For this assignment, I thought it would be fun to go back to one of Lady Gaga’s first music videos (and one of only 3 of her videos that clocks in under five minutes). Lady Gaga’s music videos have always been highly stylistic and use visual and editing elements to tell a story and build on the overall experiences of their accompanying songs. The video that I am analyzing is for “Beautiful, Dirty, Rich”, a song about money and the destructive nature of many of those who have it.
What I notice first that there are a lot of cuts between shots. The video is essentially made almost entirely of cuts from one few-second shot to the next. The cuts are obvious because they cut to different people, a different room in the house the video is set in, or Gaga in a different outfit. Sometimes the cut is to a different angle of the same shot, but even then it still feels purposefully jumpy. The quick jumps between various shots of beautiful people partying in lavish outfits in a fancy house, Lady Gaga burning or eating money, and so on, help illustrate the way that the rich throw away money and how material items are disposable to them, they can always acquire more.
