“Vogue” Em Performances Do Carnaval Carioca Strike a Pose!

COMUN. MÍDIA CONSUMO, SÃO PAULO, V. 16, N. 46, P. 376-395, MAI./AGO. 2019 DOI 10.18568/CMC.V16I46.1901

Strike a pose! A mediação do videoclipe “Vogue”

em performances do Carnaval carioca Strike a Pose! Mediations of “vogue” music video in Performances of Brazilian Carnival

Sim one Pereira de Sá¹Rodolfo Viana de Paulo²

Resumo: O artigo tem por objetivo abordar as m ediações do videoclipe da canção “Vogue”, de M adonna, buscando discutir o seu agenciam ento de corporeidades periféricas em dois m om entos: nos anos 1980, quando o videoclipe se apropria e am plia a visibilidade da dança voguing, praticada pela cena cultural LG BT nova-iorquina, e duas décadas depois, quando o videoclipe é, por sua vez, um a das referências para jovens dançarinos gays nas suas apresentações em alas das escolas de sam ba do C arnaval carioca. Assim , interessa-nos discutir as zonas de diálogo e de tensão entre perform ances locais e globais, tendo com o aportes teóricos a discussão sobre “cosm opolitism o estético” (RE G E V, 2013) e sobre as divas pop com o ícones culturais (JE N N E X, 2013), entre outras referências. Palavras-chave: Vogue; M adonna; perform ance; videoclipe; escolas de sam ba.

Abstract: The article discusses the m ediations of M adonna’s M usic Video Vogue, seeking to discuss its agency on peripheral bodies in two m om ents: the first, in the 80s, when the song and m usic video appropriates the steps and gestures of Voguing created by the LG BT scene in N ew York; and the second m om ent, two decades later, when the m usic video is, in turn, one of the references for young, black and gay dancers who practice Vogue dance during their presentations on Rio de Janeiro’s sam ba schools in the present tim e. Thus, we are

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U niversidade Federal Flum inense (U FF). N iterói, R J, Brazil. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5581-0508. em ail: sibonei.sa@ gm ail.com U niversidade Federal Flum inense (U FF). N iterói, R J, Brazil. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0557-6514. em ail: rodolfo.viana@ gm ail.com

simone pereira de sá | rodolfo viana de paulo 377

interested in discussing the areas of dialogue and tension between local and global perform ances, having as theoretical contributions the discussion on “aesthetic cosm opolitanism ” (Regev, 2013) and on pop divas as cultural icons (Jennex, 2013), am ong others. K eywords: Vogue; M adonna; perform ance; videoclips; sam ba schools.

comun. mídia consumo, são paulo, v. 16, n. 46, p. 376-395, mai./ago. 2019
378 strike a pose!

T he year w as 1990. For M adonna, the 80’s w ere closed under the spotlight of the popular album Like a Prayer. Looking for a new song that could be released as a B-side of the single “K eep it Together”, she w rites

“Vogue”. “Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it. Vogue, Vogue, Vogue”.

T he song is inspired in the dance w ith the sam e nam e practiced on
LG BT dancefloors of N ew York clubs, w here dancers created a series of gestures, poses and body m ovem ents that im itate their fam ous H ollyw ood stars, as w ell as Vogue m odels. And the videoclip, film ed in black and w hite, presents M adonna reproducing the steps and poses from Vogue in a glam ourous setting, that recriates the am biance of H ollyw ood in the 20’s.
T hroughout the years, this clip becam e an icon in M adonna’s body of w ork.³But not only that. Because, if w e m ake a cut to the recent years of the second decade of the 2000’s, w e w ill find black hom osexual dancers from R io using vogue steps during their presentations in som e of the Sam ba Schools on R io’s C arnaval. And m entions of M adonna’s videoclip or their derivations in videoclips of dancers like Yanis M arshall,⁴, Leiom y⁵and the pop group K azaky,⁶w hich perpetuate and dissem inate vogue through YouTube as a reference to a set of poses and gestures that they develop in their choreographic routines.
Based on these observations, our article has the goal of approaching the m ediations of the videoclip Vogue, by M adonna, seeking to discuss its agency of “peripheral bodies” in tw o m om ents. T he first, w hen M adonna appropriates elem ents of the N ew Yorker LG BT scene, due to the creation of the song and videoclip of “Vogue”, transform ing this

