When it comes to the most representative music videos of the 21st century, we cannot ignore Lady Gaga’s contribution. Her music video Bad Romance, released in 2009, generated huge attention and discussion as soon as it was released, reaching 100 million views on YouTube in just four months.

I first watched Bad Romance’s music video in my first year of middle school computer class when my friend found it on the internet and shared it with me. I was stunned by the gorgeous and bizarre scenes, my first time seeing a music video of this type, and we were surrounded by a group of students laughing and guffawing at the sexy and sexually explicit dancing in the video, and before we could finish watching it, our computer was forced to be shut down by our teacher. This is the reason why most people who boycotted Lady Gaga, minors should not watch such productions, but at the time there was no rating for music videos and online videos. It may be true that her style can be misleading to some minors, but the deeper influence for me was her catchy song style, which came from the convenience and ease of distribution of digital music videos.

Today, it seems that Lady Gaga was more interested in styling than other digital music videos of the period, rather than the cinematic special effects technology that was well established at the time. It’s not surprising that Avatar was a worldwide hit in 2009. But Bad Romance is still a perfect fit for what Vernallis calls ‘mixing board aesthetic’. In the music video, the lyrics consist of onomatopoeic words and very simple phrases, with only a few key words to convey the meaning of the song. In the music video, the visuals and dramatic narrative reinforce the meaning of the song and give it added value.

  I think one of the things that makes the music video so special is that one of the key scenes was shot in a confined space, all in white. Five walls of the space are visible in the scene, while the other side is filled with male ‘consumers’, with Lady Gaga and a group of back-up dancers performing in a cold, mechanical way. The low ceiling takes up a certain proportion of the image, making it futuristic in its simplicity, but also depressing for the viewer, as the four walls up and down, left and right, act as an airtight cage to hold the sexy ‘merchandise’.

Lady Gaga has a maverick fashion sense and has a unique way of expressing herself in terms of styling, whether it’s the jumpsuit at the beginning or the dress like a golden cicada that is the most important aspect of the whole film, which is her self reflexivity in her music video.

Although her interview says it’s a song about falling in love with your best friend, judging from the story of the music video, I believe she was equally trying to express feminism, the plight of women and the strength of their qualities.

 These are certainly not things I could have deciphered from watching Bad Romance at the age of 13. And Asia, which has been a little slower on the road to championing women’s rights, is now waking up. This year Korean group (G)I-DLE released Nxde, which expresses ‘I’m born nude. You’ve got a dirty mind’, which also received an enthusiastic response after its release, and most people in China expressed their support.

 Both Bad Romance and Nxde have the same sexy dressing, male gaze, women being tagged and so on. And there is a 13 year gap between them. I admire Lady Gaga for being a unique pioneer back then, but at the same time, it’s still a long road and I’m happy for Asian women.

bibliography：

Carole Vernallis, ‘Music Video’s Second Aesthetic’, Unruly Media: YouTube, Music Video, and the New Digital Cinema

Wikipedia：Bad Romance， https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Romance

https://www.mtv.com/news/z9e2xo/lady-gaga-says-bad-romance-video-is-about-tough-female-spirit

Lianfei Zeng

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