Deconstructing Madonna

But, perhaps this is unfair. Tara Brabazon affirms that we expect too much from our pop culture figures - that if they do one thing to change the culture, then that should be enough. It is unfair to expect them to do it over and again. Madonna has most certainly fulfilled her quota for questioning and transforming our times.

It is also important to understand that Madonna’s latest musical move is deeply indicative of our age. Her recent attempts, before Confessions on a Dance Floor, to provoke - to think through - about violence particularly with “How it Feels for a Girl” - have been commercial failures. MTV refused to screen the video more than once. She had to pash Britney Spears to recover from that blunder.

Consumers do not want to be uncomfortable. They want their pop culture predictable. Madonna has always understood this relationship. Even when she was challenging the status quo, she was giving her audiences what they wanted. There is now less room for Madonna to be contradictory - to bridge the gaps and absences between official and unofficial cultures. She now conforms to the culture.

What is most disappointing is the borg-like, yoga body Madonna now possesses. She is 47-years-old and looks no older than 27 with a taught and excessively toned body that is unnaturally fit. The curves she had in her “Holiday” days are gone. The bulking buff body for Blonde Ambition has been replaced by this ultra thin artificial replica of femininity.

If Madonna was truly rebellious she would have allowed herself to age and put on a few pounds. For a woman to wear her wrinkles is heresy in today’s image conscious, age-defying, Botoxed-bodied context. Instead of being the difficult and dramatic doyenne that rebelled against the convention, Madonna now conforms to it.

But this has more to do with the consequences of conservatism and generational literacies in the media than it does with Madonna as an artist or performer.

Generation X has much to answer for. In the past I have written through my anger at the Baby Boomers for filling out our culture and consciousness with their versions of the past and present. There are serious consequences for the health, well-being and social mobility of future generations resulting from this colonisation of the culture. Yet, they have only been able to achieve this because Generation X disengaged from social and political commentary.

Rather than deploying a critical and interpretive engagement with the past presented to them, Generation X embraced the postmodern platform and turned inwards towards themselves and their own identity politics.

Madonna was certainly one anchor for this style of self. Images and surfaces were mobilised - which was why she was able to transgress so many boundaries. It was of its moment and nobody thought it would translate out of its time. There was no depth so there were no consequences.

Raiding and appropriating the knowledges, identities and artefacts of another culture or consciousness was part of popular cultural literacies.

For Music Madonna was able to mobilise Indian symbolism without worry. The neo-colonialism of another identity is not problematic in an image-literate and style-conscious culture. All symbolisms are removed from context and their deeper significance to become fashionable and funky.

For Generation X, the disengagement from any critique outside popular culture meant that the free-floating signification of ideas and identities was normalised. This framework for understanding the world has consequences for newer generations who have no language for critique outside of fashion and frivolity.