DECONSTRUCT AND RECONSTRUCT

Deconstruct and Reconstruct



Deconstruct and Reconstruct

Task 1

Lady Gaga is back with "Born This Way," and yet again, we will try to deconstruct it. Last time, we explored the ins and outs and all the subtle imagery, influences, and meaning behind Gaga's music video for "Telephone." Her latest is just as controversial and confusing as "Telephone"—but it's also perhaps the most concept-driven video she's released so far.

Initial reports and feedback for the video—which premiered Monday on VEVO—ran the gamut from "the most epic video she's ever done" to "what the hell is going on" and "God, this is gross." Clocking in at almost seven and a half minutes, we think there's more to the story than others give her credit for. Lady G herself wrote the script and treatment for the video, while famed British fashion photographer Nick Knight was brought on to direct, along with choreographer Laurieann Gibson, and Nicole Formichetti, who styled the video. While "Telephone" was a meditation in pop art and exhibited Gaga as a modern-day Dadaist of sorts, "BTW" sees the star moving forward into surrealism, acknowledging Salvador Dali and expressionist Francis Bacon as inspirations. With the songs on her last album, Gaga navigated the trappings of fame, excess, and societal expectations all the while campaigning for female strength. She still does this, but with "Born This Way" she chooses to build a new world entirely rather than attempting to fit anyone else's mold.

Our journey into Lady Gaga's space-age utopia opens with some telling, very Gaga imagery set against the opening music from Vertigo, scored by Bernard Herrmann. The film was directed by the master of psychological thrillers, Alfred Hitchcock, who is one of the singer's noted inspirations. The clip opens with an inverted pink triangle, a symbol for gay rights, but originally used as badge required to be worn by homosexual men in Nazi concentration camps. In case you've been living under a rock, "BTW" is about gender equality and gay rights, so no surprise here.

Next we have a series of triangles compounding on top of each other, forming a series of "V" signs. A frequently used symbol by Gaga (remember her Pussy Wagon in "Telephone"?), V is for vagina, speaking to another one of Gaga's themes: gender equality. gaga 3_cut.jpg"This is the manifesto of Mother Monster," Gaga greets us. She's channeling Fritz Lang's 1927 expressionist film, Metropolis—the background behind her regal getup reminiscent of the futuristic cityscape we see in the movie. (Yes, Janelle Monae has also been inspired by Lang for both of her albums. And Beyonce...but we can't really explain that one.) Metropolis depicts a futuristic dystopia in which there is a split between two social classes; an android named Maria (a copy of a real-life girl) is used to incite a revolt among the worker classes. This isn't the first time that Lady Gaga has recreated images from Metropolis—David LaChapelle shot her for Rolling Stone as an android against the famous backdrop in ...