Madonna "Like A Prayer"

The other day my twelve year old daughter asked me if I had an opinion as to who was a better singer:  Lady Gaga or Madonna? We concluded that they were both great in their own way, however, I realized that she knew very little about Madonna.  After listening to a few songs she asked me if Madonna's videos were as much fun as Lady Gaga's.  We scoured YouTube and watched bits and pieces from several videos spanning Madonna's career. We finally settled on "Like A Prayer." I told my daughter that this video was considered extremely controversial when it came out.  Madonna pushed a lot of buttons, and got a pretty negative response when she released this video back in 1989. Pepsi pulled their sponsorship from her world tour when various religious groups threatened to boycott the soda.  Everyone was in an uproar because Madonna is seen in the video kissing a black saint, dancing seductively in a church, watching a rape/murder and the subsequent human form of the saint getting framed for the crime, dancing amongst burning crosses and...get this...displaying the stigmata on her pop star hands!  Madonna was looking for some attention, and boy did she get it.

What pleased me most about viewing this with my kid is that she saw nothing really all that outrageous about the imagery. She also thought it was horrible that people objected to a video of Madonna making out with the black saint. It made me wonder about how the public would react today if a similar video was released by a huge pop star.  Let's face it, Lady Gaga is one of the world's biggest stars right now, and her videos are way beyond anything Madonna every filmed yet it feels like after a brief noting on the internet the public simply forgets about what they just saw, and lets it fade into the fabric of our everyday lives.  Where is the uproar and anger? Are we beyond being shocked anymore?  Has the internet and the modern cinema desensitized us?  Or have we simply become more accepting of those things that used to offend and disturb us? Maybe we have other things to worry about today. Perhaps two never-ending wars, families losing their homes and an economy in the toilet are enough to distract people from what we used to consider outrageous entertainment. I guess it could just be the little part of the world that I live in, and the people and entertainment that I surround myself with, but really? What's it take these days to get people's panties in a bunch?

Anyway, Madonna was brilliant back in the day, and I was happy to spend a little bit of time sharing those moments, outrageous or not, with my child.



Madonna - Like A Prayer [Video]
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