Why the controversial side to Madonna’s hit is nothing new, and why it
should be irrelevant.
One of the more successful days in my Introduction
to American Studies course (which focuses on the 1980s as a case study) has
always been the one in which we discuss the brouhaha over Madonna’s “Like a Prayer”
(1989) as an exemplary culture wars controversy. It has so many perfect
ingredients to sum up the era: not only the clash between a Hollywood celebrity
and “middle America,” between sex and religion, but also protests over a music video, a soda company ending an
endorsement deal, and, yes, the
Pope. And at the heart of all those debates is a genuinely ambiguous song—I
always start that day by dividing up the class and asking half to argue that
the song’s about sex and the other half that it’s about religion, and each half
have plenty of good evidence with which to make their case (especially since I
play the rarely heard album version of the song, which includes the question “God?”
prior to the musical opening).
The truth, of course, is that it’s impossible to reduce the song to one
theme or the other—that from its title on, the song’s power lies precisely in
its conflations of sex and religion, lust and faith, the love one feels for a
lover with the love a believer feels for a higher power. The Catholics and
other Christians who protested Madonna might not want to admit it, but those
conflations are as old as religion itself, as illustrated very potently by “The Song
of Solomon.” And they are likewise at the heart of one of the most famous
and compelling accounts of faith, that of St. Teresa of Ávila: Teresa’s autobiography
includes one of the most impassioned descriptions of spiritual
epiphany ever recorded, a moment captured perfectly by my favorite
sculpture, Bernini’s
Ecstasy of St. Teresa (1645-1652).
To be clear, I’m not equating Madonna’s pop song to Teresa’s writing, nor
arguing that the intersections of love and faith, the physical and the
spiritual, are the same in either (or in “The Song of Solomon”)—but those
elements are present in each case, linking these texts as part of an evolving
tradition toward which those protesting Madonna had to turn a blind eye.
Moreover, the protests over the video for “Like a Prayer”
required an even more willful blindness. Yes, Madonna sings in front of burning
crosses at times; yes, she exchanges passionate kisses with a vivified statue
of a saint in a church. But in the context of the video’s story, those moments,
along with every other detail (such as the appearance of an African American
Gospel choir, the leader of which catches Madonna during a free fall earlier in
the video) are explicitly connected to another and overarching theme: that of
racism, and specifically of the kinds of discriminatory visions that can only see
a black man as a killer, rather than a hero—and, perhaps, that refuse to
acknowledge the
possibility that Jesus was himself far darker of skin than most artistic
depictions. The fact that the video became a flashpoint in culture war battles
over religion and sex has unfortunately obscured its compelling engagement with
these longstanding American themes and questions, and its groundbreaking
portrayal of interracial physicality and romance. I’d say it’s time we focus on
those elements instead.
Final ambiguous hit tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Takes on this song, or other American hits?
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