Judas, an Analysis

When watching Lady Gaga’s music video for her song Alejandro last summer, I was struck with the feeling that there could be a deeper meaning to the song that was brought into sharp focus by the music video. In that case, I was shocked that a video about men with Hispanic names (Alejandro, Fernando, Roberto) manifested in a music video that, for me, invoked a sense of Nazism and most certainly warlike symbolism of Western European culture.


As I often do, in order to better understand what I was seeing, I wrote a brief essay explaining what I thought.

Allow me to do this again, because the music video of Judas surprised me in a similar manner. When listening to the song alone, I expected to get the Western European themes or settings (I imagined the Holy Roman Empire, though I doubted she would do something very historically accurate), and to an extent, I also expected something with the Middle East – Israel (though that seemed far too obvious for Lady Gaga). What I did not expect was a Biker Gang and very (to perhaps over-generalize) Hispanic imagery.

Upon listening to the song, what I initially got was a sense of madness and obsession: Lady Gaga (even insane in her name, “gaga”) repeats “Judas Juda-a-a, Judas Juda-a-a, Judas Juda-a-a, Judas, GaGa” many times throughout the song. To paraphrase the Einstein quote, insanity is repetition while expecting a different result. The repetition seemed to exude an insane kind of obsession, like the more she spoke his name the more likely it was that he would come back to her.

But what is causing this obsession? Clearly it is what she has lost: Judas. She says she would do all of these things for him, if only to get him back: “I’ll wash his feet with my hair if he needs”, “Forgive him when his tongue lies through his brain”. She worships him: “A king with no crown.” Even after he betrays her, she still wants him back and would do anything for him.

But then she implies that she has been given something of a crusade, if we are to continue with the religious imagery. “I’ll bring him down, bring him down, down”. The crusade, we shall assume, is from Jesus, and to me that is reinforced by the music video (which I’ll talk about momentarily.)

A strong theme in the song is that of a dual nature. Lady Gaga exhibits a dual nature in the lines “Jesus is my virtue, Judas is the demon I cling to”, as well as “I’ve learned love is like a brick, you can build a house or sink a dead body” (which is one of those lines that reminds me of her “once you kill a cow, you gotta make a burger” line from her Telephone music video – stating the obvious, but in such a cruel, stark way that it jars). From the brick line, she launches right into a repeat of “I’ll bring him down” line, which implies to me that she will be using a brick (her love) to bring him down. Unfortunately for Gaga, she is unsuccessful. (More on that in a moment.)

And now we go to the music video, for some clarification, affirmation, and perhaps a little more depth to my argument.

In the beginning of the music video, we see the biker gang, each disciple with their name written on the back of their leather jacket.

Unlike the rest of the men, we do not see Jesus’ name; he is only identified by his crown of thorns.

The thing that struck me immediately about this scene is that Lady Gaga is in color, but the only color on the rest of the screen is red: you can see break lights, flesh tones, and the color of Judas’ bike is a very deep, blood red.

Judas spends the entire length of that portion of the music video constantly in motion toward the front of the pack, but never surpasses Jesus. The rest of the disciples remain in formation.

What the song alone did not convey to me (because the focus is entirely on Judas, and her lust after him) is that does love Jesus, even though she is still in love with Judas.

She spends most of the music video, when in the character of Mary Magdalene, touching Jesus, hanging on him, defending him with her lipstick gun.

She might still love Judas, but she has chosen to remain with Jesus.

However, something that struck me the first time I watched the video was the scene where a wave taller than Lady Gaga crashes over her, and, what with the very Christian images the video provides, my mind leapt straight to baptism.

Upon closer inspection, it is a sort of baptism, but it is entirely forced upon her. She is literally overcome and swept away by the wave. It leads me to believe that this is a forced allegiance to Jesus and to virtue, and what I realized is that although she chooses with her mind to follow Jesus, her heart remains in the darkness with Judas.

It is the second baptism of the music video that affirms this for me.

She washes the feet of Jesus and Judas,

and afterward is baptized again, this time by Judas. He pours his beer on her when her back is turned.

It is the second “beer baptism” which affirms for me that she is beyond the point where she could return (she even admits that she is “beyond repentance”) and so she is lost.

In the end of the video, she is stoned, and unlike the story of Mary Magdalene from the Bible, Jesus does not save her.

And although she dies, it is not much of a stretch to say that in this case, she does not lose. She loved Judas and never meant to leave him. If accepting her fate (death) is what she needs to do to prove herself to him, she will. Insane and obsessive, indeed.

A brief disclaimer: My intention was not to preach while writing this analysis of the song and music video. It is hard to not sound like that when the subject matter is very clearly religious, and I try to only analyze the material within its own context and emphasize the result with what I know and have learned about Christianity in my studies.