What happens to identity in the postmodern age? You should draw on feminist or post-colonial critiques to discuss the work of a choreographer or artist of your choice

Contemporary Western society is now functioning in a state of constant flux. A person’s desire or attempt to pinpoint a stable and defined personal identity in this post-modern era is subject to the difficulty of changing fashions, new perspectives, and conflicting desires. The constant hyperactive barrage of media influences, now commonplace in Western society, provides a plethora of choice and desire. Individuals, groups and communities can now choose to alter their look, beliefs and complete sense of self-hood, in accord with the changing images they see before them. Popular culture becomes a commodity that can be produced, exhibited and consumed, influencing in some way the identity of individuals. The issue of pinpointing a personal identity is further problematised by the ensuing globalised nature of the planet. Cultures are intermingling with cultures in a transnational mishmash where the nature of the authentic or the absolute has either deteriorated or shifted.
To try to understand the position of identity in the postmodern age, this study will focus on the changing image of a popular media personality. A consideration of the celebrity stardom of Madonna, a woman the Rolling Stones consider to be the world’s most famous woman (Schulze et al, 1993:15) will provide an insight into the ambivalent nature of the person in the contemporary Western world. By looking at post-colonial ideas of the ‘other’, I aim to pitch Madonna as a symbol of a globalised identity that is fragmented and commodified. More specifically, I will focus on the influence Indian culture has had on Madonna in one of her many re-worked popular images.
It is first important to outline the difference from postmodernity and modernity in order to grasp how Madonna fits more to the postmodern identity that is constantly changing. Modernism has qualities that define it such as to “irrationalize the rational”, “defamiliarise and dehumanise the expected” and see “uncertainty as the only certain thing” (Bradbury & Mcfarlane :48). This is certainly true of Madonna and her image. She irrationalises the rational through her presentation of gender, usurping traditional sexual identities and using her videos to blur the boundaries of her own sexuality. What is obvious in Madonna is that uncertainty is the only certain thing about her. An audience, having seen how she changes her ‘look’ like a chameleon, can be certain that she will change her look again, even if they are uncertain what that new look will be.
Postmodern societies are so saturated with images that we can no longer distinguish the original from the copy (Potolsky 2006: 153). Potolsky’s observation highlights the simulacra (the perceived illusionary reality where a copy of the original is perceived as the real copy) of postmodern society and highlights a key factor in the current state of this globalised world. It is a world of changing images and cultural influences, never remaining the same but always re-inventing old ideas. Douglas Kellner argues that Madonna focuses on identity as fashion and ‘looks’ – so again the idea of her identity and ‘look’ constantly form a state of flux changing to attract a level of attention and media frenzy (Kellner, 1995). It suggests that identity in the postmodern agenda is unhinged and never stable.
Other theorists recognised this element of the unstable identity and have often studied in depth the sexuality and sensual image of Madonna. Evans and Hesmondhalgh (2005) draw upon the study by Fiske, seeing Madonna as an ‘open’ text rather than a ‘closed’ one. She is a woman who can make herself in a variety of ways rather than choosing one defined point of recognition. They argue that “mainstream consumer narcissism” picks the “new you” identity as if it were shopping in a post-modern “capitalist-dominated” fashion industry (Evans et al. 2005:157). This idea of choosing the “new you” gives the impression of a post-modern culture obsessed with fashion recipe-making. Finding the newest recipe for fashion, behaviour and even belief, and parading that in a way that will draw others to follow, before the fashion taste-buds change and develop a hunger for a new recipe. The only fixed identity here is the spoon of the individual persons creative that magically mixes the fashionable ingredients together. The only way to see that identity is to view the plethora of recipes that the individual has comprised. That is not an easy thing to do in Madonna’s case; however, I will try to give some recognition to her changing image as a way of understanding her creative impulse.
Audiences see Madonna playing with images that occasionally takes her outside of her US homeland and into territories that often evoke the erotic of the ‘other’. This can be seen in La Isla Bonita where Madonna plays with ideas of sensuality attached to the Latino culture. One key image that illustrates this sensuality is Madonna lying on the floor in traditional a Latino dress caressing herself with her bare left leg revealed. This is a commonplace image of sensuality in the foreign that creates the sense that passion is attainable if identity is made transnational. Madonna serves to highlight that a woman can be anything she wants to be provided that she gives up what is natural hers to embrace the illusionary. Madonna has done this so much throughout her career from singing Like a Virgin in a wedding dress during the MTV awards of 1984; the bustier-wearing bleached blonde of the 1990’s; to the bondage attire of Erotica; her Kabbalah look of 1998; the more gothic/oriental attire for the video Frozen. Madonna has even, more recently re-invented herself and stemmed out of the music scene to write books for children. Her identity is certainly not static but there is a great sense that she is driven by the reinvention of herself as a commodity to be consumed.
