Madonna studies

Background

Chilean literary critic Óscar Contardo [es] places the Madonna studies in the context of the British cultural studies when the phenomenon of celebrities began to be analyzed from the 1970s.^[19] American historian Richard Wolin observed that the cultural studies approach expanded during the 1980s, adding that under the influence of Michel Foucault, as well as Stuart Hall and the Birmingham School, popular culture came to be viewed as a site of "resistance to power". It was in this context, Wolin argues, that the "Madonna studies" developed into an academic cottage industry.^[20]

In Madonna: A Biography (2007), Mary Cross argues that "the turmoil of new theory imported from Europe and the culture wars of ideology were bringing huge changes to the American academic world and the college curriculum". She notes that whole departments devoted to popular culture, women's studies and media studies emerged, and suggested that Madonna seemed to illustrate extremely well what was happening on the embattled cultural ramparts of late twentieth-century American, describing her as a "perfect example of the whole theory of postmodernism the academic world was suddenly so immersed in".^[21] Daniel Harries from The Nation similarly observed that reflections of contemporary attitudes were occurring in the perception of popular art, not only among academics but also among mainstream pop critics at that time that Madonna began to be analyzed by academics.^[22]

In addition, literary scholar Luis Cárcamo-Huechante from Harvard University traces the origins of the Madonna studies to the camp sensibility associated with Susan Sontag's 1960s works referring to a "fascination of artifice and exaggeration", and what he perceives Madonna illustrated well.^[19] Associate professor Diane Pecknold in American Icons (2006) also discusses the camp sensibility and added that for most of the twentieth century, American scholars subscribed to the idea of an objective and universal canon and academics "were applying to Madonna the same sophisticated textual readings".^[14]

Spread

Madonna first came to prominence in the mid-1980s, and the discipline did not take long to start up. D Magazine talked about the Madonna scholarship in 1986.^[11] Robert Miklitsch, associate professor of Ohio University dates the start of Madonna studies to 1987 and Rocking Around The Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism & Consumer Culture by E. Ann Kaplan.^[23] According to Jon Pareles of The New York Times, Madonna was deemed "as a vehicle to open up issues".^[18] Some scholars cited Steven Anderson of The Village Voice who described her in 1989 as "the repository for our ideas about fame, money, sex, feminism, pop culture, even death".^[15] Pecknold observed that her person was open to multiple interpretations, contributing to the rise of the Madonna studies.^[14]

Scholars such as E. Ann Kaplan and John Fiske represented Madonna to their academic audiences as an example of how popular culture can imitates critical theories of history, knowledge, and human identity, according to Annalee Newitz.^[24] "Of all the artists who rose to prominence through MTV, none has garnered more attention among academics than Madonna", wrote Murray Steib in Reader's Guide to Music (2013).^[25] Professor Michael Bérubé, analyzed the preference for Madonna rather than other act (such as Metallica) by academics, and argued partly that citizens of advanced Western democracies tend to be more engaged by and informed about figures like Madonna or by blockbuster films.^[17] An author suggested that "pop culture and Madonna are central to political issues",^[26] while, Harris from The Nation observed in 1992 that Madonna had come to be regarded in their academic discourse not simply as a pop star, but as "the most significant artist of the late twentieth century".^[22]

Texts

In Material Girls (1995), Suzanna Danuta Walters held these academic writings, has produced at least one major academic text devoted to Madonna.^[10] According to professor Sheila Jeffreys there exists "a slew of scholarly books in postmodern language" about her.^[48]

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor Jane Desmond has argued that "the relevant bibliography is vast" in the Madonna studies, citing works ranging from Cathy Schwichtenberg's The Madonna Connection to Lisa Frank and Paul Smith's Madonnarama both published in 1993.^[49] Another 1993 publication, Deconstructing Madonna (Fran Lloyd) situates Madonna within a British rather than an American cultural perspective.^[50] Scholars including Thomas Ferraro and Santiago Fouz-Hernández have identified additional foundational texts, such as Karlene Faith's Madonna, Bawdy & Soul (1997) and the works previously cited by Desmond.^[51][52] Fouz-Hernández describes The Madonna Connection arguably a "key event" in the history of the relationship between Madonna and the academy.^[52] Professor Pamela Robertson Wojcik has similarly argued that the three books published in 1993, "cemented the institutionalization of a major subdivision of American media studies into Madonna studies".^[15]

