The Semiotics of Performance and Success in Madonna

I. PRIETO-ARRANZ JOSE

Introduction

HIS WORK AIMS AT ANALYZING THE CULTURAL PRODUCT, OR

rather agent of cultural production, which is Madonna, who remains as controversial today as when she rst gained notoriety almost three decades ago. As a good Irish Catholic, Steve Allen unambiguously attacked Madonna from the pages of this very journal, seeing in her nothing but a professional prostitute (5). In so doing, he refuses to acknowledge Madonnas unquestionable inuence on contemporary popular culture. With over 300 million albums sold to date, she is arguably the worlds most successful female singer, owning a conglomerate of multimedia companies (Brown 4) and having recently signed an unprecedented global partnership with the worlds leading live events company that is likely to determine the way the music industry will evolve in the forthcoming years. Madonna seems to have deed all generational laws. Among her numerous followers one can nd the young of the 1980s but also those of the 2000s. And this is not all: Madonna is a household name for the parents and even grandparents of the actual consumers of her products, since Madonna, rather than a singer, is a global multimedia phenomenon. This partly explains why the 1995 edition of the prestigious Cambridge International Dictionary of English quoted Like a Virgin to contextualize usage for its entry Virgin (Guilbert 82),

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thus acknowledging the existence of what Stephen Brown refers to as todays economy of entertainment (7). This article will mostly be of a semiotic nature since, to put it simply, Madonnas output is in many respects nonverbal (Guilbert 27), pure performance, either through the videos showcasing her music or on stage on some of her world tours. It is, therefore, necessary to refer to Charles S. Peirces well-known typology of the sign (see Hoopes) and, most particularly, what he called iconic signs, that is, signs in which Signier (the signs material manifestation) and Signied (meaning) bear a close resemblance or could even be said to appear fused (Bignell 15). The greatest interest of an icon lies in that, whereas in most other signs the relationship between Signier and Signied is entirely arbitrary (e.g., why is black the color of mourning in the western world?), the icons Signier and Signied apparently relate in a nonarbitrary way, a view no doubt fostered by the parallel rise of photographythe photograph is the iconic sign par excellenceand philosophical Positivism (Bourdieu 162; Robins 153). However, photography has been shown to be one more textual genre and, as such, a mere transcription involving rules, conventions and, to say the least, an arbitrary selection of elements (Bourdieu 162), and not the faithful reproduction of reality Positivism had taken it for. Consequently, no instance of visual representation deserves to be referred to as truly iconic (Eco Theory of Semiotics 191, 216). Furthermore, the complexity of the iconic is best understood if we take into account that, besides its literal or denoted meaning, connotation (Mortelmans 18285) is also an inextricable part of the icon (Bignell 16), all of which makes it not only arbitrary but also inevitably polysemous (Barthes 16). In order to help disambiguate meaning, Barthes recognizes the existence of special techniques such as anchorage or relay, both of which involve complementing the image with verbal language, which will at least help x the otherwise quite wide range of possible meanings of the visual text. A good example of the former is the photo caption, which holds the connoted meanings from proliferating. The latter, on the other hand, can be seen in comic strips and most lm or TV productions, in which textand image stand in a complementary relationship (Barthes 20).

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Madonnas output is to a large extent nonverbal. Apart from her ever-changing look and live performances, the importance cannot be ignored of the music video as an essential promotional tool in her career. Pat Aufderheide analyzes the history of this genre, covering its early stages, rapid expansion paralleling the launch of MTV in 1981, and nonstop rise after 1984, when the channel clearly became protable. Interestingly, 1984 also saw the release of Like a Virgin, Madonnas rst chart-topping single. Its accompanying video underwent heavy MTV rotation and Aufderheide analyzes it as prototypical of the genre (68). The evolution of the music video could indeed be studied through Madonna. The impact and permanence of some of the images these videos have generated is such that they have often inuenced the singers mise en sce`ne in her live performances, thus creating interesting intertextual chains (Fairclough 79). At this point, the aim of this work can be more clearly stated: the gure of Madonna will be analyzed by focusing mostly (but not exclusively) on two of the themes she has traditionally touched upon in her work, namely sex and religion, which will be used to exemplify her condition as a postmodern icon. Emphasis will be placed on the period 19832006, although brief references will also be made to later years.

Sex + Religion = Madonna Icon?

