The artifact is the documentary film Truth or Dare, released in 1991. The subject of the documentary is a tour by rock signer Madonna, a tour called "Blonde Ambition." the film presents portions of this tour in the form of stage performances along with backstage documentary footage, interviews, and on-the-road activities and events of the tour. Different views of the film can be found in different commentators.
Camille Paglia, a professor considered to have an anti-feminist bent, states of Madonna and Truth or Dare:
"Madonna is the true feminist. . . She exposes the puritanism and suffocating ideology of American feminism . . . Madonna has taught young women to be fully female and sexual while still exercising total control over their lives. She shows girls how to be attractive, sensual, energetic, ambitious, aggressive, and funny all at the same time (Sobran 32).
Her communication in Truth or Dare thus is seen as having a didactic effect that is socially beneficial.
Another view is that Madonna serves only herself and that the communication in this film does nothing more than challenge whatever the censors among us would not like:
But for Madonna, art is defined by the censors: it's whatever they don't like. So someone who gets the censors howling must be an artist. Silly, but a lot of people agree with her, and they buy tickets. Madonna offers something new under the sun: vicarious self absorption. It takes a special kind of imagination to identify with a solipsist (Sobran 34).
Some see this as no more than a bid for increased profits (Aborn 62).
The film is important as communication because of the controversy it has generated and the two sides in the debate. Detractors are divided into two groups. One belittles the notion that what a pop star does is of any consequence. Yet, given the amount of attention lavished on pop starts, what they do has importance whether we like it or not. The other gr...