Madonna's music video called 'Like a Prayer' conducts a story about a forbidden inter-racial love affair. This music video is meant to be set in the South of the United States, a place where black people are frowned upon and white people already have a higher social status because of their colour. Madonna's ideology in this music video is provocative because of her clothing and the way in which she is sexualised to the camera which makes her appeal to many male audiences.
One of the main purposes of this video is to be controversial towards many social groups like religious people and racists. As you can see on the left, there is a black Jesus. This is not a common view for many religious people and this is a very controversial view. At the time of Madonna's career she was highly known and had a specific target audience especially towards homosexual people and was trying to spread her target audience through this song. Therefore this song was less about her musical integrity and more about using her fame to spread a message about racism and controversial views.
In this scene, there are burning crosses, giving the audience connotations of the racist group called the Ku Klux Klan. This is a heavily controversial symbol in her video and in the music video overall as the group was still around when the music video was created in 1989. Around this 90's there were still 6,000 to 10,000 people in the KKK in the deep south, even after President Lyndon Johnson condemned it. In this music video race is positively represented as there is a sexual relationship between a white woman and black man. This is not socially acceptable to some religious groups.
Racism is a huge factor in this video as you see a black man and a white woman engaging in a sexual encounter in a church. Many religious believers will condemn this as the church is meant to be only a holy place. This video is narrative based as there is not much of a performance, except for the joining together of the black choir and Madonna herself. This scene suggests that religion should base itself on the fact that we are all brothers and sisters of God and we shouldn't use religion to fight wars.
Madonna witnesses a crime where 4 white men stab a woman and run away, a black man comes to help her and he is automatically framed for the crime because of his skin colour. This is very racially prejudice because the black man is assumed to have done the crime by the police, but in fact he was helping the woman. In the end Madonna is a good samaritan and tells the police that it wasn't him who hurt the woman. This shows empowerment in Madonna and that she is against racial prejudice.
The ending of the music video may confuse some viewers as it appears the church was a stage set up and a curtain closes as if it was a performance. This is breaking the fourth wall and snapping the audience back into reality. This curtain closing suggests that the music video was only a performance and softens the blow of controversy that was portrayed in the video. It shows the ways of post-modernism and intertexuality in the real world.
Overall, this video caused much controversy and would have pushed some religious peoples beliefs to the limit. Madonna's fame has been used to show the reality of all the wrong in the world and is reaching out to target audiences who are against racism and rebellious.
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