Here’s the Meaning of the Symbolism in Lil Nas X’s Controversial New Music Video

Until last Sunday, I honestly had no idea who Lil Nas X was. I don’t really follow music in general and I honestly know especially little about rap in particular. Then, while we were driving back to Bloomington after visiting our parents for Easter, my sister mentioned to me that Lil Nas X is a rapper, that he wrote a song about being gay—which I later learned is titled “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)”—and that the music video for it includes a scene of him riding a stripper pole down to Hell and giving Satan a lap dance. She explained that religious conservatives were having a huge moral panic over this music video because they think it glorifies homosexuality and Satanism.

Having heard this, I naturally decided to look up the music video for myself to see what all the fuss was about. I have to say that, for a three-minute clip that involves the main character riding a stripper pole to Hell and giving Satan a lap dance, the music video is remarkably intellectually sophisticated. The people who worked on this video clearly did a ton of research. As soon as I watched it, I was genuinely impressed by the sheer number of classical and Biblical allusions that they managed to cram in.

It incorporates specific references to works of ancient Greek and Roman art, the Bible, Greek mythology, works of Greek philosophy, and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. They even managed to include an exact, direct quote from Plato’s Symposion in the original Classical Attic Greek! Here’s a detailed explanation of the music video’s classical and Biblical symbolism.

The cover

Before I talk about the music video itself, let’s talk about the cover for the single, which was designed by the Spanish-Croatian artist Filip Ćustić and already includes a ton of noteworthy classical allusions. For one thing, it is clearly based on the fresco The Creation of Adam, which was painted by the Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo (lived 1475 – 1564) in around the year 1512.

Michelangelo’s original fresco depicts the Judeo-Christian God in the form of a gray-haired old man creating Adam, who was the first human according to the creation story in the Book of Genesis. The cover for the song presents a reinterpretation of this fresco, with Lil Nas X portraying both Adam and the deity.

The fact that the cover is based on a fresco by Michelangelo is especially fitting since, as I discuss in this article from December 2020 about Neoclassical architecture, Michelangelo was almost certainly sexually attracted to men. He never married and is never recorded to have had any kind of sexual or romantic relationship with a woman. He is, however, recorded to have had multiple very intimate relationships with men over the course of his life. He even wrote extensive homoerotic love poems addressed to some of his male friends, in which he describes his desire for them using very carnal language.

ABOVE: The cover of the single, designed by Filip Ćustić

ABOVE: The Creation of Adam, painted in around 1512 by the Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo

The cover, however, makes several noteworthy departures from Michelangelo’s fresco. The most noteworthy departure of all is the fact that, instead of being represented as a gray-haired old man, the deity on the cover is represented as a sexy naked young man, reclining on a cloud, holding a bow and arrow, with leaves growing up out of the cloud around him.

This representation immediately reminds me of Apollon, the Greek god of archery, who is often represented in art as a sexy naked man holding a bow and arrow. The god on the cover could alternatively be Eros, the Greek god of sexual desire, who was also represented as a nude young man with a bow and arrow, but I’m more inclined to think that he is supposed to be Apollon, since Eros is usually represented in modern media as a child, not a sexy adult. Furthermore, the leaves growing up out of the clouds look to me like laurel leaves, which are traditionally said to be sacred to Apollon.

Once again, quite fittingly, Apollon is one of several gods in Greek mythology who are said to have had sexual affairs with men. His male lovers include the mortal men Hyakinthos, Kyparissos, and Branchos. By replacing the Judeo-Christian God in Michelangelo’s original painting, who condemns homosexuality, with Apollon, a Greek god who is said to have personally had homosexual affairs, the cover is hinting at the pro-LGBTQ+ message of the song.

ABOVE: The Death of Niobe’s Children, painted in the early seventeenth century by the German painter Johann König. Notice the archer god Apollon in the upper left.

The opening scene of the Garden of Eden

Now that we’ve discussed the cover, let’s talk about the music video itself. At the very beginning of the music video, before the voiceover is even finished, there is a scene of the Garden of Eden, which portrayed as a terrestrial paradise. Fascinatingly, however, the landscape is littered with ruined marble structures built in classical architectural styles. There is the façade of a Greek temple complete with a pediment, columns in the Ionic order, and a tower that vaguely resembles the leaning Tower of Pisa. These set a tone for the music video that is resolutely classical.

