Textual Analysis: Lady Gaga - Bad Romance

In music videos, we are seeing more and more the sexualisation of women in order to attract a larger audience. This can be seen in Lady Gaga's Bad Romance music video through her outfits and her overall demeanour throughout the video. The music video can be applied to the theory of the male gaze where Lady Gaga is being shown as being an object of desire as everyone is focused on Lady Gaga as it creates interest in the audience. This can be shown in the beginning of the music video when Lady Gaga is pulled out of the bath, drugged, stripped and then paraded in front of a group of men. The video itself has both narrative and performance aspects to it as Lady Gaga sings the song throughout the video and the video also follows a narrative. The narrative of the video is that Lady Gaga is drugged and kidnapped and then sold to the mafia for a million rubles.

In this shot we see Lady Gaga in the centre of a room surrounded by diamonds in the middle of a circle of men. An arc shot is used to show the men admiring Lady Gaga and seeing her as more of an object that can be owned rather than a person. The video is a metaphor for how the music industry corrupts artists and shows the bad side of the industry.

There are frequent close ups of Lady Gaga's face throughout the video. These are used to show her innocence and her vulnerability. The enlarging of Lady Gaga's eyes while she is in the bath and the use of the colour white throughout the beginning of the video supports this as it emphasises her innocence and her 'purity'

Lady Gaga is known for her eccentric outfits that she wears in both her music videos and in real life. This can be shown in this music video as she wears a range of different outfits. The use of different outfits throughout the song also helps tell the narrative. At the beginning of the song, Lady Gaga wears a white outfit that covers most of her body and the other dancers are all wearing white outfits as well. However, as the narrative progresses she wears a red outfit which reflects the narrative of the video of how Lady Gaga has been corrupted.
Lay Gaga's music video for Bad Romance can be applied to Goodwin's Conventions of Music Videos as it features many of the conventions mentioned. For example, throughout the video there are many close ups of Lady Gaga's face. This is because of the demands of the record label as they will require the video to advertise the artist. Lady Gaga has also developed a motif throughout her videos as in her videos she is known for wearing eccentric costumes. Bad Romance also applies to Goodwin's Conventions of Music Videos as it demonstrates genre characteristics as Bad Romance is a pop song and typical pop videos feature the artist and backing dancers dancing in the video, Bad Romance applies to this as there is a choreographed dance throughout. There is a relationship between the lyrics of the song and the visuals as the song follows a narrative which shows Lady Gaga being drugged and sold to the mafia which is a metaphor for being corrupted by the music industry.