The Madonna Connection

This book addresses the complexities of race, gender, and sexuality in popular culture by using the influence of Madonna to advance cultural theory. It explores how images and symbols associated with subcultural groups are smuggled into the mainstream by Madonna's various media serving as paradigm.

Introduction: Connections/Intersections -- Out of Bounds: Reading Race and Madonna's Audiences -- "A Sacred Monster in Her Prime": Audience Construction of Madonna as Low-Other -- Madonna T/Races: Music Videos Through the Prism of Color -- Images of Race & Religion in Madonna's Video Like a Prayer: Prayer & Praise -- The Sapphic Insurgent: Madonna and Gay Culture -- Embodying Subaltern Memory: Kinesthesia & the Problematics of Gender & Race -- Justify Our Love: Madonna & the Politics of Queer Sex -- Madonna's Postmodern Feminism: Bringing the Margins to the Center -- Gender Trouble: Madonna Poses the Feminist Question -- Madonna Politics: Perversion, Repression, or Subversion? Or Masks and/as Master-y -- Feminist Politics & Postmodern Seductions: Madonna & the Struggle for Political Articulation -- Seduction, Control, & the Search for Authenticity: Madonna's Truth or Dare -- Don't Go for Second Sex, Baby! -- The Political Economy of Postmodernism: Madonna as Star-Commodity -- Metatextual Girl: - patriarchy - postmodernism - power - money - Madonna -- "Material Girl": The Effacements of Postmodern Culture -- The Distance Between Me & You: Madonna & Celestial Navigation (or You Can Be My Lucky Star)