To start off, Madonna's music video "like a Prayer" is known to be the most controversial music video ever made. And there are many, many reasons for this. The video also highlights Richard Dyer's theory of the star image for Madonna. The term 'star' refers to a set of meanings constructed around music performers to sell them to a large and loyal audience. Madonna realised the more scandalous the project, the more successful it would be. The video was used as a way of her portraying her rebellion which attracted an audience. The incoherence of the star image makes the audiences continually strive to make sense of or complete the image and will make the fans go away determined to continue consuming the star in order to carry on attempting to complete their image.

First of all, throughout the whole video, there are clips of Madonna dancing, on a field, in front of burning crosses which show anti-christian semiotics as they're a reference to the Ku, Klux, Klan (KKK).  The KKK is a secret society of white Southeners who showed extreme hatred towards people of colour and agreed with slavery. It is now considered a crime meaning This symbolic convention shown through the mise-en-scene used caused an uproar in controversy from the government, the Catholic church and many other groups that saw her video as promoting the ideologies of the KKK and were insulted by the video.


Another way the video caused controversy was by the objectification of women shown throughout. The woman in the first scene is being raped by a group of men proving that the men viewed her as an object that does not possess feelings or can not fight or have a choice about what is happening to her. The woman has many similarity's to Madonna and they lack independence in their looks which could suggest that men restraint her and other females from doing so and they are all victims of mans power, siding with this male ideology. Madonna wears a short, black, tight fitting, revealing dress and dances in a sexy manner around the church this further objectifying women. It controversy into the church as she has acted inappropriately and dressed without any respect.



A matter in the video which also caused controversy is how there is a black Jesus, a black female God and the footage of the woman being stabbed and raped is juxtaposed with filming of a black gospel choir happily singing. The representation of both Jesus and God being black contracts the traditional and common representations which should not be questioned therefore angered Christians and Catholics. The innocent black man is also arrested which is evidence of racial profiling. The fact that the video was released at the same time as the Rodney King beating made matters worse in terms of the amount of controversy this caused. In her music video there is also a suggested relationship between her and Jesus, the combination of sex and religion was opposed by many during the time of the videos release.

There is a point in the video where her hands start bleeding in the church which could be seen as stigmata. making a point that she is a 'Saint' similar to Jesus. This is evidence of Dyers theory and exaggerates her star image by making her look like she is more important than everyone else. The stigmata scars sparked controversy from the Catholic church because Stigmata is not necessarily referred to as a punishment. The church was outraged by this inappropriate misuse of Stigmata.

The controversy caused by the music video led to Pepsi dropping their contract her. They originally wanted her to appear in a series of TV commercials of which her music would be played and she would be payed $5 million. It was common for Fizzy drink companies to sponsor and join a contract with singers as a way of advertising their companies. Pepsi dropped Madonna after the "like a prayer" videos release because of the outrage it caused.

Camera editing and sound are the technical conventions shown in the video that makes the genre of the video clear. It also acts as evidence supporting Dyers star theory. The camera is used with most shots being on Madonna and what she is doing. These shots include lots of close ups and mid shots of her highlighting her as a important and how the focus of the audience is supposed to be on her. This being evidence of Dyers theory as there is continued consumption of Madonna through her products and fits with paradox 2 that the star should be simultaneously present and absent for the consumer. The use of closeups of the singer is also a common convention of pop genre music videos. The editing for this music video isn't in correlation with the music, it is when it feels comfortable to change the shot in the story thats being portrayed. This proving the the story about the star being shown (Madonna) as more important that the music in the video. Again suggesting Madonnas power, importance and how the audience should see her as different and better than anyone else. In terms of sound, Madonnas singing is the main focus of the sound with a gospel choir singing as backing vocals again highlighting her star image and importance. The symbolic conventions (mise-en-scene) mentioned throughout this analysis all help Madonna represent this 'star figure', helping make this video go alongside the pop genre- representing her as a 'pop' star and attracting a certain audience.