Will Lady Gaga's Judas video fail to outrage religious leaders?
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By Sarah Pulliam Bailey for USA TODAY
Lady Gaga's Judas music video is out, but few religious leaders seem to be rushing to condemn the artist's adoration for the man who turned Jesus over to soldiers with the mark of a kiss.
The video (probably NSFW) opens with Jesus wearing a crown and cornrows as the apostles fitted in leather head down a freeway on motorcycles. The rest of the video is full of religious imagery, including foot washing in a bathtub, crosses on Lady Gaga's bra and plenty of gyrating.
The song was released in time for Holy Week, and her newly released video has more than 2 million hits at this point.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue appeared underwhelmed in his short statement, suggesting that Lady Gaga "typically dances on the line without going over it."
"The faux-baptismal scene is a curious inclusion, as is her apparent fondness for the Jesus character," Donohue said. "But if anyone thinks the Catholic League is going to go ballistic over Lady Gaga's latest contribution, they haven't a clue about what really constitutes anti-Catholicism."
Perhaps her Alejandro music video contained more sexually suggestive imagery with her pretending to swallow a rosary and wearing a cross-shaped patch on her crotch.
"Stuff Christians Like" blogger Jon Acuff recently added an entry on "Feeling like you should write a blog post about Lady Gaga's song, Judas, but not knowing how to," suggesting none of his friends were outraged of the song.
1. Should I write about Lady Gaga's new song Judas 2. Maybe not, approximately 0 of my friends asked me this year to help them with a protest of Lady Gaga's Judas. And no one sent me online petitions trying to get the song taken off the radio. 3. Are we mad about that song? It doesn't seem like it. 4. Hooray! We've chilled out on stuff like that. 5. Wait, is that a bad thing? Is that a sign of our generation's weakening faith and refusal to take a stand for the supremacy and majesty of God? 6. Yikes, that's a big conclusion to jump to based on a song.
She told MSN Lady Gaga intends for the video to depict the apostles as revolutionaries in a modern-day Jerusalem, as Ann Oldenburg points out.
Her goal, she says, is to show that "forgiveness and betrayal are hand in hand ... video puts destiny above all things and postures that the mistakes in your life are in fact not mistakes at all, they are just part of your overarching potential and your destiny." And, she said, "It's meant more to celebrate faith than it is to challenge it."
Some are taking her potential to combine the spiritual with the musical seriously. America magazine posted a series of responses on the theology of Lady Gaga. Phil Fox Rose of Busted Halo says he finds it "moving, both artistically and spiritually."
Author David W. Stowe of argued in the New York Times that Lady Gaga could signal the meshing of popular culture and Christianity.
Interestingly, it's Lady Gaga who offers a throwback to the less-segregated pop of the past. Her new single, Judas, includes the lines: "I'll wash his feet with my hair if he needs / Forgive him when his tongue lies through his brain / Even after three times he betrays me / I'll bring him down ... a king with no crown." While the song is unlikely to herald an end to the religious/secular rift in pop music, maybe it takes someone as genre-bending as Lady Gaga to bring mainstream pop and Christianity back together.
New York magazine has a line-by-line interpretation of the lyrics if you want to walk through them.
Do you think Lady Gaga intends to shock people? Do you find her work outrageous, inspiring, underwhelming or something else?
See photos of: Lady Gaga
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