Madonna

MADONNA — THE POP BODY AS ARCHIVE, APPROPRIATION & CULTURAL TRANSLATION

Madonna absorbs and redistributes performance languages through television, music video, global touring, celebrity and commercial recording. Her power cannot be separated from cultural transfer.

VOGUE — 1990

Voguing emerged from ballroom cultures created primarily by Black, Latinx, queer and trans communities. Ballroom functioned as social refuge, chosen-family structure, competitive ritual, gender-performance laboratory and survival space.

Madonna's Vogue brought elements of this culture into global commercial pop. She hired ballroom performers including Jose Gutierez Xtravaganza and Luis Camacho Xtravaganza for the video and subsequent performances. Scholarship emphasises the unresolved tension between sincere proximity/alliance and appropriation. ([DOI][10])

AMPLIFICATION ↔ EXTRACTION

Ballroom gestures become globally visible, but may be separated from communities, history, racial conditions, economic conditions and ritual meaning. The pop machine can circulate an aesthetic more effectively than it redistributes the economic and cultural power behind it. ([gsws.sas.upenn.edu][11]) Do not resolve Madonna as exploiter or liberator: preserve VISIBILITY ↔ APPROPRIATION.

MADONNA AS LIVING ARCHIVE

Across decades, Madonna restages former looks, choreography, songs and personae. The current ageing body performs an archive produced by younger versions of itself. CURRENT BODY ↔ ARCHIVED BODY: the star is archive and interpreter simultaneously.

Detailed Damien Jalet material remains in the separate POP MIGRATIONS node.