Post Modern Madonna

Our film so far seems to be quite post modern because of the parodying and outrageousness of it, so I've done some research into post modern and for my example I've used Madonna "Queen of pop".

Madonna is fake on the surface and that is one of the reasons why she is so postmodern. Madonna always puts on a show acting as someone else, this is shown in many of her music videos. For example in ‘Material Girl’ you see a curtain open, she then dances and at the end the curtain closes. This makes the music video look like a performance, that it was not real, and the audience understood. But she breaks her own boundaries in ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ where there was no hint or symbol to show that this was just a show. This confused a lot of the audience because it made them think whether she was telling us about an emotional event that happened in her life.

Madonna made a documentary of her self to show the public what her life is like backstage. In the video she is obviously not being her self, she shows off in a flirty way to lure the male audience to like her and watch more. She is nice to her father, but a vast amount of the public know that she doesn’t like her father, one of the reasons is because he married their house keeper who Madonna didn’t get along with "I didn't accept my stepmother when I was growing up... In retrospect, I think I was really hard on her." This shows that she is postmodern because she is showing the public what her life is like yet she is not showing the real truth about her, then the public is left to believe that this documentary is real. She shows off in a flirty way by revealing her breasts to the camera after a show, for no reason at all.

What is also postmodern about Madonna is her representation of gender. She breaks the tradition of women wearing women clothes and men wearing men clothes by dressing up as both. Like in her music video ‘Express Yourself’ she is seen wearing a suit and a monocle, she then opens her jacket and reveals her bra. This represents that if you are a woman wearing men’s clothes it doesn’t stop you from being a woman underneath. Also in one of her live shows she has men dressed as women and women dressed as men.

As well as her representation of gender that is postmodern, her sexuality is merged into it too. In one of her live shows she has a lot of lesbians and gays dancing and kissing. In one of her recent publicity stunts she was in a music video with Brittany Spears, ‘Me Against The Music’ in 2003 and they shared a full on kiss. Once again she had shocked the public. This shows that she is postmodern because even though she is straight she can kiss women too.

Madonna’s entire postmodernism put together makes her even more postmodern. Madonna knows how to push people’s buttons and will do anything to surprise, shock, get attention and insult the public. She’ll bundle different sensitive subjects together and splash them out for everyone to see and make the audience question whether it is real, that’s why Madonna is so postmodern.