Analysing Madonna's 'Vogue' Music Video- Using Goodwin's Theory

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics

- Madonna's genre of music is pop. The name of the song, Vogue, is a highly stylized, modern house dance. Evolving from the Harlem Ballroom Scene in the 1980s. Madonna was very clever at catching onto popular underground crazes of the time, popular in the gay community, which could be why Madonna used an all men dancing cast. Critics noted the way Madonna used her postmodern influence to identify the new underground subculture movement to the masses. Typically in a pop music video it has a choreographed dance routine with the main artist taking centre stage with backing dancers.


2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals

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- Goodwin noticed a similarity and direct contrast with what is shown in the video and the lyrics of the song. In this video we can see the choreographed dancing, named Vogueing, and the lyrics matching, (1st image: Beauty's where you find it, Not just where you bump and grind it) & (2nd image: Come on Vogue, Let your body move to the music, Come on Vogue, Let your body go with the flow, you know you can do it.) The use of this connects the audience to the video and does not need to much thinking power.

3. There is a relationship between music and visuals

- This is where beats or rhythm of the song are edited in time to the visuals of the video. At the beginning of the video we have a smooth beat with a little drum of a bongo and then a click of the fingers: drum drum, click, drum drum, click... as the beat of the song carries on the visuals change to a different clip of someone slowly moving on every click of the beat.

4. The demand of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artists.

- One way in which record labels like to sell their artists, particularly females, is to show them regularly throughout the video (often in a provocative manner). The use of close-up provocative shots is a way of enticing a male audience. In this video we see the iconic fashion item which is Madonna's, cone bra, expressing her femininity.

5. Voyeurism- Frequent notion of looking

Throughout the video Madonna has extreme close up shots looking into the camera, which gives a direct approach, as if she is singing to the audience.

6. Intertextual reference

The whole video is shot in black and white taking stylistic inspiration from the Art Deco movement in the 1920s and 30s, it has the look of films and photographs from the Art Deco movement, making it look unique stylised. It also plays homage to the numerous Golden Era Hollywood actresses and actors. Later on in the video Madonna goes on to, almost rap, about famous actresses and actors from the 1920s and 30s.

Not only is the look of the video inspired by the Golden Era in Hollywood in the 1920s and 30s but a lot of the scenes in the video are recreations of photographs, taken by photographer Horst P. Horst.