Development The music video for "Justify My Love" was filmed within three days in November 1990 at the
Royal Monceau Hotel in Paris, France. It was directed by
Jean-Baptiste Mondino, who had previously directed the video for Madonna's "
Open Your Heart" (1987). The clip was produced by Philippe Dupuis-Mendel under Bandits, in a co-production with
Propaganda Films, with
editing by Oliver Gajan and
principal photography by Pascal Lebegue. The video features Madonna's then-boyfriend
Tony Ward, fellow models Amanda Cazalet and Wallis Franken Montana, as well as
Jose Gutierez Xtravaganza, who was a dancer on the Blond Ambition World Tour which occurred earlier that year. It is a tribute to the film
Bay of Angels (1963). Mondino described the concept of the music video: I've worked with Madonna a few times now, and there's more to her than people think. She's a great actress. So I wanted to do something less glamorous, less slick, more real. I wanted to put the paparazzi out of work. How can a picture of Madonna and Tony together be surprising when you've already seen them together half-naked in a video? [..] It was very cheap, very easy. It's very real — that's what's so shocking about it. And maybe her kissing a woman... but that's part of our society. And with AIDS, shouldn't we celebrate kissing as a beautiful thing? Mondino did an experience for the video, locking the entire crew into a hotel for three days and two nights, setting no rules, and nobody was allowed to go out. The entire top floor with 15 rooms was rented, and also served as makeup and wardrobe rooms; they had no deadline, as opposed to a regular video. He explained that he did not have any concept, except for the idea that Madonna arrived in the hotel tired and broken, and left full of energy. The director recalled that by the end of it, he was unable to differentiate the real from the performed as they were not following a script. He described the shooting as "very quiet, it was very gentle, we were all very sweet to each other", and said "we were talking, chatting, laughing, playing the music, shooting and when people were tired they went to bed".
Synopsis is alluded to when two women are seen in men's clothing and with drawn-on moustaches. The video was filmed in
grainy black and white. It opens with a dancer in a black bodysuit dancing to the camera, cutting to Madonna walking down a hotel hallway, looking tired. She is dressed in an overcoat, carrying a suitcase, with her hand on her forehead. The ajar doors in the hallway also reveal glimpses of a topless androgynous figure, as well as a shirtless man who appears to be receiving oral sex. As Madonna starts
lip synching the song, she drops the suitcase and kneels down against the wall, while caressing her neck. She opens her coat, which reveals she is wearing lace underwear, garter belt, and stockings. An out-of-focus male figure, played by Ward, emerges, and slowly walks towards her. As Madonna stands, she pulls Ward towards her and they kiss. More images from the doors are also shown, displaying a man in black leather clothes lacing a woman into a
corset, as well as a woman wearing a corset who turns to camera thrusting her breasts forward. The video moves into a scene where Madonna is seen in a bedroom, slowly removing her clothes and displaying herself on a white bed as Ward observes her. He comes close to her, undressing himself and preparing to mount her, and she pushes him away. A cut occurs, and Madonna is seen laying down with an androgynous woman, wearing male clothes and make up applied on her eyes. They engage in a kiss as Ward observes as a
voyeur. Two
transgender women are then seen caressing each other's faces, while observing themselves in a mirror. The video returns to the bedroom scene, where Ward is on top of Madonna and appears to be penetrating her. A
dominatrix enters the bedroom in a cop hat and leather gloves, as well as suspenders covering her nipples. She then grabs Ward by the hair, who is tied up on a chair, wearing a latticed leather harness and leather chaps. Madonna and Ward are back in bed, caressing each other; he is then seen rubbing his face on Madonna's body until it reaches her feet.
Women in drag draw thin mustaches on each other and look into the camera, as Madonna laughs in the background, putting her hand onto her mouth. A man holds a woman's face as she makes a fearful look to the camera. Two men are seen sitting on a couch caressing each other, while a
crossdresser is laying down on their laps. Madonna leaves the hotel hurriedly, holding her suitcase, with Ward reaching out for her to return. She throws her head back as she laughs, with mouth open wide, then bites one of her fingers in disbelief. The video fades to black, and the words "poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another" appear on the screen.
