Welcome

Welcome to our blog.

In this blog, we will discuss about 

Madonna

Before we start,

let us introduce ourselves.

We are students from UTAR, Malaysia.

Chong Suet Mun

Cynthia Yap Jing Yee

Lee Ern Hong

Loh Yoon Wei

Ng Kok Sum

Soo Joon Hern

Tan Vi Nie

Wong Su Hui

Before we start, please note that this is our assignment.

Enjoy.

Reference

http://www.biography.com/people/madonna-9394994#personal-life

http://www.publicacions.ub.edu/revistes/bells17/documentos/574.pdf

Moran, J. (2000). Disembodied Images: Authors, Authorship and Celebrity. In Star authors literary celebrity in America (p. 60). London: Pluto Press

True Blue - Madonna | Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards | AllMusic. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.allmusic.com/album/true-blue-mw0000190762

Image Source Retrieved From:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUQJnJQsIPVdcYFeg3WVKdFq4iPf6nTm8nbLAwKgCYLqOaXtpnYaV9mc9TjC8g4DKcWsxvHDd5m4_l7euQUIVstacl-Mu6pVNIa6qkoA9IqdWgk7rKDZ-FPO-df4lX2XHVnVkNLQUTYF8/s1600/Madonna+-+True+Blue+%2528Greek+Edition%2529IMG_0592.JPG

http://madonnaturkiye.com/wp-content/uploads/Madonna-hung-up-20051.jpg

http://nex1.tv/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Madonna7.jpg

http://assets-s3.usmagazine.com/uploads/assets/articles/80541-madonna-returns-as-the-face-of-versace-for-the-fourth-time-photos/1417710051_madonna-versace-zoom.jpg

http://www.ouchpress.com/madonna/wallpapers/423030.html

http://www.radiomix.com.br/portoalegre/wp-content/uploads/sites/63/2014/01/madonna.jpg

http://musicbiz101wp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/madonna-4fe25d0953b25.jpg

http://www.imobilco.ru/f/articles/350/583/505/Madonna-YOUNG1.jpg

http://www.madonnarama.com/artworks/posts/20120330-pictures-madonna-truth-or-dare-fragrance-ad.jpg

http://vienniev.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Madonna-Looking-Cool-and-Effortless-As-Always.jpg

http://images2.fanpop.com/image/photos/11900000/Madonna-Photo-shott-for-Interview-May-2010-madonna-11940288-1503-2000.jpg

Parody of True Blue MV

The reason we choose the music video because this is the period where Madonna is the superstar, the moment where she started to be famous and well know through out the world.

Our group did parody on Madonna's True Blue and highlighted some of her casual dance moves that show her diversity in taking different kind of roles in her career.

Conclusion

She is seen by many as having a near perfect body and looks. This helps to maintain her long-term appeal as a sex symbol, like, for example Marilyn Monroe, whom she can be seen to mimic in certain ways. Other qualities, it can be argued, include her talent in singing, dancing and acting without which she would lack appeal to the public. A certain degree of dedication, perseverance and confidence can also be seen proving useful in pulling her through many a scandal and criticism. Above all it must have been ambition that got her started and must have seemed useful in the progression of her fame.

It can be seen that, through the years, her appeal has changed in various ways.
The general majority of her audience, however, seems to be in the younger generation.
I believe that her appeal to males is that of a sexual representation with good looks and body, a degree of talent and a fair amount of publicity. Appeal to females is more in the form of a symbol of feminine rebellion or a kind of role model. Above all her message of "you can make it with whatever style" appeals to all those interested in music, as a career or a hobby.

Analysis

In both of the music video Hung up and True blue, Madonna portrays the act of star as performer. Madonna clarified that the video was a tribute to John Travolta and to dance in general. Her dance moves for the video, which were inspired by Travolta's movies like Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978) and Perfect (1985) took three hours to shoot. She wears a pink leotard while dancing in the ballet studio in Hung Up video is actually inspired by John Travolta.  This shows that she does not imprint her persona in the video but she performs to entertain.  Furthermore, her choreographer Jamie King says that this music video is not just about music but the bodily expression. Hence, a lot of moves were applied in her video such as whole spectrum, be it crumping, breakdancing, jazz and disco.

