The inspirational singer’s influence on culture stretches much further than her music.
After almost forty years of an extraordinary and highly controversial music career, pop queen and provocateur Madonna has recently announced that she will be co-writing and directing her own biopic.
Universal Studios have announced that both Oscar-winning Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody and producer Amy Pascal will be working alongside the superstar to help create a film that will look back over Madonna’s life and critical moments. As a tribute, let’s take a look at some of the ways Madonna has impacted culture in and outside of music in her 40+ year career.
Much more than just the “Queen of Pop”, Madonna has challenged taboos throughout her career, ones that could have easily restricted others from expressing themselves in the way they wanted.
Through her revolutionary 1980s fashion sense, lifestyle, lyrics and rebellious attitude, Madonna has singlehandedly caused a few cultural crises and brought in notions which empowered feminism and supported the LGBT community amongst other braveries. Her actions as a daring pop icon arguably led many people to finally retaliate against oppression in their lives, and look at things like gender and sexuality from a different perspective.
Her early work, in particular, has influenced a number of the highly talented artists that we cherish today. Singers including Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande, two of the most prevalent pop artists of this generation, have spoken of being inspired by Madonna’s art and influence.
Gaga mentioned in an interview with NME TV that Madonna was a big inspiration whilst writing Born This Way – a song remembered primarily for its championing of race and sexuality. Ariana Grande has Madonna giving a monologue as “the lord” in the music video for her single God is a Woman. These examples serve to show Madonna’s ‘Queen of Pop’ status and her immense power as a prominent woman within the entertainment industry.
After losing her mother to breast cancer at the age of five, Madonna Louise Ciccone’s character was moulded into a rebellious, “I don’t give a damn, and you can’t tell me what to do” way of being that became known as simply, Madonna. She didn’t have it easy, and her bold nature in her early years could be considered a coping mechanism.
Once the tragic event of her mother’s passing took place, her father quickly remarried another woman, who also happened to be their house cleaner, and who Madonna pretty much detested – Cinderella vibes indeed. But despite her tough childhood, this all helped to create one of the most influential female artists ever.
It was when she performed Like a Virgin in the 1984 MTV video awards that people reacted like “wow, who is this girl”. This moment wasn’t just the definitive one in Madonna’s music career, but also in wider pop culture, too. In this performance, she rolled around the floor on stage in her underwear, an embodiment of her purpose of taking all the political taboos that were simmering in America at the time, and putting them out in the light using the medium of pop music.
Whilst growing up, Madonna had a lot of religious symbolism in her life, as she was frequently surrounded by nuns and priests who were always over at her home – ironic. This was later symbolised in her work which often merged political, sexual, as well as religious themes that triggered both infuriated criticism and praises from those who appreciated her bravery and boldness.
Besides the MTV video awards performance, the most provocative highlights of her career included making out with other pop icons including Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, and pretending to masturbate on stage during 1990’s Blond Ambition World Tour – truly pushing boundaries.
At times, the singer can even be seen as a polarising figure. The song and subsequent music video for 1986’s Papa Don’t Preach saw Madonna playing the character of a pregnant teen who tells her father she’s set on “keeping my baby”. Madonna ended up dedicating this song to the Pope, which led to Pope John Paul II urging Italian fans to boycott her concerts – she was ultimately labelled as “blasphemous” by the Vatican.
In other religious conflicts, she released the song and music video Like a Prayer in 1989, which showed features such as burning crosses and Madonna making out with a black Jesus statue come to life. The response from religious groups was evidently not so positive – they ended up boycotting the music video with accompanying threats. This even led to Pepsi-Cola banning all future broadcasts of the Madonna/Pepsi-Cola commercial, as well as cancelling her 1-year contract and the sponsorship of what would have been the Like a Prayer world tour.
She is known to have empowered the LGBT community through much of her work, including the 1990 song and music video Vogue, which was subtly about gay liberation. Her urge to empower women and feminism has also been executed in numerous ways, including her reclaiming of crotch-grabbing for women in the 1989 music video for Express Yourself and how she turned wedding dresses into bold assertions of female sexuality in music videos such as Like a Virgin.
She has also explored female sexuality with her publishing of a (£117) coffee table book in 1992 called Sex, which displayed erotic pictures of her with other celebrities, including Vanilla Ice and Naomi Campbell. This incredibly bold move was even criticised by people close to her, as she took it so far that this could have easily put an end to her career.
When we really stop to think about Madonna’s moves during the highs of her music career, we realise just how crazy and abominable many parents and grandparents from the 80s and 90s must have seen her as. Despite all the controversy, however, she continued without letting any set-backs interrupt the messages she transmitted as a provocateur pop artist.
While some of us may be thinking that there’s been much more explicit work from artists since her heyday (Cardi B’s latest sex-positive song WAP is merely one example), what must be acknowledged is that Madonna was one of the first musicians to do this during a time when many more people were offended by the subjects of sex, abortion, and gay rights.
She’s a genius for the simple fact that she knew what she was doing. As those who knew her well say in the Madonna: Goddess of Pop movie, she knew that it would sell to provoke and cause controversy.
The way she explored sexuality and impacted culture by challenging controversial subjects throughout her work makes her an exceptional figure and female artist in the history of music. Like her or not, Madonna is considered by many to be the greatest woman in music, and, as columnist Barbara Ellen from The Guardian rightly said, popular culture still reeks of Madonna’s influence for the good reason that she’s earned it.
