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The Internet Review of
Books
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Vol 1, No 002, April 8, 1999 |
o one could accuse Madonna of trying to emulate her
sacred namesake. Though the material girl has her spiritual side - currently,
she's into Buddhism, though it looks like she's really just a good Catholic
girl at heart - style is really the characteristic that distinguishes
her from her less talented colleagues. Style . . . with attitude.
She can look like a tart at the S&M end of the market one moment, then a Vogue cover shot the next. She plays with images the way others look into their wardrobe or the lipstick and rouge dressing table tray.
It could be argued that she's not really a very good singer, that she compensates for the lack of content in her public persona by shape-shifting constantly, but this is to misunderstand the name of the game she's playing. Like McLuhan said (and he might well have been talking of her), the medium is the message.
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Click here for list of Madonna CDs and singles |
Each new persona is a variation on the same, powerful theme: that she is a woman (yes, boys and lads, decidedly not a girl or a babe or any of those other put-down diminutives) who knows exactly what she wants and is using the assets nature gave her to achieve it. No wonder new wave feminists like Camille Paglia love her!
This is true, whether she is communicating the seductively spiritual message of Material Girl or dressing up like the 90s' image of Evita. And everyone who works with her must star in the same movie, adorning themselves with Rocky Horror Show undies (and that's the men) or planning her own kind of personal revolution.
It's a dangerous life, for all her good Catholic upbringing, living out there on the boundaries of gender war. Bowie may dress hermophraditically and move from Thin White Duke to Ziggy Stardust and back, but basically this is something he learned from Lindsay Kemp. Madonna invented herself, with no outside assistance, so far as is known. IRB
On the next page: what the lady from Vogue says about her, some other Madonna books, and a list of CDs & singles.
