A Unique Power to Scandalize Each Generation Anew

October 12, 2023 7:50 AM

We may not understand Madonna in the moment, but rarely is she wrong about what’s coming. from What Madonna Knows, Sophie Gilbert's review of Mary Gabriel's new biography Madonna: A Rebel Life [The Atlantic; ungated]

The Muchness of Madonna [NYT, ungated]
Madonna by Mary Gabriel review – the definitive life of a pop colossus [Grauniad; ungated]

posted by chavenet (47 comments total)

I haven't read this (I will) but I am compelled to share that when I was a sophomore in college I (very lightly) made out with an MBA student named Christina in her Toyota Celica as the new song "Ray of Light" played on the radio. I am sure she was only like 3 or 4 years older than me but it felt like she was Mrs. Robinson or something. I'll always appreciate Madonna for supplying the soundtrack to this core memory. And that song is a total bop.
posted by AgentRocket at 9:02 AM on October 12, 2023 [12 favorites]

"More than that, she’s a living, breathing, constantly metamorphosing work of art, a Gesamtkunstwerk—her life, her physical self, her sexuality, her presence in the media interweaving and coalescing into the totality of the spectacle that is Madonna."

Hey, can I have some of that tasty Kool-Aid®?

I mean, I like Madge fine, more so counting backwards from Music, but this writer, along with any biographer who writes a "reverent" 800-page bio of anyone, needs to throttle back a tad bit.
posted by the sobsister at 9:06 AM on October 12, 2023 [16 favorites]

It's okay for other people to go nuts for things, it really is. We don't have to throw dishwater on other people's joy in a public forum, like we were an arbiter of absolute taste. It's truly fine to just say -- silently, to one's self -- "self, this is not something I like," and get on with one's day.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:13 AM on October 12, 2023 [55 favorites]

Three basically perfect albums: Like A Prayer, Ray Of Light, and Confessions On A Dance Floor. Any artist would kill for just one of those, but she's done three, and done a lot of quality work outside of those.

I've lost track of her over the past while, keep waiting for her to spark me up again. But she's a singular achievement in Living Life As Art, and I hold nothing but respect for her.
posted by hippybear at 9:19 AM on October 12, 2023 [5 favorites]

seanmpuckett
I disagree. And I disagree with the writer's hagiographical treatment of Madonna, who hasn't had her '80s level of media impact in at least 15 years. But thanks for taking time out of your busy day to attempt to instruct me.
posted by the sobsister at 9:20 AM on October 12, 2023 [18 favorites]

Beatles or Rolling Stones :: Madonna or Cyndi Lauper
posted by elkevelvet at 9:33 AM on October 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

There was also the whole Tiffany or Debbie Gibson or Britney Spears point in time, too.
posted by hippybear at 9:36 AM on October 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

Wow. The Israel-Palestine thread started off with less acrimony than the Madonna thread. That’s gotta be a record.
posted by eviemath at 9:37 AM on October 12, 2023 [41 favorites]

With Tiffany and Debbie being in direct response to Madonna's overt sexuality. It was a weird time in music.
posted by hippybear at 9:37 AM on October 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

It's telling that whenever the Atlantic references the way Madonna is analyzed, it's almost always pointing back to the early 1990s. Media-focused feminism really had a minute there with the Madonna Question. But the problem with being a culture-defining artist is, once you've defined the culture, you're just part of it, you're the background, the sinews, the replaceable cellular matrix. Is there any current work on the Madonna Question? The Atlantic piece certainly cannot point to any. We are no longer scratching our heads over this phenomenon. There is nothing particularly scandalous going on. The reinvention, the boundary-pushing, the self-commoditization, it's all just part of the toolset now, the opposite of transgressive. Which is okay! She's still a potent public figure, she's still making music, and that's all fine. But the hagiography, to use the sobsister's well-chosen term, just seems anachronistic at this point.
posted by mittens at 9:42 AM on October 12, 2023 [16 favorites]

is there any current work on the Madonna Question?

