Star Image: Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga’s star image is a sexualised one, in nearly all of her videos she wears little clothing and this gives the idea of women being objected as a sexual object. This gives connotations of voyeurism, although the women are mostly undressed, in Lady Gaga’s videos so are the men. This makes the equality of the sexes more equal and far. It shows the taboo subject of women liking sexual objects just as much as men.

 Lady Gaga’s main image on her website is an image of her, this isn’t a regular image, it has many abstract elements. This is the key selling point in Lady Gaga’s style. The font on Lady Gaga’s website is quite feminine, this is because she generally attracts a female audience. Lady Gaga, allows merchandise to be bought, you can tell that she is an important star in the media because of this. This shows that she has many fans who want to show their support of her. This only increases her star image more, as more focus will have to be made on her.

Lady Gaga’s first ever music video, ‘Just dance’ is quiet tame compared to her later ones, the only abstract part of it being that not all of the lyrics match up to the visuals.

Matching lyrics to the visual is a very important part in any music video as it helps the audience understand the artists aim and style. Whereas Lady Gaga’s style is quiet outrageous, we now as an audience expect that constant shock factor from Lady Gaga.

In Lady Gaga’s videos she always has abstract and performance elements in it, her performance is always her lip syncing to the lyrics and usually include some type of dance routine, her music videos generally require many back up dancers, this gives the idea of an audience watching like voyeurism.

A few of her videos include narrative, in one of her videos for the song ‘Judas’ she refers to herself as being the one “in love with Judas”, this is a form of narrative. This helps the audience connect with the video, the connotations of the red in this video give the sense of romance with also links in with the idea of being in love. Like mentioned earlier, Lady Gaga always has a narrative in that she is the one lip syncing to her music, so everyone knows it is her own song. The abstract of this video is the religious elements, this video shows a biker with the name ‘Judas’ on his leather jacket, with men following him behind, like disciples would. Although these disciples have the same names as the ones that Jesus, for example, ‘Peter’ and ‘John’. As it is known that ‘Judas’ was a religious traitor, it’s an odd idea to pair his character with Jesus’ disciples.

Lady Gaga, also makes an effort on creating individual cover arts for her album, this is one of her later albums, in which by this point she has fully developed as an artist. Her album cover is an artistic one in that, she wasn’t ‘born this way’ as in half bike, half human. But it symbolises her unique nature in the way that she isn’t an artist of the ‘norm’. This is one of the reasons she has to now keep up this dramatic shocking image, for her star image. Her genre of music is pop and dance, her music is featured in the charts, this shows her to be a popular musician. Who is now someone people can idolise for her unique messages. As she is always expected to be in the charts, she has to think of new ways to create over reactive ideas.

She does this by expressing herself on stage and through her outfits, while at celebrity events where she is expected to ‘look the part’ she fits in with her star image by dressing outrageously. At one award ceremony she dressed herself up in meat, this then creates an outcry from the public. But her outrageous costumes do have her being talked about, which is essentially the point of it all.  

The lighting she generally uses in her music videos is back lighting which gives her a glow around her face as she usually uses that in close ups. Her general lighting is usually a hard light behind her and to the side so everything can be seen as her songs are usually happy and not emotional.  She also uses strobe lighting which gives the effects of parties and a good time. This fits in with the general idea of pop videos, as they are usually happy and exciting.

Lady Gaga’s body language is quiet sexual in her videos, her dance moves can be explicit and she usually throws her body around in these videos. This links back with the idea of voyeurism and women being looked at as sexual objects.

Her live performances usually match up to her general image and as she’s a very popular artist, many people attend this sort of concert. Her image is even represented in her support acts at these concerts, for example glam-rock band ‘the darkness’ have been said to perform and with them also sexualising themselves it appears to be a good fit for the theme Lady Gaga goes for.

Her support acts are usually shocking and compliment her style of performance. She likes to keep her crowd entertained and does this by bringing even more dance routines and interesting ideas of costumes and scenery into the mix.

While Lady Gaga’s star image is a publicised one, it has a keen effect onto her target audience. That being teenagers and young adults. The record labels know how to keep in trend with each year and model their artists to fit this accordingly. While at first Lady Gaga’s star image was seen as shocking, as time passed her fan base grew and more people turned to be more fascinated by it rather than appalled. Now because of this Lady Gaga is an icon and has started many trends, many artists and musicians now start to look up to her star image and try to turn it and make it into their own.