One may remember Madonna’s Confessions tour last year, where she was singing hanging from a glittery cross wearing a crown of thorns. She outraged Christian leaders all around the world. A Church of England spokesman said: "Why would someone with so much talent seem to feel the need to promote herself by offending so many people?" David Muir of the Evangelical Alliance told the Evening Standard: "It is downright offensive. Madonna's use of Christian imagery is an abuse and it is dangerous.” Madonna has however insisted that it is not "anti-Christian, sacrilegious or blasphemous", and she said “I believe in my heart that if Jesus were alive today he would be doing the same thing." (BBC)
Madonna, in this media spectacle, used the most important Christian symbol, the cross, in order to shock and provoke people all around the world. She disposed of the symbolism of the cross to make it part of her show, succesfully distancing the cross from its basic reality, namely the cruxifiction of Jesus Christ. Despite the protests and outraged reactions, she succeeded, because so far, she has not been burned at the metaphorical stake.
In this light we can understand what the French cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard meant by his concept of the simulacrum. This is a phantom image which pretends to be real but is without origin or reality, and defines our consumer society and makes up the hyperreality. The simulacrum is “never that which conceals the truth - it is the truth which conceals that there is none [...] It is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself [...]. Never again will the real have to be produced” (Baudrillard, 1988, p. 178).
"The successive phases of the image will be:
1 It is the reflection of a basic reality.
2 It masks and perverts a basic reality.
3 It masks the absence of a basic reality.
4 It bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum" (Baudrillard, 1988, p. 180).
Madonna has created her own hyperreality, the Madonna brand, a world composed of empty symbols such as the cross and Madonna products which are to be purchased online in today’s consumer society. Her products can be considered kitsch, and great examples of simulacra according to Baudrillard. He considers kitch “‘trashy objects’, ‘folksy knick-knacks’, ‘souvenirs’ [...], useless, impoverished objects composed of a “superabundance of signs, allthough they lack any real signification” (Ritzer, p. 12). Madonna’s mass produced kitch products include H&M clothes, t-shirts, and keychains.
Madonna keychain, $6,99
The queen of pop is, as always, succesfull in her self-promotion through her products, creating a hyperreality in which the Christian cross has become just another prop on her set in order to shock and provoke the world.
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Jean Baudrillard
(1988). Selected Writings (ed. Mark Poster). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
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Riter, G.
(1998). "Introduction" in The Consumer Society by J. Baudrillard. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
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Unknown Author
(20-10-2006). NBC cuts Madonna 'crucifixion'. Retrieved 08-05-2007 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6069260.stm