ABOVE: Scene of the Garden of Eden from the music video

After the voiceover, the camera zooms in on Lil Nas X in the role of Adam, sitting underneath the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil with a pink guitar. A large serpent is seen coiled around the tree. While Adam is singing, the serpent emerges from behind the tree to reveal that it also has the upper body of Lil Nas X, only with serpentine features and a third eye on its forehead.

ABOVE: Screenshot of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, as it is portrayed in Lil Nas X’s music video

This portrayal clearly alludes to medieval Christian representations of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, which frequently depict the serpent with the head and upper body of a human being. The music video, however, deviates from the medieval iconography in the following notable way. Namely, medieval Christian portrayals usually depict the serpent with the upper body of a woman. Lil Nas X’s music video, on the other hand, depicts the serpent with the upper body of a man.

In this first part of the video, Adam seems to represent Lil Nas X himself as a teenager when he first began experiencing sexual attraction towards other males. The serpent seems to represent his sexual desires, which, at this point, he still sees as “temptations” that he must resist.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a medieval Gothic relief carving at the entrance to the Notre Dame de Paris depicting the serpent in the Garden of Eden with the upper body of a woman

After emerging from behind the tree, the serpent begins singing, causing Adam to run away in terror. While Adam is running, we see a brief glimpse of a statue in classical garb with the face of the serpent. There appear to be vines growing up the statue. This statue may be intended to hint that the serpent can also be seen not as terrifying monster to flee from, but rather as a thing of beauty.

ABOVE: The statue with the face of the serpent

No matter how far Adam runs, the serpent keeps catching up with him. It emerges from a flower and it appears as a face in the clouds. While he is running, we see even more classical ruins in the background. Finally, the serpent leaps out at him and hypnotizes him with its third eye.

In the background while the serpent is hypnotizing him, the broken hand of a ruined marble colossus is plainly visible. This may be based on the famous colossal hand of Constantine I, the first Christian emperor of the Roman Empire, that is on display in the Musei Capitolini in Rome. This hand, of course, falls at the intersection of the Christian and the classical, thereby further emphasizing both themes, which are important throughout the video. The fact that the hand is broken and lying on the ground also emphasizes the idea of the fall of man.

Having been hypnotized, Adam slowly falls onto his back as his hands rise to hold the serpent’s face. They kiss. Then the serpent starts to go down on Adam, licking his belly. This is represents a new version of the story of the fall of man from the Book of Genesis. In this version, the fall comes not as a result of Eve and Adam eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but rather as a result of Adam having gay sex with the serpent of temptation.

ABOVE: Screenshot of the serpent hypnotizing Adam with the colossal hand in the background

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the broken hand of the colossus of Constantine I on display in the Musei Capitolini in Rome

The quote from Plato’s Symposion on the Tree of Knowledge

After the serpent licks Adam’s belly, the camera zooms out and zooms in on the trunk of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil itself. Inscribed on the trunk of the tree are the following words in Classical Attic Greek:

“ἐπειδὴ οὖν ἡ φύσις δίχα ἐτμήθη, ποθοῦν ἕκαστον τὸ ἥμισυ”

This is an exact quotation from the Symposion, a philosophical dialogue originally written in the Classical Attic dialect of the Greek language by the ancient Athenian philosopher Plato at some point between c. 385 and c. 370 BCE. To be more specific, the quotation comes directly from the Symposion, section 191a.

To understand precisely what this quotation is about and why it is written on the tree in the music video, we need to know what Plato’s Symposion is about. It is a written account of a conversation about the nature of sexual desire—ἔρως (érōs) in Greek—that allegedly took place among a group of elite male guests at a drinking party in Athens. The guests at the party include the tragic playwright Agathon, the young aristocrat Phaidros, Agathon’s lover Pausanias, the physician Eryximachos, comic playwright Aristophanes, and the philosopher Socrates.

ABOVE: Screenshot of the quote from Plato’s Symposion 191a in the original Classical Attic Greek on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the music video for Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)”

In the dialogue, each speaker delivers a speech in praise of ἔρως. For his speech, Aristophanes, being a comic playwright, tells a humorous fable. He says that, originally, in very ancient primordial times, human beings were unusual creatures who were roughly spherical in shape. Each human being had two faces, four arms, four legs, and two sets of genitals. Some humans had one penis and one vagina, some had two penises, and some had two vaginas.

In those times, human beings were much more physically powerful than they are now, so they rebelled against the deities and tried to seize control of Mount Olympos. The deities thwarted their rebellion and, to punish the humans for their insolence, Zeus, the king of the deities, split each individual human in half, thereby creating both men and women.