I hear they're building a new gravity-wave detector in Asia
posted by credulous at 9:52 AM on October 12, 2023 [5 favorites]

Has anyone asked ChatGPT the Madonna Question?
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:53 AM on October 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

But is that about what the author of this doorstop of a book has focussed on, or is that a fault of the author of the Atlantic piece and this being their own focus on Madonna's career. They admit they came into it not at the beginning, but with in the Like A Prayer/I'm Breathless era, and even then only as a young child. This is someone who found early Nineties Madonna basically foundational to their musical identity, according to what they have injected into the article about themselves. Maybe the perfect person to write a review about a biography about Madonna, maybe not the best person to try to turn that review into a summary about What She Means To Culture.

The other linked reviews I think are a bit more honest about what the book contains, and those reviewers aren't trying to draw strong lines between Madonna and their own personal musical backgrounds.

I've tried hard, with sincere deliberation and effort, to engage with her more recent albums, but didn't purchase Rebel Heart or Madame X. Maybe they're good? The gay underground in which I move didn't tell me they were worth buying. Doesn't mean they aren't good, but if they're that far outside of my life, then yeah, she's lost a lot of cultural significance.

She's only a decade older than me, so I figure she can still Do A Thing. Not sure what it would be, but I'm always hoping to find out.
posted by hippybear at 9:53 AM on October 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

i liked it when madonna helped me learn my times tables
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 10:19 AM on October 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

"Ray of Light" is a great William Orbit album.
posted by senor biggles at 10:21 AM on October 12, 2023 [6 favorites]

I still remember a skinny dance club sort of guy flipping through all the 12-inch singles in the lame record store where I worked and being disappointed that we didn't have anything by this Madonna person. I remember it because he was very disappointed in me and I felt kind of bad that I hadn't even heard of this person he said was the new big thing.
posted by pracowity at 10:34 AM on October 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

[is the Muchness of Madonna link broken?]
posted by girlmightlive at 10:45 AM on October 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

The "ungated" link is not broken, but yes the direct NYT link seems to be malformed.
posted by hippybear at 10:52 AM on October 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

The Muchness of Madonna
posted by chavenet at 10:55 AM on October 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

Beatles or Rolling Stones :: Madonna or Cyndi Lauper

The Stones were consciously the rougher, edgier foil to the Beatles' Fab Four image. Was Lauper that to Madonna in the 80s? Genuine question, I was just a small child at the time and have no context for it.
posted by star gentle uterus at 11:36 AM on October 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

The Stones were consciously the rougher, edgier foil to the Beatles' Fab Four image. Was Lauper that to Madonna in the 80s?

Not really. But Lauper was more dressed in the MTV pop version of what "punk" was at the time.
posted by Liquidwolf at 11:47 AM on October 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

Was Lauper that to Madonna in the 80s?

I think it's more that Lauper and Madonna were two big female pop stars with non-mainstream looks who were hit artists on MTV at the time, and were sort of battling each other in the charts a bit. Burning Up came out in March of 1983, with Girls Just Wanna Have Fun in June of that year, and then Holiday in September, and then the next year would see Time After Time kind of in the charts around the same time as Borderline.

I don't remember there being a contention of "between them" in the same way between Debbie/Tiffany/Britney, though.

The whole thing about having to choose between female pop stars during a time when many of the most popular male bands were dressing nearly identical to the women and were all allowed to co-exist is a sexism that is not lost on me. I hope not lost on anyone.
posted by hippybear at 11:47 AM on October 12, 2023 [7 favorites]

There was also the whole Tiffany or Debbie Gibson or Britney Spears point in time, too.

