With MTV nearing its 30th anniversary, the influential television station has spawned numerous icons who have taken advantage of the station’s wide reaching spectrum. Musicians have used videos to create their own image and commercialization and have used music videos to springboard their careers in ways that wouldn’t be possible without the advent of the music video. Arguably, the artist who has used the popularity of the music video to her greatest benefit has been Madonna. Starting with her first video (“Borderline,” 1983), Madonna has turned herself into a titan of multimedia as the foremost female crossover artist over the past 30 years. She has tackled a variety of genres of music, has become a talented actress, dancer and writer and appeals to people of many different niches and subcultures. She has become the voice of female expression and her videos have stirred many discussions on the importance of her videos and career in society and history.
Music writer Cathy Schwichtenberg has authored a book titled The Madonna Connection: Representational Politics, Subcultural Identities and Cultural Theories and has done extensive studies on Madonna’s place in history, society and within many different subcultures. Even before the advent of the music video, the social functions of music over the decades have been undeniable. Music has spurred revolutions and has inspired many people to do great things. In Madonna’s case, she has been at the forefront of the female expressive revolution and the social functions of her music videos have been far reaching. Over the years, Madonna has changed images and changed her messages numerous times, but has always remained an integral part of the social landscape. According to Schwichtenberg, “music today is always visualized on some level is association with a performer’s style, a set of behaviors and a personal history that is made pervasive through media mass exposure” (Schwichtenberg 117). Through that concept, Madonna has been able to reinvent herself and appeal to many different subcultures that all interpret and enjoy her music on different levels.
Madonna 1980's Style-
In her “Vogue” video, which was released in 1990, Madonna took a different path of expression from her previous album, Like a Prayer. In the video for the song “Like a Prayer,” Madonna caused a stir among religious groups with numerous images and actions she performed. In the video, she kissed a black saint, danced in a field of burning crosses and displayed an instance of stigmata when she cut her palms with a knife. The video was shocking because it was the first to display images that many religions hold sacred in such a different light. Madonna went in a completely different direction in the video for “Vogue.” The song itself is an ode to the Hollywood stars and starlets of the first half of the 20th century. In the video, Madonna embodied the image of the classy sexiness of those stars by dressing formally in a style that was more fitting for the 1950s than the 1990s. At the time of the video, Madonna already had a huge global following and just about anything she did was going to appeal to the masses. Shot in black and white, the images of the video itself were striking. By this time, Madonna’s videos were conceptual experiences that appealed to a broad spectrum of people. “Conceptual music videos, in particular, demonstrate vividly how popular music can be experienced as ‘visual music’” (Schwichtenberg 125). What’s interesting is that conceptual videos, like “Vogue,” are described as being an “experience” rather than just a five minute bit of television programming.
While many music videos from even the most popular artists are contrived as promotional tools to make the record label as much money as possible, Madonna has been able to take creative control of her productions and avoid commercialism despite becoming one of the most popular female entertainers of all time. Music videos reach the teens that set trends on a global scale, so it’s common for record labels to try to capitalize on any performer’s popularity. “The relationship of producer and consumer in this context belies a variable economy of cultural signs in which sub cultural capital is not only a powerful component in the construction of identities but also a highly valuable commodity in the marketplace” (Strachan 201). The fact that Madonna seems to bypass this idea despite her immense popularity speaks volumes about the respect she has among the most powerful people in the music industry.
Take Madonna’s “Vogue” video for instance. The song was released after her highly popular Like a Prayer album and was released as part of I’m Breathless, which was a compilation of music made for the film Dick Tracy. The song itself was a hit from the start and Madonna and her record label could have easily used the video for capital gain. However, she wanted to express the same class in the video that was embodied by the people she mentioned in the lyrics of her song (Grace Kelly, Jean Harlow, Ginger Rogers, etc). The social function of this video was a different message than that of her previous videos. While her previous videos, especially “Like a Prayer” and “Express Yourself” featured scantily clad male and female dancers and suggestive dance routines, “Vogue” sent the message that you don’t need to go to that extreme to express sexiness and class. “Madonna, whose music was first popular in dance clubs, uses video to convey – visually and aurally – the sensuality of body movement” (Schwichtenberg 124). While in the past Madonna had been blurring the lines between what was acceptable in a music video and what was unacceptable, in “Vogue” she went in a more conservative direction. While the dress and dance is more conservative in “Vogue,” she is still able to express herself sensually through the dance and cinematography. The message of sexiness through class that was sent to her millions of fans, many of whom were young teen girls, is both socially responsible and highly effective. The video is devoid of the attempt at any capital and is just used as a creative extension of the message she sends in the lyrics of the song.
By showing a versatility that is rarely seen in performers of any media, Madonna has been able to appeal to many different popular cultures and subcultures in society. While many artists find their niche and make music and videos for that specific audience, Madonna has been able to appeal to both sexes, fans of all different genres of music, most age groups, people of all sexual preferences and has done so on a global scale. Her place in popular culture history is already established as her 30 year career cannot be matched by performers on any level. However, it is her wide-reaching appeal that makes her truly unique.
