Analysis of Lady Gaga Ft. Beyonce's "Telephone"

The premiere of Lady Gaga's music video for Telephone, featuring Beyonce, aired on E! entertainment news at 11:30pm on March 11th. Belated gift from Lady Gaga to me in honor of my 23rd birthday? Most likely.  The video itself is an epic journey that tops out at nearly 10 minutes (9 minutes and 32 seconds, to be exact) that explores many themes, including the modern prison system, lesbianism, death, and the importance of product placement.


The video starts with a high security prison, judging from the high fences, barbed wire, and Lady Gaga's presence. I feel her to be a 'go big or go home' kind of girl in all aspects, especially dancing, fashion, and crime. Let's get serious- she wouldn't be doing time for something petty. At 0:36 we're shown an apathetic Lady Gaga being marched down a hallway by two very muscular, shirtless female security guards. The hallway is lined with tonz of bad girls ("Bitches," as the headline tells us) without clothes and strapped into sexxxy heels. Fascinating. The government is corrupt: they can't pay for clothing, but why wouldn't they shell out money for inmates to wear Lady Gaga-endorsed headphones and stiletto heels (1:33). Corruption abounds, I tell you.

Lady Gaga appears to be pandering to the young male and the gay community all at once. Perhaps with the tried and true idea that if you have double le scandal you'll get double le publicity. The security guards make a clever quip about her supposed missing genitalia when she climbs on the prison gate. Ho ho Gaga! Way to tackle the rumors head-on by showing yourself naked! That takes cohones. Or... um, perhaps...not. Anyway, it's not proper procedure to politely take new inmates sunglasses but then strip them of clothes inside their cell, but it sets up Gaga as the bad girl, too bad for clothes even in prison. Mind you, we're a minute into the video and we've yet to have the song start or any type of reference to a Telephone. I'm just sayin'.

 At 1:26 The Lady comes out draped in chains, a lá Jacob Marley, wearing eyeglasses made out of smoking cigarettes. As you are forced to do in the big bad world of stiletto prison. Maybe this is a wealth symbol, as prison cigarettes are often traded as currency. One of the inmates takes a fancy to her bound-and-gagged cigarette burning nature and starts to make out with her. Can Lady Gaga see through the glasses? Is it consensual? Doesn't the smoke burn her eyes? Man but she is exxxtreme! Another groping woman saddles up behind Gags to steal her prominently displayed Virgin Mobil cellphone. 2:09- Grandiose Product Placement 1: Virgin Mobile. Then we're taken inside, where, following the path of a sexual fantasy, two scantily clad women in obscene heels duke it out on the floor. Cue Beyoncé on the phone, for Lady Gaga. Naturally.

This video demonstrates a few very important lessons. The United States prison system can't afford pants, tops, or proper curlers (soda cans- life is tough but oh so cool), but there is plenty of eyeliner, lipstick, bedazzled undies & bras, and stiletto shoes come complimentary. Thank goodness there appears to be plenty of unsupervised recreational hallway dancing time. (3:19)  I'm not sure what computer brand that is, but it seems like a pretty obvious shot of the computer. 4:24- Product Placement 2. And following soon after Product Placement 3: Plentyoffish.com.

After being bound in caution tape Lady Gaga is bailed out of jail for an unknown crime by a pop superstar. Rejoice! 4:26- She is wearing what anyone would wear with their newly found freedom: a full sun hat, a full length skin-tight dress, and heels. That's some fierceness right there. When Beyoncé comes to pick up Gaga and we learn that Lady Gaga did something "bad, very very bad, Gaga" (fun to say three times fast! Rofl!). Beyonce offers her a chewy snack innuendo. 5:14- Product Placement 4: some sort of drive thru fast food restaurant that I again can't identify. Isn't the point of product placement, oh I don't know, to bolster sales through the audience recognition of the logo? Buyer's confusion.

Lady Gaga does offer some really interesting advice in the car: "You know what they say: once you kill a cow, you got to make a burger." Which is actually a rather deep, foreboding, compelling thought. Beyoncé's advice is not as clear:"You know Gaga, trust is like a mirror. You can fix it if it's broken." But you can't really, as Lady Gaga points out. (Beyoncé is a pretty bad actress, though. Did you ever see her Fatal Attraction remake, Obsessed? Don't.)

