Posted on 05/31/2004 9:00:48 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
What is Madge good for?
The only thing Madonna provokes with her latest tour is sadness at how lame she's become
Aaron Wherry National Post
Monday, May 31, 2004
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| Madonna and her cast of muscled dancers do Kabbalah-inspired moves at the Re-invention tour launch in Los Angeles. CREDIT: Nam Y. Huh, The Associated Press |
Those readers under the age of 18 may have to ask their parents about this, but, believe it or not, Madonna used to be quite shocking. Edgy even. Testing with each new album, video or tour the Western world's sexual, religious and political boundaries. Hers was an arsenal of burning crosses, simulated masturbation, virginal squeals, S & M, a black Jesus and a picture book about sex.
But this was long before jihad and Abu Ghraib became the stuff of family dinner conversations. Before the video of Nick Berg's beheading was put on the high school curriculum. Before gay marriage seemed less an outrage than an inevitability, and Michael Moore wasn't just a fat guy schlepping around Flint, but a fat guy swaggering through Cannes.
Not that Madge isn't trying.
Her latest tour, not-so-subtly- titled Re-invention, is apparently an orgy of burkas, Bush-bashing, Kabbalah and her greatest hits. Oh, and at one point she straps herself into an electric chair.
The centrepiece is her performance of American Life, the ridiculous title track to her last album, one of 2003's more dramatic disasters (Sample lyric: "I'm drinking a soy latte/ I get a double shot-ay"). It is, in all its clumsy glory (Mini Cooper is also rhymed with "super-duper"), an attack on the American ideal and the commercialism that used to define the Material Girl. On stage, though, it becomes a gaudy anti-war protest.
"American Life was a massive anti-war production piece, helicopters and firebombing on the giant screens behind her as she moved with her troupe, all clad in fatigues," explained the Hollywood Reporter of the tour's opening show in Los Angeles.
"In the creaky song ... dancers sternly march around in military fatigues as images of bloodied and terrified Iraqi children flash on the video screens," reported the New York Daily News.
Feel like you've seen that before? Well, you haven't. But a little deja vu is warranted all the same. Last year, Madonna cut a video for the song that reportedly featured much of the same content.
"Starting as a runway show of couture army fatigues, the fashion show escalates into a mad frenzy depicting the catastrophic repercussions and horror of war," Madonna's spokeswoman Liz Rosenberg explained last February. "This will be a stirring and extremely controversial piece of work from the artist who created the medium of the small film set to music."
But, before it could be premiered, Matt Drudge began to leak details of the Jonas Akerland-directed clip, including word of transvestite soldiers and Madonna tossing a grenade at a George W. Bush look-alike. The resulting outcry from Drudge's core conservative constituency convinced Madonna to do what she had never done: back down.
"Due to the volatile state of the world and out of sensitivity and respect to the armed forces, who I support and pray for, I do not want to risk offending anyone who might misinterpret the meaning of this video," Madonna explained in shelving the clip in favour of a neutered flag-waving second cut.
At the time we still believed in weapons of mass destruction. Support for the President and his war was high. And Madonna had sales to worry about.
A year later, critics have turned and that album has tanked, as has the popularity of the President. More importantly, several hundred thousand concert tickets have gone on sale. So here (again) comes Madonna the anti-war agitator, seeming not so much brave as desperate. Odd all the more because her original inspiration for the military fatigues was reportedly Moore, specifically his rant at last year's Oscars.
Since using his moment at the podium to discuss America's "fictitious President," Moore has made Fahrenheit 9/11, which includes embarrassing footage of President Bush and graphic images of casualties and prisoner abuse in Iraq. Intended for distribution by Disney, Michael Eisner's Mickey Mouse regime refused to do so, only to see the resulting controversy lead to a triumphant reception in Cannes where Moore won the prestigious Palme d'Or, the first time in nearly 50 years a documentary has won.
Some of Moore's most remarkable footage, an interview with Berg, was left out of the film. Moore has subsequently refused to release the footage and sent copies to Berg's family members.
Which is where Moore differentiates himself from many an American high school social studies teacher. Approximately a dozen such educators in Texas, California, Oregon, Oklahoma and other states have been suspended or disciplined for showing their wide-eyed students the video of Berg's beheading at the hands of al-Qaeda terrorists. The video, widely available on the Internet after release by the perpetrators, has been among the most searched-for items on the World Wide Web for weeks now, besting the war in Iraq and even, speaking of gruesome video footage, Paris Hilton (high school sex-ed teachers take note).
There is little Madonna can show us that we, or our Internet-literate sons and daughters, haven't already seen. So what is left to slander?
The Catholic church? That wee little sex scandal has left little to add. Global warming? Sting tried that and we all know what happened to him. The evils of commercialism? Hard to battle when you're asking several hundred dollars a ticket. The sins of excess? Those in glass houses, etc, etc.
So while it might be easy to conclude Madonna has lost her edge, it seems reality has, in many cases, simply outpaced her. Even homoeroticism, an old Madonna stand-by, seems tired at this late date, same-sex marriages in Massachusetts dominating the headlines on the rare day Berg or Iraq does not.
Consider, for a moment, how different a conclusion we'd be making today had she gone ahead and premiered the inflammatory original video for American Life. Some sort of boycott would have ensued -- likely by Wal-mart -- and the usual conservative suspects would have raised their voices in hyperbolic protest. But months later, with the American public forced to confront the violent, inhumane and homoerotic images from Abu Ghraib, she might be basking in the same anti-war afterglow that now surrounds Moore.
Lone salvation for the Kabbalah convert might have come, oddly enough, in Israel. Tentatively scheduled to play several dates there, Madonna backed away citing security concerns. If there was a way to ensure the safety of her audience, shows there, especially in light of cancellations in the Middle East by other pop stars (most recently Missy Elliott), would have sent the sort of defiant message she now so desperately seems to be seeking.
Until then, any buttons Madonna had left to press have been hammered harder and faster by more-willing provocateurs, if not reality itself. And Madonna is a ground-breaking artist in need of new ground.
Not everyone has been up the Statue of Liberty.
Well, give the people what they want....
Well, MSNBC says Madonna's "hit" tour is one of the highest grossing of the summer so far.....Sounds like many will want a refund!
She is a has been. Her so-called popularity depended upon how notorious could she appear to the public. She overlooked that after all the latest atrocities perpetrated and the godawful Bush bashing, her attempts at "shocking the audience" are sinking faster than quick sand. Apparently, the moronic matronly older woman of two children and two marriages with a meltdown of antics just isn't shocking enough. She has been superseded with reality.
Psst. Over here, cupcake.
I agree. Compared with Jihadis' beheading, throat-cutting, and dragging charred corpses and after Lynndie English's antics, she looks so lame and infantile.
I saw Alice Cooper do that back in '71.
One word, and pardon me in advance:
Answering the question...."What is Madge good for?".....how about taking money from liberal scum....who then have less to spend on what they might REALLY need, like a decent education, a decent pair of shoes, or maybe even some decent food.....sheesh.
She's good for us who have a perverse sense of humor who find it amusing to watch an 80's has-been have to try harder and harder to be something she never was.
Just like a politician, you give a non-answer.
She is so 80's...
She's a made for Vegas act...Reno, that is.
http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/afp/20040526/capt.sge.ttu99.260504163051.photo01.default-277x364.jpg
She's good for us who have a perverse sense of humor who find it amusing to watch an 80's has-been have to try harder and harder to be something she never was.
I'm trying to think of a suitable caption but...just can't. She seems so proud of her crotch, doesn't she...I guess when you don't have much else to work with, you can always go that route. Oh, well...
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