Madonna is an American singer, songwriter, actress, director, and dancer. She has sold more than 300 million records worldwide and is known as the world's best-selling female recording artist in history by Guinness World Records. She’s mainly been a pop artist for all of her career, however has done some dance songs. From her early images to the present, she has constantly evolved and grown as an artist, and her image is always changing.
Her early videos portray her as quite rebellious and manly, however still young and naive. This is evident in her borderline video, where the narrative of her being an up and coming model and ruining the setting that the video is shot in. Her costume is also very different for the time and we get lots of close up shots of her face and not her body, showing she is not overly sexualised.
We also see this in Papa Don’t Preach (1987), where she is portrayed as a young vulnerable girl, who entirely relies on her father and the man she is in love with. However she is much manlier in this video, her hair is cut shot and she wears simple, casual tops and trousers, giving her a ruff, manly appearance. This shows her stage image to still be edgy, but still very vulnerable and innocent, which her target audience of young teenage girls could relate to. We also get a slightly more sexualised Madonna as she is a bit older now and so are her fans, so we get the intersexual reference to Marilyn Monroe in the dance sequence, with the short blonde hair and red lipstick, with tight fitting clothes. This shows a slight change in her star image as she is becoming more sexual.
Later on in her career she becomes very feminine and sexualised in the roles she plays. In all her videos she plays roles which is common within the pop genre. Like a Prayer was her most controversial video as the ideas of her kissing Jesus and the burning crosses caused out cry within religious groups and controversy, which in turn made her famous and known worldwide. In the video she again is portrayed as very vulnerable, but in an overtly sexual way. There are many high angle shots looking down her, giving the audience the feeling they are on top of her, and again that she is weak. Also as well as close ups of her face with a direct mode of address to sell the artist, we get many of her head flung back, which is a very sexual portrayal of her. There are also a lot more close ups of her chest, and her costume is only a thin, low cut dress, with the straps down, again showing a sexualised, vulnerable woman. This video made her famous because of the controversy that surrounded it, as many people considered her to have been disrespectful. Her star image changed drastically, as she was now seen as a sex symbol and many people didn’t like her because of this video.
From then on she was known as a controversial star who was highly sexualised within the media. In her Human nature video, we see her purely as a sex symbol and even the song is about it. The whole video was shot in black and white, which gave it a dark, mysterious feel. All the dancers including Madonna were dressed in tight, black leather suits, which give off a sensual feel to the video. The opening shot is a mid shot of her being stroked by all the male and female dancers, which is very provocative and sexual. Again we see many close ups of her body, especially towards the end where she is in black underwear, which portrays her in an erotic way. The props used connoted to S and M and bondage, as she gets chained up, blindfolded and whips people, again giving the video a very erotic theme. There are also sections of the song where this is transferred to her singing, as she whispers certain lines, again in a sexual manner. This whole video shows her as a sex symbol as this was now her star image, she was known for sexy, controversial videos, and as there were a lot of changes in the 80s and 90s as we move into a more sexualised society, women liked her as they wanted to be her and men wanted her, making her really popular.
In 1998, we see a complete image change, back to this idea of an isolated vulnerable woman. Her video Substitute for Love plays on the intertexual reference of Princess Diana’s death. The video at the start is confusing as all we see is close ups of flashes, making us as the audience feel really isolated and vulnerable. When she is in the car we got lots of close and mid shots of her, selling her image. However she is wearing sunglasses, suggesting she is hiding and again very vulnerable. Her appearance has also changed a lot since the human nature video, as she now as long, natural looking hair, connoting a sense of maturity in her star image. The whole narrative shows her running away from people and being very isolated. Also at the end we see a child, and get a close up shot of her hugging and carrying her. At this point Madonna had already had her first child, so we started to see a more relaxed motherly and mature side to her, as she was now older and her fans were.
Throughout her time Madonna has stood for many things. In the beginning she represented the typical teenage girl, then she stood for women and sex appeal and finally she matured and stood for mothers and older women. Throughout her career she has evolved and matured with her fans, which is what has made her such a success.
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