The music video to ‘Like a Prayer’ is one of the most controversial videos in history as its juxtaposition of religious symbolism and sexualised behaviour created conflict between her and the catholic church, the Pope even banned Madonna from Italy, conveying how disgusted they were by Madonna’s representation of their religious community. This therefore created more negative press for the artist, helping her to reach an incredible amount of publicity. This national outcry is still considered a key reason why she is still such a phenomenon today as she continues to display this independence and power within the industry.
Firstly, this will of course appeal to male audience as the camera is used to emphasise Madonnas body. This can be seen in many elements of the video ranging the appearance of her hair is messy like ‘bed hair’ which emphasises the theme of sex, her clothes are tight fitting and revealing. Furthermore, Madonna is seen on her knees looking up to the male as she lip syncs, appearing to be at a state of sexual power. The bars also contribute to the visual pleasure males will receive as the bars, following camera composition, not only frame the sexualised areas of Madonna’s body but act as leading lines encouraging the audience to look at her breasts.
I believe the way she decided to be represented in an objectified manor to convey her post-feminist involvement and aspire women of her new targeted demographic. She has taken the historical context of the 1960’s pre-feminist movement where females rejected artificial means which had the aim of simply pleasing men and applied it to her video by showing you can be more natural (seen in her dramatically changed appearance from her previous videos) and still be as successful, this is what has contributed to make her such an icon. With this applied to the video we can infer that the scene when Madonna may initially be seen to be acting sexually are actually a representation that she is confident with her own sexuality and is a successful, independent woman (not being restricted by the continuous pressure to have to please men).
Madonna further promotes herself within the video in ways which would have positive consequences in reaching her new target audience. Because the main aim of a music video is to promote and advertise the artist it was essential Madonna and the producer decided the best ways in influencing her new target audience to be interested in her. I believe that the video successfully achieves this in many areas.We see evidence of this when the innocent man of a black ethnicity is falsely imprisoned by the actions of a man of white ethnicity. This not only conveys an opposition of moral actions by the men but also by Madonna. The boundaries of the antagonist’s actions will ultimately work in Madonna’s favour as the way she restores justice conveys her as being caring to the audience which will increase her popularity with them. Additionally, with the inclusion of a man of black ethnicity it shows Madonna is acceptant to his culture which will increase the niche market of her new target audience showing she is against racism. However, we see later in the video that Madonna and the man who she released share an embrace, therefore an alternative interpretation of the video is that Madonna is not free of sin. This changes the narrative as now the audience may see Madonna as a selfish individual who does good actions in order to be rewarded sexually. This can also be illustrated in the lyrics as they have an underlined sexual tone describing her desire to pleasure a man – “In the midnight hour I can feel your power, just like a prayer you know I'll take you there”.
Binary Opposition occurs further by the representation of Catholicism alongside sexualised behaviour by the way in which the video has been edited to place emphasise on scenes of significance. The third shot of the video is the symbolic burning cross that has been the foundation of religious uproar. The cross is the symbol of Christianity and by it being of fire it delivers negative connotations – one of danger, fear and disregard for the religion. By it being one of the beginning shots it foreshadows that the religion is to blame for the actions which follow, intentional or not, it shows Madonna and her production team are not afraid of being dramatic in order to get attention for her as an artist. That however contrasts the long shot of the church which appears welcoming and homely. I feel that the shot of the church was placed in to remove the negativity created by the burning religious symbol but the shot of the church itself looks artificial and out of place in the video. These dramatic and exaggerated shots of religious symbols would have gained the audiences interest either positively or negatively resulting in the artist receiving more publicity.
The use of religious symbolism is later incorporated again with Madonna present wearing the tight fitting and skin revealing clothes giving the connotation of sex alongside religion creating a controversial message. Madonna’s target audience of this video is of an older demographic and can understand that the combined themes of sex and religion is not a responsible one to make but there will be alternative responses from different audiences, such as her previous target audience of the teenager market who would see an artist they used to aspire to be like acting provocatively and want to act in the same way.
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