Core Post #4 Josie Andrews. "Madonna: Appropriator, 'Inspirator' or Master Manipulator.

Core Post #4 Josie Andrews

"Madonna: Appropriator,  'Inspirator' or Master Manipulator"

“I’m tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, OK.”   

                                                                                                                             — Madonna

                    
Madonna reigns supreme as one of the worlds’ most famous female musical artists. Focusing on Madonna’s career in 1990, Cvetkovich’s essay, “The Powers of Seeing and Being Seen: Truth or Dare and Paris is Burning,” embraces Madonna’s aggressive take-charge, kick-the-door-down, pop rock kind of modern feminism that rejoices in women today taking control of their own identity—which includes the decision to transgress gender identities. Both titillating and terrorizing audiences, Madonna took pleasure in mixing masculine and feminine attributes to pleasure herself on center stage (157).  Madonna’s gender-bending confounded expectations and dared to be different.  Even when playful, her presentation of a sexually powerful woman who was in complete control of her life and her own sensuality was a welcome antidote for many feminists weary of the diatribe against all that was masculine.  Madonna encouraged young women, minorities and gay men to embrace being attractive, sexual, ambitious, spoiled and even the object of the male or female gaze as a source of power—if that is what they wanted in their life.

Madonna on the Blonde Ambition Tour

Master Star Image and Feminism Manipulator

The documentary of her 1990 Blonde Ambition Tour, Truth or Dare, mixes highly choreographed, full color on-stage performances with black and white backstage footage that shows Madonna’s life as if it is simply unfolding before our eyes. Recognizing that voyeurism, particularly that which creates the illusion of disclosing secrets, fuels the publicity that makes her a star, Madonna invites the camera to make her the object of the gaze, not the victim as Mulvey would argue.  Inviting us into her personal world, she shares interactions with her father. She visits her mother’s grave. We watch her apply her make-up, have her teeth fixed, dye her hair, and nastily put down Kevin Costner, who makes the fatal error of saying he thought her show was “neat.”

At the same time, Madonna’s and her dancers’ self-referential camera comments and behavior, such as flashing her breasts at the camera or sending the cameraman away, dispel any illusion that the film is unedited or a secret exposé. Madonna is clearly in careful and complete control of every single aspect of her image and the film.  For Madonna, unlike her then boyfriend Warren Beatty (who is irritated that everything she does is only for the camera), her private life is simply another opportunity to perform and solidify her star status. Rather than wait for gossip and scandal to generate publicity, Truth or Dare becomes Madonna’s own “power and money” vehicle to solidify “her star status” (157). Cvetkovich suggests that, while the audience believes they are seeing Madonna as “her true self,” the documentary is actually highlighting and reaffirming to audiences the dominant representation of Madonna that either Madonna (Cvetkovich’s belief), the music industry, or both (my belief) has already constructed.

Because Madonna has the “ability to assume a variety of roles or poses” on and off-screen, nothing we see “can be considered her ‘true’ self.”  Yet, as a symbol of self-transformation, her performance of roles still affects audiences own views on identity, raising serious issues of feminism and superficial identity transformation based on consumption (157). Madonna’s 1980s Material Girl is emblematic of Madonna’s carefully constructed star image. The song was used by the music industry to carefully construct on MTV and in the media a Madonna phenomenon associated with glamour and fashion. Young girls copied her fashion in the 1980s and early 1990s, and her videos which seemed to reach out to gays and minority audiences, expanded her appeal.

            
Madonna at 18                                                                                              

Madonna’s Blond Ambition Tour reminds us that gender is a consumerist construction, a performance, a costume. Madonna playfully shows us that, with sufficient money and time, anyone can construct a beautiful white, privileged image (160). From make-up to dress to how we walk, gender is largely learned (158). In a consumer culture that defines identity in terms of image and consumption, we see her dye her hair blonde, dress in the “right” fashions, and live the truly glamorous life of being on stage and adored by millions.  Venus Xtranvaganza says in Paris is Burning, “I would like to be a spoiled, rich white girl” (155), and that sentiment is likely endorsed by most Madonna fans. Of course, the stakes are much different for a white girl celebrity, like Madonna, who wants to play out masculine or feminine fantasies on- or off-stage, than for a cross-dressing gay man. 

But, if the documentary was designed to be a real game of “Truth or Dare,” it must fail for we only see that part of the truth that Madonna wants us to see, e.g. the ‘truth’ that helps expand and solidify her star status.

"The Appropriation of Vogue"--Paris is Burning

The importance of consumer culture and “performance” of transgender roles is also prevalent in Madonna’s appropriation of the New York drag balls in her performance of “Vogue” (156).  Cvetkovich present this subculture as a community of cross-dressing black and Latino gay individuals who are shunned from normal society and use drag ball competitions as a shared means of accessing mass culture and gaining temporary fame and glory. Even if you cannot have money, education or privilege in the real world, you can perform the role of the wealthy in the ballroom and “be a superstar, yes, that’s what you are” (159). Unfortunately, as Cvetkovich notes, gender is not really self-transformed as easily as Madonna would lead us to believe on stage in the Blond Ambition Tour (160).
 

