Analysis of Madonna's 'Like a Prayer' Video

In this analysis, I will be focusing on elements of Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer’ video, aiming to follow codes and conventions of the product. Primarily, the objectified video includes many different controversial aspects to it, raises discussions towards Madonna as an artist and also represents wider affairs as well as concluding her opinions on subjects.

The video summarises Madonna escaping from seeing a women getting abused by two white male individuals. Madonna runs to a church and seeks some religious reassuring help and safeness from echoes and movement in the church. Madonna dreams about discovering her religion due to scenes of previous witnessed mistakes. The female artist Madonna falls asleep and wakes up whilst dreaming, her absent mind finds herself seeing Jesus. The audience rapidly notice, the man in the church is the same man that got arrested and therefore Madonna falls guilty as she realises the wrong man went to prison.

The controversial music video doesn’t strictly follow a narrative. For instance, the artist doesn’t always follow the lyrics to the song; therefore the video is a concept-based performance. For example, Madonna sings to the camera numerous times using close up camera angles. From this convention, we know who the main star is as it is highly and recognisably sexualised. However, at some points she notably reflects aspects of the words, ‘fall from the sky’ and similarly the word ‘dream’ in which she echoes the lyrics with convincing movements. Intertextuality is also seen as a code through the video through references to other texts, such as costumes from ‘Grease.'

Throughout this video, many references are created and made towards religion and Madonna’s opinions on subjects and her representations of them. For example, the clip depicts Catholic symbols such as stigmata, Ku Klux Klan cross burning, and a dream about kissing a black saint.  For example, conventions and codes seek at times when the video shows a scene of burning crosses. The burning crosses are used in this video to show Madonna feels as though she has betrayed her religion by not saying the correct thing or doing the right thing, and she therefore feels as bad as the ‘KKK’ did because she accidently demanded the wrong man in prison. By burning the cross’s, it shows Madonna’s act of braveness but also represents her as a violent and powerful creature. Effectively conventions are also used, such as when we seek Jesus in the cage in the church, it represents a metaphoric convention to show the wrong person getting in prison.

Also, one scene during the video references the cuts on her hands in which she makes using the knife, this can be similar and recognisable to images of what Jesus’ hands looked like when his hands got pinned upon the cross.

Madonna presents herself as a brave creature and her music video is used as a vehicle to highlight and heighten this. For instance, the video was created in 1989 and racism was a big subjective around this time. Madonna confidently aims to stand up for equal rights in this video regardless of race, gender and religion.

This product connotes and audience members gain information regarding Madonna. For example, the video conveys Madonna to be an attractive, pure and promiscuous character as she is presented around white. Contrasting rebellious aspects and anti-authority from Madonna begin to seek. The video almost makes viewers believe girls are empowering and objectified. This is important as this could suggest ideologies within society.  Women being objectified highlight a notion central to feministic theories. Individuals, mostly men sometimes state people treat or seek women as an object. From this aim, it clearly attracts a male audience as well as male’s gain pleasure by seeing women as a sexual object. For example, her hair is messy and her clothes are tightly fitted emphasising this attraction. Actions and connotations shown in the product can raise discussions about the artist.

Considering the video was created in 1989, the product is modern due to her futuristic opinionative impacts. The video shows she is ahead of time and this shocked viewers with some scenes at the time the video was made. Her product isn’t that dissimilar to modern videos nowadays; this can also connotate she is a brave and controversial artist. This could also suggest, Madonna is also trying to raise various points about stereotypes before several others comment. The music video, was directed by Mary Lambert and personally, I feel Madonna and the creators of the video realised the genre pop was a mainstream genre and wanted to distant their self from the current style.

Overall, ‘Like a Prayer’ was released to re-establish her brand image and to allow a new target audience to be aimed at older viewers. The target audience are older and more mature as a younger audience wouldn’t necessarily understand or handle the scenes. Previously Madonna created songs and music videos for a younger teenage audience using her fashion icon, however she wanted to change her image and engage a wider matured audience. Male audiences are also engaged as they gain pleasure from seeing women as a sexual object. However, women are also attracted as they appreciate the empowering and brave, equal position Madonna is standing for.

The video is a successful piece of work and Madonna gained many popular comments follows, both positive and negative raisings. I personally think this video is a successful example of a promotional campaign as Madonna has used a series of advertisements using marketing tools that provoke messages and subjects.