1. 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

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