Madonna is recognised as one of the biggest-selling artists in music history and a huge icon of the 80's. Throughout her career she has had many number one's such as "Like a Virgin", "Papa Don't Preach", "Like a Prayer", "Vogue", "Frozen", "Music", "Hung Up", and "4 Minutes". When Madonna hit the scene of music she was very different to what anyone had seen before and this caused attraction to the general public as they wanted to find out more about her. She has sold more than 250 million records within 20 years of her career.
Her video "Like a prayer" caused a lot of controversy because of the religious references used throughout, here is the video:
The video features Madonna as a witness of the murder of a white girl by three white men, and the arrest of a black man who attempted to save the victim, but ends up being accused of the crime. Following his arrest, Madonna goes to the chapel for safety and at the end testifies the black man's innocence.
The video attracted so much criticism because there is a black man being percieved as Christ. This goes against the typical stereotype people have of Jesus Christ. In the chapel Madonna visits there are black statues of Jesus Christ which is rare as he is often percieved as a white man.
There is use of Catholic iconography in the video, and there is a scene including Madonna developing stigmata. There are also burning crosses in the background which attracted a lot of criticism. She also seduces the man acting as Jesus which obviously caused a lot of commotion amongst viewers.
Madonna knew that she was going to shock viewers with the 'like a prayer' video. Madonna stated "When I think of controversy, I never really think people are going to be half as shocked as they are at what I do." So it seems that she perhaps didn't realise quite how controversial her video would be.
It reached number 1 on MTV's "100 Videos That Broke The Rules".
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