To this day, human beings are constantly searching for their other halves and, when they think they have found their other half, they embrace each other and try to be joined together as a single being, just like they were in the beginning. According to Plato’s Aristophanes, this is why some men are sexually attracted to women, some men are sexually attracted to other men, some women are sexually attracted to men, and some women are sexually attracted to other women; it is because each person is seeking a person of the gender that they were originally joined with.

It is in this context that Plato portrays Aristophanes as speaking the line that is quoted on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in Lil Nas X’s music video. The full passage in Greek actually reads as follows:

“ἐπειδὴ οὖν ἡ φύσις δίχα ἐτμήθη, ποθοῦν ἕκαστον τὸ ἥμισυ τὸ αὑτοῦ συνῄει, καὶ περιβάλλοντες τὰς χεῖρας καὶ συμπλεκόμενοι ἀλλήλοις, ἐπιθυμοῦντες συμφῦναι, ἀπέθνῃσκον ὑπὸ λιμοῦ καὶ τῆς ἄλλης ἀργίας διὰ τὸ μηδὲν ἐθέλειν χωρὶς ἀλλήλων ποιεῖν.”

This means, in my own translation:

“Therefore, after their nature was split in two, [each person] yearned that they might be joined with their other half and, throwing their arms around each other and embracing each other, they yearned to be joined together as one, and they began to die from starvation and other laziness because they were not willing to do anything without each other.”

I feel it is important to note that Plato’s story completely overlooks the existence of bisexual people, asexual aromantic people, and transgender people. Nonetheless, it is surprisingly inclusive by ancient Greek standards, since it acknowledges the existence of women who are primarily sexually attracted to other women.

References to male homosexuality and homoeroticism are practically ubiquitous throughout ancient Greek literature. Female homosexuality, on the other hand, is far less often discussed. This is probably in no small part due to the unfortunate fact that the vast majority of surviving ancient Greek sources were written by men. There were actually a few ancient Greek women who wrote works of literature, but nearly all their works have been lost.

One notable exception to this trend is the poet Sappho of Lesbos (lived c. 630 – c. 570 BCE), who is most famous today for her poems involving homosexual attraction among women. As I discuss in this article from December 2019, although only a few of Sappho’s poems survive, she is actually one of the best attested of all archaic Greek lyric poets. For most archaic Greek lyric poets, there are maybe a couple surviving lines at best; for Sappho, there are about a dozen poems that have survived to the present day either complete or in substantial portions. We are actually extremely fortunate that so much of her work has survived.

In any case, the use of this quote from Plato’s Symposion relates to several themes in Lil Nas X’s music video. One theme is, of course, the overarching theme of queerness. Aristophanes’s fable of the primordial human being attempts to explain why gay men and lesbian women exist in a humorous way, so it is contextually very fitting.

The quote also reemphasizes what the video has already implied through the drama of Adam and the serpent, which is that queer people having existed since the beginning of time. The fact that the quote is given in the original Classical Attic Greek only further serves to emphasize this idea.

Finally, the quote relates to the theme of rebellion against the Divine, which will only become even more prominent later in the video. In Aristophanes’s fable, the whole reason why human beings are split in two is because they rebelled against the deities. Likewise, the fall of man is commonly conceived as an act of rebellion against God.

ABOVE: Depiction of the “primeval man” according to Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposion

The trial before Pilate

After showing the quote from Plato on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the scene transitions. We see one version of Lil Nas X dressed in flamboyant pink fur with a curly pink wig being escorted in chains into a huge, crowded amphitheater by two other versions of himself. This scene appears to represent Lil Nas X literally putting himself on trial for being gay, having at this point come to realize that he is gay, but not yet having come to accept it.

Both of the guards escorting him are also dressed in flamboyant outfits and huge curly wigs, but they are dressed in blue, not pink. The color scheme seems deliberately designed to mark the version of Lil Nas X in chains in the center of the scene as gay and those escorting him as his straight persecutors. Meanwhile, the amphitheater itself is obviously inspired by the Roman Colosseum. Various classical-looking statues of Lil Nas X in feminine-looking clothing can be seen in the background.

As with the first scene in the Garden of Eden, this scene also seems to be loosely based on a famous scene from the Bible: the trial of Jesus before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judaea. Versions of this scene are found in all four gospels. (More specifically, you can find versions of it in Mark 14:53–15:20, Matthew 26:57–27:31, Luke 22:54–23:26, and John 18:13–19:16.) In all four accounts, Pilate is portrayed as reluctant to sentence Jesus, but he agrees to sentence Jesus to be crucified because the crowd demands it.