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For exam ple, the videoclip had nine nom inations for M T V V ideo M usic Aw ards in 1990

and w as included in the 29th position am ong the 100 best videoclips listed in R olling Stone m agazine in 1993. Available at: https://pt.w ikipedia.org/w iki/Vogue_(canção)#cite_note-12. Accessed in: August 1st, 2018.
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Yanis M arshall is a French dancer and choreographer specialized in choreographies perform ed in high heels know n as stiletto. See video available at: https://w w w.youtube.com / w atch?v=m D zx33N T g20. Accessed in: Aug. 12th 2018. Leiom y M aldonado is a trans dancer, instructor, activist and m odel that gained special visibility through the T V show Pose from FX. Available at: https://en.w ikipedia.org/w iki/Leiom y_M aldonado. Accessed in: August 21st, 2018. U cranian group of pop music. See video available at: https://w w w.youtube.com / w atch?v=7T d3Q W-Q R w A. Accessed in: June 26th, 2018.

comun. mídia consumo, são paulo, v. 16, n. 46, p. 376-395, mai./ago. 2019 simone pereira de sá | rodolfo viana de paulo 379

underground dance in a reference to pop culture. T he second m om ent, tw o decades later, w hen the videoclip is, in turn, one of the references for gay black young dancers to dance these steps in R io Sam ba schools. Agencies that, in case of carioca dancers, are not strictly affiliated to the vogue culture of the fam ous houses – cultural groups that developed specific styles of dancing vogue in the 80’s –, but that dissem inate from m ix w ith other local rhythm s like funk and sam ba, case that w e w ill approach.
W hen proposing the reflection about the agency of peripheral bodies, our w ork is articulated to issues that are being developed in our research projects about the form s how the im aginary and pop iconography – especially of pop divas – are enacted and perform atized in peripheral scenes, articulating issues of perform ance, corporeities and m edia popular culture (PE R E IR A D E SÁ, 2013; V IAN A D E PAU LO , 2017). T hereforem taking the pictures of pop divas as “aesthetic epicenters” (PE R E IR A D E SÁ, 2019) that point tow ards a type of corporeity that inhabits the m ediascape of m odernity (APPAD U R AI, 2005), w e are interested in discussing the zones of dialogue and tension that are given in tw o w ays: the first, w hen M adonna appropriates N ew York’s LG BT ghetto culture; in the second, w hen LG BT dancers from R io appropriate the video as reference for their choreographies.
To do so, the study is divided into three parts. T he first, w e sought theoretical support for the discussion around this trinom ial; in the second, w e describe the context of creation of the videoclip and the dialogue betw een M adonna and the N ew York scene in the 80’s/90’s; in the third part, w e discuss the appropriation of gay black dancers from the M aculelê part of the sam ba school Acadêm icos do Salgueiro, from R io, voguing in the parade and in presentations of sam ba schools through ethnographic incursion and interview s m ade w ith the dancers.⁷T herefore,

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O ne of the authors of this article frequented the rehearsals of the section in the period betw een

April and August 2017. T he interview s w ere m ade w ith Lucas G abriel (m ay 2017), V ictor C antuária (June, 2017) and V inicius M onteiro (July 2017).

380 strike a pose!

it is a study m apping issues and presenting the first results of ongoing research that w ill later be unfolded into new field incursions.⁸

Pop divas, aesthetic cosmopolitanism and performance

According to w hat w e previously discussed (PE R E IR A D E SÁ, 2018), the w ord “diva” appears in music linked firstly w ith great opera singers, the popular prim a donnas, extending its use throughout the 20^thcentury to refer not only cultural item s in the cinem a, music and entertainm ent culture, but, m ore recently, to any pow erful, spectacular and glam ourous w om an (PE R E IR A D E SÁ, 2018).
E xploring the relation betw een gay culture and the diva cult in the opera environm ent, Jennex (2012) highlights the clichés, the tricks and exaggeration in the representation of heterosexual love as elem ents of the O pera perform ance.⁹O n pop music, in turn, the term refers to the lineage of transnational singers/artists that em phasize visual spectacle, scenic presence, choreography and the developm ent of dram atic characters. D iana R oss, M adonna, Britney Spears, R ihanna, Lady G aga and Beyoncé can be considered exam ples of the sam e lineage of w om en that enact form s of being in the w orld through the idea of em pow ered fem ininity, body aw areness, entertainm ent and political aspects related to w om en and hom osexuals” (XAV IE R , E VAN G E LISTA e SO AR E S, 2016, p. 96).
In his study, Jennex relates the im age of the diva to R ogers’ discussion
(1999) about cultural icons, understood as

