ABSTRACT
The statement is arresting because, for most of the time, Madonna deliberately plays with surfaces, masks, and the masquerade. Madonna's quoted statement to the contrary, that there is no real Madonna, at least in any sense that might be useful in a cultural studies context. The three dominant stances toward the Madonna phenomenon may be distinguished as "perversion," alluding to the puritanical characterization of Madonna by US and other cultures, rather than to serious Freudian theories of perversion; repression; and subversion. The media have always used Madonna for sensational news and at the same time been quite relentless in their criticism of her. Sigmund Freud's concept of fetishism partly explains the attraction of icons like Madonna, who cover over or stand in for castration anxiety. Madonna may believe that her fans and critics will never know the real Madonna, but her whole corpus is constructed as a thinly disguised public confession or autobiography.
