Alej-underwhelmed.

music vide review

by Shardae Jobson

The third single from Lady Gaga's more artistically superior sophomore album The Fame Monster is a wonderfully wistful tale of a love story full of lingering lust and overblown aggravation, titled "Alejandro". For a majority of the people who heard "Alejandro" at the time of Monster's release, with its lyrical inclusion of Mexico's balmy weather and intoxicated beats, any Gaga fan likely pictured a tropical setting for its music video; thinking even Italy would do (Gaga's heritage) to match the song's conflicted romance. Too bad neither Gaga or (famed fashion photographer) director Steven Klein got the memo to keep the song's natural beauty alive, and took it to an unnecessary place of weird, psycho-sexual affliction.

At eight minutes and fifty-three seconds long, a good six minutes of the military motivated video is superfluous in its shots of men dancing and the current heroine of the music industry looking surprisingly gaunt as ever and washed out. Someone give baby girl a Vitamin Water. She's officially been over-worked. Some Little Monsters may choose to still support Gaga even before the music video is over, for once again being the awesome individual that she is, but an objective eye will see that "Alejandro" is underwhelming. It's quite boring in fact, and stark, hollow scenes undermine the song that without the video still holds its blush of effervescence with a Spanish touch that made it unique on The Fame Monster.

Every other scene features homoerotic elements that come across more mocking than stimulating praise towards the gay community. The scenes of men, gay or otherwise, dancing in sync, wearing heels and briefs, careless religious imagery, simulated semi-rough sex with gender role reversal, not of this is shocking or provocative, but are deserving of an eye-roll or two for being so hackneyed in inspiration. Klein and Gaga clearly thought a lot of what to do for the music video, but neither acknowledged that Alejandro is one half of an imaginary couple looking for love and not sequences of some pseudo-remake of a French or German 1960s horror film. And the last two minutes taken straight out of Madonna's "Express Yourself" doesn't add anything at all.

It is always interesting when art that's already been released to the public is re-introduced in an other medium (such the music video) and takes a different route than would have been "expected", "Alejandro" fails in this juncture. And it's not the actual look of the video that makes it disappointing. The gothic theme Lady Gaga's been promoting the song with was a possible method, giving the song a dark twist that goes with the storyline of emotional abuse, the video is just silly. The video was claimed to be a tribute of sorts to the community Lady Gaga always credits as being the forefront of her success--her gay fans--but "Alejandro" is an unintentionally impudent shout-out. Sorry, but not every homosexual man wears heels, and if they do every so often, there's more to them than that. The video cheapens the gay community and as well as the song.

For a song as beautiful as "Alejandro" that belongs in a different category from her worldwide celebrated dance music, is so much more worthy of a better video. "Alejandro" represents her "fear of sex" on The Fame Monster, and it looks like Gaga should be fearful of loosing some real meaning the next time she releases a video for her adoring fans.