Madonna As Postmodern Myth

Author : Georges-Claude Guilbert
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 0786480718
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Madonna as Postmodern Myth written by Georges-Claude Guilbert and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-10-02 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Madonna has long been accepted as a pop culture icon, but this text postulates a greater cultural importance by analyzing her as a postmodern myth. This work examines how Madonna methodically discovered and constructed herself (often rewriting her past), the nature and extent of her ambition and the means she used to reach her goals. It also details the way in which she organized her own cult (borrowing from the gay community), devised her artistic output, and cunningly targeted different audiences. It also studies the fundamental contradiction--virgin or vamp? saint or prostitute?--that fuels Madonna's career and describes how Madonna reflects today's society, its contradictions and its attitudes toward sexuality and religion.

Author : Paul Rutherford
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
ISBN 13 : 1442691603
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book World Made Sexy written by Paul Rutherford and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2007-08-11 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cult of eroticism is a pervasive force in modern society, affecting almost every aspect of our daily lives. In this book, Paul Rutherford argues that this phenomenon is a product of one of the major commercial and political enterprises of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: the creation of desire - for sex, for wealth, and for entertainment. A World Made Sexy examines museum exhibitions, art, books, magazines, films, and television to explore the popular rise of eroticism in America and across the developed world. Starting with a brief foray into the history of pornography, Rutherford goes on to explore a sexual liberation movement shaped by the ideas of Marx and Freud, the erotic styles of Salvador Dali and pop art, the pioneering use of publicity as erotica by Playboy and other media, and the growing concerns of cultural critics over the emergence of a regime of stimulation. In one case study, Rutherford pairs James Bond and Madonna in order to examine the link between sex and aggression. He details how television advertising after 1980 constructed a theatre of the libido to entice the buying public, and concludes by situating the cultivation of eroticism in the wider context of Michel Foucault's views on social power and governmentality, and specifically how they relate to sexuality, during the modern era. A World Made Sexy is about power and pleasure, emancipation and domination, and the relationship between the personal passions and social controls that have crafted desire.

Author : Sandra M. Gilbert
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 039365172X
Total Pages : 362 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Still Mad: American Women Writers and the Feminist Imagination written by Sandra M. Gilbert and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant, sweeping history of the contemporary women’s movement told through the lives and works of the literary women who shaped it. Forty years after their first groundbreaking work of feminist literary theory, The Madwoman in the Attic, award-winning collaborators Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar map the literary history of feminism’s second wave. From its stirrings in the midcentury—when Sylvia Plath, Betty Friedan, and Joan Didion found their voices and Diane di Prima, Lorraine Hansberry, and Audre Lorde discovered community in rebellion—to a resurgence in the new millennium in the writings of Alison Bechdel, Claudia Rankine, and N. K. Jemisin, Gilbert and Gubar trace the evolution of feminist literature. They offer lucid, compassionate, and piercing readings of major works by these writers and others, including Adrienne Rich, Ursula K. Le Guin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Susan Sontag, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Toni Morrison. Activists and theorists like Nina Simone, Gloria Steinem, Andrea Dworkin, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Judith Butler also populate these pages as Gilbert and Gubar examine the overlapping terrain of literature and politics in a comprehensive portrait of an expanding movement. As Gilbert and Gubar chart feminist gains—including creative new forms of protests and changing attitudes toward gender and sexuality—they show how the legacies of second wave feminists, and the misogynistic culture they fought, extend to the present. In doing so, they celebrate the diversity and urgency of women who have turned passionate rage into powerful writing.