Quite surprisingly, there was nothing overtly sexual, let alone religious, in the lyrics to Madonnas rst album songs. The only remarkable aspect was the image of the artist herself, soon to be copied by millions of teenagers across the world: teased, bow-tied hair, street market fashion, rubber bangles, and her true trademark: the ostensible use of lacy underwear and the cross/crucix as a fashion complement. Indeed, a young girl who, not being particularly beautiful, seemed to take pride in her plumpish body, oddly ornated with religious symbols, was bound to shock. This early Madonna was already characterized by three features that would remain constant throughout her career: (1) Iconicity. Transgression, novelty and shock will not normally come verballyexplicit lyrics are only rarely found in her

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repertoire: Madonna will instead construct her body as a complex, meaningful text. (2) Sex-religion interplay. Throughout most of her career, Madonna will to a greater or lesser extent resort to these two variables. (3) Multilayered meaning. The metaphor of the palimpsest, that is, the manuscript which has been written on, scraped off and used again, can indeed be used for Madonna. Her work has gradually developed multiple layers of signication, the validity of each being in turn ambiguous: do the upper, more recent layers invalidate the lower, older layers, or do they on the contrary simply complement them? A brief analysis of the early Madonna (1983 1985) may well serve to illustrate this question. Her classic Like a Virgin (1984) provides a good example. As usual, its lyrics are at best ambiguous but could hardly qualify as explicit. During this same stage, the constant exhibition of her own body is perhaps her least polysemous Signier, and could indeed be taken as a vindication of the female body. But what is the meaning of her superposition of religious symbols? Did she simply want to be seen as a blasphemous, anti-Catholic rebel? In a famous 1983 shot by Deborah Feingold,1 a huge cross hangs from Madonnas right ear. The portrayed, dressed rather decently, seems to sustain an image of innocence, emphasized by the lollipop she holds in her mouth. Yet, this innocent layer may well be covered by another not quite so innocent: Madonna looks straight into the camera, seeking contact with the viewer and placing herself at their same level. Her gaze is selfcondent, unsettling, challenging, and completely subjects the viewer. Moreover, there is a clear association between the lollipop motif and oral sex, which, it is suggested, the portrayed practices while staring at her lover: control and power are therefore clearly connoted. Thus interpreted, the sex-religion binomy is given a new, destabilizing dimension and points to a vindication of the role of (sex-charged) Woman in Christianity. Kate McCarthy, for whom Madonna tops the list of women singers transcending mere sexuality, linking it to both spirituality and gender construction, would probably agree with this interpretation. Indeed, the physical and the divine have been traditionally dissociated in the Christian (and specially Catholic) world. As McCarthy herself points out, gnostic teacher Valentinus contended that divine

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Jesus could not defecate (69). The association of bodily and divine matters is even more irreverent when the body is femalea good case in point is the desexualized maternity of the Virgin Mary that has traditionally yet unofcially presided over the Catholic Church. For McCarthy, Madonna epitomizes a whole generation of artists who have (sometimes unconsciously) become pillars of the so-called 3rd-wave or even postmodern feminism, which clearly opposes and goes beyond the traditional association between sexual sin and womanhood (7071). Ultimately, this feminism understands gender as a mere yet powerful social, cultural and psychological construct imposed on biological differences (McElhinny 22).2 Madonna has indeed often made a point of blurring gender conventions, which makes this a productive line of research. Which interpretation should then be adopted? A vindicative ` la political celebrity, as John Street sees her? A deliberMadonna a ately obscene, sacrilegious Madonna whose only aim is to shock and court controversy? A Madonna who reconstructs the concepts of gender and religion/religiosity as well as the relationship between them? Or simply a young woman in a secular era (Michel Foucault would call it episteme) enabling formerly religious signs to retain their Signier with a purely aesthetic function but dissociating them from their original Signied?see Foucault, Archeologie du Savoir and Les Mots et les Choses. What is interesting about Madonna is that all these semantic dimensions may well be equally valid. From a very early stage, Madonna has deliberately cemented her popularity on ambiguity, thus appealing to not one but many social groups and subcultures.

Madonna as a Postmodern Icon

Economic growth, the concentration of capital and the technological breakthroughs in the elds of communication and transport have changed the face of the earth and turned it into a global village. Globalization or transnationalization, although an economic phenomenon with origins rooted in the postimperial, postindustrial evolution of nineteenth century colonialism (Hall 1928), now has far-reaching consequences beyond the purely economic (Saskia Sassen 206).

