"Video Phone": Watching and Being Watched

Beyonce's I Am… Sasha Fierce celebrated its one year anniversary last week, and it is still being unspooled across various media—most recently, in a remix released last night of "Video Phone." The album is notable for an album by a woman in that it has no guest stars, no rappers cropping up, but in this remix, she is accompanied by more-newly-famous entertainer Lady Gaga. This is a remix in the sense that Sinead O'Connor's remix of "Jump in the River" with Karen Finley was a remix, in that there is largely only sections added; added value, brand conjunction, etc., and also that the match-up seems at first strange. In musical reality, this constitutes a problem because it means that there are two singers here: Beyonce and Lady Gaga, which is sort of like Kermit the Frog guesting on a Nina Simone record.

The song "Video Phone" itself has always had problems conceptually: "So press record, I'll let you film me," is essentially what it is about, or: Beyonce wants your romantic affection, so much so that she will make contact with you via a sophisticated device that doesn't quite exist yet in general circulation. This is in difficult territory, which is pretty much the only territory for popular music by women in the last year or so: look at me, or don't look at me, or look at me with certain conditions, or look at me for a certain price. It's in company with, obviously, Mariah Carey's "Touch My Body" ("If there's a camera up in here it's going to leave when I do"), Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" ("I'm your biggest fan, I'll follow you till you love me") and Britney Spears' "Circus" ("There's only two types of people in the world, the ones that entertain and the ones that observe"). Or basically also any Britney song of the last couple years. See also: "Kill the Lights": "I think I'm ready for my closeup, you don't like me, I don't like you, it don't matter."

This is music about the central conflict for women who get photographed daily to manage their fame, at least as expressed by songwriters on their behalf.

Musically, "Video Phone" pretty much lacks any sort of melody, and nearly lacks any hook whatsoever, which makes it exceedingly both attractive and uncatchy. The production is yet another example of the new emptiness in one strain of pop music, which also gets used heavily on the last Kanye West and Erykah Badu records; it's a cousin to production trends in progressive house and crystal meth-friendly dance music. (Shondrae Crawford, AKA Bangladesh, a writer-producer on "Video Phone," has worked with M.I.A. and Busta Rhymes, who both frequently work in the big empty space production style.)

So in the video, directed by Hype Williams, who works far too frequently to do more than play with imagery, Beyonce and her bodyguards march to a room and then she stays locked in this room. She is forced to display her pelvis in various varieties of swimsuit; one-piece, two-piece. Eventually she puts on a Rosario Dawson circa Death Proof wig. Sooner or later an emaciated Jewish girl from Long Island, played by Lady Gaga, shows up and looks overly thin in the face. Nothing much happens.

In terms of personal iconography it's notable that Beyonce, as a conceit for this album, divided her character into two women; one who wears ball gowns and sings for the President, and another who wears tiny one-pieces that expose her pelvis to the air and also usually wears a robotic hand-and-arm piece. But though she appears with that… mechanism on the cover of the single, she's long since discarded that piece of machinery, and so it's not clear which Beyonce this is supposed to be. Most likely, this is the Beyonce that figures, why not pop Lady Gaga onto my track and 1. get some attention and 2. show everyone who's the boss really now?