"Bad Romance" is a 2009 song by
Lady Gaga. It was part of her album
The Fame Monster and was released as a single in 2009.The video is around five minutes long, and you can see it
here
. It's also got a (heavily spammed) view count of over 400 million and is jam-packed with elements of
Mind Screw taken
Up to Eleven. Which is hardly unexpected, considering who sang it.
The music video has won 7 Video Music Awards (Video of the Year, Best Pop Video, Best Female Video, Best Dance Music Video, Best Choreography, Best Direction and Best Editing).
Tropes used in "Bad Romance" include:
- Ascetic Aesthetic
- Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me: Implied.
- Between My Legs
- Black Bra and Panties
- Celebrity Endorsement:
- The video for "Bad Romance" features a man using a Wii remote to sell Lady Gaga as a prostitute.
- Also, her "Heartbeats" headphones which are part of Dr Dre's "Beats" collection, as well as the Beats Edition HP Envy 15 laptops, both featured prominently in the same video.
- The laptops were the scoreboard for the whore auction.
- Creepy Cleanliness
- Creepy Cool Crosses: One outfit in the video features a glass cross over her crotch; in the shot after the one that outfit appears in, she also stops dancing to do the sign of the cross.
- Double Entendre: "Want you in my rear window", anyone?
- Force Feeding: Gaga gets force-fed a glass of some beverage.
- Gratuitous French
- Light is Not Good: White walls and furnishings, bright lighting, lots of white and/or sparkly costumes, and the plot involves slavery and murder.
- Making a Spectacle of Yourself
- Male Gaze: The video takes a lot of common uses of Male Gaze in music videos and puts them in a nightmarish context.
- Woman on Fire
- Mad Love: The theme of the song.
- Mind Screw: Oh, God...
- Out with a Bang: Implied by the ending, though it could be a case of Out With A Striptease.
- Playing to the Fetishes: Watch the video and count the fetishes as they come up. Latex, non-con, white slavery...and the robot-fetishist crowd were very happy with a lot of her movements.
- Refuge in Audacity
- She Cleans Up Nicely: Inverted, as she appears in some scenes without any elaborate outfits or makeup, and is still pleasing to the eye.
- Shout Out:
- To Alfred Hitchcock, but...in a somewhat unusual way.
- Apparently the Bad Romance-universe has adopted Pokedollars as their form of currency.
- The opening shot of Gaga's Bathhaus is reminiscent of the scene in Aliens where the Marines awake from the pods.
- And the body-bags from Firefly.
- Or even the torpedo casings that Starfleet uses as coffins for fallen members.
- Speaking of the opening, the pods themselves have red text over a white background and a gratuitous cross slapped on them. Anyone else thinking NGE?
- The opening shot looks like a mash-up of Stanley Kubrick films. The bright glowing floors are highly reminiscent of the bedroom at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the pose looks like an inversion of the opening shot of A Clockwork Orange and the masks almost look like the ones worn during the cult orgy in Eyes Wide Shut.
- When watching the claw-handed Gaga groupies' crowned suits, is anyone else reminded of Max's costume and gestures from Where the Wild Things Are ?
- The costumes were supposedly based on the pattern from the movie.
- The dancers in white, with their covered faces and jerky movements are a Shout Out to the Silent Hill nurses.
- Signature Song
- Single Tear: Cut aways during the music video show a surpisingly low-key (in terms of make-up, anyway) Gaga becoming increasingly more upset. The camera is close to her face, and a single tear slides down her cheek near the end of the video.
- Smoking Hot Sex: Well, Smoking Hot sex-turned-fiery death..
- What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: A lot of it certainly looks like it could be symbolic of something, but it's too much of a Mind Screw to be sure.
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