In addition, Weisbard noted that some of her bibliographies often combine music criticism with "academic chops" citing Madonna: Like an Icon (2007) by Lucy O'Brien as an example.^[16] Fouz-Hernández further observed that academic discourses on Madonna were periodically amalgamated in volumes such as Desperately Seeking Madonna (Sexton, 1993), Madonna: The Rolling Stone Files (Rolling Stone, 1997) or The Madonna Companion (Metz and Benson, 1999)".^[52] Ferraro describes the latter book as "the better resource for Madonna criticism".^[51] Bitch She's Madonna (2018), written by Hispanic academics was promoted as the first Spanish–language cultural study book dedicated to Madonna, and as an extension of the Madonna Studies in Spain.^[53] In the same year, assistant professor Manav Ratti of Salisbury University, writing for Journal of American Studies, discussed Madonna's Sex book and called it as an extension of "scholarship on Madonna".^[4] Some theses have also received media attention and academic citation, such a Madonna's 'Like a Prayer:' A Critique of a Critique of the Geritol Generation by Chip Wells.^[54][29]

Criticisms

Madonna scholars faced criticism from both academia and mainstream media, with some describing them as a "marginal group".^[16][29] Ouellette traces the height of this criticism to the publication of The Madonna Connection of 1993 noting that such scholars became a fashionable target for "concern, condescension, and scorn from progressive quarters". ^[12] Some authors suggested that the branch was no really about Madonna but primarily motivated by professional factors within the academy, particularly a desire among scholars to "prove their social relevance".^[22] Ouellette argued that these scholars were not so much interested in Madonna herself, and Spanish sociologist Enrique Gil Calvo of the Complutense University of Madrid similarly stated "what scholars want is to take advantage of Madonna's fame".^[12][59]

Madonna scholars were subjected of discussions and criticisms centered in potential fanatic and ideological bias. Psychologist Abigail J. Stewart has questioned why some academics focus primarily on "Madonna's triumphs and not at her pain", further suggesting that they have constructed Madonna as a "solo generator of her image", arguing the postmodernist approaches have contributed at least as much as her biographers to her self-generated myth. She cites Susan McClary, who claimed that Madonna is "solely responsible for creating her music".^[60] In contrast, Guilbert argues that some Madonnologists instead seek to appropriate Madonna's work to serve ideological purposes and criticize her for failing to promote specific causes.^[38]

One critic argued "these professors make Madonna the academic equivalent of Shakespeare".^[54] Anne Hull wrote: "A handful of renegade scholars—students and professors—are studying Madonna. While their colleagues explore gender conflicts in Florentine history or Aristotelian metaphysics, they search for higher meaning in Madonna".^[29] Harris also expressed that "her academic admirers spend a great deal of time studying how she embodies the fantasies of other people; they devote remarkably little time, however, to discussing how she embodies their own".^[15] In 2003, Stephen Brown from University of Ulster who studied Madonna as a marketing genius, commented that "when you read some of the stuff that academics have written about her, then you're inclined to conclude that certain scholars should get out more".^[8]

Views from Madonna scholars

Some Madonna scholars, particularly women, have argued that they were subject to gender bias in academia, describing some of the criticisms directed at them as "derogatory criticisms" as a similar language to that used to describe Madonna herself, as reported herself Laurie Schulze of University of Denver.^[12] E. Ann Kaplan, an early scholar in the Madonna studies,^[15] expressed surprise over the backlash, interpreting it at that time as part of a broader reaction against feminism.^[12] Chip Wells, who received media attention responded to criticisms from Inside Edition, which taped him stating: "I've read Aristotle, Plato, Descartes. And I'm not finding anything in them I'm not finding in Madonna". He commented in defense, "it's not hard to make us look dumb".^[54]