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John Urry denes globalization as the existence of nonlinear interdependencies between peoples, places, organisations and technological systems across the world (Time, Complexity and the Global 3). Among its general features are the constant use of technologies that shrink time and space, the ows of people and images and, as could not be otherwise, cultural homogenization (he even goes as far as to speak of the cocacolonization of culture) (Globalisation and Citizenship 36). Urry, therefore, regards globalization as a constant ow of global uidsinformation, material mobility (Time, Complexity and the Global 4)which gives rise to what he calls global hybrids, among whom the post-national or nomadic citizens (e.g., international lm or pop stars) play a signicant role (Global Media and Cosmopolitanism 3). In other words, transport and IT, most specially the mass media, have pulled down traditional national borders, brought mobility up to levels deemed impossible not so long ago, and turned the individual into a hybrid being as part of a process which could be referred to as the decentering of the self, already identied as inherent to the postmodern condition (Scholte 15983; see also Amin, Boulding, Hewitt, and Sassen). Postmodernism, therefore, understood as the age or period in which Western citizens currently live, results from the material conditions of life which have just been described as globalization. Postmodern, consequently, will be the adjective used to refer to the new cultural system underlying late capitalism (Jameson 193). And as such it could be dened as a specic regime of signication in which particular cultural objects are produced, circulated and received (Urry, The Tourist Gaze 83).

Madonna: Global, Hybrid Fluid

As a consequence of this network of global uids, the rst feature of postmodernism may well be eliquation, that is, the melting, fusion and free ow of up-to-now xed and distinct entities (Punter 79). In turn, homogeneity disappears to be replaced by heterogeneity. In this context, the postmodern world, and most especially the postmodern city, has been seen as a celebration of difference (Hutcheon 6; see also Sassen), a true Babel of colors, languages and, of course, cultures

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brought to us daily by the different media. Little wonder, then, that in such a hybrid world theorists should forecast the end of individual identities in what has been termed the death of the subject (Jameson 19596). Madonna may well t the postmodern individual category. She undoubtedly is a truly global, hybrid uid. Global because she is prominently featured in virtually all the media in the world. Hybrid because she has moved beyond the constraints of the supposedly provincial, middle-class identity of her native Midwest, absorbing and appropriating many other features that have come her way along her life and career. The media still refer to Madonna as an ItaloAmerican singer. Yet it is difcult to know to what extent Madonna would agree to describe herself as a singer. Indeed, she does sing and has so far sold more records than any other female singer but the messages she puts across transcend the physical borders of her lyrics. Her concerts are genre theory-defying shows featuring songs, of course, but also a spectacular mise en sce`ne with clear dance, cabaret, circus, mime, street theater and Broadway/West End musical inuences, not to mention the importance of lighting and multimedia resources. Whether performing live or through her music videos, Madonna is to be seen rather than listened to, thus paving the road for a good many (especially yet not exclusively female) artists, including the latest sensation in the music recording industry, Lady Gaga. Equally doubtful is her Italo-American label. To start with, in emphasizing her fathers Italianness one tends to ignore her mothers French-Canadian descent. True enough, Madonna herself has stressed her Italianness, especially when drawing attention to her strict Catholic upbringing (which she would later deconstruct in her work) or through hints like the famous Italians Do it Better T-shirt slogan she donned on her Papa Dont Preach video. However, it would be a mistake to identify Madonna with an exclusively Italian cultural legacy. For a start, she does not speak the language. Besides, Madonna has never recorded in Italian: her entire output uses English, the only signicant departure from it being Spanish. All in all, it can be quite safely stated that the Hispanic is perhaps the most inuential and revisited ethnic style in her work, ndez claims in his article Crossing the as Santiago Fouz-Herna Border(line): Madonnas Encounter with the Hispanic (139).

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It is not, however, the only one. Mostly in her 19921993 and 19982001 periods, Madonna also adopted, modied, subverted and deconstructed Asian (specially Thai, Hindu and Japanese) elements and imagery (see Angelo Tata and Gairola for further details). Finally, suggesting that her Italian heritage is nothing but a piece of a much larger mosaic, Madonna recovered her Papa Dont Preach T-shirt on some of the dates of her 2004 and 2006 tours, replacing the word Italians to pay homage to Britain, Ireland, Japan and even her wellknown Kabbalist beliefs. This in turn somehow puts into question the importance of US heritage in Madonnas artistic persona. This third element in the Italo-American singer label is equally blurred and debatable. Undoubtedly, she is mostly seen as Caucasian, especially when she sports blond hair (she referred to herself as Blond Ambition in 1990) and yet her use of US iconography or themes is not particularly abundant. Her lyrics are mostly written in English, her native language. As far as spelling, lexis and syntax are concerned, she occasionally allows her US origin to rise to the surface. Madonnas singing accent, however, is one of the clearest examples of the hybrid Mid-Atlantic English, and hybridity also seems to have taken hold of her everyday accent, which she herself parodied in her 2001 International Female Brit Award video acceptance speech. Musically speaking, virtually all critics agree that Madonna, rather than export US music, has imported new (mostly European dance club) trends into US mainstream pop (Fishwick 76), with only one notable exception of late: her Hard Candy album (2008), widely seen as an attempt to win back the US market with marked urban undertones. It remains to be seen where her upcoming 2012 release will stand in this regard. In terms of iconography, US culture does not seem to have played a central role in Madonnas work either. In many of her videos one can recognize typical US, yet not individualized, urban features. In fact, she frequently focuses on suburban life (Papa Dont Preach, 1986), away from WASP canonicity (as in the barrio of La Isla Bonita, 1987). Often enough, however, the location used resists identication, or is presented as foreign and exotic.3 To say that Madonna never focuses on US symbols would, however, be something of an overstatement. She occasionally does,

