by Peter Pullicino/Ellen Davis
One gets the feeling that an actual solid personality has been created out of nothing but thin air. What the real Madonna does when she is alone with Lourdes, her baby, or her lover, and essentially at what point the glitter of the stage ends is hard to judge. This article however deals with her show-personality, because as you can probably guess there are only a finite number of men who will ever know her personally, and I am not to be one of them (that gap between her two front teeth turns me off).
Back in the days of her first album she appeared on ‘American
Bandstand’. Dick Clarke asked her what she hoped to achieve, and she replied ‘I
want to rule the world’. And there she is ...
Madonna, the mother of god. She is the mother of her show, of her
dancers, and of her image. Madonna is without doubt a no-shit, fast-paced
business-goddess, who controls her media very carefully. The effect of her
videos and her famous documentary “In Bed With Madonna” give the impression
of a woman who will not submit any law
but her own. In her goal to saturate our airwaves, she manipulates society’s
male-stereotypes, the purity of religion, and the strength of self-realisation. It is these three pillars of her art that
this article will describe. None of them stand alone, but are skilfully
combined in many instances, for instance, “Like A Prayer”, where religion is
mixed with sexual overtones to produce a striking controversial effect. In live
shows of “Like A Virgin” and similar clips she promotes masturbation, not as a
traditionally condemned sin, but as a freedom of expression, of
self-empowerment. These carefully combined symbols have kept her popularity
rising, and a powerful image of her has remained in our general media. As such,
the pop-star wolf-bitch has lingered, while stars who do not play on our secret
fantasies have faded.
Sex is essentially about power, and sexuality is about exuding force.
In energetic clips such as “Express Yourself” she sends a challenge to the
world, and in the darkness and sanctity of her dressing room she chides her toy
boy lovers. She plays the mixed up girl next door to attract sympathy, while on
other occasions one has to wonder whether she has a heart at all. Her
production company is appropriately called “BoyToy”. In the final analysis,
everyone around Madonna knows who’s boss. In her documentary-style film, she
claims to give an insight into her life, but the whole video has been
meticulously crafted to entice, without revealing too much. She is
simultaneously a soft-mother, a caring friend, but with the innate and mafioso
ability to cut her friends off with an icy flick of the wrist. Such an image,
is to most men a fulfilment of the ultimate fantasy, which is a paradox : The Virgin
Slut. Consider the following lyrics, which on the surface suggest passivity,
but on a second-listen illustrate a more subversive message, that it is the
boys that are on receiving end,
“I’m crazy for you, touch me once and you’ll know its true” – Crazy For
You
“You may be my lucky star, but I’m the luckiest by far” – Lucky Star
“’Cause the boy with the cold hard cash is always Mr. Right... boys may
come and boys may go and that’s alright with me, experience has made me rich
and now they’re after me.” – Material Girl
“Get into the groove boy, you’ve got to proove your love for me” – Into
The Groove.
And then there is the more forthright “Like A Virgin”, where every line
tells the guy just what he wants to hear, complete with a misplaced Lion. This
might be seen as a counter-example, but she has changed the visual delivery of
‘Like A Virgin’ when she performs it live so that it contains a masturbation
scene, and the message is hence unclear, when contrasted with the lyrics.
Essentially, however, her whole artistic contribution considered, she
defies the male psyche. It cannot place
her in a role of submissiveness or control – and it is therefore doomed to lust
after her. The male mind does not wish to have the situation clarified
completely, because it is precisely these mixed signals which adds potency to
the sexual response. In her smash single “Rescue Me” she illustrates this in a
few lines,
“You see that I’m ferocious,
you see that I am weak,
You see that I am silly
And pretentious and a freak
But I don’t feel to strange
for you
I think when love is pure you try
to understand the reasons why
And I prefer this mystery” (Rescue Me)
The brilliance of this sexual ploy has been missed by the manager of
the Backstreet Boys, a New-Kids-On-The-Block-Clone-Band, who intends to
follower her success by becoming a
‘trendsetting’ act. He said "Our
prototype is Madonna, when she first broke, she was a phenomenon. She has
endured because she evolved into being a trendsetter. That's our
benchmark."
Brittany Spears she said just last week, “"Madonna's a great
businesswoman. She's basically a legend. She's still here and she's
strong.". The truth is that she is a legend because she emits the right
vibes, and fashion is just another means of showing her audience she is in
control. Her bad-ass, but cutesy strength is what has capured the imagination
of her viewers. Trendsetters come and go, and I think Madonna has survived
because what she is offering has lasting appeal. The petty controversies over
simulated masturbation and blasphemy are not transparent publicity stunts but
cornerstones in an image she consciously has constructed. Even on her first
album’s cover art she has started to toy with S&M, and religion (cruxific
earrings), but the songs are rather shallow lyrically. From then on, she has
evolved into a thinking breathing image, with daring improvements in style, and
more thoughtful lyrics. Erotica (1992) is the clearest culmination of her
previous 11 years of image-work. Looking back through the years, Madonna
changes her surface, but her central tenets have grown steadily and
predictably.
Religion is ever present in her work. It is absolutely everywhere, and it is no understatement to say it preys on her mind. Her name, her mother’s name (Also Madonna, and a very ardent Catholic), and her child’s name are good examples. For the record, Madonna has snubbed the church, but baptised Lourdes into the faith. Her personal rejection of spiritual concepts does not stop her from celebrating them. She plays with ‘normal’ concepts of sex and religion like tools. She teases us, and uses everything to her own ends, rather that letting them dominate her. As she sings, all you have to do is speak her name, its just like a prayer. She is a self-ordained goddess, and yet in the next line, she says she can feel the power, that she is on the receiving end. In the clip she frees Jesus and Jesus frees her. It is confusing, but calculated to good effect. In her most recent album, (and not included on the lyric sheet) she illustrates the flexibility of her religion,
“Now I’ve changed my mind,
This is my religion” (from Drowned World, off Ray Of Light)
At any rate in “Sky Fits Heaven”, again off Ray of Light, she is the
one who uses religion,
“Sky fits heaven so fly it
That's what the prophet said
to me
Child fits mother so hold
your baby tight
That's what my future could
see”
She dominates religion and attacks it, but not like blunt Marilyn
Manson who careers into it like a tank. Madonna plays with the concept like a
glass ball. She uses it to visualise herself, to empower herself. When she
prays, and is down on her knees, she is by no means submitting herself, but
playing out a role as submissive – teasing our stereotypes into the open in
order to destroy them and assert herself. Madonna will outlast the caveman
antics of Marilyn Manson. Manson criticises institutions with the subtlety of a
brick (Beautiful People etc...), whereas Madonna’s tactics are subconscious,
intriguing and enigmatic.
Through the unclear messages as to who is doing what to who which
tantalises male audiences, she presents her “sistaz doin’ it for themselves”
face. Women can indentify with this face easily, and just as well, because they
make up 50% of her potential market. This evidences itself in the self-esteem
boosting songs like “Express Yourself”, “Justify My Love”, and “Papa Don’t
Preach”. This assertive image appeals to young girls who discover that they can
use their sexuality as a weapon in a male-dominated world. This aspect of Madonna
is the plainest to understand, and has been canvassed by feminists in
respectable universities around the world.
So she remains, Madonna, a rare butterfly who has magically survive the
snares of stardom. For the reasons of her survival, we must perhaps not look so
much at her, but at ourselves, and our sexual fantasies – for it is our desires
that she has framed in her MTV box, and not the other way around.