‘Oh Father’: The chilling music video inspired by Madonna’s mother’s funeral
Madonna is certainly no stranger to making provocative music videos, especially when it came to the release of her 1989 album, Like A Prayer.
Mixing religious imagery and sexuality was not your typical combination that people were used to seeing in mainstream media in the 1980s, and it was hugely frowned upon when measured by the considerably more prudish standards of the decade. Despite this, it also proved to be a hit with audiences, praising her for her bold artistic decisions.
By today’s standards, there’s not much that most people would take objection to in the video for ‘Like A Prayer’, the title track from the album. That being said, it’s not like certain videos that follow similar themes, for example, Lil Nas X’s ‘Montero (Call Me By Your Name)’, don’t also court vitriolic hatred from religious groups, who see the combination of these themes with forbidden acts to be sacrilgeous and offensive to their beliefs, and given that, ‘Like A Prayer’ may still be frowned upon if released today.
However, this wasn’t the only time Madonna shocked everyone with a music video in this album cycle. When it came to the release of the record’s final single, ‘Oh Father,’ she once again found herself in hot water for a particular scene that was seen as being in poor taste. Surprisingly, despite the song’s themes, this wasn’t anything to do with religion, and there was something else that was deemed more objectionable lying within.
The song itself focuses on themes of Madonna grappling with how to deal with authority figures who have dictated her life since childhood, and the burden that they have had on her since a young age. While much of Like A Prayer follows with this theme, the video for ‘Oh Father’, which one may think would have religious or confessional connotations, was more eye-opening for a different reason.
The video, which was directed by a young David Fincher prior to him becoming one of the leading directors in Hollywood, was shot in black and white and was supposedly inspired by aspects of the singer’s own life and childhood, as well as cinematic influences such as Citizen Kane. Taking inspiration from having been present at her mother’s funeral at the age of five, there is a scene in which the camera hovers over a casket, which contains a woman with her mouth sewn shut as her young daughter grieves.
Madonna fought with censors to allow this, which she eventually overcame, as told to Interview Magazine. “Every time I do a video, they say they’re not going to show it,” Madonna claimed to the publication. “When I did ‘Oh Father,’ they said, ‘we’re not going to show the scene with the lips sewn up.’ I said, ‘fuck you,’ and then they showed it.”
It may not have ended up being anywhere near her biggest hits, which may well have been due to the controversy surrounding the music video, but there’s no doubt that the success that the rest of this album brought her made the risk of taking these bold artistic decisions entirely worth it. What’s more, she’d go on to continually revolutionise the art of the music video in the future, so one small bit of controversy was hardly going to get in her way.