While in the True Blue, Madonna play a role of a bubbly girl instead of being herself the sexy girl she use to be. With the partial casual wear, she did proper dance moves that does not consistent with her previous music videos because this music video can be say less sexy than before. Thus, this shows her being a performer that able to perform different roles into her character in music videos. As mentioned, in this video, she plays a role of a blonde hair girl where new look  produced because we seldom see her in this diverse mode. 

Hung Up (2005)

Hung Up’ is part of Madonna’s 10th studio album, ‘Confessions on a Dance Floor’. This album was released in 2005 and winning the Grammy award for best electronic/dance album. The genre of this song is Dance-Pop which is known as a style of electronic dance music and a sub-genre of pop music that evolved from 1980’s disco music as we can see the props and costume make the song more realistic and match the genre of dance pop in 1980s Disco music. It is the mixture dance beats with a Pop-House and R&B song structure. Besides that, this song also incorporates the sound like ticking clock to symbolize fear of wasted time. For Madonna, indeed time goes by so slowly. Hung Up is a Tearful Dance on her mother's grave and she cries the song with existential sadness. Most Dance/Disco songs are happy and upbeat. Not this one. In Hung Up, Madonna is Crying on her Sad Dance Floor! The performance of the physical discipline ‘parkour’ also can be seen in this music video.

True Blue (1986)

True Blue is where Madonna become Madonna the Superstar, this music video got endless praise by the public whereby it critics as a light-hearted and cute retro song. According to Madonna, “True Blue” tittle was origin from a favorite expression of her husband (Sean Penn) and his very pure version of love. ("True Blue - Madonna | Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards | AllMusic," n.d.)This album was tribute to him and the album inspiration come from her “unabashed valentine” for Penn. Madonna has the true skill as song writer, recorder maker whereby she mentions that this song is also inspire by Motown’s girls groups from 1960s. Furthermore, “True Blue” is a dance-pop girl group song where she manage to portrayed herself with a new look, leaner with a sporting platinum blond blush hair. The song displays a rock and rolls youth culture. 

About Madonna

When mentioned Madonna, people will automatically think of singer, performer and actress, Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone, born on August 16, 1958 in Bay City, Michigan. Madonna is a mix of Italian and French Canadian. Madonna’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and passed away on December 1, 1963 when Madonna was only 5 years old. Thus, it significantly affected Madonna’s adolescence. She rebelled against the rules imposed by her stepmother, upbringing by turning her conservative clothing into revealing outfits, visiting underground gay clubs and rejecting her religious background.

However, Madonna was drive for perfectionism and high achievement. She was a straight-A student, cheerleader and disciplined dancer which gradually earned her a full scholarship to the University of Michigan to their dance program. In 1980, she joined Breakfast Club as its drummer and later, as its lead singer. Over the next few years, Madonna formed several different bands of her own, including Madonna & The Sky, The Millionaires and Emmy. Madonna decided to go solo and hired Camille Barbone of Gotham Records as her manager in 1981 to her get her singing career on track. Camille showed Madonna to navigate the male-dominated world of the music business.

Madonna then starred in her first mainstream feature film, Desperately Seeking Susan (1985). On August 16, 1985, she married actor Sean Penn and co-starred with him the film Shanghai Surprise. She also star in Who’s That Girl (1987), Bloodhounds of Broadway (1989) and Dick Tracy (1990). However, her marriage to Penn ended due to reports of domestic violence and his assault of a photographer. She starred in the critically acclaimed screen adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Evita (1996) and she won a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical, and in the film she performed "You Must Love Me," which earned an Academy Award for Music, Original Song. Madonna had proven her versatility as a star in both film and music. In 1998, she released Ray of Light, a critically-acclaimed outing that had her delving into electronica and spiritual exploration. Then came Music (2000), another successful electronic project, this time with more explicit, unpredictable dance leanings and the bulk of production. 

