Violent Madonna Video to Air on MTV

March 16 -- It looks like life with gun-happy film auteur Guy Ritchie is rubbing off on Madonna.

The pop icon's latest video, for the song "What It Feels Like for a Girl," which was directed in a handheld style by her husband, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels director Guy Ritchie, has been deemed too violent to make its way into regular rotation on MTV or VH1.

The networks have opted to air the video, which features the Material Girl as an angry woman on a crime spree and ends in a car crash that may or may not be fatal, just one time, a decision they say is irrevocable.

The four-and-a-half-minute video will be shown Tuesday at 11:30 p.m. EST on both stations, after a news segment about it, according to The Associated Press.

"MTV and VH1 feel that the Madonna video is newsworthy and can be seen with proper context," a network representative speaking on condition of anonymity told the AP today.

Madonna rep Liz Rosenberg says the video actually carries an anti-violence message. "There is a lot of violence in the video," Rosenberg conceded to the New York Daily News. "It tells the story of a woman who has probably been abused. It's very strong. It's not the last video you'd want to see before going to sleep at night."

Rosenberg told the AP that if MTV and VH1 don't agree to replay the video, Madonna will seek to have it aired elsewhere, and that America Online has already agreed to make it available on the Internet.

MTV previously censored Madonna for being too sexy in her 1990 video for "Justify My Love," which only boosted video sales of the banned clip. Her 1992 video for "Erotica" was played on the network, but only in the wee hours, a restriction apparently not repeated until the video for Prodigy's controversial "Smack My Bitch Up" — which, incidentally, was admired by Madonna — was relegated to a late-night slot by the music network.

Rumors of a big-screen team-up between Madonna and her new husband — who's directed hipster-gangster movies Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch — circulated after their high-profile wedding in December, but Ritchie nixed the rumor in January.