When I thought about these Readings, I did not know whether to rejoice or feel sad for those who had popularized voguing, which seems to equate Madonna’s wealth and fame with social acceptance. Unlike the poor or working-class blacks and Latinos voguing, Madonna is already part of the glamorous world of fame she is performing. She is using voguing to capture millions of dollars, not to establish an identity. In contrast, these drag queens are using voguing and appropriation of what it means to be white, wealthy and maybe even famous to construct an identity. While it is easy to say that wealthy, beauty, social privilege and white power are not necessary to be socially accepted or successful in today’s world, I believe there is some truth in this assumption and naïve of us to claim we live in a world that is accepting of all “others” or a world where money cannot bring privileges that make life easier.

 
Paris is Burning

Ironically, these drag queens imitate a society that shuns them. Yet, they understand that if you don’t look the part, you cannot get the role. Seduced by society’s images of (straight) white prosperity and beauty, for a brief moment, they can look the part and become part of the fantasy world of fame, fortune and standing in the spotlight. Of course, to do this, these drag queens use shopping to avoid real problems in the hopes that shared consumerism will fulfill their dreams.  But, unlike Madonna, after the drag ball is over, these individuals must return to real life.

While this aspect of voguing saddened me, at the same time, I found the drag balls ability to bring a few minutes of glory and fame to these individuals joyous and liberating. For cross-dressing men, drag balls become an important source of pleasure and empowerment they cannot get elsewhere. At the balls, gay men appropriate the symbols of wealth and fame (the dress, attitudes and haughtiness of high fashion models, as well as just other wealthy white middle-class roles) and enjoy the brief escapism that each of us discovers in emulating our favorite stars.

 

“If Madonna had to depend on masses of black women to maintain her status as cultural icon she would have been dethroned some time ago.” –bell hooks

I have ambivalent feelings about bell hook’s essay, “Madonna: Plantation Mistress or Soul Sister.”  On the one hand, hooks correctly points out that Madonna has the freedom to engage in sexually aggressive behavior in her performance on and off-stage that black women cannot embrace because of historical stereotypes of black female sensuality (160). Hooks also observes and questions Madonna’s fascination with black masculinity in the “Truth or Dare” documentary. Always a “material girl,” hook says Madonna commodifies blackness by imitating Michael Jackson’s crotch grabbing moves—evidently something unheard of in 1990, and she seems to prefer dancing and humping on stage with black male dancers. According to hooks, Madonna also “perceive [] Prince and Michael Jackson as the standard against what she must measure herself” (161).  Curious about hooks argument, I did some online research of some of Madonna’s other videos.   I saw that she created a black image of Jesus or an angel, who she then seems to seduce in her "Just Like A Prayer" music video, which was criticized as racist and a false profit-seeking attempt by Madonna to be and act black. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA983t3Rdzs&ob=av2e. You might want to watch it and see what you think.

What hooks is really angry about, though, is her belief that Madonna’s gaze at the black and Latino “Truth or Dare” men is a condescending one. Hooks seizes on Madonna’s description of the male dancers as “emotional cripples” that she had to essentially mother and fix (163).  Interpreting this statement to mean that Madonna sees gay male minorities as “defective,” hooks equates Madonna’s gaze as an imperial one designed to subjugate and dominate people of color (163).  

Since I was already bothered by Madonna’s bizarre laugh when she was told in the documentary that one of her crew had been raped, I was highly sensitive to hooks’ criticisms. I went back online and looked at the Blond Ambition Tour images, and I agree that they do seem exploitive of gay black and Latino men (only one male dancer was straight). What I mean by exploitive is that, since she compels these men to cross-dress, wearing almost S&M outfits and strapping female cones to their breasts, Madonna makes gays (and drag queens, in particular) even more freakish than our largely white, heterosexual patriarchal society already perceived them in 1990.

But, then I listened online to an interview of her former Blond Ambition male dancers who were asked about hooks’ statement.  They were shocked and said that they never felt subjugated, mistreated or patronized by Madonna.  The costumes, dances and her on-stage performance was always professional and artistic. They said she treated them all as professional dancers and she selected the best dancers without knowing whether they were gay, straight, wealthy, privileged or poor. This was true even for the few dancers that had sued her for using them in the documentary without their permission—evidently, she had told them it was being filmed for her personal use; one dancer who had not come out who was shown kissing another male dancer said his life was destroyed.







I then went back and thought about the images in the Truth or Dare documentary. While I was bothered by the fact that she used largely gay minority men to place in the position of someone a white woman could have power over (and forced one black to dye his hair blond), it did not bother me when Madonna wore a corset with cone shaped breasts with male black pants—in fact, I embraced it. And, it did not bother me to see a female on top of a man making love to him. It also did not bother me to see a female pleasure herself—although it was a bit uncomfortable seeing it on a bed on center stage. This made me wonder then what is it that causes hooks or others to dislike the Blond Ambition Tour. Are they bothered by the fact the dancers are gay? People of color? Or, is it simply any depiction of a male acting a part that seems androgynous or less masculine. I think it might be the latter, which if true, proves Madonna’s point that the Blond Ambition Tour was gender-bending at its finest. Society must learn to accept seeing women who not only embrace their own beauty and sexuality but welcome the gaze as a source of power and money.