Popular Culture Review Vol. 3, No. 2, August 1992 | Page 25

Like A Prayer

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psychologically inside/outside the body that so precisely defines her
within that discourse.
Yet, women in western culture have occasionally exploited
this hysterical condition as a means of articulating their desire.
According to Helene Cixous, the hysteric creates a resistance reserve
with her body as "all of her passes into her voice, and it's with her
body that she vitally supports the logic of her speech" (881). Her
body then becomes the instrument by which she negotiates the
contradiction of her desire in symbolic discourse and registers her own
desire over her already culturally-inscribed body.
This state of
affairs underscores the serious stake a woman artist has and will
continue to have in the discourse of the female body.
It is hardly surprising to note that the arena women rockers
have often dominated has been that of dance music. However, as
Susan McClary explains, a dichotomized "mind/body-masculine/feminine problem places dance decisively on the side of
the 'feminine' body rather than with the objective 'masculine'
intellect. . . [causing] dance music in general. . . [to be] dismissed by
music critics-even by 'serious' rock critics" (5). To be taken seriously,
to be noticed at all, the female artist must bridge the gap between the
important use of the body and the privileged masculine use of reason.
Into this arena of merging signifyers. Madonna, like the hysteric,
makes her move.
First of all, her reappropriation of the female body for
herself from its exclusive service to male desire occurs as she imitates
the graven images of women from the past and reconstructs the
contexts from which these images exert control over women. The rock
video is not incidental to her success since it is a medium which,
according to E. Ann Kaplan, assumes a "decentered spectator" (1986,
114) rather than the traditionally male one. In her discussion of the
Madonna video "Material Girl," Kaplin shows that the video
refuses to allow the young actress to be confined by the desire of her
director~and perhaps the desire of the audience~"by unbalancing
the relations between framing story and performance story" whereby
the non-materialistic actress is contested by her appropriated
cinematic image of Mariljm Monroe, the ultimate material girl (1987,
244). According to Kaplan, the video's display of postmodern
pastiche blurs the narrative lines so that neither position gains a
more privileged place over the other.