Week # 2 Discussion: Pardun & McKee’s ‘Strange Bedfellows: Symbols of Religion and Sexuality on MTV’
Pardun and McKee’s ‘Strange Bedfellows: Symbols of Religion and Sexuality on MTV’ is an interesting study on the use of religious and sexual imagery in rock music videos. The research, which was conducted through content analysis, aims to examine how frequently these images are used at the same time in the same video.
The methodology involved aims to answer two questions: How often is religious imagery used in rock videos? And when religious image is used, is it used alone or is it combined with the use of sexual imagery?
Previous research in this field focused on Madonna, who’s music videos at the time blended both sexual and religious imagery. While this article does make some interesting points it is important to note that the article was published fifteen years ago in 1995.
It would be interesting to take Pardun and McKee’s methodology and apply it to music videos that are featured on MTV today. After reading the author’s literature review, where the authors quote Larson’s description of Madonna as someone who “wears a crucifix around her neck, see-through blouses, and fingerless gloves. She admitted the crucifix was because of her affinity for ‘a sexy man on a cross’ “, I couldn’t help but think of Lady Gaga’s ‘Alejandro’ music video and how this ties into their research.
One can see Madonna’s influence in this video and I would argue that Lady Gaga adds to Madonna’s critique of religion, most notably Christianity’s repressive viewpoints on sexuality and gender. The ‘Alejandro’ video contains scenes of Gaga wearing a nun’s dress made out of red leather, a white hood covered with red crosses, and a ghostly-looking Gaga swallowing a rosary.
Pardun and McKee state in their discussion that the ‘majority of the videos used religious images with no apparent connection to the story line of the music video’. Perhaps sexuality and religion that are found in music videos are simply outlandish ways to express an art-form – or maybe artists in the 1990s were critiquing religion like Lady Gaga is doing today.
Do you feel that displaying images of both sexuality and religion in music videos somehow motivate youth to change their viewpoint on sexuality or religion?
If this study was done today, do you think the research would find that music videos would portray more or less religious and sexual imagery than in 1995?