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although never straightforwardly or as a mere act of patriotism to her home land. For many, Madonna embodies the from rags to riches American dream, and yet she does so in a most unorthodox way. Equally linked to the American dream is the self-made man, which Madonna has re/constructed, mostly due to the fact that she is not a man but a woman. This was perhaps rst seen in one of her rst big hits, Material Girl (1985), a hymn to materialism (Roosksby 16) which is, however, performed ironically, as seen in (1) the extremely high pitch she uses in the song; (2) the accompanying music video, which, as Georges-Claude Guilbert points out, deconstructs Marilyn Monroes Diamonds are a Girls Best Friends number in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) through a mise en abyme structure (Guilbert 143); and (3) live performances of the song. On her Virgin Tour (1985), Madonna refused to refer to herself as a material girl and rounded off the song giving away money bills from the stage; on her Whos That Girl Tour (Ciao Italia 1987) she gave her performance a carnivalesque air which would eventually become satire on her Blond Ambition Tour (1990) by turning the song into a beauty parlor conversation and replacing the line Experience has made me rich with Experience has made me a bitch. But this would not be the end. As Guilbert points out, on her 1990 tour Madonna once again gave away money bills, this time with her own efgy printed on them (Guilbert 44). As usual, meaning becomes blurred. Could this be a declaration of power, Madonna placing herself on a par with US Presidents? Or is this a huge metaphor for an imaginary country governed by different values? In any event, the song lyrics are quite clearly Madonnas starting point, which she uses to build an entirely new message with each live performance, thus signaling that her Material Girl persona cannot be interpreted hurriedly. Over the last few years, Madonna, having teamed up with some of the biggest names in the retail sector, has successfully turned to designing. Interestingly, her teen-oriented clothing range, available from Macys department stores across the US, is labeled as Material Girl. Whenever Madonna uses US imagery in her artistic work, this is to be seen as much more than simple patriotic homage. On her 1987 tour she used images of the then US President Ronald Reagan whilst singing Papa Dont Preach. This is one of her very few songs with fairly explicit lyrics which a young, unmarried mother-to-be addresses to her un-understanding father. In the context of this live

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performance, this father was no other than the then metaphorical father of the nation, Republican Ronald Reagan, whom John Street would call a political celebrity, just like Madonna herself. Her opposition to the US Republican Party is notorious and she does not even hide it when performing songs which are apparently to be taken as mere invitations to dancing. This is noticeable, for example, in the musically uninteresting I Love New York (2005), whose lyrics include a veiled reference to President Bush made more than explicit when performed live on her 2006 tour. Something similar (and reminiscent of her 1987 Papa Dont Preach performances) could be seen in her use of a remix of Sorry (2006) for one of the shows interludes. This included visual input showing the Iraq War, Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush, thus transforming what originally was presented as a womans complaint to her ex-lover (Ive listened to your lies and all your stories) into a political statement. A similar strategy would be used on her 2008-9 Sticky & Sweet Tour. This brings to memory the aborted launch of her satire of the American dream: American Life (2003). The original music video, rst screened when the Iraq War was about to break out, pointed to the international scenario as a concoction by President Bush, presenting it as an extravagant fashion show. This was almost immediately withdrawn and replaced by an edited version which instead showed Madonna clad in a sexy military outt against a changing background featuring the ags of different countries, the last of which is the StarSpangled Banner. This is more in tune with Madonnas usual work. The ag is an easily recognizable symbol and potentially more neutral when used critically. On her Girlie Show (1993) Madonna sang Holiday. Both singer and dancers wore military-inspired coats with US ag linings and danced to a military beat against the background of a huge US ag, Madonna being clearly in command of her troop, ironically tyrannizing them and accepting no reply other than Yes sir, Mrs Sir, Yes sir. Thus, by blurring gender conventions, Madonna seemed to condemn the attitudes of surprise and shock at women occupying powerful positions still found in certain quarters.4 Moreover, and even if Sean Albiez would probably disagree here, by wearingand not yingthe ag to a military beat, the rst Gulf War still fresh in everybodys mind, Madonna was not simply displaying her

