Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2001/12/03/madonna_naked_to_the_world.php
Monday, December 3, 2001
Who is Madonna?
Is she, as former rapper and Madonna lover Vanilla Ice said, timeless? 'If she were a painting, she would be an abstract by Picasso,' said Ice. 'She has so many faces.'
Why has she succeeded while other divas have faded away? Is Madonna truly a diva? (What exactly makes one a diva?) And, most importantly, why do so many people care?
Two new unauthorized biographies of the self-proclaimed 'Boy Toy' try to answer those questions for us—and more! The release of Madonna by Andrew Morton and Goddess: Inside Madonna by Barbara Victor gives us about 650 pages of Madonna to sort out the answer. We are privy to irrelevant personal information. We learn about Madonna's first period at age ten, a detail involving a rather unpleasant school tale. We learn about her first high school lesbian encounter from both parties. We learn about the loss of Madonna's virginity—to the captain of the football team in the backseat of his car—and the medical complications during the birth of her son Rocco. Strangely, a lot of the biographical information varies in the books—but that only adds to the intrigue surrounding Madonna, I guess. And, both books feature previously unreleased photos of America's foremost diva—the shorter book, Madonna, contains the most pictures.
These authors are no slouches when it comes to gossip. Andrew Morton, according to the dust jacket, is 'one of the world's best-known biographers and a leading authority on modern celebrity.' He is the author of two other 'controversial' and sultry biographies: Diana: Her True Story and Monica's Story. People magazine made Morton's biography the subject of a recent cover story, which documents Madonna's past lovers, the number of which would make even Wilt Chamberlain jealous. Barbara Victor's 'explosive' and 'extraordinary' biography is less hyped and the cover is far less vibrant than Morton's florescent yellow bombshell. She, a traditional journalist, having covered the Middle East for various publications for most of her career, presents Madonna in a more academic fashion.
Morton and Victor both see Madonna as some type of timeless classical figure, and their candor is quite humorous. Sadly, it appears they actually believe what they write. The story of Madonna has now entered the Western canon as myth, they imply. 'As the story, which now has become a myth, goes, Madonna arrived at La Guardia Airport in New York City from Detroit's Metro Airport on August 16, 1978, her twentieth birthday,' writes Victor. Morton frequently invokes the colloquialism, 'as legend has it,' elevating gossip to grand, mythic proportions. To elevate the story of Madonna to legend and myth is more than bad writing and hyperbole; it gives credence to a life-story that isn't all that monumental.
Madonna has transcended her human state and become a goddess, Victor says. 'Madonna is purely and simply a goddess. She is the modern version of Diana or Artemis with the torch in her right hand, the protector of virgins as well as the goddess of the heart and the hunt at the same that she is Aphrodite, the goddess of love, the more passive and traditionally female deity.' (This puts Madonna in select company—Hercules is the only mortal ever to have been deified.) Victor, however, never explains what exactly she means by describing Madonna in this way. For instance, how is Madonna the protector of virgins? Probably Victor just translated diva into English, but that would require some knowledge of Latin.
Morton sees Madonna as more of an Odysseus-like figure, the normal, girl-next-door on an epic journey. He calls her an 'All-American' girl—just as Odysseus is the 'everyman' or Leopold Bloom the 'allroundman.' Morton, unfortunately, sees Madonna's odyssey as not yet complete: 'Her journey has only begun.'
The biographical information in the two books is sometimes contradictory. For instance, Morton says Madonna went to New York at age twenty with hundreds of dollars, perhaps a few thousand. Victor says she went with only $35, a notion Morton vehemently dismisses. Madonna endorses the latter as it is much more dramatic. But Madonna also has said she grew up poor and attended a black high school—both claims are total fabrications. Her high school in suburban Detroit had only one black student.
Here are the facts: Madonna grew up outside Detroit, Michigan in a middle-class family. She was not poor; her father was a successful engineer. Her mother, also named Madonna, died when little Madonna was five. She briefly attended University of Michigan on a dance scholarship but left the school prior to graduation to pursue fame in New York City. While in New York, she was 'discovered' through luck and some hard work and, thus, became very famous. That is Madonna's life sans all the sexual anecdotes.
I have never paid any attention to Madonna, but people must, as evidenced by the release and success of these books and Madonna's numerous chart-topping records and singles. Perhaps, the world admires Madonna's ability to cross into all types of media: music, movies, stage, and prose. Or, maybe they are captivated by her ability to transform from provocative 'Boy Toy' to mother of two children with relative ease. Maybe, the public identifies with her spiritual struggle, be it with Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Wicca, Shintoism, Islam, Jewish mysticism, Scientology, Rastafarianism, Ba'hai, Tai Chi, yoga, Feng Shui or whatever she can come up with over the weekend. She has tried them all.
Nothing about Madonna's life is normal. Morton claims she is a sweatpants-wearing housewife who, these days, is busy monitoring her kids TV watching and cooking wholesome dinners. Her entire life is a staged act—from her marriages to Sean Penn and Guy Ritchie to, sadly, her children. Even now, as she claims to be the consummate mother, she is just putting on a public relations spectacle. Who can believe she is telling the truth when she says, 'I am much more puritanical than people think'? There is nothing puritanical about Madonna, whether she is hitchhiking naked or feigning masturbation with a crucifix—as she did during her 'Like a Virgin' tour.
