Borderline (song) - Music Video

Music Video

"Borderline" was filmed on location in Los Angeles, California from January 30 to February 2, 1984 and was the first video that Madonna made with director Mary Lambert, who would later also direct the videos "Like a Virgin", "Material Girl", "La Isla Bonita" and "Like a Prayer". The video portrayed Madonna's then burgeoning star quality. It is regarded as one of her career-making moments when the video was started to be shown on MTV. She acted as the girlfriend of a Hispanic street guy who is picked up by a British photographer who publishes her picture on a magazine cover. The portrayal of the street life and high-fashion scene in the video was a reference to Madonna's life in the gritty, multiracial streets and clubs that she used to haunt while her career was beginning as well as the world of popularity and success she was experiencing at that moment. The storyline involved her being emotionally torn between the photographer and her boyfriend. Madonna's boyfriend in the video is portrayed as Latino and her struggles with this relationship depicted the struggle Hispanic women faced with their men. In the January 1997 issue of Rolling Stone, Mary Lambert described the video and its plot as, "Boy and girl enjoy simple pleasures of barrio love, girl is tempted by fame, boy gets huffy, girl gets famous, but her new beau's out-of-line reaction to a behavioral trifle (all she did was to spray-paint his expensive sports car) drives her back to her true love."

The video narrative weaved the two relationship stories in color and black and white. In the color sequence, Madonna sings, flirts and seduces the Hispanic guy who becomes her boyfriend. In the black-and-white sequence she poses for the photographer, who also courts her. The video had Madonna in her usual sense of style in those years and wore her hair in a haystack, lace gloves, high heeled boots with thick socks and her trademark boy-toy belt. She changes from one shot to another in color as well as black and white while wearing an unusual array of clothes including crop-tops, T-shits, vests and sweaters coupled with cut-off pants and jeans as well as a couple of evening gowns. Posing for the photographer, Madonna looks towards the camera with challenge in her eyes thus depicting sexual aggression. At one moment in the video, she starts spraying graffiti over some lifeless classical statues thus portraying herself as a transgressor who breaks rules and attempts at innovation. With the video Madonna broke the taboo of interracial relationships. Although at first it seems that Madonna denies the Hispanic guy in favour of the photographer, later she rejects him thus implying her desire to control her own sexual pleasures or going over the established pop borderlines with lyrics like "You just keep on pushing my love, over the borderline". The contrasting image of Madonna, first as a messy blonde in the Hispanic sequence and later as a fashioned glamorous blonde, suggested that one can construct one's own image and identity. Portraying herself as a Hispanic also had the clever marketing strategy of appealing herself to Hispanic and black youths thus breaking down racial barriers.

After its airing "Borderline" attracted early attention from academics. They noted the symbolism of power in the two contrasting scenes of the video. The British photographer and his studio is decorated with the classical sculptures and nude statues holding spears in a phallic symbol. In contrast, phallic symbols portrayed in the Hispanic neighbourhood included a street lamp which Madonna embraces and a pool cue held erect by Madonna's boyfriend. Author Andrew Metz commented that with these scenes, Madonna displayed her sophisticated views on the fabrications of feminity as a supreme power rather than the normal views of oppression. Author Carol Clerk said that the videos of "Borderline" and "Lucky Star" established Madonna not as the girl-next-door, but as a sassy and smart, tough funny woman. Her clothes worn in the video were later used by designers like Karl Lagerfeld and Christian Lacroix in Paris Fashion week of the same year. Professor Douglas Kellner in his book Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity, and Politics Between the Modern and the Postmodern commented that the video depicted motifs and strategies which helped Madonna in her journey to become a star.