Deconstruction of Madonna's Material Girl

This the video from Madonna’s single ‘Material Girl’, released in 1895 and is taken from her album ‘Like a Virgin’. The video was directed by Mary Lambert, who also directed videos for Annie Lenox, Mick Jagger and Janet Jackson. She also directed Madonna’s videos for Borderline, Like a Virgin, Like a Prayer and La Isla Bonita. Throughout these videos you can see how Madonna’s star text, something Goodwin says is demanded by the record company, was being developed through her music videos, as her appearance in all of the videos except for La Isla Bonita was as her dressed in the typical clothes that we would have expected to see Madonna in the 1980s. There is also a reoccurring theme of the car in the videos for Borderline, La Isla Bonita and Material Girl. The song has become synonymous with Madonna, being one of her biggest selling hits and she now even has a clothing range called Material Girl.

There is a clear relationship between the lyrics and the visuals in this video, with her being surrounded by expensive material things, such as diamonds. The relationship between the music and lyrics is strong and does help to reinforce what she is telling us and what she is singing about. It also reinforces the message at the end that she doesn’t pick the man just because he gives her lots of expensive things. There is also a relationship between the music and the visuals as this is a pop video, and so the video is fun and tongue-in-cheek.

The key part of this video is the interstitial references, where Madonna is clearly recreating scenes from Marylin Monroe’s performance of the song ‘Diamonds are a girls best friend’ from the film ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’. In the videos both women have blonde curly hair, a floor length pink dress on a elbow length dinner gloves on. Aside from the women’s presentation the setting for the videos are also similar. They are both in large blank rooms with red backgrounds and red steps. They are also surrounded by men dressed the same and the men in both videos are holding red hearts at certain stages of the video. Madonna also goes as far as to copy the dance routine used in the original.

What we want to take from this video when were making ours is the fact that she has a story before the music begins, something that we want to do in our video. We have also taken ideas from this in recreating the shots, like she has with the ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ shot.

Posted By Chloe Barnham