Release and banning The video was set to premiere on
MTV's "Madonnathon" weekend event, of which it was going to be the main attraction. However, the network suddenly announced that it could not be broadcast; on November 29, 1990, MTV's correspondent
Kurt Loder explained the reasons: "When MTV programming executives got their first look at the video's steamy bed scenes, gay and lesbian snuggling, S&M and briefly bared female breasts, they decided they couldn't air it." The channel's executives also said in a statement, "We love Madonna; we've had and will continue to have a terrific relationship with her. We respect her work as an artist and think she makes great videos. In its current form, this one is just not for us". It was rejected by its standards committee, which previews all new videos, and requests artists to edit or trim objectionable scenes. According to MTV's vice-president Abbey Konowitch, the network frequently had concerns about the content of the singer's videos, stating, "You take the black lingerie, sex scenes and flesh out of 'Justify My Love,' and you've got 10 seconds of ill-focused dancing." The channel had previously threatened to ban Madonna's music videos from airing — such as "
Express Yourself", "
Oh Father" (1989), and "
Vogue" (1990) — but ultimately broadcast all videos unedited. it was later aired on
ABC's
Nightline, on December 3. The channel's lawyers analyzed the video before it was shown, and agreed to its broadcast "because of the news value of the video, the late air time, and the focus of the discussion". Madonna was also interviewed by the show's host
Forrest Sawyer about the video's sexual content and censorship. She defended the video as a "celebration of sex" and wondered, "Why is it that people are willing to go and watch a movie about someone getting blown to bits for no reason at all, and nobody wants to see two girls kissing and two men snuggling?" The singer also expressed during the interview that she did not understand why MTV banned the video yet allowed videos that contained violence and degradation to women to continue receiving regular airplay, saying, "I draw the line at violence and humiliation and degradation." Her appearance on
Nightline became the show's highest-rated episode for the entire year. Other shows which showed parts of the video also garnered record-breaking ratings, such as
Saturday Night Live (
SNL) and
CNN's
Showbiz Today. The music video was also banned from regular rotation on
MuchMusic and
Musique Plus in Canada. John Martin, program director for the former, said it was inappropriate to air, while the latter's program director Pierre Marchand called the video a "soft-porn short movie with a message about freedom of choice", and stated that viewers needed to understand before accepting it. The banning led MuchMusic to air a special titled
A Question of Taste, where the video was aired in its entirety, accompanied by panel discussions on its artistic and cultural context. In the UK, the video premiered on
Channel 4's
The Word, and later the
Independent Broadcasting Authority determined its airing only after the
9pm watershed. Although many complaints were received, the clip was played without restriction on the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation's music video show
Rage, as the channel is not bound to follow classification guidelines due to being a public broadcaster. In 2002, the video was aired in its entirety on
MTV2 as part of a special countdown showing the most controversial videos ever to air on MTV. Upon the video's banning, Madonna decided make it available commercially as a
video single, marking the first time an artist had released a single in this format in the United States; it was described as an unprecedented move in the video industry. When asked whether she stood to make money selling the video than airing it on MTV, she answered, "Yeah, so lucky me." with the retail price of $9.98. In the United Kingdom, the video was given an
18 certificate by the
British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), meaning no one under that age could legally buy or see the release. It was reported that in Saudi Arabia it was sold at a high price as illegal market porn.
Reception and analysis agreed that banning the video from MTV was the right decision, despite deeming it as "truly avant-garde". Caryn James from
Tampa Bay Times considered Madonna's music videos for "Express Yourself" and "
Papa Don't Preach" (1986) more controversial, but deemed "Justify My Love" as her most pretentious, stating: "The
feminist message of Justify My Love is that Madonna can control a career as shrewdly as any man."
Camille Paglia, writing for
The New York Times, called Madonna "a true feminist" and deemed the video "truly avant-garde, at a time when that word has lost its meaning in the flabby art world". Nevertheless, she stated that MTV was right to ban it, as "parents cannot possibly control television, with its titanic omnipresence" and that "it does not belong on a mainstream music channel watched around the clock by children". On the other hand,
Liz Smith, writing for the
Sarasota Herald-Tribune, was critical of the decision, and hoped that since "MTV has gone so moral on the public, that they'll also begin to take close looks at other material submitted to them by all those macho metal and rap groups, with their own S&M overtones, their incipient violence and degradation-of-women themes". She also noted that who admired the singer would applaud her refusal to censor her art, and who never liked her would dislike her more than ever. Richard Goldstein from
The Village Voice opined that "by suppressing erotic dissent, MTV does its best to see that this powerful medium will not communicate the 'wrong' idea about sex. That may pacify the puritans, but it also makes it easier to deny women and gays their full humanity—easier for the metal masses to justify their hate", concluding that "'Justify My Love' makes it harder to hurt people".
