Madonna's Confessions II Video Breaks the Internet: Vagina Lasers, Sabrina Carpenter, Awkward Cumberbatch and Bananas Explained

New York/Tribeca – Madonna has done it again. The Queen of Pop premiered her 10-minute short film "Confessions II" at the Tribeca Festival, and the internet has been collectively scratching its head, laughing, gasping, and hitting replay ever since. With over a million YouTube views in record time, the video features everything from green "vagina lasers" to Sabrina Carpenter, an awkward Benedict Cumberbatch, Kate Moss, urinal hijinks, and yes – bananas.

The video is a follow-up to her album "Confessions on a Dance Floor" – which, impossibly, was released more than 20 years ago. But years are for little people. Madonna can hold back the passage of time with the power of her imagination, and that has always been true. So what, exactly, is the Queen of Pop trying to say in this wild 10-minute ride? Let's break down the most surprising moments.

The Green Lasers: Vagina Power or Something Else?

The "Confessions II" film is already going by the shorthand "the vagina laser video" – in much the same way as the "Vogue" video came to be known for its Jean Paul Gaultier cone bra. These green lights shooting out of everyone's vulvas and sometimes butts are there, according to those close to the production, to signify "life force and unstoppable orgone energy."

The message? Power is in desire, not in being desired – though, unavoidably, the first carries the second as a side-effect. Madonna, as ever, is not asking permission.

Sabrina Carpenter: Mini-Me or 2.0?

The absolute poppet of bubblegum modernity, Sabrina Carpenter appears giving off very much her own vibe. She isn't a mini-me or a 2.0 – that would be trashy. Nevertheless, the choreography and camera angles create a lot of strategic ambiguity. You're often not sure which one you're looking at, particularly when Julia Garner gets spliced in, looking very like Madonna in her Marilyn Monroe-era days.

It's emphatically not a statement of batons passing and the ages of womanhood. It's about the metaphysics of clubbing – the strobe-lit disorientation, the bliss. "Who exactly am I looking at? Never mind. I'm completely here."

Awkward Benedict: The Cumberbatch Cameo

It's really hard to say whether Benedict Cumberbatch looks awkward because he got dressed thinking he was going to show a couple around an overpriced two-bedroom flat, only to discover that Madonna was going to grab him by the jaw in her long blue gloves and force him to dance – or whether he looks awkward because that's the cue. And that, friends, is what they call acting.

The internet has already memed his bewildered expression into oblivion, with fans speculating whether the actor knew what he was signing up for when he agreed to appear in the Queen of Pop's latest visual extravaganza.

Kate Moss and the Cocaine Line

Doing her lipstick, looking definitively like herself, the supermodel Kate Moss's arrival coincides with the line "Hide the cocaine" – although it's unclear whether she is hiding it or an unseen narrator is hiding it from her. That's because, as Madonna seems to be telling us, it doesn't matter and it's none of your business.

The Urinal Scene: A Toilet Revolution

A line of men innocently try to use a urinal trough while a bunch of women come and bug the hell out of them with lewd gestures and importunate physicality. Then some men are snogging in the cubicles, while elsewhere women are also snogging, and admiring themselves, and admiring each other, and sometimes just walking about.

Debi Mazar is there looking "more snatched than ever." And sometimes you can't tell who's female and who's not. Nowhere on this public lavatory is there any indication of whether or not it's unisex. And it would be beyond tedious to walk through the politics of this, except to say: don't you wish your toilet was hot like mine?

Gwendoline Christie: Brienne Lets Loose

You wouldn't expect to casually run into Gwendoline Christie (Brienne of Tarth from "Game of Thrones") in a Madonna video. The actor looks cleaner and a lot more Glyndebourne than everyone else. She's vaudeville-shocked by the cubicle antics, yet it plays out as a subversion of the classic rivalrous messaging, where you put a prim woman into a debauched scene in order to lampoon her.

Nobody is mocking Brienne of Tarth. She is fully part of the living, breathing organism. It has a very communitarian atmosphere, this film.

The Car Crash and Airbag Snog

Due to some complicated edits between a car interior and a table, it's never completely clear whether Madonna is the driver, the passenger, or is on top of the car menacing its inhabitants. But one way or another, this leads the car to crash, whereupon somebody – indicated by a beautiful, slightly 80s, red lipstick bow – snogs the airbag.

Doesn't really matter who. It's reminiscent of Daniel Bergner's book about the omnivorous female libido, "What Do Women Want?" So you could read the book, or you could take the short answer: she wants everything. She'll crash your car and get off with your airbag. To be real, it's probably her own car.

Camerawomen, Gimp Masks, Nepo Babies and Bananas

We close with the camerapeople finishing up – futuristic masks, ring lights, G-strings, more stilettos, poses held. It looks a little bit robot dystopia, a little bit OnlyFans, a lot of gear changes. The champagne drinking is quite pornified but the cigarettes just look like regular, fun smoking.

One cameraperson is maskless and it is Lourdes Leon, because of course Madonna's daughter has to be in it. Don't be stupid. Everyone else is in it. She uses her boredom as a weapon, ending the film with a magisterial: "Cut, bitch."

Just before the end, they all start eating bananas, which sounds like it would be suggestive, but is actually the universal language of parenting: when your daughter is in a really bad mood, you give her a banana.

The Verdict: Pure Madonna

Madonna is 67 years old. She has been shocking, delighting, and confusing audiences for more than four decades. "Confessions II" proves she has no intention of stopping. It's a dominatrix frame meets feminist manifesto meets chaotic night out meets family therapy session.

The chair in the opening scene is a classic dominatrix setup – satin corset, pointy stilettos, praying-mantis body language. But the chair itself is a complicating factor. The pose is, rather, "Ask me anything" – invulnerable openness. "But don't ask me anything boring. I'm still wearing a corset."

And that, perhaps, is the whole point. Madonna doesn't owe us explanations. She doesn't owe us coherence. She owes us art that makes us feel something – confusion, arousal, laughter, awe, or all of the above simultaneously. "Confessions II" delivers on all fronts.