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patriotism but probably parodying aspects of her countryher contribution to the 1990 Rock the Vote campaign (literally wearing the ag with very little underneath) or the nal image in the Erotica music video (1992), featuring a Marilyn-styled Madonna hitchhiking in the nude in a suburban American street, can be similarly interpreted, given the Puritan middle-class values the latter connotes. A similar approach will be followed upon the release of her cover of Don McLeans 1972 homage to Buddy Holly and American values, American Pie (2000). Madonna edited the song to accommodate it to dance-pop conventions. The accompanying video is one of Madonnas simplest: images of Madonna singing and dancing in an almost spartan setting featuring a chair and the US ag as backdrop alternate with images of different sectors of the US population, emphasis being clearly placed on non-WASP America: gay and lesbian couples openly displaying affection, marginal families, Afro-Americans, Hispanics, and for almost the videos total run, a yellowing, ragged US ag. Devoid of specic references, the songs edited lyrics receive a totally new meaning, once again conveyed visually. The country evoked in Don McLeans version, Madonna seems to say, does not exist. The values its ag represents are a construction well past its sell-by date. The expression on Madonnas face when singing and dancing before the ag is difcult to describe but she jumps and smilesat some point she even marches to a military beat, as she had done back in 1993 with Holiday. Note should be taken that the half malicious, half childish smiling Madonna wears a tiara, which she combines with ragged, low-rise, rear-displaying jeans. Madonna as Princess or even Queen in a Republican state (see Albiez 129)? Is this to be taken as further evidence of her disregard for established power? Or does she, on the contrary, crown herself Queen of the ctional country evoked in Don McLeans song? Once again, Madonna leaves the door open for virtually any interpretation but one: blind patriotism. American Pie marks Madonnas transition to her most obviously American ethnic image: the sequined, Wizard-of-Oz Dorothy-reminiscent cowgirl (Albiez 131), which will characterize her Music period (20002001).5 Taken at face value, Madonnas cowgirl image can be seen as a deconstruction of the US male myth. And yet, as Albiez adds, the cowgirl once was a self-sufcient myth which Hollywood relegated to an almost invisible position in the

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twentieth century (12425). If this is really so, rather than deconstruct, Madonna may be seen to vindicate the validity of the cowgirl myth. Either way, hers is a tongue-in-cheek deconstruction/ vindication, as evidenced by the incongruence of the sequin and rhinestone-based outts she will be wearing in this period. Was she claiming the validity of American West values for early twenty-rst century urban life? Or was she, on the contrary, parodying them? In either case she presented them as yet one more construction, as seen in the Dont Tell Me video (2000), characterized by up to three different levels of signication, apparently opposingthrough yet another mise en abyme structurethe American West as a reality versus different levels of construction, even if everything eventually seems to melt into a huge construction which even admits homosexual connotations (see Albiez 13233).

Madonna: Pastiche and Collage

Madonnas status as a hybrid uid leads to another feature identied as typically postmodern: the emphasis on pastiche and collage (Urry, The Tourist Gaze 85), a melting pot of imitations of whatever is considered to be peculiar or unique (Jameson 195), which in turn is nothing but what the media present as such. After all, in a world with blurred frontiers and identities, the unique and original cannot but be revered, whatever is most frequently copied being also the most appreciated (Groom 9). According to Nick Groom, todays is a world of original copies or even blatant forgeries, in a culture where absolutely everything is mechanically and electronically reproduced, where seeing is believing (Urry, The Tourist Gaze 8485) and, consequently, where the image and the reproduction can be more real than the real and therefore become hyperreal (Eco, Travels in Hyperreality). All such features can be seen in Madonnas use of religious motifs and, most visibly, sex themes. As for the latter, Madonna has polished an increasingly sophisticated image, drawing inspiration from the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Manseld or Marlene Dietrich but always reinterpreting and providing their poses with a new meaning and signication. Although visible from the beginning, Madonnas sex load increases in 1990. Her Vogue video, which

