Madonna and Her Persona (Sheridan Pierce Core Post #4)

Madonna has that indescribable “it” factor that makes her so interesting to watch.  She even transforms the documentary, Truth or Dare, which is supposed to be a look at Madonna’s everyday life, into a platform for her stardom.  It gives the audience the sense that Madonna is always performing even when she’s not.  Even Warren Beatty questions her decision to put her private life on the camera, and jokes, “What point is there existing off camera?”  And this statement is coming from an acclaimed and respected actor whose profession involves being in front of  a camera.  The difference is that an actor like Beatty is able to separate himself from the character he is playing, while Madonna feels the need to constantly uphold the persona she has created.  As Cvetkovich points out in The Powers of Seeing and Being Seen, “Truth or Dare suggests that Madonna enjoys displaying herself for the visual pleasure of others… The making of a film about the tour suggests, furthermore, that Madonna is not content to merely be watched onstage” (Cvetkovich 156). 

It is also interesting to consider the amount of work it takes to be Madonna.  She is constantly being touched up in the film, or even giving her testimonials about having a “motherly instinct” towards her dancers while sitting in a make-up chair.  The audience can get the sense that she is a perfectionist to the extreme, she can’t let her guard down for one second or else the whole illusion goes to pieces.  But that is what makes her “Madonna.”  She’s larger than life and she desperately wants the viewer (her potential fan) to know that.  As Bell Hooks states in “Madonna: Plantation Mistress or Soul Sister, “Madonna never lets her audience forget that whatever ‘look’ she acquires is attained by hard work—‘it ain’t natural”… “Certainly no one, not even die-hard Madonna fans, ever insists that her beauty is not attained by skillful artifice” (Hooks 159).

Madonna is also criticized by both Hooks and Cvetkovich for appropriating Black and gay culture in crafting her image.  As Hooks points out, in the film, “We found it tragically ironic that Madonna would choose as her dance partner a black male with dyed blonde hair… he was positioned as a mirror, into which Madonna and her audience could look and see only a reflection of herself and the worship of ‘whiteness’ she embodies—that white supremacist culture wants everyone to embody” (Hooks 163).  I thought this was an interesting point, since the same man is also one of the only, if not the only straight male dancer on the tour.  Perhaps this decision was made because Madonna, while very reliant on her gay fans, equates masculinity with heterosexuality, as Hooks suggests.  She likes to "crotch-grab" in her performances because it asserts a male power that she wishes to embody even though she is a female.  Having a straight dancer, and creating this "reflection of herself" that Hooks suggests, in Madonna's mind makes her seem "strong" or "male-like."