Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’ and the postmodern

I have chosen the video ‘Material Girl’ as it includes many elements which lead me to believe that it is postmodern. The first element I have noticed is pastiche as it’s clearly present in this video. Madonna clearly references Marilyn Monroe, in the form of copying a scene from the film ‘Gentlemen prefer blondes’. In this film, Monroe sings the song ‘Diamond’s are a girl’s best friend’, to which Madonna copies the setting and

costume. This signifies that she has a lot of respect for Marilyn Monroe as she was one of the best actress’ of her time and Madonna is using this video as almost a tribute to her.

Secondly there’s the meta-narrative. Throughout the video we see that a separate narrative is present, as well as the narrative of the song itself. This is apparent at the beginning of the video, were we see two directors looking at a clip of Madonna’s video and discussing her involvement in one of their new films. The video constantly cuts to scenes of her with the directors and follows her journey, creating a separate

story to the one in the song. This keeps us interested and also shows a lot of meaning behind the song and that a lot of thought has gone into the creation of the video.

Finally, there’s a lot of self reference throughout. The theme of the song and the title ‘Material Girl’ symbolises that Madonna is aware of her representation in the media at this particular time and is almost mocking them by embracing the image. Throughout her career Madonna has been classified as many different personalities but Material Girl highlights that she is mocking the media for their

portrayal of her and that in fact she is far from this look.Overall this video displays several characteristics that are examples of the post modernist movement

as its thought to be the first video were Madonna was classed as being postmodern and tested the boundaries.