The real sinners in Madonna’s latest temptation

Press, 31 March 1989, Page 8

The real sinners in Madonna’s latest temptation

THE TROUBLE with blasphemy — apart from the awfulness of the thing itself — is the effect it can have on perfectly sensible people.

There seems to be two main attitudes to it. First, that it is a bad thing but not so serious that anyone should try to prevent it, since nothing whatever should interfere with free speech. The second view is diametrically opposed: that blasphemy is so bad it simply ought not to happen; and that religious feelings ought to be respected and protected, if necessary, by law. Both these positions are arguable. The trouble is, such arguments tend to get out of hand. Particularly for those who (like myself) are inclined towards the second view, there is an ever present danger of outrage leading to heavy breathing, redness in the face and spots before the eyes. This leads in turn to a major temptation: to avoid the consequent feelings of absurdity by extravagant displays of reasonableness.

fulminated the "Daily Mirror,” “condmened as blasphemous by leaders of her own Catholic faith, will be shown to children on a prime-time TV pop show on Saturday. The five-minute tape,in which Madonna is seen being kissed passionately by Christ, has enraged Catholics in Britain.” Viewers, the newspaper continued, would see Madonna showing a bleeding hole in the palm of each hand, representing Christ’s wounds, a field of burning crosses with Madonna dancing scantily clad in front of them, and Madonna on ah altar, with a black Christ bending over and kissing her passionately. All this was accompanied by still photographs, one of them appearing to represent actual sex taking place. Well, the video was duly shown on a programme called “The Chart Show,” and the most terrible thing about it turned out to be the quite astonishing musical drivel one had to sit through before it came on. When it did, I must have missed something because I found it hard to muster any real sense of outrage.

I have always avoided this temptation in the past, but it may be that at the present I am in the grip of it. I have felt strong inclinations in this direction since being shown an article which appeared last week in a London tabloid newspaper, with a huge headline across two pages reading “Madonna: her video has outraged the Church.”. Madonna, for those who did not know, is not who you might have thought, but a pop star. She has released a single called “Like a Prayer,” and it is the accompanying short video which is supposed to have caused all of the fuss.

Madonna turned out to be a nice, healthy young woman fetchingly but decently clad. She sang in tune and danced very prettily. The “steamy embrace” turned out to be a tender and strictly hands-off kiss on the side of the face, not wholly devoid of

Madonna’s outrageous video,

Madonna’s latest video, to be shown in full on TVI on Sunday, caused a fuss in Britain recently. William Oddie, an Anglican priest, saw it

sexuality but not exactly unbridled either.

The Christ-like figure was black because of the burning crosses (obviously referring to the Ku Klux Klan). The song is all about the singer’s feelings that Life is a Mystery, and included a lot of phrases like “I can feel your power” and “I hear you calling my name.” The stigmata on Madonna’s hands seemed to refer to the pious feelings of the singer. All in all, it was tasteless enough but by no means blasphemous; it had, indeed, what (if I am not mistaken) seems ,to me like acts of religious feeling, which is not necessarily always absolutely tasteful. On the whole, I thought there was something positive here; on the other hand, maybe I am just a silly old fool who likes this pretty young woman’s lively dancing.

Unlike the two cases of clear and unequivocal blasphemy in recent months, this one does not represent a holy person as doing anything actually wicked or irreligious: the Jesus of “The Last Temptation of Christ” is a liar, and sexual voyeur and a traitor, the Prophet Muhammad is portrayed in “The Satanic Verses” as a brothel keeper.

So where did all that stuff in some popular newspapers come from? The tape, we read, has “outraged Catholics in Britain.”

What Catholics? It has been “condemned as blasphemous by leaders of the Catholic faith.” What leaders? No spokesman of the Catholic Church I have spoken to has any notion who this might refer to. As one of them put it, “we don’t spend all of our time being offended; only when something is really offensive.”

worst harmless, at best quite interesting. This is not quite so bad as actual blasphemy, certainly. But that the cynicism of the nasty little man who thought of trying to cash in on what might be called the Scorsese/Rushdie effect serves to sell a perfectly inoffensive record is almost as squalid. The video does not insult God. But the operation to publicise it is deeply insulting to Christians.

And since these claims were made before anybody could have possibly seen the video (for maximum effect, there was no advance showings), there is little doubt of the origin of all this “Catholic outrage”: the imagination of some smart cookie trying to hype up the film which is at

The Rev. Dr William Oddie is a theologian and literary historian. This article first appeared in the "Daily Telegraph” in London.