From the Green Room: Behind the Music Videos
Lady Gaga’s newest nine minute video, “Alejandro,” features her in a polyvinyl chloride nun’s habit swallowing rosary beads. Katy Perry’s latest, “California Gurls,” has her shooting frosting from her breasts.
The Buggles were right. Video DID kill the radio star.
As Miley Cyrus’s pole-dancing on the ice cream cart would suggest, controversy is now a pre-requisite when attempting to promote records.Video imagery has been a sales technique ever since the advent of MTV in the 1980s. It was the foundation of Madonna’s career, which is also obviously the paradigm Lady Gaga is following as she makes her way through her particular fifteen minutes. However, as pop culture progressed and “evolved,” the bar has been raised…or lowered precipitously, depending on your perspective.
Prodigy’s “Smack my Bitch Up” video, as one would expect, is rife with disturbingly pervasive violence and the assault of women. M.I.A. was banned from You Tube for “Born Free,” a short in which genocide against redheads was depicted, a philosophy that one can’t help but embrace, given how annoying Carrot Top is. And who could ever forget the pedophile manifesto foist upon us by Britney Spears with her “Hit Me Baby One More Time” video, three minutes and fifteen seconds of creepy jailbait hijinx that, upon merely one viewing, makes even the most morally upstanding man want to surrender himself to Chris Hansen.
In the tradition of Madonna, Marilyn Manson, and Puff Daddy, Lady Gaga uses Christian imagery in what many would consider to be in profane and blasphemous ways. She has learned at the feet of the masters: nothing gets you more press than a condemnation from the Catholic Church. It’s not clear what Lady GaGa’s non-secular garb has to do with the subject of the video, which appears to be sadomasochistic, homosexual bondage, but I guess it must be an artistic choice.
I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like.
I’d much prefer Katy Perry shot-gunning frosting from her bosom if she were attempting to ice a cake.