Open Your Heart (Madonna Song) - Music Video

Music Video

The music video was shot at Echo Park in Los Angeles, California. Madonna portrays an exotic dancer who befriends a young boy, played by child actor Felix Howard. This video was originally set to be directed by Madonna's then-husband Sean Penn, but in the end the final honors went to Jean-Baptiste Mondino, who went on to work with Madonna on her videos for "Justify My Love" (1990), "Human Nature" (1995), "Love Don't Live Here Anymore" (1996), "Don't Tell Me" (2000) and "Hollywood" (2003). The video was shot in October 1986 and was released in December 1986. It was produced by David Naylor. The video was nominated for three MTV Video Music Awards in 1987. In the best female video category "Open Your Heart" lost to another Madonna video, when her "Papa Don't Preach" video won the award. The video has been ranked at #35 on VH1's "50 Sexiest Video Moments" of all time.

The "Open Your Heart" music video presents an early version of Madonna's musings about her Italian-American heritage and focus on her feminocentric street theology, which was also explicitly brought out by 1987's Who's That Girl World Tour. The video is structured as a cinematic peep show and voyeurism that portrays Madonna as a stripper. It starts with a little boy trying to go inside a peep show where Madonna is the star performer but getting rebuffed by an old man at the ticket booth outside. Inside Madonna starts singing the song from the center of a carousel that revolves to display her to the gaze of the customers who are sitting safely in their cubicles. Madonna is dressed in a black bustier, spike heels, fishnets, revealing her new slimmed down body at that time. She begins the video wearing a black wig which she subsequently removes, revealing her short bleached hair. The lighting is bluish and dark. Her look is a mix of actresses Marlene Dietrich in the movie The Blue Angel as well as Liza Minnelli as the character Sally Bowles in the Bob Fosse-directed musical film Cabaret. The dancing is restrained with a single prop: that of a solitary chair. At one point in the first segment of the video, she is filmed dancing but the camera is almost still and the motions of the dance are confined within the small range of the camera. As the screens inside the viewing booths open and close, the camera slices the shots of Madonna each with its own angle and duration. The same imagery is exhibited by the little boy outside who tries to frame Madonna's playbill image into different angles. There are four other men in the booths who are made of wood with paintings of artist Tamara de Lempicka on them. Madonna at one point takes off her gloves like Rita Hayworth in Gilda and points towards one of the wooden paintings. It collapses and she blows on her finger.

The video is similar in thematic content to Mötley Crüe's video for the single "Girls, Girls, Girls". But in contrast, this video tells the story from Madonna's point of view. She looks down into the cubicles to make eye contact with the men but they are unable to return it. She also looks assertively into the camera, making eye contact with the viewer. With these scenes Madonna portrays her holding power over the men and the ability to pursue them. Madonna represents an assertive woman searching for a lover who can accept her as a human being. Author Bruce Forbes notes that the men in the cubicles are proved unworthy of her and there is an undertone of mockery when Madonna addresses them as 'baby' while shaking her body. By the end of the video the isolated and sad men depart with the doors closing on them. (If viewers looks closely, they will see that one of t he customers is actually an African-American woman.) As the final chorus breaks into dance grooves, Madonna comes out of the theater and gives the boy a quick kiss on his lips. Both are clad in loose-fitting gray suits, which gives Madonna an androgynous look. They stroll away playfully in the sunrise, reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin and Jack Coogan in The Kid with the old boss pursuing them and shouting "Come back, come back, we still need you" in Italian. The tension between the visual and the musical dimensions of the video is extremely unsettling according to author Nicholas B. Dirks. Only when she disappears from the carousel and reappears to run away from her patriarchal boss with the young boy, then the music and visuals become comparable.