Page 153 - Cultural Studies Volume 11

REVIEWS 147

Subculture
The Madonna Connection orthodoxy is that ‘There are currently different
aspects of Madonna’s presentation that have specific appeals to different sorts of
people, that are interpreted in different specific ways and have different specific
cultural uses’ (this from David Tetzlaff, one of the few who contests it). Standing
in for the individual, an array of discrete subcultures serve as containers of all
these different interpretations. In her introduction, editor Cathy Schwichtenberg
declares that ‘subcultural’ identities is a key term in the book’s subtitle.’ ‘By
integrating symbolic aspects into her performance that reference subcultural
groups, Madonna has become a mainstream artist who addresses African
Americans, Hispanics, gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, feminists and others who
represent minority or subordinate positions in relation to the dominant powers
that be’ (p. 2–3). The significance of these statements now lies not so much in
any contestation of Frankfurt School or productivist mass-media sociology
assumptions as in the constitution of an academic position which blends
Birmingham CCCS and ‘postmodern’ theories to form something entirely
palatable to the liberalism they set out to oppose.
The chapters in the first two Parts employ either audience response to or
critical interpretation of Madonna videos in which the overriding concern is to
connect the content of the videos with the concerns of specific minority or
subcultural groups, most particularly people of colour (Ronald B.Scott), gays and
lesbians (Cindy Patton, Lisa Henderson). Thus, to Scott, Madonna’s success on
the black charts is ‘due, in part, to’ [her] acknowledgement and celebration of
African musical roots and style’ (p. 63). And the same goes for all the other
marginalized constituencies Madonna represents. Gays and lesbians likewise
appreciate her to the extent that she ‘references’ them. A video (or selection of
videos) is understood as it alludes to, appropriates, or is appropriated by a
subculture. So Henderson ‘focus[es] on justify My Love and its reception in the
mainstream and gay press to consider Madonna’s resonance in lesbian and gay
culture (p. 108).
The references are signs the communities recognize—the black church,
Vogueing—and presumably appreciate (or resent) seeing in a mass-mediated
context. But the interest in each case originates in the subculture; the star simply
happens to represent its concerns. The implication is that Madonna’s stardom is
to be explained as the accumulation of these discrete ‘grounded’ subcultural
receptions. The secret of Madonna’s success mounts up as the subcultures
different facets of her image appeal to are aggregated together.
This is the significance of the ‘Madonna connection’ trope which recurs
throughout the book in various guises. In all of them Madonna is a centre where
diverse strands intersect, or a prism with multiple surfaces, ‘a multifaceted site of

Cultural Studies 11(1) 1997:138–187© 1997 Routledge 0950–2386