Popular Culture Review Vol. 3, No. 2, August 1992 | Page 26
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The Popular Culture Review
However, Kaplan stops short of discussing the historical
context from which the narratives are derived and the one in which
they are presented, thereby understating the feminist power of the
video. Both narratives occur against the backdrop of viewer/Iistener
expectations in a long-standing narrative tradition. First of all, the
two narrative lines represent traditional paths for women—that of
love (the madonna choice) or money (the whore choice). In fact, the
"Material Girl" landed on music charts just as the United States
began institutionalizing what many have come to call the
"feminization" of poverty. Increasingly for women in America, to
choose love means to choose its inevitable consequence, poverty.
While forced to rely on men for economic health-is it still only 62
cents to every dollar a man makes?—women are never supposed to
acknowledge that economics enters the equation when choosing a
partner. Here is a sacred prescription as old as capitalism itself, a
narrative posited for women by men who want to be loved in spite of
the power they hold over women and without fear of having to
relinquish that power.
Indeed through the pastiche. Madonna refuses to endorse the
love-over-money narrative and permits the video's most accurate
representation of the lyrics to obtain greater weight. Moreover
though, the commodification of men suggested by the lyrics represents
a reversal of the terms upon which our culture is based: the exchange
of women (Irigaray, 84). The balance between the two narratives is
nnaintained, when, in the song's last stanza, the material girl laments
that "Experience has made me rich/ And now [the men]'re after me"
("Material Girl," Like A Virgin). This involution implicates the
poor director's desire as he ushers the non-nnaterial girl into his truck.
Yet, once seated in his truck, she turns her body away from him and
the standard oppositions he unites under the last stanza.
While the pastiche may not take a definite position toward
the oppositions offered, it hardly fails to take a stand against the
polarization which demands the elimination of any one of the terms.
Alone, neither position is viable for women as it completely excludes
the other. Inde^ such a refusal is a departure from the requirements
constructed by this traditional narrative. Here the two valorized
images of Wontan are both playfully embraced. Women recognize
the choice (madonna or whore) presented to them and the selection
they are expected-in fact, required—to nrtake. The appropri