Madonna’s video of ‘Like a Prayer’ has engaged with a lot of the different themes. The main representation in this video is religion but Madonna does this in a very extreme and provocative way. The video shows Madonna’s true colours with her star image. It just screams blasphemy all over it with burning crosses, a sexualised main character, Jesus being sexual with Madonna and ofcourse the stigmata in Madonna’s hands.
From all the actions taken forward in this clip it shows Madonna has defined beliefs to the Catholic church although that this video touches on a lot of blasphemous threats with very controversial actions. For example that Jesus is in the video as a black man, challenging the other views of believers of what their Jesus is to look like. This caused a large controversial reaction considering her large fan base. Controversial element to this video proves that Madonna in fact does not care and believes she can share her views. With the video being so controversial it is obvious to stir thing around with her viewers because everyone all over the world will be talking about it. Although Madonna is creating quite a political video at times she is still wearing a very low cut video with her cleavage completely on show, showing thats she still wants to be very sexually attractive even when in a video preaching to the nation to almost stop being racist and believe in the good of God.
The main narrative story of the young black man getting the blame for four black mens crimes of stabbing a young women in the road, Madonna does view this. The black man is a hero figure through out this and then gets the blame which makes the gang of white men evil. This is a point that Madonna shows that she is seeing the problems of young black men getting accused of crimes that are not to blame for. A modern day version of this is ‘Ferguson’, showing that these racial problems have not in fact improved fully. Madonna makes it clear that she is on the black mans side more by having every african-american person in a positive way. For example, she dances and sings with the Gospel singers. At one moment Madonna goes on her knees with the main choir singer holding her head. This reminded me of the cleansing ritual that religious people use to ‘take demons’ away from another body or bad thoughts (exorcism). Cleansing madonna of her sins and excepting her openly in their chorus. However the white men are seen as murderers, racist policeman and helpless stabbed women. Madonna is the only white person that the audience is to like in this tail, especially when she releases the man from prison.
The burning crosses through out the video have a intertextual link. This reminded me of the rituals of the Klu Klux Klan, a strong group of white supremacists with no resistance for other races. By using the burning crosses it relates back to how black people were treated back in those times in the south, relating to the white people being evil and black people being lovely, vulnerable.
Although this video touches upon very racial and religious points, Madonna continues to sexualise herself by wearing a very low cut burgundy tight dress, almost resembling to a piece of lingerie. This makes it all very provocative. The man who is played out as Jesus also has a moment with Madonna on the floor covered in candles. This is very sexual but cuts before it goes any further after their kiss. After she wakes up from an almost ‘dream’ with ‘Jesus’ back to being a wax model behind the bars. The immediate link here is ‘Virgin Mary’ following the idea of how Mary was conceived with Jesus.
The end of the video, the chapel is then transformed into the prison. A red curtain closes and all the ‘cast’ come out and take a bow with the classic ‘The End’ coming up on the screen. This implies that all that takes place in the video is a production and performance. This is an intelligent way to end this because it tells the viewers that in fact with it being so hard hitting for some audiences and hard hitting that its all a performance and not real, do not take it to heart.
Over looking the video ‘Like a Prayer’, Madonna’s star image becomes very clear to how far up she is in the market. With it covering over so many subjects in deep ways it shows that her team want to bring in as many views as they want. Madonna is a controversial, flamboyant and daring artist who is very powerful. Also she has very strong political and religious views that she wants to share with her audience.
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