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It is about the project “C artography of the urban in musical and audiovisual culture: sound,

im age, places and territorialities in a com pared perspective” (2014-2020), coordinated by Sim one Pereira de Sá and financed by C apes/Procad; “Strategies of visibility of pop-peripheral music in contem porary Brazil: betw een local, transnational and peripheral”, from Sim one Pereira de Sá and financed by edital PQ /C N Pq (1D productivity scholarship); and “’In a land of rascals w e are bandits’: viral dissem ination of bodies m aculating sam ba conventions” by R odolfo R . V iana de Paulo, in developm ent at the PhD from PPG C O M /U FF under the orientation of professor Sim one Pereira de Sá, also counting w ith the help of C apes scholarship and help of the aid from the R esearch and Productivity program of U niversidade E stácio 2019. “In opera, em otions and plots are, Bronski argues, exaggerated to the point of absurdity” (JE N - N E X, 2013, p. 352).
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[… ] T hese objects or people that becom e catalysts of fantasies and identifications for big audiences for their versatility and openness to different senses, allow ing, therefore, multiple cultural appropriations and layers of multifaceted cultural identification (JE N N E X, 2013, p. 351).

In addition to that, paradoxically, icons allow the evocation of feelings of com munity and difference. Therefore, what gives life and sustains cultural icons – in which divas are inserted – are the “experiences, m em ories and fantasies” of individuals that love them (JEN N EX, 2013, p. 351).
T herefore, relating divas perform ances to the context of discussion about versatility and multivocality of cultural icons helps us understand them , firstly, through its presence as part of the global pop im aginary that Appadurai (2005, p. 35) calls “m odernity m ediascape”, understood by us as an archive of im ages, m em ories and affections acquired through the globalized m edia apparatus and that crosses multiple different territorialities and tem poralities.
T he use of the notion of perform ance, in turn, is affiliated to the com municational perspective and it is understood by us as a “com municative process anchored in the corporeity and, at the sam e tim e, an experience of sociability, once it supposes negotiated rules and conventions” (PE R E IR A D E SÁ and H O LZ BAC H , 2010); also as “restored behavior” (SC H E C H N E R , 1988). It is about, therefore, according to Taylor (2013), an epistem e, a form of producing know ledge and negotiating position through body tangibility (PE R E IR A D E SÁ, 2018).¹⁰
Finally, the notion of aesthetic cosm opolitanism (R E G E V, 2013) refers to this dynam ic of mutual circulation and appropriation am ong global and local item s defined by the author as a w ider cultural condition that crosses the experience of inhabitants of different countries, even those considered peripheral, in relation to the hegem onic cultural flow s. Far from m anacheistic argum ents about the relationship of dependence of “peripheral” cultures regarding global centers, the author discusses how cultural singularities are articulated (not erased) in global

10 For a discussion of the notion of perform ance in a com municational perspective, see Am aral,
Soares and Polivanov (2018).

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processes of circulation of consum ption goods and im ages, highlighting cultural practices of negotiation betw een local and global, that w e intend to scrutinize through the analysis of multiple m ediations of the videoclip “Vogue”.

Vogue: poses, mediated corporeities and one videoclip

Bringing back the em blem atic docum entary Paris is burning (1991), it is possible to know the cultural aspects that originate the style of dance and, especially, the gender expressions of black LG BT people in the inner city of N ew York betw een the 80’s and the 90’s.
T he film presents aspects of drag culture, w hose m em bers, facing the lack of access to the glam our of the sophisticated clothing of the fam ous fashion m agazine Vogue, ironize their good taste creating a style of dance nam ed Vogue, stylizing body m ovem ents in form of poses that m im ic editorial pictures of the fashion w orld. Approaching the inform al contests of drag queens that took place in underground clubs in the city, the docum entary em phasizes the form how voguing choreographies enact, through dancing gestures, a body that fights back against heteronorm ative sexuality:

In a sociocultural environm ent (N ew York, 1980) w here w hite heterosexuals could do anything w hile gays should control how they dressed, spoke and behave, the ball culture created spaces w here its m em bers could be w ho they w anted to m e, show ing their elegance, seduction, beauty, skills and know ledge (BE RT E , 2014, p. 70).

