Calling Gaga [Part 2 Media Meditation #1]

Recently Lady Gaga released her most recent music video featuring Beyonce. It is a short film/music video written by Lady Gaga and Jonas Akerlund,who also directed the film. The always eccentric Lady Gaga went all out for this. Watch and learn.

Warning: it's not censored.



After watching this video once on Vevo, I knew it would be a perfect media meditation. It makes a good media meditation because it probably covers every single definition in the four tool sets. I'm going to jump right into the educational aspect of analyzing this video, because I find it so fascinating.



The Brain:

As with all music videos, the limbic brain has a frenzy. There is music playing, people talking, and images moving across the screen.

The neocortex is also highly involved because there are words appearing on the screen at different points in the music video that people must read.




Eight Shifts:

The first shift that I notice is the epistemological shift because the song is going from words and lyrics to an image of Lady Gaga's depiction of the song.

Watching the music video on the Internet is also a technological shift. There was a point in time where music videos did not exist, then they were exculsively on television, now they can be found on multiple websites like YouTube and Vevo.

I am also making this music video part of the discursive shift by talking about it on my personal blog. I am posting my own personal views about the video after watching it multiple times to dissect it.




Seven Principles:

Production techniques were used throughout the video. One that I really liked was showing the view from the surveillance camera's perspective.

Pacing was also used very well. The movements of the camera were extremely quick, and kept me engaged the entire time.



Persuasive Techniques:

The real reason I wanted to use this music video as one of my media mediations was because of the symbols shown throughout the entire film. I watched the video multiple times in a row, and continued to find more symbols. While watching the video I saw: Virgin Mobile, Diet Coke, HP, Quentin Tarantino's Pussy Wagon, Honey Buns, tattoos, Wonder Bread, Miracle Whip, USA flags, Polaroid, Plenty of Fish, Mickey Mouse glasses, and multiple Illumiani symbols. The most prominent Illuminati symbol was the All-Seeing-Eye, where Lady Gaga, and even Beyonce continuously cover one of their eyes with hair, costumes, or by simply flashing "OK" symbol (seen by Gaga a lot over one eye).



Humor was used in the beginning of the video. There have been rumors that Lady Gaga is a hermaphrodite, so to take down those rumors, Lady Gaga makes a joke out of it in her music video. When she is brought into the jail, her clothes are ripped off, and she jumps on the jail bars, revealing herself (well, it was censored). However, when that happens one of the security guards say, "I told ya she didn't have a dick." Then to continue the joke, the other security guard replies, "too bad."

Bandwagon is used because it seems like Lady Gaga is the one to convince Beyonce to be a part of the mass homicide at the diner. Beyonce agrees because Lady Gaga is doing it too.


Testimonial is an obvious one for this video. It uses Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Jonas Akerlund, and even Tyrese Gibson.

Beautiful people is used as well in this video, because of the people listed above. Lady Gaga and Beyonce dance around in scandalous attire, which includes a scene where Lady Gaga is simply wearing a bra, a thong, torn fishnet stockings, and high heels. I'm sure that's attracts a certain crowd.




Scientific Evidence is used in a way. There is a scene where the recipe for poison is listed on the screen. I watched this video on cable television yesterday, and they blurred out the recipe, so I think it's a fair assumption that the poison recipe is accurate.





Lady Gaga outdid herself for this video, and probably used everything from the tool set. These are the most prominent ones that I noticed. Hope you found it as fascinating as I did!