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An attempt to decode the making of and symbolism in Kanye West's “Father" music video directed by Bianca Censori with original models of the set.
On March 28th Kanye West released a music video for “Father,” featuring Travis Scott from his highly anticipated 2026 album “Bully.” His 12th full-length studio album and first in four years after Donda 2, named after his late mother and mentor Donda West, a scholar, author and intellectual. The music video is directed by Bianca Censori, architect, activist artist and conceptual-jewellery designer. The nearly three-minute long video has surpassed 5.5 million views in 24 hours.
“As my directorial debut, it felt like a natural extension of my background in architecture and performance art," she tells AD. The video's setting is the church. A centre of gravity for communities, where life's most important rituals take place; baptisms, deaths, weddings, confessions, holy communions and prayer. The world's stage. About the making of the video, Censori says:
She explains that because of this, the architecture of the set was critical.
It is a work of art remnant of late 1960s directors like Jacques Tati, the one-take forces the audience to stay attentive in a constant present tense, an unbroken reality and truthfulness akin to practicing the presence of God in religion as the path to enlightenment, later reconstituted by modern esoteric thought as mindfulness and staying present as a path to reducing mental illness.
Kayne West has been a determined advocate of faith since his very first album in 2004 at 26 years old, with legendary tracks like Jesus Walks and later fully-fledged gospel albums like Jesus is King recorded live with The Sunday Service Choir. Less literally but in the same vein, tracks with sentiments of faith, oppression, hope, catharsis, retribution and tenacious spirit have been constant in his music. Through The Wire, All Falls Down, Runaway, King, Preacher Man and the Gil Scott-Heron poem by the same name used in Who Will Survive in America, are all examples. A notable excerpt is, “We learned to our amazement the untold tale of scandal, two long centuries buried in the musty vault, hosed down daily with a gagging perfume,” which becomes relevant later in this article.
Alien abduction is another recurring theme in the music (and this video), a proxy of religious ascension detailed in Ultralight Beam, Spaceship and I'll Fly Away. On the Bully album West marks the oppression of nations like Lebanon with a track titled, “All the Love” sampling Fayek Alaya by Fairuz, Lebanese singer and political activist dubbed “the voice of Lebanon.”
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The “Father" music video features a handful of archetypal characters; a choir, priest, medieval knight, a magician beside an expressionless woman, two elderly women, two nuns, a mother and son (her face is painted like a panther), two police-officers, two US astronauts, a Michael Jackson impersonator, a newly-wed couple, two brides, two male children who guard the church-doors, a young female child perched high in a blue veil and a man who bears the cross. All of these characters represent imagery that lives in the collective unconscious.
In the first frame of the video, the priest, robed in uniform, walks down the aisle “hosing down the church with a gagging perfume.” The incense here, used to sanctify and to bridge heaven and earth is veiling a room filled with distracted characters in smoke. (Extract from that what you will). Behind him, crossing the window outside is a man carrying the weight of the crucifix over his left shoulder. Here we see differences between the symbolic and literal; institutionalised, organised faith and carrying the responsibility of your own life, meaning the personal, difficult relationship with God and with your own soul.
In the last frame, as every character is leaving the church, the man bearing the cross enters, puts down his cross and rests. The apparent message here is that when Jesus (a symbol for righteousness) is away all of life's events take place but when Jesus returns inside only a few remain – ironically, the church's only requirement is Christ. Importantly, the only characters who remain with him is the young girl in the blue veil perched high on a plinth behind him and the undeterred woman to his left. Which we'll discuss towards the end.
Back to the second frame. A knight in armour, the universal symbol for ‘saviour’ trots down the aisle on horseback, the priest marks him with the sign of the cross (an act signifying dedication to God and protection from evil), while this spectacle of pageantry is happening two police officers, (symbols of protection in the shallow state) arrest a nun, who are symbols of purity. The first themes of proxy, impersonation and interference with universal divine order begin here. “Living as we do, upside down.” (Who Will Survive in America poem by Gil Scott-Heron, featured on Kanye West's 2010 album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy).
Next, a performative couple approach the altar to be wed, a suited man in what looks like a Luchadora wrestlers mask (a literal and symbolic symbol of wrestling) take their photo, the last remaining nun looks on distressed, the knight-saviour sits beside her unfazed while the young son of a mother escapes her clutches and blows out the candle at the altar, seemingly extinguishing the light of Christ and the sacredness of the altar. Could this frame touch on the disintegration of the holiness of marriage? Perhaps the young, in their simplicity are the only ones who can discern unconditional love.
As this is happening, two US astronauts expose Kanye West as an alien and remove him. After that, an alien in a suit lands in a spaceship, approaches the altar, removes his alien mask and reveals himself to be Travis Scott, he is about to be wed to two brides. This could be interpreted as using the duality-trick as a framework or stage to show the paradox and separation between good/evil, body/soul, light/darkness; any two opposing forces or states necessary for life, from the DNA helix to night and day. The “is it human or is it alien” dilemma can also be flipped: Humans themselves have caused more destruction than any imagined inter-dimensional being ever could.
Throughout all of this, the magician is continuously performing card tricks and at one point produces a "Hot Book" magic trick: a documented illusion known as the "Hot Book Bible," available from magic suppliers, involves a Bible that appears to be on fire. The preacher can open the book to show flames, then close it to extinguish them without burning the pages. Again, there is a paradox here between the trickster-archetype associated with the Devil and impersonation.
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During the wedding the young son deliberately trips up the baker bringing in a wedding cake. Is the child being portrayed as the defender of truth? In Censori's explanation of her Bio Pop art performance she described the cake as “an offering, not nourishment [and that] it embodies the gesture of domestic service reframed as spectacle.” In this context and in a more literal sense, an argument for the woman as bride and its expectation of service and labour at the cost of her own development can also be argued. It's also worth noting that in all of this chaos, the pastor (the shepherd-archetype) is complicit. Adding to this theme of deceit is a Michael Jackson impersonator, an embodiment of illusion and mimicry watches over the spectacle, the irony being that Michael Jackson remains the most imitated figure of all time.
Let's now look at the two figures who remain constant; the female child in a blue veil and the woman in the front row previously beside the magician. The veiled girl might represent Mary Magdalene and the Path of the Blue Rose and by extension the divine feminine. Mary Magdalene was a prominent follower of Jesus nicknamed the “apostle to the apostles” in the gnostic gospels. Controversially, her importance and wisdom was suppressed by early church leaders in favour of a purely patriarchal religion leading some to argue about the wider omission of not just women throughout history but the diversity of religious thought in ancient times. These early texts survived only because they were hidden and famously rediscovered in 1945 near Nag Hammadi in Egypt.
Censori is no stranger to feminine retribution. Her Bio Pop show and subsequent jewellery line divided the world between those who saw the literality of nudity and violence (in the case of the jewellery) and those who inspected its message. And film is no different.
In her directors debut for Kanye West's “Father" music video she presents four female archetypes; the mother, the bride, the devoted and the divine. In this multidimensionality she might argue for the liberation of the woman as a creation capable of the full spectrum of worldly roles as well as leadership, inner and outer power and enlightenment. It is also symbolic of a metaphysical return to femininity as a foundational and generative source. Interestingly, it is the blue-veiled girl and the woman unmoved by the magician's tricks that remain parallel to the man bearing the cross in the final frame. Even the pastor has left.
This analysis of the “Father” music video is the opinion and distillation of the writer and has not been verified as the intention of Bianca Censori, Kanye West, Travis Scott or anyone involved with its conception and/or production.