Author : Mary Gabriel
Publisher : Little, Brown
ISBN 13 : 0316456446
Total Pages : 939 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Madonna written by Mary Gabriel and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2023-10-10 with total page 939 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Editors’ Choice, One of NPR’s Best Books of the Year In this “infinitely readable” biography, award-winning author Mary Gabriel chronicles the meteoric rise and enduring influence of the greatest female pop icon of the modern era: Madonna (People Magazine) With her arrival on the music scene in the early 1980s, Madonna generated nothing short of an explosion—as great as that of Elvis or the Beatles—taking the nation by storm with her liberated politics and breathtaking talent. Within two years of her 1983 debut album, a flagship Macy's store in Manhattan held a Madonna lookalike contest featuring Andy Warhol as a judge, and opened a department called “Madonna-land.” But Madonna was more than just a pop star. Everywhere, fans gravitated to her as an emblem of a new age, one in which feminism could shed the buttoned-down demeanor of the 1970s and feel relevant to a new generation. Amid the scourge of AIDS, she brought queer identities into the mainstream, fiercely defending a person's right to love whomever—and be whoever—they wanted. Despite fierce criticism, she never separated her music from her political activism. And, as an artist, she never stopped experimenting. Madonna existed to push past boundaries by creating provocative, visionary music, videos, films, and live performances that changed culture globally. Deftly tracing Madonna’s story from her Michigan roots to her rise to super-stardom, master biographer Mary Gabriel captures the dramatic life and achievements of one of the greatest artists of our time.

Author : Patricia Spence Rudden
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1443808695
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Singing for Themselves written by Patricia Spence Rudden and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Singing for Themselves: Essays on Women in Popular Music is a fresh look at a topic that has attracted increasing interest in recent years. In this collection, scholars from a number of disciplines look at various artists and movements and come to some new conclusions about the ways in which female artists have contributed to the past four decades of pop, rock, blues and punk. From new looks at major artists Etta James, Laura Nyro and Patti Smith to later figures Ferron, Bjørk, and Melissa Etheridge, these chapters suggest new ways to view—and hear—music that is already part of our culture. Essays on the Indigo Girls, Dixie Chicks and Destiny’s Child prove that the girl-groups tradition is alive and well, but with additional new dimensions, and a three-essay section on Joan Jett and the Riot Grrrls phenomenon sheds new light on their implications for feminist artistic expression. The final piece, an annotated bibliography of academic writing on women in rock, helps make this collection a useful addition to the library of students of popular music, while the solid research and accessibility of the text make this a good choice for the general reader as well as the seasoned scholar. "If you think that adoration of certain pop music is a guilty pleasure, not worthy of higher intellectual aspirations, then Singing For Themselves offers absolution. It's far from trivial to ponder the Tao of Canadian singer Ferron, the classical allusions of Laura Nyro's lyrics, the postfeminist booty-shaking of Destiny's Child, or the historical milieu that turned Jamesetta Hawkins into blues great Etta James. Reading these essays made me want to go right back to the music - feeling wiser, yes, but also validated in the desire to go as deep as any song or singer can take me." Michele Kort, author of Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro, and senior editor at Ms. magazine "I've read Singing for Themselves: Essays on Women in Popular Music, and am happy to provide an endorsement. Singing for Themselves is a consistently interesting collection of new essays on women and popular music. The collection is all the more welcome for being so current. It mixes essays on recent phenomena (such as electronic/punk group Le Tigre and the Dixie Chicks' stirring of political controversy) with new perspectives on canonical figures like Patti Smith or Etta James. The essays gathered here are written with clear commitments, but all are marked by care and scholarly rigour. I found the interdisciplinary breadth of Singing for Themselves refreshing; new avenues for research are opened up here, and new theoretical paradigms are explored." Will Straw, PhD, Acting Director, McGill Institute for the Study of Canada Associate Professor, Department of Art History and Communication Studies "Opening this book was like opening the door onto a surprise party. Everyone I've ever wanted to meet was in there, including myself!" Ferron

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 900418287X
Total Pages : 442 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Kabbalah and Modernity written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010-09-15 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together leading representatives of the recent debate about the persistence of kabbalah in the modern world. It breaks new ground for a better understanding of the role of kabbalah in modern religious, intellectual, and political discourse.

