Internet agog for Lady Gaga's provocative video to Telephone

With some grunts, G-strings, heavy product placement and an enormous amount of hype, the 21st century's take on feminism and social commentary arrived this week with the video to Lady Gaga and Beyonce's duet, Telephone. Within 12 hours of the video being released on the internet it had half a million hits and nearly as many blogs eagerly dissecting the possible meanings behind the nine-minute video.

Already being touted by some as the successor to Michael Jackson's Thriller, Telephone continues Gaga's tradition of elevating her songs with clever videos. This time she and director Jonas Akerlund have created a melange of Russ Meyers, Quentin Tarantino, Thelma and Louise and the brief incarceration of Paris Hilton to make a film about lesbian murderers, set to the lyrics of a woman complaining about people phoning her in a nightclub.

While Beyonce is clearly the more talented, her brand of sexiness looks dated next to Gaga. Bloggers have been decoding the meaning behind the sunglasses made of cigarettes, but one might just as well try to decipher the dress Gaga once wore made of Kermit the Frogs: she does it because it's funny.

Gaga, never averse to ascribing depths to her work where others might see shallows, has claimed that the video's meaning came from "the idea that America is full of young people that are inundated with information and technology". Her intention, accordingly, was to "turn it into something that was more of a commentary on the kind of country that we are".

For
Forget outrage, just enjoy it
Some taboos are still alive and kicking. Lady Gaga and Beyonce's prison "lezz-ploitation" video has caused outrage, featuring as it does butch dykes, chicks with dicks, horny female prison wardens perusing lesbian dating sites – oh, and a bit of mass murder.

Early in the video there is a scene in the prison yard featuring a lesbian snog between a butch lesbian in leather and Lady Gaga, who is wearing a pair of sunglasses made from burning cigarettes. It's hard to know what to be outraged about first. The answer is, nothing – the answer is just enjoy it.

It's a cross between Tenko, Prisoner Cell Block H, a ghetto-girl Malory Towers and Thelma and Louise, as re-imagined by David Lachapelle and Betty Paige, only this time our heroines don't have to die. Instead, they drive into the sunset in Beyonce's "pussymobile" after Beyonce has turned to her (we assume) lover and said: "You've been a very, very bad girl, Gaga."

Women in prison exploitation movies took off in the 1950s thanks to the influence of pulp magazines with films such as Caged and So Young So Bad. But unlike them, there are no sadistic male guards in this one. While there are obligatory scenes such as the strip search ("I told you she didn't have a dick," says one guard) and the cat fights with the queen bee gang leader, the chicks are all doing it for themselves.

It's a silly, sexy, funny film for a song about the nightmare of having a mobile phone, ridden with product placement from the phone company logo on Gaga's screen to the cans of Diet Coke rollers in her locks, and it feels very zeitgeisty – a big, female power fantasy. These aren't just tough but hot tough chicks who can take care of themselves – like Trudy Chacon in Avatar, the cute Latina helicopter pilot, who's the sort of person you want looking after you if you find yourself in lost in a mad sci-fi jungle.

In terms of "all girls together" videos, it reminded me of Britney Spears' One More Time, only Lady Gaga has moved beyond the lame message of turning yourself into a Lolita schoolgirl, and has instead decided to turn the world completely lesbian – and good on her and her tattooed sisters in their studded leather bikinis, roaming the world avenging themselves on bad people.

Stephanie Theobold

Against
The same old boring sexism
Say what you like about Lady Gaga – everyone else does – but when it comes to colour and controversy she certainly delivers. She's appeared in hats shaped like lobsters, shoes resembling armadillos, dancing in a white latex catsuit in her Bad Romance video. She's regularly seen wandering around with a small china teacup and saucer in hand, apropros of nothing (this last affectation gets no less irritating).

What we get now is a cartoon-ish explosion of sex and violence. It starts with Gaga being taken into a women's prison, led past bra-clad, tattoo-covered inmates, who are writhing against the doors to their cells – and occasionally pausing (as you do) to lick the bars. Gaga is wearing a low-cut outfit, and as she gets thrown into her cell, she's stripped by the guards, revealing just a pair of fishnets and black plasters over her nipples.

When the cell door closes, she throws herself against it, and although her pubis is pixelated, the screen grab enables her to rebuke those tired old rumours of hermaphroditism. "I told you she didn't have a dick," says one guard. "Too bad," says the other.

There follow lesbian kisses, a mass poisoning, and a double act with Beyonce – the two drive off in a lurid vehicle nicknamed the "pussy wagon". Gaga has apparently said that the video was inspired by Quentin Tarantino's work, but the references reach further back to the 1960s exploitation flicks of Roger Corman and Russ Meyer's Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.

These references coat the whole video in a slick film of irony, and make the whole enterprise seem occasionally funny and always ridiculous. But also, strangely, a little bit dull. Because if there's one thing that we've seen a thousand times over the past few decades, it's old-style sexism dressed up as new-style irony. Does the fact that Gaga seems to be winking knowingly at the camera as she dances in a bikini make the vision any less predictable, any less boring, any less reminiscent of sexist video after sexist video that you've seen in the past few years? Nope.

It's a disappointment from someone who seems to be popping with so many ideas. Gaga will do something great, I'm sure. But this isn't it.

Kira Cochrane