ABSTRACT
Madonna’s continual grappling with her religion brings people to the second point in our understanding of her Italianness. Madonna has exploited the significance of her name. In a less obvious manner, Madonna acts out the Madonna—puttana dialectic in the documentary Truth or Dare. On 14 October 1996 Madonna gave birth to Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon, the “game of the name” being passed on to Lourdes, who was conceived with trainer Carlos Leon. She presented herself through a breathtaking succession of sexual personae and women’s roles, dressing for her masquerade in looks and poses appropriated from the pop-culture canon. For Madonna, the quick change artist, the self is a spectacle that expresses itself in material externality and through a self-fashioning that is intimately linked to selfdeconstruction.