The strength of gesture, added to the invention of a garm ent – or better yet, to stealing – the re-appropriation of clothing of the fashion world m ade in a low cost by the dancers them selves, m akes clear how the dynam ic of global pop culture icons is locally agencied. Therefore, the corporeity assum ed during the dance can loan the idea of a fashion show, rem aking it in an am biance that can be seen either only as a dance solo perform ed by

one person,¹¹or as if it were a showdown against another voguer dancer,

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in the challenges known as battles between houses.
In this context, it is interesting to take back Lepecki’s (2005) discussion on the pow er of the still act in the context of m odern dance. According to Lepecki (2005, p. 14), the im m obility of the pose does not m ean a freezing of the m ovem ent, but another relation w ith the tem porality of the gesture, that leads the subject to break w ith preestablished body rhythm s. In this sense, it is about a body that keeps inform ation, transm its, updates, distorts and create sym bolic elem ents according to the lived territory. O r, as Jussara Setenta (2008) puts it in her thesis, it is the body being a m edia for itself, in other w ords “a bodym edia” that is in constant perm eability, w hich is not only processing, but producing a “relation of constant co-authorship betw een body and environm ent” (SE T E N TA, 2008, p. 37).
In a dialogue w ith these reflections, w e understand that the steps and poses of voguing, developed in the 80’s through a com plex glossary of nam es and subtitles of m oves,¹³do not m ean na im itation or a reproduction irreflected of poses extracted from the m edia, but a creation of coreographies that w ill dialogue w ith identity and local aspects of cultural scenes that w ill discuss next.

Madonna’s videoclip

After the contact w ith N ew York dancers, M adonna releases, in 1990, “Vogue”, one of her m ost fam ous songs and videoclips (V O G U E , 1990a), w hich she invites the listener to strike a pose. T he song, inspired in the previously described scene, and especially, on the choreographers José and Luiz Xtravaganza, from the H ouse Ball com munity at H arlem ,

11 T his is called 007, as V ictor C antuaria explains his position in the scene of R io de Janeiro
(V IAN A D E PAU LO , 2017b).
12 It is im portant to clarify that there are m any styles to dance vogue, as the voguer dancer R aquel Pereira explains in a video available at: https://w w w.youtube.com /w atch?tim e_ continue=3& v=cniZ bH U AlO A. Accessed in: June 26th, 2018
13 Am ong m any others, w e can quote the m ovem ents of catw alk, duckw alk (perform ance in the ground), dips and drops and spins. E ach house claim s a specific w ay of dancing each step.

384 strike a pose!

appropriates vogue steps to call listeners to the dancefloor. “It m akes no

difference if you’re/Black or white/If you’re a boy or a girl/If the m usic’s pum ping/It will give you new life/You’re a superstar/Yes, that’s what you

are, you know”,¹⁴M adonna sings.
T he videoclip, in turn, connects the LG BT scene to an iconographic
H ollyw ood m em ory in a perform ance that pays an hom age to m ovie divas from the 20’s and 30’s. D irected by D avid Fincher and film ed in black and w hite in an art deco-style scenario – at the Burbanks Studios, in C alifórnia –, the videoclipe uses pictures from H ollyw ood stars, recreating fam ous poses of actresses like M onroe, G reta G arbo, M arlene D ietrich, K atherine H epburn and Jean H arlow, etc. R eferences that are outlined in the song lyrics, along w ith also iconic actors.

G reta G arbo and M onroe

D ietrich and D iM aggio M arlon Brando, Jim m y D ean O n the cover of a m agazine G race Kelly; H arlow, Jean Picture of a beauty queen [… ] D on’t just stand there, let’s get to it Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it Vogue¹⁵

It m ay be im portant to outline D avid Fincher’s contribution, film - m aker and producer that began his career on Industrial Light and M agic (IM L) by G eorge Lucas and built his reputation through m ovies like Seven (1995) and Fight C lub (1999).¹⁶As a videoclip director, he w orked w ith M adonna before in “E xpress Yourself” (1989) – videoclipe that, just like “Vogue”, brings cinem atographic references that brings back a

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