ABOVE: Screenshot of the version of Lil Nas X dressed in pink being escorted by two versions of himself dressed in blue into an amphitheater

One of the two guards escorting the prisoner is wearing a blue wig in a style that appears to be based on the orbis comarum, a particularly extravagant hairstyle that was worn by elite Roman women during the late first and early second centuries CE and is particularly associated with the Flavian Dynasty (lasted 69 – 96 CE). This hairstyle is most famously exemplified by a portrait bust of a young, elite Roman woman that is currently on display in the Musei Capitolini, known as the “bust of a Flavian woman” or the “Fonseca bust.”

Other commentators have described the hairstyle as being based on the French pompadour style, but it honestly looks to me like it’s based more on the Fonseca bust. Moreover, the Fonseca bust makes more sense as a model contextually, given all the references to classical art that we’ve already seen. (By the way, if you would like to imitate this hairstyle on your own hair, the “hairstyle archaeologist” Janet Stephens has a video tutorial explaining how to do it. I can’t say I’ve tried it, but it looks very difficult.)

ABOVE: Photograph showing the front and back sides of the Fonseca bust in the Musei Capitolini

In any case, while Lil Nas X is standing there in chains, the camera pans around to show that, behind him, there is a colossal statue of him in drag wearing yet another huge curly wig, seated on a throne holding a scepter in a manner that parallels the famous Statue of Zeus at Olympia.

ABOVE: Screenshot showing the statue of Lil Nas X as Zeus in drag

ABOVE: Illustration created by the French illustrator Quatremère de Quincy in 1815 showing what he imagined the Statue of Zeus at Olympia might have looked like

He stands before a panel of five judges, each of whom is dressed in a blue outfit with a huge curly wig in the style of the Fonseca bust.

ABOVE: Screenshot of the five judges

While Lil Nas X continues singing, the crowd begins to hurl stones at him. This part of the video is clearly not based on the passion narrative in the gospels, since, in the gospels, Jesus is described as having been crucified, not stoned to death.

I strongly suspect that the use of stoning in this scene is meant to remind viewers of the story of the woman taken in adultery, which is found in the Gospel of John 7:53–8:11. The story goes that the scribes and Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery before Jesus and asked him what they should do with her, knowing that, according to the law of Moses, she was supposed to be stoned to death.

Jesus is said to have replied to them: “Let anyone among you who is without sin cast the first stone.” The scribes and the Pharisees heard this and, realizing that they all had sinned themselves, left without stoning the woman. When Jesus saw that he and the woman were alone, he is said to have told her that, since the scribes and Pharisees could not condemn her, he would not condemn her either.

One purpose of the stoning scene therefore seems to be to drive home the message that condemning gay people is the opposite of what Jesus himself stood for.

ABOVE: Illustration from 1866 by the French artist Gustave Doré depicting Jesus defending the adulterous woman from the angry mob wanting to stone her

The stoning also, however, reminds viewers of the stoning of Stephen, who, according to the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, was the very first Christian martyr. The story of the martyrdom of Stephen in Acts 7:54–60 reads as follows, as translated in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV):

“When they [i.e., the people in crowd] heard these things, they became enraged and ground their teeth at Stephen. But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’ But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him.”

“Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ When he had said this, he died.”

The stoning scene in the music video therefore portrays Lil Nas X as not only a victim of injustice, but a martyr as well.

ABOVE: Illustration by Gustave Doré depicting the stoning of Saint Stephen

The descent into Hell

After being stoned to death, Lil Nas X begins to ascend to Heaven. He sees a winged figure flying above him. This seems to represent an angel preparing to welcome him to Heaven. Before he reaches Heaven, though, he grabs hold of a stripper pole that materializes out of thin air and rides the pole down to Hell, pole-dancing the entire time.

This scene is clearly meant to represent Lil Nas X as consciously rejecting Heaven in favor of Hell. I’ll talk about this more in a moment and how it relates to another work of classic literature, but, for now, I’ll simply note that this seems to be the moment in the video where Lil Nas X starts to reject the standards that other people have imposed on him and embrace being gay.

This scene also notably continues the parallels to the story of Jesus. It’s true that Jesus is not traditionally said to have ever danced on a stripper pole, but, in post-Biblical Christian lore, he is said to have descended to Hell after his crucifixion to rescue the souls of the righteous who had already died. This event is traditionally known as the “harrowing of Hell.” Lil Nas X descending to Hell after being tried and executed seems to parallel this story.

