Lady Gaga is a phenomenon in modern popular culture. The American singer has once again surprised the public, this time with a dazzling clip full of strange surreal allusions. And while thousands of Internet users search for the hidden messages in each shot, experts have already pointed out their source of inspiration.
We’re talking about the Lada Gaga 911 theme song, the eighth single from her latest album Chromatica. After it was published on YouTube, the video immediately went viral on the networks, accumulating 3 million views in the first five hours alone.
Like many of Lady Gaga’s video clips, the shots of her new entry stand out for its intrepid image, but this time mixed with seemingly far-fetched arthouse scenes, but which take on a very empathetic and coherent meaning at the end.
Arthouse movies as a source of inspiration
The social networks were immediately flooded with thousands of comments from people who realized that there is a message behind all surrealism, sharing and arguing about the meaning of each shot. The truth is that one of the clues to making sense of the visual kaleidoscope lies in the name of the director.
The 4:40 minute shot was directed by Indian filmmaker Tarsem Singh, known for arthouse feature films such as The Fall, the fantasy comedy Mirror Mirror, or sci-fi such as Selfless.
It is in the world of cinema that the source of inspiration for the visual 911 series lies.
The internet users most familiar with the matter realized that most of the shots in the video clip are actually a recreation of scenes from several arthouse films.
The first and perhaps the one that exerted the greatest influence on the narrative line of the clip is The Color of the Pomegranate, a 1969 Soviet art film, written and directed by Armenian director Sergei Paradzhánov and which has appeared in some academic polls as one of the best movies ever made.
Several scenes in the clip come straight from El topo and The Holy Mountain both by the Chilean artist of Ukrainian origin Alejandro Jodorowsky. The first is characterized by its strange events reflected through a mixture of Christian symbolism and Eastern philosophy. The second is considered Jodorowsky’s masterpiece, one of the best productions of his time and the pillar of the so-called esoteric cinema.
Another film that Gaga and Singh’s clip feeds on is the drama 8½ by iconic Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini. It is one of the director’s best-known films and some film critics highlight it as one of the best films ever made.
911, an ode to antipsychotic medication
The artist had previously revealed that the song is about the antipsychotic medication that she has to take for her mental health problems. The video is thus an ode to the experiences that she creates in her mind and how she struggles with them to survive, visualized through various artistic symbols.