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Seriously, how?? How has technology changed so much since I was a child? When I was young, I played a game called SimCity. It was like filling in a spreadsheet- block here, block there.
The Sims 2 is VERY modifiable. (The Sims 3 is also modifiable, but to a lesser extent.)
If you know a bit of 3D modeling you can make new objects and clothing for the Sims 2. If you know some programming, you can create new animations (therefore some of the dance moves). A lot of it is creative use of objects and moves that already exist in the game. Also, there are hacks that you can download that will let you do things like get a bunch of Sims dancing in unison.
I don't know all the tricks they used to make that video, but huge props to whoever took the time to put all that together, and edit it so well, to boot.
Does anyone still make some equivalent of mix tapes? Because I'm really into listening to Gaga's Telephone back-to-back with Micachu's Calculator, and I think there's an awesome mix tape to be made of songs about technology.
I'm so bothered by this idea that all these post structural analyses of the Telephone video won't even let slip that there's some conventional sexual content there. Like we won't even notice that and skip right to the stuff about the viewer the artist the gender role blah blah blah? I'm like what kinda alternate reality stuff is this.
elaborate on the conventional sexual content Firas
Woman forcibly stripped onto prison bed?
Beyonce eating part of a candy bar and giving it to Gaga?
Man these are like stupid-straight-porn tropes!
BP yeah what prompted me is that I had clicked your link (seeing it on twitter earlier) and did a search through the document for "sex" and was frustrated at how dry the take on the matter is, like "Lady Gaga is not Sexy in the regular sexy way like bad terrible sexy women, she is sexy in this intellectualized oppositional way! Go her!"
I mainly just have a bee in my bonnet about it cause I had read the mefi thread about it and the whole discussion about the intersection of sexuality and politics seemed to have started with a guy snarking about how she's catering to male fantasy and some woman shutting him down with "yeah I can't tell you how often my boyfriend has asked me to poison him!" which got a host of favorites. I'm like, that's it? That's the whole discussion on this aspect? AAARGH
Personally I found the product placements unbearably repellent
I'm pretty sure that was the idea. She got companies to PAY for appearances in a video where she used their products to kill people. How is that not awesome?
Coca-Cola flipped out when Oliver Stone used their polar bears in "Natural Born Killers." Even though they'd paid to be in a movie about mass murderers. They just didn't expect their product to be near a mass murderer. Fucking with corporations is time well spent, IMO.
I hate how she's playing both sides of the product placement fence. My understanding (nah, I didn't look for the research, it's metachat!) is that product placements are effective whether linked with positive or negative associations. I'm just kind of shocked by how saturated our culture has become with advertising.
For the old school sexism, yeah, I get what you're saying Firas. Again, its playing both sides. "I'm using sexist tropes to subvert them!"
I am enjoying the analysis of her video though - a bit more than the actual video.
Yeah, I get that videos are themselves ads. Sometimes I wish I could read it the way you do, BP. Instead I get high blood pressure panicking about consumerist distopias.
I watched "Bad Romance" for the first time and I wish I could find something fun or even meta in it. It just seems dreary and old. I haven't got to the Sims bit yet.
I love "Bad Romance" -- what BP said -- and can even say I like "Paparazzi" (speaking as both video and song) but I really dislike "Telephone" (as both). Jonas Åkerlund is responsible for both the latter. Maybe I need to watch Beyond the Valley of the Dolls again or something to reconnect with trashy B-films.
It's spelled "Lady Gaga" on the title attribute of her official site, and I've rarely seen "GaGa" except in "Haus of GaGa".
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