Ariana Grande’s gory chainsaw massacre music video exposes Hollywood’s spiritual sickness

The useful part

The nearly seven-minute video that follows includes one of the most graphically violent sequences in a mainstream Hollywood pop music video in recent history. In the video, a skeletal-looking Grande plays the role of Pepper, an aspiring actress who repeatedly auditions at the fictional Fame Inc. The sequence cuts between stark red silhouette shots of Pepper wildly swinging the chainsaw and closer live-action frames that show the blood spraying as limbs and fingers are severed.

How it works

• The scene is so horrifically violent, Allie Beth Stuckey refuses to play it on her show.
• Ariana Grande's new music video for her song "Petal" opens with a "parental advisory and viewer warning." Before a single verse is sung, a voiceover cautions: "The following video contains explicit content...
• She keeps going until the executives are a mangled, bloody heap, then walks out of the room still covered in gore, as the room full of her fellow female auditionees erupts into applause and cheers.
• "They become darker and edgier and more violent and more disturbed in their artistry as time goes on," she says, pointing to Taylor Swi...

Details worth keeping

Viewer discretion is advised." It's an honest warning. Eventually, Pepper snaps and murders the panel with a chainsaw. She does expose what's going on beneath Grande's sudden dark turn.