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mainstreams what up to that moment had been a Harlem gay club dance (Guilbert 124), has Madonna adopt clearly Monroe-inspired poses. Yet, this is a tongue-in-cheek appropriation, as she would later show in her 1993 Saturday Night Live spoof of Monroes Happy Birthday, Mr President or her 1993 Bad Girl single cover image. Shot by Steven Meisel, this replicates a classic 1960 Marilyn Monroe picture taken by Eve Arnold except that Madonna clearly does away with Marilyns innocent aura and victim status. Whereas the Arnold image has a recently awoken woman decently covering her nakedness with her bedsheet, Meisels appropriation shows Madonna not covering but caressing her left breast, a cigarette carelessly hanging from her moutha clear sign of postcoital satisfaction. Furthermore, the songs title, Bad Girl, exceptionally anchors this interpretation. A self-conscious distance from Monroes innocent and victim image can also be seen in Madonnas Marilyn-inspired persona posing in contexts no one would ever associate with Monroe (e.g., the glamorously dressed Sex book Madonna deantly looking at the camera while surrounded by stark naked gay club dancers) or her adoption of features from other lm stars like Jayne Manseld or the never candid Marlene Dietrich, whom Madonna appropriated in some of her most sophisticated poses (e.g., in her Vogue video) and her recurrent androgyny/sexual ambiguity interplay. Indeed, Dietrich consciously provoked by wearing typically male outts, which helped consolidate her powerful sex appeal with bisexual undertones. Madonna will do this while performing Like a Virgin on her 1993 Girlie Show, taking her appropriation further by placing a walking stick between her legs and simulating an exaggerated erection. Around this period Madonna herself suggested new readings for this already complex palimpsest by declaring having had same-sex relations in the past and even fostering ambiguous interpretations of her friendship with comic actress Sandra Bernhard.

The De-Differentiation Game

De-differentation is another feature generally accepted as characteristic of postmodern life, and clearly affects the up-to-now clear-cut line separating high and popular culture, resulting in the birth of intertextual genres (Hutcheon 910; Crook, Pakulski, and Waters

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3637). Madonnas live performances have grown in sophistication and developed into a genre of their own, a 4-act show fusing elements from Broadway musicals, theater, ballet and all kinds of art/street performance. Each act showcases a series of songs, the greatest interest lying in how older songs are newly performed and give rise to intertextual chains. One of the most interesting is, again, that made up of the different performances of Like a Virgin, which was also used to open the Blond Ambition Tours second act (1990). Aided by new musical arrangements and choreography, the song transported the audience to the Western concept of the erotic/exotic Orient (Said). Sensuality was emphasized by the brassiere worn by Madonna on this occasion, whose golden color highlighted the visibility of what in principle was a piece of underwear, as well as the cones covering Madonnas breasts. The sexual connotations of these were obvious, but their interpretation is far from simple. On the one hand, they could be taken as an idealization of the female breast. It is equally possible, on the other, to see in them an inverted representation of the uterus, the container par excellence, or even a phallic symbol supplanting the female attributes. Supporting evidence could be found in the mirror image of the elongated bras worn by the dancers, which they would occasionally touch with movements suggesting masturbation, itself cataphoric of Madonnas performative climax. Should this be taken into account, an interpretation of such bras becomes increasingly plausible as sexual forms fusing in principle antithetical male and female features into a neutralized and therefore uid, hybrid, thus typically postmodern and truly effective sexual sign. The climax of this 1990 version of Like a Virgin was emphasized by the music suddenly coming to a total stop. Then Madonna would look up and a voice-over (clearly Madonna herself) would pronounce the word God. Very much like an adversative conjunction, this introduced the next song, the religiously themed Like a Prayer. But like the cigarette on the Bad Girl cover, it could also be taken as an exclamation signaling orgasm. Both readings could in fact be complementary. This is beyond any doubt the moment when sex and religion, two constants in Madonnas career, achieved their most perfect union. In actual fact, this moment can be read as a combination of both, marking the union