This is not a point in time that existed. Tiffany vs Debbie Gibson, yes, 1987 was a year, but Spears came more than a decade later.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:52 AM on October 12, 2023 [14 favorites]

Huh, okay, my bad. I did see Debbie once, it was a good show. Haven't seen either of the other two, and they all do sort of blend in my mind.
posted by hippybear at 11:57 AM on October 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

Anybody else remember Ciccone Youth? This quote from Thurston Moore seems relevant:

We actually embraced Madonna's joie de vivre, her celebrity. We did that record and everybody felt we were crazy, and some people lambasted us for giving her some kind of credibility in the underground. But she already had credibility, as far as I was concerned; she was already a part of the downtown scene. I don't think she capitalised on it.
posted by trip and a half at 12:19 PM on October 12, 2023 [10 favorites]

Debbie Gibson was the perfect foil for Madonna in the 80s. Madonna was the woman you knew you could never be or be with, but Debbie Gibson was definitely supposed to register as the girl you could be / or could be your girlfriend.

I spend the summer of 1987 on Long Island with lots of other teenagers who knew her slightly or her friends or had mingled with her after her mall food court performances (which were a big part of her rise to fame). Never saw her in the flesh but she was so in the air it almost felt like I had.

I now run into lots of music stars of middling fame in airport lounges and on airplanes. I don't know if you should never meet your heroes, but it is a little dispiriting to hear them get a little worked up about why there's only Diet Coke and not Coke Zero...
posted by MattD at 12:22 PM on October 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

Madonna's A Lucky Star .
posted by hortense at 12:24 PM on October 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

As amazing as Madonna is, I feel like it is practically impossible to set the direction of pop culture for more than a brief window. There are fantastic artists who create great work for long periods of time, but they are not typically pushing the boundaries of pop culture. Bob Dylan was doing this for basically a half-decade in the sixties, but after that, all the twists and turns in his career were developments of his music, not pop culture. David Bowie was innovating and challenging pop culture from maybe 72-80, but much of that was at a much lower profile of sort of art-pop culture that only got more acclaim later (e.g., Berlin trilogy).

Madonna was a really driving force in pop culture from maybe 84-92, which is a very long time to do that. Not many people, or women have had a run like that. Maybe Dolly Parton or Cher are somewhat close?

I think claiming that she has been driving culture in the last 20 years almost undervalues how truly transformational she was in the 80s and early 90s.
posted by snofoam at 12:24 PM on October 12, 2023 [13 favorites]

The Stones were consciously the rougher, edgier foil to the Beatles' Fab Four image. Was Lauper that to Madonna in the 80s? Genuine question, I was just a small child at the time and have no context for it.

Madonna quickly became the rough. Lauper was zany/goofy.
posted by srboisvert at 12:34 PM on October 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

Madonna Ciccone is still at large.
posted by kyrademon at 12:44 PM on October 12, 2023 [7 favorites]

Not sure it has much Deep Meaning, but I was recently struck by the fact pointed out to me that of the quartet defining the 80s (Madonna, Prince, George Michael and Michael Jackson), only Madge remains. I will mourn her passing deeply, but I hope it’s not for a good while yet.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 2:28 PM on October 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

all this talk of the 80s.. Debbie Gibson, Tiffany.. has me stark ravin' naked in a for-ni-cation nation
posted by elkevelvet at 2:54 PM on October 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

Madonna and Lauper did have something in common, they were both on the PMRC's "Filthy Fifteen" list. They were tipped off to Cyndi when she spilled the beans about "She Bop" on the Dr. Ruth show, but for Madonna they chose "Dress You Up" for some reason (they must have had creatively dirty minds.)

In 1984 it might seem that Cyndi was on top, but "Like a Virgin" changed everything, and then she became the "Material Girl" though in her own words she didn't expect these to be her signature songs -- it seems like a happy accident involving the songwriters, her stylist, and MTV that she leaned into. Then she did a movie and played stadiums while Cyndi got involved with the WWE and Goonies. Madonna owned 1986, I have the opening synth notes of "La Isla Bonita" imprinted in my neurons. I think a few years later, the Pope canceled her Pepsi commercial.