Others criticized the bibliographical exchanges as resembling groups "who swap bibliographies like 13-year-old girls trade earrings", while Wells described themselves as a "a tight unit" adding by the nature of the area "we are studying, we have to coalesce".^[29] Assistant professor Lisa Henderson, responded "one can be a fan and a scholar, they enhance each other".^[26] Schulze herself, later published an article in The Velvet Light Trap in 1999, in which she examined the controversy surrounding the field and the label of "Madonna's academic wannabes" by left-leaning popular press, as noted her publication.^[61]

Controversy

Described as a controversial field by the National Geographic Society in 2018,^[39] Spanish sociologist María Ángeles Durán has noted that Madonna has been the subject of numerous and diverse studies, but provoking controversy of opinions.^[35] Charles T. Banner-Haley, a professor of history at Colgate University, similarly observed that Madonna's influence in academia has "caused a division among scholars that has often gone from the sublime to the silly".^[62] David Roediger described: "The idea of studying the popularity of Madonna has been grist for the mills of many critics of trends in scholarship on American culture".^[63]

Criticisms to the field extended to journalists, as noted the Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale.^[64] In 1991, Knight Ridder published an article titled "Madonna Even Controversial for Scholars", where they cited commentaries made by teachers and media personalities.^[65] According to Miklitsch, for cultural critics, the Madonna studies represented "the first and last word of barbarism", for the left, and cultural for the right.^[23] He described the scholarship as "political-cultural" phenomenon.^[23] Other critics labeled these studies as "the ultimate act of cultural imperialism".^[22]

Specific criticisms

From an educational sense, some reviewers debated about whether Madonna should have a place in curriculums alongside more established and canonical subjects, while argued that she was an "unworthy of academic study" that "adds nothing to the advancement of knowledge".^[12] Various commentators described it as "a waste of time and money" for both professors and students.^[54] It has also been criticised for adding nothing to students' employment prospects.^[66] Another critic said that "neither this study theme sit well with some students of higher education".^[54]

The field was criticized because tends "to be jargon laden and prone to over-interpretation".^[12] A denunciation of the branch and its feminist and gay exponents in cultural studies, rails against "a state of intellectual anarchy that sanctions willfully perverse misreadings", wrote Mandy Merck in Perversions: Deviant Readings (1993).^[67] Camille Paglia whom devoted studies about Madonna later criticized field's "pretentious terminology", citing terms such as "intertextual", "significations", "transgressive", "subversive" or "self-representation". She argued that "this would be comical, except for its ill effect on students and an increasingly corrupt career system".^[68] Robert Christgau observed that much academic writing on Madonna "feels translated", and noted a tendency that "overanalyzed" and "overstuffed" Madonna's videos in contrast to her pop songs.^[16] Authors of Media and Cultural Theory (2010), stated that from a musicological perspective, the Madonna studies devoted relatively little attention to the musical texts, and focused instead on performance and videos.^[7] Likewise author Andrew Blake offers a musicological review on the Madonna studies, arguing more broadly that cultural studies have a "problem" with music itself.^[23]

Other commentators addressed both Madonna's relevance and whole courses devoted to her. Roger Kimball, charged Madonna's presence in the classroom with nothing short of "defrauding students of a liberal-arts education".^[43] Instructors like Robert Walser found that some students reacted skeptical to the studies on Madonna, because "they haven't thought about in certain ways" and "they've trained not to image that there could be anything important going in popular culture, especially in popular culture produced by women".^[43] By 1991, Paglia said "We do not need a 'whole course' in Madonna".^[43] CBS News president Fred W. Friendly referred that "writing a major paper is supposed to be an intellectual achievement—a serious matter. Madonna is a media freak. How the media made her—I could see studying that".^[54]

Given the fact that Madonna's work only occupied consciousness for a mere years during the rise of this branch (she debuted in 1983), Elizabeth Tippens of Rolling Stone asked in 1990, "Do we wait another fifty years before we dare to deconstruct Madonna? To ask what she is teaching us about ourselves and our culture?".^[43] In the late-1990s, Australian feminist historian Barbara Caine dismissed the field by saying: "While not advocating more Madonna studies (now considerably dated), nor defending them as either scholarly or political, I want to suggest that such studies of girl culture are important".^[69] Robert Clay, a University of Florida English professor called them an "Old Hat".^[54]