Johns Hopkins University professor of popular culture
Mark Crispin Miller observed that it was "perfectly all right for MTV to broadcast sadomasochism couplings and events as long as the images don't violate a certain heterosexual norm". Considine wrote in the book
The Madonna Companion: Two Decades of Commentary that the banning "immediately mushroomed into a censorship scandal", as "Madonna insisted that she hadn't caused the commotion intentionally", but "her critics accused her of planning the whole thing. Nobody doubted her intelligence then—they merely held it against her." In
Justify My Love: Sex, Subversion, and Music Video,
Ryann Donnelly wrote that "while the banning of Madonna's Justify My Love video for its explicit sexual content has become somewhat legendary — a sufficient promotional tool in itself — few artists could have sacrificed the support of MTV in a similar way to that of Madonna, before
YouTube". Commenting on the video's release as a video single, Landon Palmer stated in
Rock Star/Movie Star: Power and Performance in Cinematic Rock Stardom that "the release of 'Justify My Love' exclusively on VHS had the effect of creating a new moving image platform – the 'video single' – for Madonna's cultural production, extending the narrowcast relationship between artist and audience popularized by MTV". The video's bisexual and sadomasochist themes were also noted. In another article, Paglia recalled that "in a number of videos, Madonna has played with bisexual innuendos", and "Justify My Love" was a culmination of that; she considered Madonna as a pioneer for "restoring lesbian eroticism to the continuum of heterosexual response" in the clip, showing "bisexuality and all experimentation as a liberation from false, narrow categories". Lucy O'Brien, in her book
She Bop II: The Definitive History of Women in Rock, Pop and Soul, wrote that "conveying the full power of sexual ambiguity", Madonna showed in the video "how gender roles could be swapped, blurred and played with to create a multitude of different identities". According to Janelle L. Wilson and Gerald E. Markle, the eroticism shown in the video was "by traditional standards, non-normative. The effeminate dancer, the homosexual behavior and the action and appearance of the masculine woman in the video also represent behavior outside the accepted norms." For Cathy Schwichtenberg, Madonna's "languid French kiss with ''l'autre femme
" in the video was a representation of "a deconstruction of lines and boundaries that fragment male/female gender polarities and pluralize sexual practices. This is a postmodern, unbounded feminism, that unifies coalitionally rather than foundationally." According to Tim Dean in the book Beyond Sexuality'', the music video was "replete with stylized gestures of representing the whole catalogue of perverse activity: lesbianism, fetishism, voyeurism, transvestism, troilism, and the ritual accoutrements of sadomasochism". Reflecting on the video for "Justify My Love" in a retrospective review, Tom Breiham from
Stereogum pointed out that the video became "one more time that Madonna made the entire media industrial complex serve her interests". Daniel Browne, writing for
The Gay UK website, cited five reasons for calling the video a "masterpiece", such as sex, gender bending, and gay and lesbian romping, describing it as "five minutes of artistic brilliance. I cannot think of a video before or since that covers such a topic in a positive and empowering way. The act of sex in its various forms, cross-dressing and fluid sexuality tend to kept behind closed doors." In a similar vein,
Dig!s Mark Elliott went on to say that "the gender fluidity and nudity featured in the new video were provocative enough in a more sheltered era, but the fact it was being issued by such a major star was extraordinary", citing George Michael's "I Want Your Sex" (1987) as an example of a video that had explored similar thematic territory, but was altogether more conventional in its approach. Samantha Grossman from
Time observed that "if YouTube had existed when 'Justify My Love' was released in 1990, the extremely
NSFW music video would have gone
viral in minutes, if not seconds". In 2015, Christopher Rosa of
VH1 showed the music video to five people
around the age of twenty, later interviewing them on their thoughts after watching it. All five of them agreed that it was "certainly envelope-pushing", but also pointed out that "it's nothing 2015 artists haven't done (or even surpassed)", with the author citing the film
Fifty Shades of Grey and
Nicki Minaj's music video for "
Anaconda" (2014) as examples. Additionally, it was later added to sexiest music videos of all time lists by VH1,
Rolling Stone, and
Marie Claire. ==Live performances==