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Seduction, Control, & The Search For Authenticity: Madonna's Truth Or Dare, E. Deidre Pribram Ph.D.

Faculty Publications: Communication

Maddonnas' 1991 film Truth or Dare, based on her 1990 “Blond Ambition” tour—itself a combination of pop music and performance art— defies easy categorization. It is a “docudrama” of sorts: part documentary, part concert film, part dramatic enactment. By combining various filmic styles and traditions. Truth or Dare recreates certain long-standing cultural dichotomies between, for instance, onstage and offstage, public and private, reality and appearance, or truth and artifice. The film replicates such oppositions only to then question their continuing validity. Binary distinctions in Truth or Dare prove more apparent than real, more fleeting than differentiating. Ultimately, I believe, …