Madonna - Vogue

The Artist and song background The artist of this video is Madonna, who has sold more than 300 million

records worldwide and therefore is the top selling female artist of all time. Madonna is known for her pop songs, which this video does live up to, from it’s dance routines, which makes this a performance video. But Madonna is also known for being daring and reinventing her image. This is shown through the idea that this video could also be seen as a concept music video because it is highlighting the ideas of the ‘Golden’ Hollywood’ era though the style of clothes and the composition of the video. This video can also be seen as reinventing her image, as the dance style of Vogue became a very popular dance, after this video was released.

This single comes from the album ‘I'm Breathless: Music from and Inspired by the Film Dick Tracy’ which was a film which Madonna herself stared in. The song was released on the 20th March 1990. Vogue went on to become number one in over thirty countries worldwide, and was the best selling single off all time.

Genre Madonna is constantly referred as the ‘Queen if pop’ and this song and

video keeps up the trend of her songs by being a pop track The Conventions of a Pop video are:• Extreme close-ups to show something specific, for example a microphone• Close-ups on the artist to show the emotion• Dance routines, including lots of dancers along with the artist• Upbeat• Bright and colourful composition• On trend fashion ‘Genre is a kind of text that derives its form from the structure of a

(frequently repeated) social occasion, with it’s characteristic participants and their purposes’ Gunther Kress. This links to Vogue because the message of the video is that people are beautiful, this is linked to the idea that the people in this video are pretending to be statues, and works of art, which links to the message of the video.

Genre conventions met in Vogue One pop convention which is met in this music video is the use of close up’s. Close-

ups are used very often in this video, as shown by the screen shots below. Close-ups are very important to any music video, because this way you can see the artists emotion, and this is how the storyline of the video usually comes across. I think close ups are well used in this video because Madonna is singing about lots of beautiful people, and these close ups show her beauty. I also think these shots are well used in this video because the idea of the song is that Madonna wants people to get up and dance. And through the use of close ups, we feel closer to her, because you would not normally get to see someone that close, so we form a relationship with her, and therefore people are more likely to get up and dance, which is the message of the song. Also, close ups are very important because Goodwin’s theory states that the artist must have a certain amount of screen time, and one way of doing achieving this is through close ups.

Genre conventions met in Vogue Vogue does follow many of the traditional conventions of a pop video. For

example, in this screen shot you can see that it follows the idea that a pop video should include dance routines. I think this is very important for the song, as they are singing about a dance move, so it only seems right that the video should link to this idea. This is also a key idea to pop music, as they are usually upbeat, which this song is, but it needs to be something that people are going to want to dance along to at home, and by including a dance routine in the video this gives people the incentive to do this. I believe this video had achieved this because this song is linked to the move which Madonna is doing on in the shot below, and whenever this song comes on at a party people do this move, so it has made people want to dance, so dancing is key to this video.

Genre conventions challenged in Vogue In most pop videos, such as Reach by S Club 7, a bright, colourful

composition is used. But Vogue challenges these conventions, by being filmed in black and white. I think this challenge makes the video better, because the photo below of Reach looks very cheesy, where as the shot from Vogue looks very sophisticated, which is one of the reasons why I believe they decided to challenge this convention. I also think this compotation works really well because of the interesting light that it creates, for example on the image below a silhouette is created, and it looks very artistic, and creative. I also like the use of this composition because the idea behind this video is to pay homage to the diamond years of Hollywood, so the black and white lighting fits better with this theme.

Genre conventions challenged in Vogue

Another genre convention which is challenged in Vogue is the idea that the fashion should be on trend. This is challenged in this video through the fact that Madonna is not following the style of the time, she is creating her own, for example the pointy bra that she wears. By doing this Madonna is challenging the ideas of what was proper to wear at this time, and she is creating her own style. In addition, the video is also supposed to be set in around the golden years of Hollywood, around the time of the 30’s. So Madonna’s fashion in this video highlights this era. In addition the genre convention of wearing on trend fashion is challenged because Madonna is rebelling against society by wearing clothes that may seem strange. For example in this video Madonna wears, what has known to become one of her signature clothes, a pointy bra. This shows that Madonna is choosing to wear what she wants, and is not following the trend, but creating her own.

Links between lyrics and visuals

This video works well because it includes many links between lyrics and visuals. One example is the lyric ‘Greta Garbo, and Monroe’. These lyrics are highlighting to the famous actresses, Greta Garbo and Marilyn Monroe. This lyrics link with the visuals because the idea of this video is to look like the ‘golden’ Hollywood era and this is created through the black and white composition of the video. There are also links through the hairstyles which Madonna has through the video, for example in the screen shot below Madonna’s hair is very much in the style which Marilyn Monroe was famous for having.

Narrative structure in Vogue

The narrative structure for the music video Vogue is a weak narrative structure based loosely around the idea that the video is set in a art gallery/museum , and that the people in the video are supposed to represent statues and works of art. The video is partly a circular narrative because the video starts and ends with the same shot of some feather fans. The video can also be seen as circular because the people in this video start off s works of art, and then they slowly come alive, and then at the end then morph back into still pieces of art.

Here we can see a dancer from this video standing by a pillar, looking like a piece of art.

This is the image of the feather fans, which close andopen this video.

Representation

This video represents women in a positive way because it represents Madonna as being in control of her sexuality. This is a positive thing because it is showing that woman can wear whatever they want, and shown in the screen shots below she chooses to wear revealing clothes. But this can be seen as a good thing as it suggests that she is in control of her life, and she can choose to do and wear what she wants.

How it fits with my work

Madonna’s Vogue has inspired me for my work because I loved the composition of the video, as I felt that it being black and white helps explain the theme of the video, and I like the idea that the audience can tell what the video is going to be like, just from the light of the video. I feel this is an important point to have in my video because the song is rather dark, so I feel that the video needs to represent this. Another thing which I did like about this video was how it was performance based. I think the idea of my video being partly performance based is a good idea, because then the audience get to see the artist in action, which is important as one of the demands of the record label would be that there needs to be lots of shots of the band, to help with things such as promotion.