Bad Romance

"Bad Romance" is a 2009 song by Lady Gaga. It was part of her album The Fame Monster and was released as a single in 2009. It's also got a (heavily spammed) view count of over 700 million on YouTube and is jam-packed with elements of Mind Screw taken Up to Eleven. Which is hardly unexpected, considering who sang it.

The music video has won 7 Video Music Awards (Video of the Year, Best Pop Video, Best Female Video, Best Dance Music Video, Best Choreography, Best Direction and Best Editing).

Tropes used in Bad Romance include:

• Ascetic Aesthetic
• Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me: Implied.
• Between My Legs
• Black Bra and Panties
• Celebrity Endorsement:
  • The video for "Bad Romance" features a man using a Wii remote to sell Lady Gaga as a prostitute.
  • Also, her "Heartbeats" headphones which are part of Dr Dre's "Beats" collection, as well as the Beats Edition HP Envy 15 laptops, both featured prominently in the same video.
    • The laptops were the scoreboard for the whore auction.
• Creepy Cleanliness
• Creepy Cool Crosses: One outfit in the video features a glass cross over her crotch; in the shot after the one that outfit appears in, she also stops dancing to do the sign of the cross.
• Double Entendre: "Want you in my rear window", anyone?
• Force Feeding: Gaga gets force-fed a glass of some beverage.
• Gratuitous French
• Light Is Not Good: White walls and furnishings, bright lighting, lots of white and/or sparkly costumes, and the plot involves slavery and murder.
• Making a Spectacle of Yourself
• Male Gaze: The video takes a lot of common uses of Male Gaze in music videos and puts them in a nightmarish context.
• Woman on Fire
• Mad Love: The theme of the song.
• Mind Screw: Oh, God...
• Out with a Bang: Implied by the ending, though it could be a case of Out With A Striptease.
• Playing to The Fetishes: Watch the video and count the fetishes as they come up. Latex, non-con, white slavery...and the robot-fetishist crowd were very happy with a lot of her movements.
• Refuge in Audacity
• Right-Hand-Cat
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Inverted, as she appears in some scenes without any elaborate outfits or makeup, and is still pleasing to the eye.
• Shout-Out:
  • To Alfred Hitchcock, but...in a somewhat unusual way.

I want your Psycho, your Vertigo shtick,
Want you in my Rear Window, baby you're sick.

• • Apparently the Bad Romance-universe has adopted Pokedollars as their form of currency.
    • The symbol shown in the video is identical to an unofficial sign for the Russian rouble developed by a group of Russian graphic designers.
  • The opening shot of Gaga's Bathhaus is reminiscent of the scene in Aliens where the Marines awake from the pods.
    • And the body-bags from Firefly.
    • Or even the torpedo casings that Starfleet uses as coffins for fallen members.
    • Speaking of the opening, the pods themselves have red text over a white background and a gratuitous cross slapped on them. Anyone else thinking NGE?
      • The opening shot looks like a mash-up of Stanley Kubrick films. The bright glowing floors are highly reminiscent of the bedroom at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the pose looks like an inversion of the opening shot of A Clockwork Orange and the masks almost look like the ones worn during the cult orgy in Eyes Wide Shut.
  • When watching the claw-handed Gaga groupies' crowned suits, is anyone else reminded of Max's costume and gestures from Where the Wild Things Are ?
    • The costumes were supposedly based on the pattern from the movie.
  • The dancers in white, with their covered faces and jerky movements are a Shout-Out to the Silent Hill nurses.
• Signature Song
• Single Tear: Cut aways during the music video show a surpisingly low-key (in terms of make-up, anyway) Gaga becoming increasingly more upset. The camera is close to her face, and a single tear slides down her cheek near the end of the video.
• Smoking Hot Sex: Well, Smoking Hot sex-turned-fiery death..
• Visual Pun: At the word "bitch" in the first "I'm a free bitch, baby", the camera cuts to the Right-Hand-Cat.
• What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic: A lot of it certainly looks like it could be symbolic of something, but it's too much of a Mind Screw to be sure.