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of the worlds of sexuality and spirituality, and thus conrming a conception of sex as God-given pleasure. This songs latest rewriting was presented on the 2006 Confessions Tour. There, Like a Virgin, used as the central piece of the shows rst act, was once again given a new layer of meaning through highly successful intertextual chains. For this rst act Madonna wore black, horse riding-inspired (and S/M-related) gear, a reminder of her Dita persona in the Erotica song and video (1992). In the latter, however, Dita only exerts her power on a puppet, whereas in the rst act of her 2006 tour Madonna held the reins of power and exerted it on esh-and-bone men who, characterized as horses (in bridle-and-bit-including apparel), literally allowed their mistress to ride them: Eroticas Dita had come back with a vengeance. With this performance, Madonna once again vindicated sex, this time for middle-aged women who, like herself, could also feel touched for the very rst time. In so doing, Madonna contended, and still does contend, that being the object of sexual desire need not weaken the position of women. She is exposed because she wants to, possibly because pleasure can also be derived from exhibitionism, but she remains in control, literally subjecting the men around her and even suggesting that she does not really need them since in this performance she ended up alone on the stage, riding a mechanical bronco (yet another intertextual reference, this time to both the Dont Tell Me video and Drowned World Tour live performance) and even lap dancing around its phallus-evoking pole. Interestingly, the analysis of Madonnas intertextual chains would not be complete should it fail to account for the recurrence of visual motifs. In other words, intertextuality in Madonnas career is to be seen not only through the different stagings of the same songs but also through her use of the same symbols in live performances of (or videos accompanying) different songs. This is specially the case of her characteristic use of religious symbology. The half shocking, half vindicative early Madonna icon, epitomized by Deborah Feingolds lollipop portfolio, was based on the fact that the lyrics accompanying such visual input were in no way religious. This encoding perhaps reached a turning point in 19891990, with the (KKK-reminiscent or anti-orthodoxy?) burning cross motif and updated Maria Magdalena role she adopts in her

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controversial Like a Prayer video (1989). A change can indeed be noted in Madonnas work by this time. Although the religion-sex binomy still seems to be at work, religious themes no longer appear only visually but also in her song lyrics. Perhaps for the rst time in her career Madonnas aim to shock comes hand in hand with an aim to raise awareness and so the Madonna sign comes to represent religious (albeit hardly orthodox), critical thinking. This is best seen in her production in the late 1990s and 2000s. Ray of Light (1998) encapsulates a newly found profundity and, occasionally, mysticism in her lyrics, which quite ttingly matches her

Clare Parmenter--http://www.madonnalicious.com

FIGURE 1. Embodying the sacred: the Confessions Tour onstage crucixion

(2006).

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clearly evolved public persona, by now well known for her yoga and kabbalah-inspired lifestyle. What becomes interesting in this most recent period is not quite so much the religious dimension Madonnas Signied seems to develop as the development experienced by its Signier: the tendency to ornate her body with religious symbols remains (the kabbalah writsband or her Re-Invention Tour Kabbalists do it better T-shirt bear testimony to this) although clearly secondary to another. Taking her skill to construct her own body as text one step further Madonna has of late taken to embodying (and not only wearing) the sacred. Her Hindu goddess Laxmi impersonation in a famous David LaChapelle portfolio (1999) and, perhaps most notably, her 2006 Confessions Tour onstage crucixion (see Figure 1) are but two relevant examples which have certainly helped x unorthodoxy and nonconfessional religiosity as essential elements of the Madonna Signied.

Conclusion
This article has presented the gure of Madonna as an icon, arguing that the meaning and signication of the Madonna sign largely depends not quite so much on her song lyrics as on a complex nonverbal Signier. Focusing on two of her pervading themes, sex and religion, it has showed how Madonna became an icon in the early stages of her career by clearly choosing to use her own body as Signier. Likewise, this iconicity has always been characterized by a twofold complexity derived from (1) the growing sophistication of both her onstage and music video performances; and (2) the multilayered meaning her messages always seem to convey. In this regard, Madonna has been treated as an icon imbued with all the features generally attributed to postmodernism, and accordingly presented as a hybrid, global uid defying all pre-established (national, ethnic, religious, sexual) identities whilst always remaining easily recognizable. In addition, Madonnas use of pastiche and collage has also been noted not only in the inspiration she permanently draws from late artists but also, and above all, in the constant re/ visions she makes of her own work, each re/vision introducing at least one further level of meaning/signication. Finally, Madonna has been presented as a consummate advocate of de-differentation, constantly