Madonnas Loves all different cultural back-rounds and always ties it into he music-
Madonna 1995 VMA'S-
“In order to contextualize the music video within its generic and commercial parameters, we need to appreciate that popular music has always been linked with images the visual” (Strachan 201). Madonna is well aware the her music is linked to the images and the visual and takes advantage of that idea to reach out and appeal to many sub cultures in order to establish herself as a master crossover artist. If Madonna’s music stood on its own without videos, she might have been pigeon holed as someone who makes solely pop and dance music. However, the images she presents in her music welcomes fans of all subcultures. Madonna has a strong appeal not only with fans of pop and dance music, but she has been able to draw fans who usually favor rap, R & B, rock or other forms of music. Socially, she appeals not only to the important youth market of 12-34 year old males and females, but she also has a wide appeal among gay and lesbian groups and among all races worldwide.
Madonna and Missy Eliot, GAP AD- This shows Madonna as a crossover artist easily ready to reach commercial success as well as blend in with todays artists.
Madonna has been able to do this not only by making high quality music, but also with the visuals she uses in her music. Madonna first started approaching boundaries of sexuality in her “Express Yourself” video. The first half of the video features images which while sexual in content, aren’t anything that hasn’t been seen in videos or television shows of the time. Along with images suggestive dancing in skimpy outfits the video showcases wet and dirty muscled male dancers. However it is in the second part of the video where Madonna has scenes that start to appeal to smaller subcultures. While she begins the video dressed either in a business suit or green dress, she ends up the video naked with a heavy metal chain and restraints around her neck. She is also shown dressed in a tight black dress crawling towards a bowl of milk like a cat. These extreme sexual images appeal to subcultures in which sexual experimentation is prevalent.
Three years after “Express Yourself,” Madonna went even further in appealing to sexually charged subcultures with her “Erotica” video. Unlike in “Express Yourself” where Madonna only hinted at the sexual practice of submission and domination, she was more direct in “Erotica.” Dressed as a blindfolded dominatrix and carrying a whip, Madonna creates an image that runs through the video that appeals again to sexually oriented subcultures. The video also breaks new ground for Madonna when some clips feature her lying in bed naked with another woman who she is caressing and kissing. The obvious appeal to the gay and lesbian community helps establish Madonna as an icon for this subculture. The video itself also features very sexually charged quick images of a girl chained up in a cage, a man and woman dressed just in small leather straps, a man sitting on a woman’s mouth holding a gag in her mouth with leather straps and a woman strapped into a leather and spiked chair with the phrase “NY Strap and Paddle” painted on the top. While these fetishes have been around for decades, Madonna became the first person to feature them so prominently in a music video, again cementing her place as a crossover sexual icon in many subcultures.
Despite all the controversy surrounding Madonna’s videos and performances over the years, one thing is certain: she has been one of the most influential female performers in music history. Her ideas would have been risky, even by today’s standards. The fact that she was able to create such vividly sexual imagery in her videos shows that she was truly ahead of her time. If you examine videos like “Express Yourself,” “Erotica,” or “Justify My Love,” which are around 20 years old, they are quite similar to videos made today by popular female artists like Brittney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Lady GaGa to name just three. Schwichtenberg writes that “(Madonna) is not made into a spectacle, but makes a spectacle of herself” (Schwichtenberg 125). That idea might be simple in concept, but female entertainers did not embody that idea to the extent Madonna has over the years. In the decade between Madonna’s most racy videos and the rise of artists like Spears, the music industry lacked female entertainers who not only were able to cross the lines of sexuality, but were effective in doing so. Any female artist can dance half naked during a video to create a controversy, but there have been none that were as far ahead of their time and maintained the high success that Madonna has over her career.
Lady Gaga And Madonna Comparison Video-
Madonna’s place in the social functions of music is undeniable. Her career started just as MTV and music videos were reaching the height of their popularity and she used videos as a vehicle to become a pioneer in musical video expression. What is amazing is that she did so while not only being commercially successful, but also remained true to her artistic values. Each video seems to have a direct purpose in reaching to different subcultures. Whether it was reaching out to teens with family problems in “Papa Don’t Preach,” addressing religious material in “Like a Prayer,” or uncovering the world of sexual domination in “Erotica,” Madonna was ahead of her time in using music videos not only to reach her audience, but to expand her audience. Rob Strachan contested that “from the mid 1980’s onward, a dominant argument in this scholarship was that the rise of music videos made the “image” made the music video more important than the music and hence detracted from the music by tying down the meaning to the visual representation to the video” (Strachan 198). It is clear that while Madonna’s conceptual videos did thrive on vivid images, it never did detract from her actual music. Her appeal in dance clubs has remained strong during her entire 30 year career, thus showing that her music can stand without the help of video.
Madonna Dolce & Gabbana AD 2010-
Even as the 21st century reaches its second decade, Madonna still stands as an influential performer today. She continues to remain on the cutting edge in musical technology and is a master at changing with the times. She has reinvented herself numerous times as a musician and still remains popular in all of the subcultures she appealed to over the past 30 years. Madonna has used the music video to tell a story throughout her career and continues to do so. Her most recent album, 2008’s Hard Candy, shows her appeal as a crossover artist as she collaborated with current pop stars like Justin Timberlake and rap stars like Timbaland. She has been able to address and appeal to so many different niches during her career that her place in the social function of music is undeniable.