Kellner acknowledges this aspect of Madonna as commodity and the importance that marketing and political powers play in the Madonna identity designing her as a cultural artifact to be displayed to the world. He makes it clear that “media culture overwhelmingly supports capitalist values, but it is also a site of intense struggle between different races, classes, gender, and social groups.” (Kellner, 1995: 13). Kellner’s assertion of a struggle outlines the tension between modern and postmodern where the latter appears to be usurping the former by the inability of pinpointing a stable identity. Gerhard Bach states that culture “has undergone a paradigm shift as it has advanced from the modernist to the post-modernist era” (Bach, 2005:15). As this shift has been taking place so has a shift from the observation of the self/other dichotomy has moved to a more inclusive model of cultural globalization that Bach describes as the ”multicultural individual”. Bach describes this quite rightly as a ”new type of transnational” or more firmly a ”self-as-part-of-the-other model” (Bach, 2005:16)
In the early 1990’s the film Indochine inspired the Asian-themed fashion trend Indo-chic (Niessen et al 2003:94) a trend that has seen elements of Asian/Indian dress cross into the gaze of Western audiences. There was the initial fear that with “cross-cultural communication, therefore, comes a loss of control over the meaning of the items being displayed and the risk that their integrity will be compromised or degraded” (Niesson et al, 2003:95). This can be considered when viewing Madonna and her incorporation of Indo-chic into her own style and image. Again her identity is choosing elements of something foreign and mysterious to forge a new identity that will maintain her status as a popular commodity in the commercial world. She is trying to survive that world using her bodily image as a commodity to be consumed.
In traditional African cultures the body was treated with great respect and adorned with beautiful objects to show off the body as art and morality Menon states that “the traditional African aesthetics that were regarded as primitive, savage became regarded as subjective, interest laden expressions or social promotions of traditional African power holders” (Menon, 2002). Menon goes on to discuss the use of henna body art that has been incorporated into the mainstream of fashion and worn by popular celebrities and stars. Madonna’s use of henna (one instance using the traditional symbol of ‘Om’ on her hand in the video Frozen) is just one example of the globalised identity. Considering the incorporation of cultural-specific traditions into Western society serves the purpose of highlighting the way the hybridised identity is followed and adhered to. Madonna has set the Indo-chic trend for many to follow by using henna, an artistic form of paint that is meant for adorning the body with beauty. It is interesting that Madonna chose this particular art form as she herself is well versed in the artistic re-working of her own bodily image. This example of henna usage shows how Madonna recognises that in order to maintain her popular appeal she must capitalise on India as it “functions not just as a polyvalent cultural sign but as a highly mobile capital good” (Huggen, 2001:67).
Madonna appearing at the 1998 MTV awards with her hands adorned with henna yet again re-interprets her image to incorporate ethnicities and cultures that lie outside of her own. The Frozen video adopts Middle Eastern percussion in a complete re-working of her image. With the gothic look, Madonna seems to be tapping a much more melancholic mood than previous videos but the elements of dance and makeup present the audience with glimpses of psuedo-Bharatanatyam moves. The henna on Madonna’s hand used at the 1998 MTV music awards presented the Indo-chic Orientalism to audiences and sparking a trend in celebrity culture (Nguyen et al, 2007). The use of the henna was from an Indian-American beauty artist Sumita Batra, who wrote a book advocating the use of henna (or its more traditional name mehndi) with Madonna being quoting that the henna practice evokes “magic, passion, and romance” for her. But despite the cover of the book, the contents focus largely on the traditional practice of mehndi (Sunaina, 2000:7). The fact that Madonna is only really used on the cover of the book is highly suggestive of her role as commodity to sells part of her identity in the henna-product she imaged. Sunaina’s discussion of Indo-chic goes no further and does not consider the quote and mention of Madonna (only on the cover) to be highly suggestive of her postmodern identity. However, Sunaina does make a clear distinction that Madonna’s use of henna is tied to the commodification of her image and identity. She quotes, quite rightly, the view of Edward Said:
“Henna, and other markers of Indo-chic, have become signifiers for a turn-of-the-millenium Orientalism, in Edward Said’s words, “a system of knowledge about the Orient, an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness… in which, for many generations, there has been a considerable material investment” (Sunaina 2000:7).
Madonna, as we see is capitalising on her ability to attract through the exotic imagery of herself. This, however, destabalises her image and identity and she becomes disembodied from her origin again. She is no longer the Material Girl or the Madonna of the film Evita. Re-modeling her image is like her image-identity moving house. Even her use of henna outside its traditional culture-specific setting, marks her, to use Edward Said’s term, as an ‘other’ (Said, 1995). Although Madonna may present herself all painted in this cross-cultural fashion she can never quite be at home in that identity as it does not originate from her culture. This raises the question of whether a pure identity has something to do with a pure origin.
Essentially the post-modern identity is a crisis of identity if one is considering it in terms of satisfaction. It is an unsatisfactory mode of behaviour that never ceases to want to change. Each change just brings the desire for something new more extreme, more shocking and more controversial. The image of Madonna can only be presented to a mass-audience through the media forms she uses. This leads to a one-sided view of her identity that is tainted during the delivery of media messaging and the way Madonna may be framed by the media. An audience will be forever perplexed to find and pinpoint her identity if it simply relies upon the images presented through the media. Television, print, radio, film and music all present in different ways and the voices of media commentators will always dress up an image to play into the sentiments and desires of consumer culture. Robert Miklitsch’s remarks make very clear the thought surrounding Madonna that “One has to wonder whether any identity, parodic or otherwise, can be said to be constituted before or outside the logic of capital” (Miklitsch, 1998:108). According to Miklitsch, and of which I will agree, every ‘body’ is a commodity sign and there is no way of escaping the effect of postmodern capitalist culture (Miklitsch, 1998:109) as we become spectators of each other in a globalised economy. Madonna’s image and identity is, in postmodern Western society, no more than a mask of re-worked images that are driven by the desire for something ‘new’. Madonna is an icon of consumption for postmodern Westernized capitalism. She is the iconic ‘Material Girl’ who reflects the very nature of identity that everyone in a consumer culture is comprised of. Just as her identity is in a constant state of flux and change, so is modern Western society as a whole.