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fusing old and new, the elitist and the popular, thus giving rise to new interpretations of old songs or, conversely, presenting new songs to t semantic elds she has traditionally explored in her almost thirty years as a solo artist. Urry adds that de-differentation in the postmodern world may even affect the border between the artistic and the commercial (The Tourist Gaze 85; see also Jameson 20305, and Storey 13132). There probably is no better example than Madonna herself, the best-selling female artist of all time, when every move of hers has been calculated to boost sales; no better example than Madonna, the artist with whom a new, hybrid, intertextual, half-artistic and half promotional genrethe music videohas developed to be later imitated by fellow artists. There still is a question that needs to be addressed, namely the relation (anchoring or relay) that can be said to exist between the verbal and the nonverbal in the case of Madonna. If only isolated performances were to be analyzed, it could be maintained that Madonnas is a fairly clear case of relay between the verbal and the nonverbal. Her lyrics are generally ambiguous, and these are only (partially, hardly ever totally) disambiguated through performance anchoring is therefore to be ruled out. In any case, neither relay nor anchoring will sufce in a possible account of the semiotic richness of Madonnas work, since neither truly explains how her recurrent intertextual chains can be tackled. The possibility is always there for the audience to infer that each new re/vision cancels out earlier meanings. This work suggests that such re/visions are not about cancelation but complementation, and from this only apparent contradiction a hybrid, universal Madonna so far risen victorious, with a slightly different message for each and every one of her millions of followers worldwide. As a post-scriptum of sorts, it should be added that, after performing on the worlds most successful tour ever by a solo artist (the Sticky & Sweet Tour, 20089, in support of her Hard Candy album), and parting ways with Warner Bros., 2012 promises to be a milestone in Madonnas career. Morphed into a blonde starlette from the 1930s40s, she has been busy of late promoting her upcoming directorial effort, which revisits the relationship between King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. Madonnas latest impersonation fosters comparisons between herself and the controversial American socialite. The artists new album will also be released this year, hunger for which

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will surely develop when she performs during the Superbowls Halftime Show. Even if critics are waiting to see how she resists competition from Madonnaesque gures like Britney Spears, Rihanna or Lady Gaga, one thing is for sure: a new Madonna era is dawning and, with it, new layers will be added to the Madonna palimpsest. To be continued.

Notes
1. This image can be accessed online at <http://www.madonnalicious.com/gallery1983.html>. Thanks are due to this site and her editor, Ms Clare Parmenter, for kindly granting the author permission to reproduce copyright material. See also Deborah Feingolds own Web site at <http://www.deborahfeingold.com>. All other images discussed in this article, including those from live performances or music videos, can be retrieved from the relevant galleries at <http://www.madonnalicious.com> and the media section at <http://www.madonna. com>. 2. In any case, many feminists would reject this denition on the grounds of oversimplication, as, from a clear presumption of heterosexuality, it seems to imply that there are two and no more than two sexes. Many babies are born with chromosomal, genetic, hormonal or genital dysfunctions. Consequently, such newborns do not t the standard male or female categories, and medicine and surgery have often been used to bring their recalcitrant bodies into closer conformity with either the male or the female category (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 11). 3. Nonindividualized US features can be seen in, for example, Borderline (1984), Open your Heart (1986), Secret (1994), American Pie (2000), or Love Profusion (2003). On the other hand, locations are deliberately blurred in most of Erotica (1992), the surreal Bedtime Story (1995) and even Frozen (1998). Finally, exoticizing videos are particularly abundant. Consider, for example, the carnivalized sensuality of Like a Virgin (1984); the evocation of Fritz Langs 1927 Metropolis in Express Yourself (1989); French eroticism and decadence in Justify my Love (1990); the Andalusian Spanish avor in Take a Bow (1994); the Argentinian theme used for the Evita-related material (19961997); the Japanese inuence in both Rain (1993) and Nothing Really Matters (1999); or even her particular homage to the British twenty-rst century metropolis in Drowned World (Substitute for Love) (1998), Beautiful Stranger (1999), or Hung Up (2005). 4. Using gender and queer theory concepts, and as Mark E. Casey has suggested to the author of this article, Madonna can be seen to have borderlined a female drag king performance in her portrayal of maleness. The Girlie Show performance of Holiday, as well as that of Like a Virgin can indeed be interpreted along these lines. Madonna gender-bending transgression must have affected her reception, specially among female followers, and ultimately position in what many would still regard as a male-dominated industry. 5. Similar undertones may also be seen in her less enduring Hard Candy era (2008), which used boxing and wrestling imagery.

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I. Prieto-Arranz is an associate professor at the University of the BaleJose aric Islands Department of Modern Languages. He holds a European PhD in English from the University of Oviedo (Spain). He has published in the elds of EFL, translation and, most specially, cultural studies, his main interest being the expression and representation of identity. He has authored and edited several volumes, including A Comparison of Popular TV in English and Spanish Speaking Societies: Soaps, Sci-Fi, Sitcoms, Adult Cartoons, and Cult ndez-Morales) and is Series (The Edwin Mellen Press, 2010, with Marta Ferna currently working on a comparative study of British and Spanish historical cinema from a national identity perspective.