Author : Santiago Fouz-Hern?ez
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351559532
Total Pages : 267 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Madonna's Drowned Worlds written by Santiago Fouz-Hern?ez and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Madonna is perhaps one of the most consistently transgressive and self-transforming artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The recent release of two critically acclaimed and best-selling albums and a sold-out world tour have renewed media and academic interest in the artist. Madonna presents a set of strikingly new challenges to cultural analysis, and new developments in Gender, Queer and Ethnic studies have shed more light on her entire oeuvre. Whilst the contributors do refer to classic cultural theorists such as Baudrillard, Zizek, Foucault and Barthes, new theoretical approaches to Madonna's work feature prominently. In view of this, the present volume offers new perspectives on Madonna's work to date, addressing her configurations of race, gender and sex(uality) and with special emphasis on her resurrection after the Sex backlash in the early 1990s. The collection focuses on new Madonna-related topics such as Hinduism, Judaism, Japanese culture, All-American culture, Queer culture, Motherhood and her influence on newer 'girl acts' such as the Spice Girls and Britney Spears. The book explores the themes of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and celebrity consumption through the lens of Madonna's songs, videos and shows. An international array of scholars portrays Madonna's popularisation of the notion that identity is not fixed and can be continuously rearranged and revamped. The book should have wide appeal for all those concerned with gender studies, cultural studies, ethnic studies, lesbian and gay musicology as well as popular music studies.

Author : Doris Tishkoff
Publisher : AuthorHouse
ISBN 13 : 1420897675
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Madonna/Whore written by Doris Tishkoff and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2006 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since time immemorial women have been cast into two opposite categories - either the 'Madonna', respectable wife, mother, daughter, sister, or the off-limits mistress, vamp, or common whore. This book traces the so-called Madonna/whore syndrome from its roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition to the present day. Drawing on works of art, literature, and the theater, we find that every age recreates the two principle feminine archetypes in its own image. As mirror images of the ways in which society views and treats women, they remain deeply buried within our collective unconscious, shaping men's perceptions of women and women's perception of self. Neither a feminist nor a religious polemic per se, this book considers several especially timely issues. Jesus' strikingly liberal stance on women, their active role in the Jesus movement and early Church pertains to the current debates on the ordination of women. Similarly, the discussion of Jesus' position on sexuality, marriage, celibacy is especially pertinent to the critical debate about celibacy and the priesthood today. Ultimately, however, by stripping away layers of mythology and restoring the 'two Marys' to their original vital roles - wife, mother, lover, creator, nurturer, scholar, teacher - they become complementary rather than separate categories, a holistic view not only of woman, but of our universal and fundamental humanity.

Author : Diane Railton
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 13 : 0748633243
Total Pages : 184 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Music Video and the Politics of Representation written by Diane Railton and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-07 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can we engage critically with music video and its role in popular culture? What do contemporary music videos have to tell us about patterns of cultural identity today? Based around an eclectic series of vivid case studies, this fresh and timely examination is an entertaining and enlightening analysis of the forms, pleasures, and politics that music videos offer. In rethinking some classic approaches from film studies and popular music studies and connecting them with new debates about the current 'state' of feminism and feminist theory, Railton and Watson show why and how we should be studying music videos in the twenty-first century. Through its thorough overview of the music video as a visual medium, this is an ideal textbook for Media Studies students and all those with an interest in popular music and cultural studies.

Author : Landon Palmer
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190888431
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rock Star/Movie Star written by Landon Palmer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the mid-1950s, when Hollywood found itself struggling to compete within an expanding entertainment media landscape, certain producers and studios saw an opportunity in making films that showcased performances by rock 'n' roll stars. Rock stars eventually found cinema to be a useful space to extend their creative practices, and the motion picture and recording industries increasingly saw cinematic rock stardom as a profitable means to connect multiple media properties. Indeed, casting rock stars for film provided a tool for bridging new relationships across media industries and practices. From Elvis Presley to Madonna, this book examines the casting rock stars in films. In so doing, Rock Star/Movie Star offers a new perspective on the role of stardom within the convergence of media industries. While hardly the first popular music culture to see its stars making the transition to screen, the timing of rock's emergence and its staying power within popular culture proved fortuitous for a motion picture business searching for its place in the face of continuous technological and cultural change. At the same time, a post-star-system film industry provided a welcoming context for rock stars who have valued authenticity, creative autonomy, and personal expression. This book uses illuminating archival resources to demonstrate how rock stars have often proven themselves to be prominent film workers exploring this terrain of platforms old and new - ideal media laborers whose power lies in the fact that they are rarely recognized as such. Combining star studies with media industry studies, this book proposes an integrated methodology for writing media history that combines the actions of individuals and the practices of industries. It demonstrates how stars have operated as both the gravitational center of media production as well as social actors who have taken on a decisive role in the purposes to which their images are used.