The One Time Madonna Censored Her Own Video—And Why She Felt She Had To Do It To Keep Her Kids Safe
She swore she pulled the video out of respect. But years later, she admitted the frightening true reason.
YouTube, Twitter & Denis Makarenko / Shutterstock Madonna has built her 40-year career on many things, but controversy has been chief among them. From challenging sexual and gender taboos, to speaking out about AIDS long before it was acceptable to do so, to even fighting with the literal Vatican, the artist has never shied away from being provocative or political.
Until, that is, when she actually did back in 2003. That year, the now 64-year-old pop queen shocked the media and her fandom alike by being the opposite of provocative, bowing to outrage and controversy and censoring her own work.
Madonna pulled her 2003 video for 'American Life' amid worries that it endangered her children.
Madonna's 2003 album "American Life" was an angry, woeful rumination on celebrity culture, American politics, and "the American Dream" in the immediate life-changing aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. The video for the song "American Life" was meant to take the album's concept a step further, by protesting President George W. Bush's march toward the Iraq War.
Madonna's 'American Life' video sparked outrage before it was ever released.
Details of the video's concept first began appearing in late 2002 and early 2003, when the debate over the proposed Iraq War was at its highest. The video, Madonna announced, would feature a dark and twisted "War on Terror"-themed fashion show that becomes increasingly violent and unsettling as it goes along.
The celebrity look-alikes in the front row gleefully laugh along at the ever more macabre spectacle, while video backdrops show incredibly graphic news footage from previous wars. Meanwhile, Madonna and a cabal of female commandos gate-crash the fashion show and angrily force the assembled crowd to wake up.
The infamous ending sees Madonna hurl a grenade that a George W. Bush look-alike uses to light a cigar he shares with Saddam Hussein. Madonna meant to highlight how no one seemed to be taking "the catastrophic repercussions and horrors" of the proposed Iraq War seriously.
From the vantage point of 2023, it's impossible to argue that Madonna didn't have a point. Shell-shocked by the horror of September 11, even many liberal Americans and Democratic politicians supported the Iraq War, despite Iraq having nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. As began to be revealed a year later, the Bush Administration sold the Iraq War to the American people on entirely false pretenses.
But amid the post-9/11 mourning and fear, speaking out against the war and President Bush was widely considered unforgivably unpatriotic and disrespectful, and Madonna's "American Life" video concept sparked immediate outrage and backlash—so much so that The New York Times declared it the thing that would finally end Madonna's then-20-year career.
Madonna outraged many fans by pulling the 'American Life' video days after the Iraq War began out of respect for the US military.
The video was eventually replaced with a hastily thrown-together music video in which she simply lip-syncs to the song.
Days before, Natalie Maines, lead singer of The Chicks (then known as The Dixie Chicks) had criticized George W. Bush in an anti-war statement at a concert, and a shocking backlash, including boycotts and televised CD burnings, erupted.
Fans and some in the media accused Madonna of pulling the "American Life" video because she didn't want to "be Dixie Chicked," and was afraid the backlash would hobble her album sales (which it did indeed end up doing). But Madonna denied this was true in an interview with Matt Lauer, insisting she did it because she feared the public "would misconstrue...that I was slagging on President Bush...[or] that I was making light of what’s happening to the soldiers in Iraq, which I’m not."
"Things are so serious and people are so volatile that they’re not gonna see irony, they’re not gonna see subtlety, they’re not gonna see the message," she went on to say.
In recent interviews for the 20th anniversary of Madonna's "American Life" video, its director Jonas Akerlund has confirmed this was indeed the case—and he maintains they made the right choice by pulling it. But in 2005, Madonna revealed there was more behind the decision.
Madonna later revealed she pulled the 'American Life' video because she was afraid for her children's safety.
In a 2005 interview around the release of her next album "Confessions On a Dance Floor," Madonna admitted that fears of "being Dixie Chicked" were indeed top of mind when she decided to pull the "American Life" video—but not because she was worried about album sales.
As revealed in their 2006 documentary, The Chicks had faced credible death threats, including threats to their children, forcing them to hire round-the-clock security.
A similar fear consolidated Madonna's decision to abandon the video.
"I was ready to fight," she told Spanish-language newspaper El Pais of MTV's insistence on censoring Madonna's "American Life" video. "But there came a time when I remembered that I had a family," she said, referencing her daughter Lourdes Leon, now 26, and Rocco Ritchie, now 22. (She later adopted son David Banda and daughter Mercy James, both 17, and twins Stella and Estere, now 10.)
"I saw what the Dixie Chicks suffered when they said they were ashamed to be from the same state as President Bush. Quite simply, they became the most hated women in the US and I decided that my two children were not going to go through that situation."
Madonna has never shied from controversy since, and has continued to perform "American Life" on tour despite its flop status. But she was probably right to protect her children back in 2003—as any mother in her position would have. And given all that has happened in the 20 years since, that should be a sobering thought for all of us.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.