Secondary Source
Lady Gaga Parody: Caught in a Bad Romance ‘Til We Have Suffrage
We Are Caught in a Bad Romance Until We Have Suffrage. Director: Tim Alden Grant. Performers: Meredith Garrison, Dan Williams, Tripp Hamilton, Sarah Barnhardt, Talmadge Ragan, Mae Spencer. Soomo Publishing, 2012.
Era: Post-Suffrage Era | Media: Music, Radio/Audio, Video, Web-based
Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” is an infectious hit that easily gets stuck in your head. So it’s no wonder that Soomo Learning, an education company, decided to create a parody version for use as a teaching tool. Soomo Learning created the song, which has been watched over a million times, to teach students about the push to pass the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.
The parody video, which won the Emmy for Informational or Instructional Program at the 27th Annual MidSouth Emmy Awards, features Meredith Garrison as Alice Paul, the women’s suffrage activist. Garrison as Paul sings:
Hey! We’ll raise our banner
Across this land hey!
‘Cause franchise isn’t just
The right of a man
It shows women activists marching for their right to vote, and also depicts efforts to suppress them.
Soomo Learning has put together an easy-to-use website about the parody, complete with sample lessons for teachers and lyrics.
In 2015, Sony/ATV, which published Lady Gaga’s song, filed a copyright claim with YouTube, which eventually took down the Soomo Learning parody, as the education company explains in a blog post. However, numerous copies of the parody exist online.