Star as Performer

Stars-as-celebrities who are famous by “being themselves”, and star-as-professionals is known by others by “act as themselves” which is putting a lot of effort by creating consistent image or role of them. For the stars-as-performers, they become famous by trying to play with difference roles as they not really want to be the same role that known by others. Due to the expansion of celebrities’ side, not only film stars can dominate in the entertainment field but the pop musicians and soap stars.

So that it arouses a phenomenon which is quite a lot of film stars get into stars-as-performers, in order to re-establish their stars status by giving the meaning in their acting and subtext, they emphasize on body language, gesture, not just acting for acting. The stars-as-performers expose to method acting, which is some techniques that actors use to bring themselves into the character to know their thought and feelings, in other words, it’s a technique of merging self and character. There are several actors switch from star-as-professional to star-as-performer which is Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt and star-as-celebrities to star-as-performer is Johnny Depp.

Star as profession

Which is a person after he/ she becomes a star famous and known with his/ her work in the entertainment industry.  A star as profession is a person where his/her private life did not really stand up in the public and public does not pay fully attention on their private life. Which can consider their life as little non-existent in the public. There group of the people are form by television show hosts, journalist, and also the sit-com actors. Whereby the audiences only focus and pay fully attention on their work.

In Malaysia we have an example which is Owen Yap a newscaster in 8tv. Few years back he became more and more famous and we can see his level of popularity many of the advertisers hired him as the ambassador for many brands and products. The star as profession is a stage before the star gets famous whereby everyone is crazy about his private life, another example is the international star, Andy Lau, he is one of the stars as profession and moves to star of celebrity’s category.     

Generally speaking, the star-as-professional mode is seen to contrast with the star-as-performer, for in the latter it is the actor’s performance or acting skills that are foregrounded, over and above questions referring to their private life or public image. As suggested earlier, a logical consequence of the fact that the star-as-professional relies on the existence of a perfect image-role correlation is the widespread but misleading belief that professionals do not act, or ‘work’ for that matter, but ‘perform themselves’.

Star as celebrity

For a star as celebrity, their lifestyle are more often in the limelight and receive much attention compared to their work. This could start off with the attention of a kind action or a criticism action and could end in the other way it started. Things gone big depending on how the media magnifies the issue and the rate of recurrence of the celebrity made on each different media. Their popularity often puts their work into oblivion and focus on highlighting on their lifestyle entertaining the audience.

Star could start out as a profession or performer and when their personal lifestyle received much attention of the crowd, they slowly become a star as celebrity. Quoting from Joe Moran’s book, Star Author, he mentioned that a celebrity creates from a person that leads him or her to become a capitalist society in different ways. Those ways may be different but they are commonly used as market stimuli, a representation of idealistic social type, as a focal point for the purpose of keeping attention of the audience and so on. Nowadays in the fandom culture as well, celebrity slowly becomes their identity, their role model and other possible way that they are proud of. 

Introduction

From almost the very beginnings of cinema the notion of stardom has been one of the medium’s defining appearances. It has remained central to the successful commercial production, distribution and exhibition of films. It has also played a special role in the medium’s interaction with other parts of the media, so that stars have played a significant part in the coverage and marketing of cinema within the media more generally. The relationship which cinema has forged with its audience has frequently been defined by the status of film stars. They remain the industry’s primary marketing tool and are frequently a main reason for the audience’s attendance in the first place.

Richard Dyers star theory is the idea that icons and celebrities are manufactured by institutions for financial gain. He believes that stars are constructed to represent 'real people' experiencing real emotions. Stars are manufactured by the music industry to serve a purpose; to make money out of audience, who respond to various elements of a star’s personality by buying records and becoming fans.

Stars are made for money purposes alone. Increasing the brand identity benefits the institution as they become a household name increasing sales in all of the media platforms they are in.  The institution then models the artist around the target audience they choose.

Stars also can be categorized into three which are profession, celebrity and performer. Each and one of them have their own elements characteristic.