While it is perhaps redundant (not reductive) at this juncture to point out that Lady Gaga has a tendency to “borrow” from Madonna–a fact that few pops stars can avoid–it bears noting that Madonna herself is a master borrower. It just so happens that she perfected the art before everyone else in mainstream pop culture and seems to remain the best at it. Possibly because she was of a generation where the subtlety of homage was better understood than a mere shot-by-shot copying (one need only watch the video for Ariana Grande’s “thank u, next” for a prime example of this millennial frailty). Granted, with “Material Girl,” Madonna did just that, except that there was a layered message embedded into it, one that thumbed its nose at the yuppie domination and excess-worship of the 80s. In short, it was repurposed with a sense of irony.
With Gaga’s latest video and single, “911,” an ode to antipsychotic medication, there are overt “vibes” and resemblances to M’s recent Spanish-flavored aesthetic of 2019’s “Dark Ballet,” as well as the surrealist motif she adopted for 1995’s “Bedtime Story”–itself a pastiche of Madonna’s favorite surrealist artists, including Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. To that end, the Frida Kahlo imprint is left all over “911” and it’s like, how you gonna try to outdo Madonna as a Frida fangirl? It’s not possible. Not only because that bia, like, carries “My Birth” (“If somebody doesn’t like this painting, then I know they can’t be my friend”) around with her everywhere–a painting, incidentally, that Kahlo created in M’s hometown of Detroit–but just look at her album cover for Madame X.
Gaga herself, of course, considers what she does to be “painterly.” And she already laid the groundwork for an “art-ified” concept of this “plot twist” nature when she brought us 2011’s “Marry the Night.” In the long-winded introduction of the video, Gaga was already placing herself in the mental institution (perfecting that notion with the story that unfolds in “911”) with the voiceover, “When I look back on my life, it’s not that I don’t want to see things exactly as they happened. It’s just that I prefer to remember them in an artistic way. And truthfully the lie of it all is much more honest, because… I invented it. Clinical psychology tells us arguably that trauma is the ultimate killer. Memories are not recycled like atoms and particles in quantum physics. They can be lost forever. It’s sort of like my past is an unfinished painting. And as the artist of that painting, I must fill in all the ugly holes. And make it beautiful again. It’s not that I’ve been dishonest, it’s just that I loathe reality.”
With this in mind, the creative route she took with “911” appears to be only a logical progression of that sentiment, as well as one of the song’s lyrics, “It’s not real, but I’ll try to grab it/Keep myself in beautiful places.” Opening in a desert of white sands (à la New Mexico), a man in black on a dark horse is panned past by the camera to reveal Lady Gaga over the hill, lying on the ground akimbo, a contorted bicycle with one of its wheels popped off and a bevy of pomegranates ornamenting her area like some bizarre version of a chalk outline. She gathers her bearings as she sees the horse trot away, following it up to a church that, again, very much harkens back to the Spanish style in “Dark Ballet.” But instead of a Mykki Blanco-played Joan of Arc being “on trial,” it is, ostensibly, Gaga herself, who doesn’t yet fully fathom why.
Possibly wanting the video to be as cinematic as possible, Gaga enlisted Tarsem Singh of The Cell and The Fall (which also bears similarities to this plot) fame to direct. But, most important of all, it was Singh who directed R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion,” an OG of surrealist composition in the music video art form. What’s more, someone of Singh’s pedigree was surely influenced by Fellini. Thus, around the two minute, seven second mark, Gaga rips off another Italian mack daddy of artistry apart from Madonna: that’s right, Federico Fellini. Specifically, the iconic opening scene of 8 ½ during which Guido (Marcello Mastroianni) is caught in a traffic jam (made all the more surreal by the total silence surrounding him, paired with the signature characters and countenances that could only exist in a Fellini movie) and then floats up out of the car to escape the intense anxiety attack he’s having. It’s not unlike the narrative thread in “911,” with Gaga, too, needing to be pulled back down to Earth by a rope attached to her ankle. And, what with all three–Fellini, Madonna and Gaga–being victims of a Catholic upbringing, the religious imagery abounds, including a Virgin Mary sort of woman dressed in an ornate white dress that would make the Pope jealous–complete with a red cross embroidered on the chest (#foreshadowing).
When Gaga is finally pulled back down to Earth, there is a costume change into a red number–one might call it the color of pomegranates. For this is the other major influence on the dreamlike presentation of the video (and is very strategically called out at the end). Directed by Sergei Parajanov and released in 1969, the film is a lyrical interpretation of poet Sayat-Nova’s life. As one of the greats of Armenian cinema, we suddenly come to find why this movie oversaturates the non-narrative of Gaga’s insular world. A world that exists only in the mind.
A mural of the real life scene that’s actually unfolding appears at one point in the middle of the video, an “Easter egg,” if you will, designed to hint at the true nature of what’s happening. And as we see the big reveal at the end, those who have prior knowledge of the Fellini/Madonna/Singh oeuvre (oh, and let us not forget Jodorowsky–which one supposes makes sense since LG has a song called “Alejandro”) are likely left thinking, “Is that all there is?”
