Music video analysis Madonna: Like a prayer

In 1989 Madonna released the music video "Like a prayer" which led to a lot of controversy, especially from different ethnic groups and Christians. There are many clear reasons for this, the video has several factors that come across to many (from the time) as wrong for many reasons.

The video shows us Madonna's visit to church and has flashbacks from her past. One of the first things she does is go up to what appears to be Jesus, in this video he is african american, this alone would have already brought up a lot of controversy at the time to many Caucasians, especially ones that were racist, which will have been many more people than today. It was later discovered that this man wasn't meant to represent Jesus but Madonna probably wasn't disappointing with this as it just led to more people talking about it and making her music and herself more relevant. Even though Madonna might have not intended to make this african american  man be represented as Jesus she certainly knew that there would be lots of talk about how the only holly figure she shows is african american.

Another major part of the video that caused so much controversy is a scene where she falls asleep and remembers her past. In this scene we see a squad of white males stabbing and harassing her, we then see that the african american man that was before seen as Jesus is running to help her as the white men ran away, he is then caught by the police and the police think he injured her. It is clear why this caused a lot of controversy. Firstly there will have been many Caucasian men that will have said that this is a bad way to display police officers as they aren't trying to be racist or stereotypical but happen to have only seen the african american man. This will also have made many african american's want to speak up and express their hate for segregation due to race, as they might have claimed that the police saw the gang of Caucasian males but decided to ignore it because they thought that the african man deserved it or was about to do the same.        

Below is the music video for "Like a Prayer" by Madonna