Madonna

Essay # 23007

Music Studies
Sociology
Women Studies

Madonna

A discussion of Madonna's feminism.

1,191 words () | 5 sources | MLA | 2002 Canada

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the cultural icon, Madonna and how she has maintained her popularity by consistently challenging popular perceptions of herself and representations of other women, offering an outward, public identity that defies male control and asserts herself as a sexual subject rather than an object. She is a woman who has reached the peak of celebrity without giving into the structural inequalities or traditional representations that female success in the past has relied upon. It raises the question of whether she can be viewed as a feminist or not since, as a performer and artist, she has undertaken subjects and themes that are controversial, especially in terms of mass public reaction.

From the Paper:

"The fact that the meaning that Madonna transmits and receives are rooted in representational language and performance causes some problems for her. Some feel that the "real" Madonna is hidden behind her image and stage show, and that her real identity is one that is sublimated behind her public identity. The importance of representation in Madonna's identity is evident as one author, cited by E. Deidre Pribham in her essay on the film "Truth or Dare," questions whether it is all just a big, contrived act, "Everywhere the fabricated, the inauthentic and the theatrical have gradually driven out the natural, the genuine and the spontaneous until there is no distinction between real life and stagecraft" (195). "