When Lady Gaga released her newest single, "Born This Way," reactions were as polarized as expected. To some, the song is the ultimate dance-pop anthem of equality; to others, it's a 2k11 rehash of "Express Yourself." No matter what you think of her actual music, though, few can deny that Gaga at least gives a mainstream audience lots to chew on, visually. And in this department, the official "Born This Way" video, released earlier today, does not disappoint.
A seven-plus-minute-long creation myth, it's a space odyssey that explains the "manifesto of Mother Monster," as Gaga explains early in the video. This is how we wound up with society's current state of tolerance, basically: First, there was one alien eternal mother of everything, who gave birth to an enlightened race free of judgment, whose beings roam among regular humans. (A lot of SAT words here get thrown around like mitosis and temporal. Nice.)
However, bummer! Evil also had to be born at the same time to balance things out. And the eternal mother wondered, "How can I protect something so perfect without evil?" Good question, because it doesn't make sense to us either. Still, there's always a duality of good/bad, light/dark, whatever.
Bottom line, more or less, of the video: The truly enlightened creatures on Earth realize that however someone is, they were born this way, and everyone has to get with the program.
After all the galactic myth-making, the film pretty much turns into your standard dance-pop video, with a half-naked star singing and dancing with a backup corps. Still, it's full of some dazzling visuals. Here are six of the best.
What are your favorites? Is there an even deeper meaning to the video? Watch the full clip at the end of this post, and leave your thoughts in the comments.
1) The "eternal mother"
This comes early in the video -- apparently, she rules the universe on a crystal throne and keeps an extra-close watch thanks to an eyeball on her chin.
2) The infamous birth scene
The birth of the good race happens early in the video with some clever split-screen, mirror-image effects -- but it gets more explicit a few minutes in, complete with a supermodel midwife.
3) The birth of evil
Similarly stirrup-y (shudder) to the good birth, except that when evil was born, apparently sparks and evil butterflies also shot out of the mother's, uh, womb.
4) Gaga's troupe of dancing earthlings
There doesn't seem to be a huge meaning to the shirtless, coed, multiracial background dancers beyond a general we-are-the-world unity... But we do love the visual of Gaga running through them as they first appear motionless and crouching.
5) Disembodied heads as good beings in the making
While the other enlightened creatures presumably wait to sprout limbs, Gaga dances in the lab.
6) Gaga teams up with the infamous skeleton-tattooed dude....
...Or, at least, an actor painted to look like him. (Oh, if you've been on the internet for more than five minutes, surely you've seen the guy known as "Zombie Boy"?) Here's a unique human being who was surely not born that way at all, but it still further drives home the message of acceptance of even the most extremely expressive among us.
Here's the official video in full:
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