Tag Archives: josef-sorett

Religion professor Josef Sorett says Gaga’s themes have long tradition in pop music. By James Montgomery Lady Gaga in “Alejandro” Photo: Interscope Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro” video is so rife with religious imagery that you practically need a Ph.D. to understand it all. And luckily enough, we found somebody with one: Josef Sorett, a professor of religion and African-American studies at Columbia University. With everyone from director Steven Klein and Gaga’s fans to Perez Hilton and Katy Perry weighing in on the clip’s use of religious (mostly Catholic) images, we decided to ask Sorett for a scholar’s opinion on the “Alejandro” video, to find out just what, exactly, all those crosses and rosary beads mean. “To me, this video is very much about the wedding of the spiritual and the sexual, which, to be quite honest, has been a longstanding theme in popular music, whether it be someone like Madonna or, you know, Marvin Gaye,” Sorett told MTV News. “But there’s also a tradition of this — using the notions of love or loss to explain the relationship between humanity and divinity — in the Catholic church that goes back much further, obviously.” Sorett pointed to a key scene at the beginning of the “Alejandro” video, in which Gaga, holding a bejeweled heart on a pillow, leads a funeral procession, as an example of this, pointing out both the divine and the human symbolism of it all. “You have her holding the Sacred Heart, the bleeding heart of God for humanity, and at the same time, the funeral also reminds me of Eva Per