5:35- Super fun girly photo montage car ride scene! I always try to take at least one of these during a trip. There's nothing safer! Product Placement 5: Polaroid. Fun fact- Polaroid actually discontinued this type of film in February of 2008. Can this really be considered product placement? Polaroid is currently promenading the Lady Gaga Telephone video on their website though, so regardless of the fact that they don't sell this type of photography anymore, they appear to be peeing themselves with joy.

Back to the video: At 5:54 Beyoncé strolls into a very bustling café to meet her ill-tempered boyfriend. Though Beyoncé just shared her super deep "mirror" idiom aloud with Lady Gaga, it appears that she is now mute, as is her boyfriend. They communicate only through cartoon thought bubbles. The ill-tempered boyfriend remains ill-tempered in spite of the gratuitous cleavage shot. As the audience, we're not given much in the way of why we should hate the boyfriend too, other than he randomly stands up to establish himself as the antagonist by stepping into another rando's face and smacking a girl's behind at the bar. Boy, I hate him already. I hope he dies!

This part of the video has a cartoon feel, what with this introduction of bright colors and the speech bubblez. Beyoncé pours some "skull & crossbones" (wink.) into her man's cup of coffee. Ill-tempered boyfriend drinks it, sputters, and survives. Darn. Good thing we have Lady Gaga the cook behind the scenes in an origami telephone hat, whipping up some magic. (Ha ha! Pun intended!) Her backup dancers are putting assorted breads and vegetables up to their ears like Telephones. Get it, like a Telephone! Just like the name of the song! Product Placement 6 & Product Placement 7: Miracle Whip & Wonderbread.

For some reason, we switch scenes to Beyoncé (we can only assume this is before?) alone in a motel room dancing in a promiscuous Sergeant Pepper marching band uniform singing "Sometimes I feel like I live in Grand Central Station. Sorry for not taking my calls 'cause I'll be dancing." This is slightly confusing. Though there are many train stations and other public areas that have had famous stints of improv groups dancing, there hasn't actually been one in Grand Central Station. There was the T-Mobil improv group that stood frozen en masse. Product Placement? I could be wrong- enlighten me.

Lady "Let's Make A Sandwich" Gaga makes a poison sandwich and delivers it, while wearing a yellow hair-telephone (...wink) precariously perched atop her head, to Beyoncé's ill-tempered man. It seems to require a LOT of poison to kill this man. First the coffee and then the sandwich. But he dies. Exeunt stage right...

Oh wait, what's this?! 7:34- Lady Gaga and Beyoncé, who is wearing the infamous Lady Gaga "Paparazzi" sunglasses that LG dons to kill her Portuguese lover in the video of the same name, decide to kill off the entire café (probably with the Miracle Whip- Wonder Bread sandwich of death). Beyonce- you didn't like the guy you were dating. He was mean. He stole your honey. And so you killed him. It's ok, I get it- I like honey too. But killing the whole café? That is slightly extreme. But then again Lady Gaga was jailed in stiletto heaven and Beyoncé is just fierce. They clearly had their reasons.

And that reason was to dance! 7:43- Beyoncé and Lady Gaga commemorate the occasion the only way they know how: dancing in unison while wearing promiscuous red white and patriotic blues with some of the backup dancers they felt they didn't need to kill. How else could you have a celebratory choreographed group dance if you killed everyone? This is forethought. It might work against their usage of the insanity defense in a court of law, but it sure looks cool. Are they celebrating Beyoncés newly found freedom from her man? The countless lives they just took? The fact that Lady Gaga really enjoys dressing up as Bret Michaels? All of the above? Probably.

The end is an ode to Thelma & Louise- two women against the world. Driving in a car called the "Pussy Wagon." (Ok, so some *minor* liberties taken with the plot.)

The whole video has many an hómage to different pop culture items. The Madonna look at 2:47, the Quentin Tarantino cartoon appeal at 5:54. But the whole video, while looking really cool and allowing Lady Gaga to wear different elaborate Telephone-inspired hair pieces, just does not jive with the actual lyrics of the song. The ending, a full 9 minutes and 32 seconds later, cautions us that this is a tale "To be continued." Thus we can only watch, speculate, and wait for the next installment of the not-hyped-at-all Lady Gaga-Beyoncé partnership. And wonder why they counted in German to three at the end.