Responses

Scholars, particularly those working in the Madonna studies argued a justification of studying modern culture as a legitimate object of academic inquiry. Charles Sykes from Milwaukee Magazine stated "there's no subject too ridiculous to be a subject of research in academics".^[54] Historian Marilyn B. Young commented that "pop culture has long been studied in universities" and "Madonna's impact is serious".^[54] Nash further stated that a figure like Madonna is "key to understanding the times in which they live and, by contrast, other eras".^[70] In 1993, Ouellette suggested that "if critics had not been so hostile from the start and had not spent so much time making scholarly work on Madonna seem ridiculous out of context, they might have been more fair in noting that the essays collected in the Madonna Collection, for instance, are nowhere near uniform celebrations of Madonna as a feminist or even populist idol".^[12]

Madonna's relevance or as object of study was commented on by such scholars. Kaplan described that "she is nevertheless a contradictory and complex cultural phenomenon that cannot be simply dismissed".^[12] Jesse Nash, an anthropology professor at Loyola University argued "it's more conventional to write Madonna off, to write popular culture off. But that's a big mistake. A whole generation is forming opinions based on her", the scholar stated.^[54] "Madonna is a figure that is very important to subcultural groups [...] To say she doesn't deserve to be studied is very condescending to a lot of people", opined Schwichtenberg.^[12] Some commentators compared her contemporary appeal with that of historical figures, with Orlando Sentinel reporting that some regarded her as "worthy of inquiry [today] as Charles Dickens was in the 18th century".^[54] Lisa Henderson, an assistant professor claimed that "a dissertation on Shakespeare might have been as laughable 300 years ago as a dissertation on Madonna might be today".^[26] Young also suggested that to younger generations, "Madonna is more important than Leonard Bernstein".^[54]

Harvard University's Lynne Layton, argued that "teaching students how to read popular culture critically is as important as teaching them to read high art".^[43] Gary Burns and Elizabeth Kizer in Madonna: Like a Dichotomy (1990) found that "students in communication classes find it useful to study Madonna because she is a fascinating and prolific cultural figure".^[71] In a Madonna devoted course by economist and academic Robert M. Grant, he noted the "familiarity with Madonna means that it is possible for everyone to contribute to the discussion".^[72] Duke University professor Thomas Ferraro described the field as "quite academic in focus, language, and ideology".^[51]

Madonna's thoughts

In 1994, Jon Pareles of The New York Times asked Madonna's thoughts about the academic discipline, while she responded, "I laugh. It's amusing. It's flattering because obviously I'm on a lot of people's minds. But I read about all of these things, and I read what I meant by things, and I just think, all of this comes from my subconscious or my unconscious, I don't even think about it".^[18] In an interview with Vanity Fair according to Gary Goshgarian, she gave a similar answer: "It's flattering to me that people take the time to analyze me and that I've so infiltrated their psyches that they have to intellectualize my very being. I'd rather be on their minds than off".^[73]

Comparisons and impact on others

The field has been analogously used both to defend or criticize other academic trends, and subfields, mostly from the post-Madonna studies era. Danish professor Erik Steinskog, used the field to defend the courses proposed for Beyoncé.^[44] Michael Dango also compared the Madonna-ology with the ongoing courses of Taylor Swift in 2024.^[75] Historian professor David Roediger, noticed that in 1997, The New York Times Magazine ridiculed whiteness studies calling it as the "silly successor" of the porn studies and Madonna studies.^[76]

For associate professor Diane Pecknold, the Madonna studies "heralded and hastened the development of American cultural studies".^[14] Dutch media scholar Jaap Kooijman, commented that before the Madonna studies, "most scholarly attention was paid to genres and artists that were not considered 'pop'", but she brought pop to the foreground.^[77] Authors of Madonna's Drowned Worlds (2004), commented "courses offered at such universities as Harvard, Princeton, UCLA and the University of Colorado have been put forth on the premise that celebrities have social significance and are therefore important topics of study".^[52] British author Emma Brockes called the "post-Madonna" studies era to those degree courses of cultural studies held by best universities, like when Harvard "pioneered" a study on Madonna back in the early 1990s.^[78]

