Analysing Narrative in Music Videos

Lady Gaga – Papparazzi

The music video does in fact follow a typical Todorovian narrative model which makes it simple and straight forward for the audience and allowing them to engage with the story in this video. There are all five stages present in the following music video. Equilibrium at the start of the video showing Lady Gaga making out with her boyfriend. Disruption when the boyfriend throws Lady Gaga off the edge. Recognition, Lady Gaga coming out of her limousine and being carried to her wheelchair. Reparation, Lady Gaga gets her revenge and kills her boyfriend. New Equilibrium, Lady Gaga being arrested. Over all the music video has a linear narrative making it easy for the audience to understand what is going on.

It is easy for the audience to identify the Propps characters in this music video and they are as follows:  Hero (Lady Gaga), Villian (the boyfriend). One could argue that the maid and the men which carry Lady Gaga on to the wheel chair may appear as helpers, however they appear only once throughout the whole music video and cannot be classified as such. In general the audience would see Lady Gaga as the protagonist and her boyfriend as the antagonist and throughout the whole music video there are certain Binary Oppositions which make the audience engage with the video. For example: Fame vs Privacy, Good vs Evil and possible others. On the other hand one could argue that Lady Gaga is not exactly the protagonist of this music video seeing as she murders her boyfriend in revenge.

Montage editing has been used in order to shorten the music video, however as mentioned before the structure is linear, providing the audience with the full story of the music video and does not confuse the audience and possibly make them watch the music video again. In the following music video there are no enigma codes seeing as the director would want the music video to be simple and straight forward and not challenge the audience too much. However in order to compensate for the lack of enigma codes there are a few intertextualities present. For example the gold metallic costume is a reference to a film called ‘Metropolis’ which is an old film and only a certain age group of audience would understand this reference. Also after Lady Gaga has been thrown off the edge and lies on the ground with the paparazzi taking pictures can be referred to a film ‘Vertigo’ which is also an old film. Furthermore near the end of the music video when Lady Gaga puts poison in her boyfriends drink, the costume she is wearing reminds the audience of a cartoon character ‘Minnie Mouse’ which is an innocent and childlike character and that image is the complete opposite of the main artist.

In conclusion the music video is simple and straight forward for the audience to engage with some intertextualities which make the audience more exited after being able to understand the reference creating a quiz like feeling for the music video.