Publication Date
1993
Document Type
Contribution to Book
Abstract
Maddonnas' 1991 film Truth or Dare, based on her 1990 “Blond Ambition” tour—itself a combination of pop music and performance art— defies easy categorization. It is a “docudrama” of sorts: part documentary, part concert film, part dramatic enactment. By combining various filmic styles and traditions. Truth or Dare recreates certain long-standing cultural dichotomies between, for instance, onstage and offstage, public and private, reality and appearance, or truth and artifice. The film replicates such oppositions only to then question their continuing validity. Binary distinctions in Truth or Dare prove more apparent than real, more fleeting than differentiating. Ultimately, I believe, the film finds such categories irrelevant, at least as far as they concern this particular cultural icon and individual. Madonna. The collapsing of long-held cultural dichotomies is a central tenet in recent formulations of postmodernism. An examination of Truth or Dare within the framework of postmodernist theorizing, in particular Jean Baudrillard’s version, indicates that Madonna, in this film, can be viewed as a contemporary application of that body of thought. Moreover, discussion on this topic highlights current and often troubling concerns for feminist film theory, in the face of postmodern formulations, surrounding concepts of subject-object polarity that have played a fundamental role in theorizing the Other.
Page Range
189-212
Book Title
The Madonna Connection: Representational Politics, Subcultural Identities, and Cultural Theory
Book Publisher
Westview Press (now part of Routledge)
Book Editor(s)
Cathy Schwichtenberg
Book ISBN
081331397x
Recommended Citation
Pribram, E. Deidre Ph.D., "Seduction, Control, & the Search for Authenticity: Madonna's Truth or Dare" (1993). Faculty Publications: Communication. 15.
https://digitalcommons.molloy.edu/com_facpub/15
Document Version
Post Print
Publisher's Statement
Authors can also post the AM book chapter to an open repository or academic social media site (such as Mendeley, ResearchGate or Academia.edu), or a personal or departmental website (including Facebook, Google groups, LinkedIn and Twitter), after an embargo period of 18 months for Humanities and Social Sciences books or 12 months for STEM books.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