Authors of Madonna's Drowned Worlds (2004), wrote that "academic studies and college courses dealing with Madonna's work benefited from the aura of her celebrity through the mid-1990s".^[52] In early 1990s, Maureen Orth also noted how academics made a "brisk trade".^[9] Some scholars appeared on talk shows, also gracing a score of national and international newspapers and magazines.^[52] Schwichtenberg, once asserted that "writing 'about' Madonna and her cultural significance had produced connections with others outside academe that dissolved the boundaries between public and private, academic and popular, theory and practice".^[79] However, John Harris of British music magazine Sounds, criticized in 1991, the pseudo intellectual rock analysis, in which he highlighted Madonna and her small intellectual industry and its scholars that analyzed her every move, noting that the BBC rounded them for an Omnibus special, and describing "the crap quotient went through the roof".^[80]

In the early 2000s, Michael Bérubé was critical of the scholarship's effects commenting "as long as cultural studies is taken to be identical to Madonna Studies, the critiques of cultural studies follow an altogether predictable path".^[17] Bérubé continued to be critical of the cultural studies more broadly, writing for The Chronicle of Higher Education in 2009, that since it importation from Europe to the United States, the field "has basically turned into a branch of pop-culture criticism".^[81] Stuart Hall, one of the most prominent authors in the cultural studies, commented: "I really cannot read another cultural-studies analysis of Madonna or The Sopranos".^[81] According to American writer Julia Keller: "Madonna Studies 101 [is the] derisive nickname sometimes applied to cultural studies".^[82]

Broadly, in Vamps & Tramps: New Essays (2011), Paglia referred to the "current academic writing on Madonna" and also on American popular culture in general as "deplorably low quality". It is marked by "inaccuracy, bathos, overinterpretation, overpoliticization and grotesquely inappropriate jargon borrowed from pseudotechnical semiotics and moribund French theory".^[68] Authors in Evaluating Creativity: Making and Learning by Young People (2000), commented that "whatever one's position on the Madonna debate, she stands as an image for a more general anxiety in the study of culture, and this respect the overall effect of postmodernism has been to unsettle criteria for evaluation in the arts in two ways: the neo-conservative backlash and cultural relativism".^[83]

On Madonna's career

The scholarship also made an impact on Madonna's literature. Daniel Harris of The Nation described as early as 1992 that "there is a Madonna for virtually every theoretical stripe".^[22] Commentators like Colombian writer José Yunis, El País's Lola Galán, Chilean literary critic Óscar Contardo and Caroline von Lowtzow from Süddeutsche Zeitung made similar observations.^{[13][59][19][41]} The lattermost adding that this even prompted a parody of these multiple interpretations: a "Postmodernism Generator".^[41]

According to the Encyclopedia of Women in Today's World (2011) the studies heralded Madonna as a "symbol, image, and brand".^[33] Authors of Religion and Popular Culture: Rescripting the Sacred (2008), believes that "despite the (perhaps misguided)" mocking of the Madonna studies wave, "the period produced some important and groundbreaking work in cultural studies that focused on the music, videos [and] films" of her career.^[84] In Boricua Pop (2004), Frances Negrón-Muntaner reflected: "Imagine for a second that you are Madonna... Imagine, that there are theory books about you, and that you are the main theme of dissertations and academic essays. Imagine that feminists discuss whether you are a heroine or a demon".^[85]

In Materialisations of a Woman Writer (2006), Swedish author Maria Wikse from Stockholm University commented "Madonna is no longer in the academic limelight", but stated that "Madonna Studies remains an established field within Cultural Studies".^[1] Andrew Morton wrote in his book Madonna of 2001: "All those college lecturers endlessly debating her impact on racial and gender relations in post-modern society, are still, after twenty years, desperately seeking Madonna".^[86]