Music Video Analysis: Never Been Kissed

To be honest, this music videos was quite difficult for me to break down initially. I had never seen the music video and my only experience with the song was hearing part of it in the movie Never Been Kissed, which, admittedly, is not a significant experience with the text. After listening to in a dozen times for this assignment though, I have to say that I do like it. I had also never analyzed a music video before, so I felt unqualified, but our in-class discussion was very enlightening. I was glad to hear that my classmates noticed the same things that I did and I was surprised to hear many of their connotations. Most importantly, they gave me so many interesting and great ideas that helped me to sort through the complex and contradictory
She sees a church and she seeks refuge there. This occurs as she sings, “I hear you call my name, And it feels like home,” thus reinforcing the church as a place of refuge from the persecution symbolized by the police sirens. Once inside the church, the cool blues and greys of the outside world are replaced by warm, welcoming, and fiery oranges and reds. Inside the church, Madonna is no longer on the run, she is able to rest and seek comfort from the statue of a saint. Her sexuality emerges concurrently. Madonna sheds her long cloak, revealing a form fitting dress with straps that continuously slide off her shoulders and partially reveal her bra. She is fully freed when the saint statue comes to life and whispers in her ear, after which she is joined by a choir, which she sings and dances for the rest of the music video. The emergence of Madonna’s sexuality, is reinforced by the innuendo of the song’s lyrics, which compares the voice of the song’s subject to an angel sighing, compares the effect that the subject of the song has on the singer to falling and
Thus, sex provides the same refuge and comfort as religion. In this way, Madonna powerfully draws upon centuries of religious history and symbolism, as is evident with the church setting, abundant crosses, and biblical allusions (as with Madonna’s touch bringing a man to life, as Jesus famously did), to the make well-founded and incredibly controversial argument for sexual liberation. She not only argues for sexual freedom, but she does so by drawing powerful visual and lyrical parallels between religion and sex and sexuality, which suggests that sex and sexuality can, for some, be like a