ABOVE: Byzantine painting dating to c. 1315 from the parekklesion of the Chora Church in İstanbul, showing Jesus rescuing Adam and Eve from Hell

ABOVE: Illustration from the Vaux Procession of Jesus rescuing the souls of the righteous from Hell, dated to c. 1504

Satan’s throne room

When Lil Nas X reaches the bottom of the stripper pole, he approaches the palace of Pandemonium and the gates open wide for him. He walks into Satan’s throne room, where a number of important details stick out. Notably, on the floor is the Latin phrase: “Damnant quod non intelligunt.” This means “They condemn what they do not understand.”

This phrase is not a direct quotation from anywhere as far as I am aware, but it continues the theme established earlier about judging others. The expression also seems to deliberately echo the phrase that the Gospel of Luke 23:34 claims Jesus spoke while he was dying on the cross. The phrase reads as follows in the original Koine Greek of the New Testament:

“πάτερ, ἄφες αὐτοῖς, οὐ γὰρ οἴδασιν τί ποιοῦσιν.”

This, of course, means:

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

In addition to the writing on the floor, it is also worth noting the inverted pentagrams, which appear both on the floor and directly above Satan’s throne. The inverted pentagram is a symbol that has been associated with Satanism in popular culture for at least a century now—although, as I note in this article from way back in April 2017, it was not always seen as Satanic.

ABOVE: Screenshot of the throne room of Hell as it is portrayed in the music video

This is, of course, immediately followed by the now-infamous scene of Lil Nas X giving Satan a very sexually suggestive lap dance. I don’t feel that I need to dwell on this bit too much, since I think it is fairly self-explanatory and there isn’t a whole lot of buried significance in it. I suspect that Lil Nas X and his producers deliberately included this part to troll conservative Christians and invite controversy. In this, they appear to have succeeded.

ABOVE: Screenshot of Lil Nas X giving Satan a lap dance

Once he has finished giving Satan the lap dance, Lil Nas X proceeds to break Satan’s neck, killing him. He then removes Satan’s horns and puts them on himself. As soon as he does this, he grows wings and his eyes start glowing to signify that he is the new king of Hell.

This part of the music video seems to represent him finally fully embracing his own queer identity. Lil Nas X explained it in a reaction video with Zach Campbell that was posted on YouTube on 26 March 2021, saying: “If that [i.e., Hell] is where we [i.e., queer people] belong, then let me be the king of that.”

ABOVE: Screenshot of Lil Nas X as the new king of Hell, as he is portrayed at the end of the music video

The scene of Lil Nas X becoming the new king of Hell also seems to be a reference to yet another work of classic literature: Paradise Lost, which was originally composed in the English language by the poet John Milton (lived 1608 – 1674) and published for the first time 1667. A second revised edition of the epic was published in 1674.

Paradise Lost is composed entirely in unrhymed iambic pentameter (i.e., “blank verse”). It retells the story of the Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, but with an unusual twist: the central figure of the poem is none other than the Prince of Darkness, Satan himself. The poem begins when Satan and his fellow demons have just been vanquished by the angelic hosts and cast into the depths of Hell. Satan, desperate to spin this as some kind of victory, delivers a very famous speech to his compatriot Beëlzebub. The speech occurs in Paradise Lost, Book One, lines 242-263. It reads as follows:

“Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,
Said then the lost Arch Angel, this the seat
That we must change for Heav’n, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since hee
Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right : fardest from him is best
Whom reason hath equald, force hath made supream
Above his equals. Farewel happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less then hee
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”

These are probably the most famous words Milton ever wrote. Ironically, as I explain in this article from February 2020, Milton almost certainly meant for this speech to be interpreted not as a serious convincing argument, but rather an example of the Devil’s sophistic rhetorical trickery, since it is revealed later in the epic that even Satan himself does not really believe the words he says here.

Nevertheless, Milton’s words have inspired artists of all subsequent generations—including, it seems, Lil Nas X. I’m not sure whether Lil Nas X has read Paradise Lost or is only familiar with the line “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven” through cultural osmosis, but, clearly, he seems to be aware of it.

ABOVE: Illustration of Satan in Hell after his fall from c. 1866 by the French engraver and illustrator Gustave Doré for his illustrated edition of John Milton’s Paradise Lost