Like a Prayer - Madonna

At the beginning of the video, we are shown an image of a burning cross. This automatically causes controversy amongst the views as this symbol was associated with white supremacy terrorist group The Ku Klux Klan.

The next scene shows Madonna witnessing a group of white men, raping and murdering a young woman. We then see a black man being wrongly arrested for this crime which she also sees but does nothing about it. This scene is also controversial because it shows how black people would automatically get the blame for crimes they did not commit purely because of their race.

We see Madonna then enter the church upon the lyric ‘feels like home’ suggesting that the church is like home to her. She is then seen to be praying for forgiveness for not preventing the black man from being arrested earlier on. However, she is praying to a statue of Jesus which shows him as black which is controversial as he was always assumed to be white.

We then see an image of Madonna being thrown into heaven, to be caught by a black angel who, although smiling at her, proceeds to throw her out. She could possibly be foreshadowing that white people that are racist or fail to prevent racisms towards black people will be thrown out of heaven as it is a sin. The fact that the angel is black shows represents that contrary top popular belief at the time, black people were just as good as white people and it is possible for an angel to be of any race, although they were assumed to be white.

Madonna is then brought back to the church, where she kisses the feet of the statue of Jesus. This then brings the statue to life and we see that Jesus is the same as the man who was arrested earlier on in the video. He and Madonna proceed to kiss. Madonna is showing here that she is not a racist person and that she believes there is nothing wrong with interracial relationships.

After the man has left the church, she picks up the knife by the blade causing her to cut her hand and drop it. We then get a close up of her hands and notice stigmata. This are holes/cuts in the centre of each hand like those which Jesus had after being nailed to the cross to die. Some Christian denominations believe that those who have these have been touched by God. This belief is ironic in this video as Madonna has just kissed Jesus.

At the end of the video we see Madonna visit the police station to say that she witness the crime and that the black man is innocent so that he is released from his cell. This shows that she is not a racist person and that the actual message of the video is to maintain racial harmony.