s no one home”, she’s supporting the same thought. The two women kill the group at the diner with poisoned honey. The honey represents the media, sweet and attractive, and the poison represents the media’s effects on the masses. In the beginning of the video when GaGa’s in jail, she’s actually enjoying herself. The different scenes and locations show her structured day which represents the media’s influence in what people do, in other words how the media controls people. Other little symbols that support this are sprinkled throughout the video such as Beyonce’s flip-up sunglasses that were also featured in ‘Paparazzi’. They are meant to look like Mickey Mouse who was Walt Disney’s way of “controlling” the media. He used Mickey in his cartoons to express his beliefs and spread them subliminally among the masses, which is exactly what GaGa is commenting on in ‘Telephone’.

  7. kellie nieves

    i loved the video, i’m a huge quentin fan and once i got past the ‘whaa?” of the video, i could see it for what it was, kevin, you hit the nail on the head.. gaga is a modern day madonna and doesn’t give a damn who she offends. i have been a semi gaga fan, but she’s got me now!

  11. Kevin

    I don’t mean to offend the writer of the article but it’s absurd to say that GaGa’s music and video’s have no social message’s because they are all one big message. Just like Kellie said, when you first watch the video, you’re like “What the hell?!” but you have to look deeper. If you watch any of Lady GaGa’s interviews, you’ll learn quickly that she is very very intelligent and she knows what she’s doing. Every little detail of her music, her fashion and her videos etc are more than meets the eye. Everything is very deliberate, very intentional and all have some sort of meaning and message.

  12. Stop Calling Kevin

    Whoa, guys. Step back and look at what you guys are saying. I really don’t think Lady Gaga’s videos need to be analyzed. It’s sort of like saying that everything in “Lost” has a meaning. You can pretend like it has meaning by referencing random shit but it really doesn’t. At some point, I think we’re allowed to say, she tripped on acid and wrote an awesome script and like Quentin Tarantino, tried to reproduce and string together fantastic scenes and plotlines from various obscure movies. And that’s fun!

  13. Kevin

    Maybe you can stop calling me if you knew what you were talking about. Nobody said that her videos needed to be analyzed but they do have meaning and for the record, she’s not tripping on acid.

  16. ezelyn

    i mean it that your song is my favorite i love to play that song because its my new favorite song and the last is bad romance gaga your my idol talaga!!!!!…………

  17. Jackson

    She may well be trippin on acid…she’s been known to do it as Stefani Germanotta back at NYU. just saying…not that that is to be held against her in any way. Might even be considered a good thing.

  20. Johnny

    i drank a bunch of acid and tripped face w/ ms. gaga once. she danced with a tambourine. she was kinda scary. one man’s opinion. no masks or nothin, just a chick in sweatpants trippin on acid.

  21. Diana

    K, I’m sorry but just because she has one line in Telephone that *may* be interpreted as having some kind of deeper meaning, and a line here or there that makes references to a book, does not by any means make her lyrics brilliant, at all.

    The song telephone, save that one line [if you want to interpret it as a critique on society leaving their ‘minds’ on the dancefloor’] is about a girl who just wants to quit with the chatting and ‘just dance’. Even with that one line inserted, and even if part of that song was critiquing the mindlessness which she so generously portrays, is that brilliance? Have we come to expect so little from lyrics, that just slip a good line in there and we’re completed sold?

    Really. So, is it interesting that her video wasn’t just about being in a club? Sure, but it has nothing at all to do with the song. So that’s the point? Ok, who cares? Most people don’t do that? Ok, who cares? That’s what Lady Gaga thrives on. Not the fact that there’s a message and a meaning, but that most people don’t do what she does [or at least to the extent that she does], and she does it confidently and unabashedly. That doesn’t necessarily mean that what she does is meaningful.

    I think there are many people behind her who are very clever at understanding what entertainment is, and what people will buy into. Lady Gaga is selling entertainment for the sake of entertainment. She is not selling a philosophy [other than mindlessness and sex], she is not selling positive messages, she is selling abstract art with clever inserts here and there [visuals, sex etc] that people can understand and latch onto.

    If Lady Gaga was JUST a freak without looking like a whore, people would guaranteed, not buy her, because they wouldn’t get her, because she would be JUST a freak. People understand the ‘whore’ in ‘whore-ish freak’ very well, because sex sells. Guaranteed if she was solely about sex, she wouldn’t sell close to as much if she didn’t do all her gimmicky stuff, but if there was no sex at all, she wouldn’t sell at all.

    Now whether or not she’s really throwing mindlessness right back at all of us is something only she and her team would know. I don’t know if that was the point in the Telephone video, though I don’t think it is. I think that that video is trying to portray her as a tough bitch who if you mess with her or her friends you can expect the worse. Even in a jail scene, she’s not in the least afraid. And of course there’s sex splattered all over the video. A lot of the morbid/’freakish’ poses/outfits she sports actually reminds me a lot of some kind of Rocky Horror characters/themes.

    Rocky Horror had a major mass appeal as well. It had the same cheesy, morbid, flashy, very openly sexualness to it, just like Gaga does. Was it deep? Uhm, not so much. But they’re playing with the same themes, as far as I’m concerned. And once again, both selling entertainment *for the sake of entertainment* and uh record sales.

    Unless her lyrics adopt a little more meaningfulness to them than *potentially* one line in each song having some kind of social reference, than the last thing I’d call her, at this point, is someone who is trying to spread a meaningful message. She is playing the game and leveraging whatever she has to, to get ahead, regardless as to whether the is some art in there, which, there isn’t really too much of.

  23. Anonymous

    Hey Diana you don’t what fuck you talking, you dumb bitch cunt. Gaga is fucking amazing, every one her songs and videos have a meaningful message, your just too stupid blind deaf and brain dead, so think before you spew your bullshit nonsense, you sad pathetic freak whore, i will fucking kill you and all you pathetic family, i know where you live freak cunt.

  24. Anonymous

    Hey Diana you don’t what fuck you talking about, you dumb bitch cunt. Gaga is fucking amazing, every one her songs and videos have a meaningful message, your just too stupid blind deaf and brain dead, so think before you spew your bullshit nonsense, you sad pathetic freak whore, i will fucking kill you and all you pathetic family, i know where you live freak cunt.

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