ABSTRACT
For the past decade, Madonna Louise Ciccone has been a highly influential pop culture icon and the center of a storm of controversy. She is the best-selling and most discussed female singer in popular music, one of the most prominent stars of music video, an aspiring movie actress, and, most of all, a superstar of pop culture. For her fans, she is the ultimate pop icon, the image of fashion and identity, who produced legions of Madonna wannabees who slavishly imitated her fashion statements. For her detractors, she is the ultimate in crass commercialism and media manipulation, the epitome of banal consumerism run rampant in media culture.
