Susan McClary describes the contemporary music world as one in which “the safe options for women musicians seem to be either denying gender difference or else restricting the expression of feminine pleasure to all-women contexts” (McClary, “Living to Tell: Madonna’s Resurrection of the Fleshly”). She goes on to argue that Madonna has constructed ‘counternarratives’, both visually and musically, which have deconstructed traditional fears and anxieties regarding female sexuality and agency. While it is certainly true that for her audience, Madonna’s impersonations of female iconography, male desire, and sexual stereotypes “is often received with delight as a knowing wink, a gesture of empowerment” (McClary), it is also true that Courtney Love took Madonna’s deconstruction and wiped the proverbial rock stage (floor) with it. The wink became an extended middle finger…accompanied by a raucous “FUCK YOU”, and her skirt-over-her-head.

As McClary points out, women musicians, unlike their male counterparts, have had to struggle against the pressures of objectifiable sexuality and with Madonna, this hypocrisy has been “brought to the surface and problematized” by her direct control over her own production (McClary). Courtney, on the other hand, blatantly exaggerates her sexuality, moving it into the realm of the abject. For instance, in the video for her most recent single, Be a Man, Courtney wears a clingy, luminescent blue dress only to end the video by wrestling in the mud with a pile of football players.

Where Madonna channels Marilyn Munroe, Carmen, and Evita in a tense resignification of historical idols, Courtney engages Fredric Jameson’s ‘blank pastiche’ (parody without humour) by donning doll-like clothing and bows, runny make-up, and by screaming ear-piercing obscenities over loud, screeching guitar riffs. Adopting the image of the ‘broken doll’, Courtney’s visual and musical style is far more of a parodic pastiche than Madonna’s, who seems to be adopting historical signs more for the sake of idolatry and reverence in order to position herself alongside them.

Although it could be argued that Madonna’s musical and visual strategies ‘paved the way’ for Courtney’s reception, it is also evident that Courtney’s uncensored shock & awe tactics have worked to eclipse Madonna’s savvy & slick approach – which seems downright demure in comparison. A juxtaposition all too perfectly illustrated during Madonna’s pre-show interview at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards, which saw Courtney throwing her shoe at the singer, climbing into the interview booth, gushing over Madonna’s expensive designer shoes and which, ultimately, ended with Madonna beating a hasty retreat off camera. Granted, these two women reside in radically different genres; Madonna’s suave professionablity is well suited to pop music and Courtney’s raunchiness is more appropriate to rock.