Lady Meh Meh

Friedersdorf is unimpressed by the latest Lady Gaga video:

Music videos are a visual medium, and Lady Gaga is most interesting as a visual spectacle, but what finally strikes me about this new effort is the gulf between its extreme ambition in the visual realm and the utter indifference to its “written content” (for lack of a better term). Why didn’t Gaga get a better song? Surely there are decent lyricists who work for a quarter of what they pay creative directors. And why is the situation so seldom reversed? Whether we’re talking about network television or Avatar or Hollywood movies, the visual and technical aspects are so frequently superior to the actual content, whereas it is hard to think of a high budget project where the writing is exceptional but the production values are as sub-par as writing we often see.

Alex Blaze on the lesbianism in the video:

From a sexuality standpoint, I give it a "meh" as well, since the lesbianism is obviously just there to make straight boys drool and it's given a complete "Well they're in prison" (a straight male fantasy if ever there was one) excuse so that Beyonce can still be read as straight.

Alyssa Rosenberg also has harsh words:

Now, this may be a little literal of me, but to start out with, women's prison isn't cute, and it's not a device to be cheerfully re-appropriated. I'd be willing to listen to an argument that it's a clever riff on lesbian exploitation movies from the '70s or something. But for someone who's spent a long time and a lot of energy cultivating a gay fan base, it seems a little odd to use stereotypically butch female prison guards and situational lesbianism as a framing device.