Even her recent marriage to Guy Ritchie played out like a pulpy grocery store romance. First, she and Ritchie had their son baptized before they were married, a strange move for a woman who (mistakenly) thinks herself adept when it comes to Protestant or Catholic mores. The wedding was worse. The guest list included pop icons like Sting, Gwyneth Paltrow, Rosie O'Donnell, Brad Pitt, and Jennifer Aniston, normal for a celebrity. She invited some family: her father, stepmother, some siblings, and the father of her first child. She also invited the Dalai Lama. The Lama did not attend. He did send a telegram.
Madonna and Ritchie rewrote the traditional wedding vows, instead promising to 'cherish, honor, and delight in family.' At the conclusion of the wedding ceremony, the minister, Susan Brown, gave Madonna and the groom two rolls of toilet paper, a tradition for the minister. 'Two rolls together reminding them that their marriage should be strong and long,' Brown told the new couple.
That Madonna has garnered so much praise for so little over the last two decades is the fault of media hungry for celebrities and a public desperate for racy gossip. The media presents a sham and pathetic wedding as some type of, as Madonna put it, 'truly magical religious experience.' She has built her career and fame on shameless performances and sex, a choice that has made millions for her and her biographers.
Madonna is a selfish woman, who has focused solely on her fame. She has left trusting friends in her wake. She manages fame well, though, and has turned failures into successes and scandals into public relations gold mines.
Madonna has the ability to spin her selfish motives into world-class altruism. She is portrayed as a great mother and a lover of children—caring, tender, and motherly. Before she had kids, she would visit children's hospitals and perform miracles that exceed even a doctor's most optimistic projections. Morton gives us a riveting scene of Madonna in action.
'Seeing these children struggling to cope with life-threatening illnesses like AIDS and leukemia, leaves her drained and deeply moved. During one visit she walked into a ward where a young boy, in the late stages of leukemia, simply refused to get out of bed. Depressed and upset, he seemed to have given up the fight for life. The boy's father was beside himself, unable to convince his son to battle on. So Madonna went into is room and joshed: 'Hey, get out of bed. Who do you think you are?' Then, for the next thirty minutes she sat quietly talking and playing with him until, finally he gingerly climbed out of bed and joined the other children. 'Everyone was moved to tears,' recalls one eyewitness.'
Instead of coming across as compassionate, this scene seems somewhat sickening. It's shameless. Madonna's intentions may have been good, but the scene goes too far. What if Richard Nixon, in his Checkers speech, had used a dying child instead of a dog?
Madonna is portrayed as a veritable miracle worker, but that she has probably killed more children than she has helped is glossed over. In Goddess, Victor writes, '[Madonna's] love of children is the one area of her life where she has always been sincere.' Yet, Madonna has had numerous abortions, including one between the births of her daughter and her son. This abortion is only one of many—most were from her early career. 'Back then, there was no limit to the possibilities of whose baby she aborted,' said one acquaintance of Madonna. Madonna only loves children when it is prudent—good for publicity or time for an image change. Otherwise, children are expendable like band members or managers.
The characteristics of the new, improved maternal Madonna are hard to find. At one recent concert, Madonna wore a shirt that said 'MOTHER' on the front. How nice, the audience must have thought: Madonna has changed. Then she turned around, and the crowd saw her back. 'F-CKER,' the shirt said. Same Madonna. Nor is it exactly maternal to pay off a father to abandon all claims of custody of a child. Madonna paid Carlos Leon, a man she met jogging and wanted to meet because he had nice sunglasses, one million dollars to do just that. Leon is an aspiring actor—he had a cameo role in the Big Lebowski—and the father of Lourdes, Madonna' daughter.
For all Madonna's moral and ethical faults, it is to her credit that her career has lasted as long as it has. She has repeatedly starred in box-office failures like Body of Evidence and made appearances in pseudo-artistic porno flicks, yet she continues to persevere and garner more lucrative roles. She has been practically booed off the stage in some of her live theatrical performances, yet she comes back for more. She made a fool of herself when she published her perverted and deviant Sex book that showed her in variety of strange, to put it mildly, poses. But, behind these gaffes is a woman who is determined to be successful in show business. Also, she has avoided the problem of drugs and alcohol to which so many of her peers succumbed.
Madonna has been prime real estate in the music industry since 1982, yet she had never been known for the quality of her music. Not until she took voice lessons for her role in Evita could she manage more than a shrill whine into the microphone. She managed to sell millions of albums with sultry music videos and peepshow stage antics. Even Jacques Chirac considers himself a fan.
But, she has managed to sustain a successful business. Her record company Maverick has signed numerous artists, like Alanis Morrisette, who would go on to sell millions of albums.
Madonna is now forty-three years old and a mother of two small children. She still sees herself as an international star and sex symbol. Her current rivals in the music industry are teenagers: Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, and others. Is there something wrong with this picture?
Madonna is getting old. She is beginning to look old. Some of the books's exclusive photos are a testament to this. She cannot go on prancing around on stage half-naked in clothes that would embarrass even the most flamboyant teenagers. Sex may sell for twenty-somethings, but Madonna is approaching the half-century mark. For her own reputation, Madonna should stop before she really embarrasses herself.
But that seems unlikely.