I love them both, but True Colors should have been out a year earlier and had more hits -- Cyndi had a shit manager.
posted by credulous at 3:46 PM on October 12, 2023 [7 favorites]

With the single exception of Ray of Light, I've never really connected to Madonna's music. I do recognize the monumental impact she's made as a woman and music artist, but at the time she was popular I was more interested in guitar driven screaming by the dissaffected of my youth. I suspect, regardless of the breathless review, I would not be reading an 800 page biography, of her or anyone. Also, I feel that the world is big enough for all of the women and none need to compete with the others. So enjoy Debbie, or Tiffany, or Madonna, or L7, or whoever your current fave is, and know that you and they don't have to answer to anyone.
posted by evilDoug at 4:14 PM on October 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

There's not one drop of irony in the fact that The Bay City Rollers are not from Bay City and Madonna is.
posted by clavdivs at 4:27 PM on October 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

There's not one bit of irony and the fact that when I first heard Madonna, it was my neighbor, who was spinning discs at his own birthday party that no one showed up too.

and he too treated me as like a Judas Priest for not knowing who Madonna was.
posted by clavdivs at 4:32 PM on October 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

Full disclosure: I bought this book based on this FPP
posted by thivaia at 7:39 PM on October 12, 2023 [5 favorites]

(It is possible that “Desperately Seeking Susan” is my most foundational youth text)
posted by thivaia at 7:41 PM on October 12, 2023 [10 favorites]

Graduated HS in 85, and I'm from one suburb over from Madonna, so she was absolutely huge when I was impressionable. Three girls bought me a ticket to the "Like a Virgin" tour because they wanted a guy around to feel safe. It was a fucking great show. I was already in my alterna-phase at the time, but she was unmissable, and kept coming out with hit after hit. And no matter how anti-mainstream I got, I'd still dance to them. Like Taylor Swift, who I think is the real comparison here and also who got a LOT of her business/stardom acumen by carefully studying Madonna, she put out a quality product every time until it started to drop off after the William Orbit album. (Like Swift, I don't think she personally wrote most of the songs, but she was able to manage a crew of creatives real effectively.) Still, a truly impressive run. 30+ years later, I can still do the rap to Vogue without missing a beat, much to the annoyance of my teen daughter (who thinks Swift is lame and Madonna ancient history)
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:55 PM on October 12, 2023 [8 favorites]

I keep thinking about bell hooks’s argument, in a 1992 essay, that Madonna “deconstructs the myth of ‘natural’ white girl beauty” by exposing how artificial it is, how unnatural. She bends every effort, hooks notes, to embody an aesthetic that she herself is simultaneously satirizing.

Sophie Gilbert's comment is a bit out of context here, the essay mentioned ('Madonna: Plantation Mistress or Soul Sister' in Black Looks: Race and Representation) takes a fairly critical view of Madonna's self-identification as a feminist liberation icon;

As with most Madonna videos, when critics talk about this film they tend to ignore race. Yet no viewer can look at this film and not think about race and representation without engaging in forms of denial. After choosing a cast of characters from marginalized groups--nonwhite folks, heterosexual and gay, and gay white folks--Madonna publicly describes them as "emotional cripples." And of course in the context of the film this description seems borne out by the way they allow her to dominate, exploit, and humiliate them. Those Madonna fans who are determined to see her as politically progressive might ask themselves why it is she completely endorses those racist/sexist/classist stereotypes that almost always attempt to portray marginalized groups as "defective" Let's face it, by doing this, Madonna is not breaking with any white supremacist, patriarchal status quo; she is endorsing and perpetuating it. Some of us do not find it hip or cute for Madonna to brag that she has a "fascistic side," a side well documented in the film...

posted by ovvl at 8:30 PM on October 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

It's okay for other people to go nuts for things, it really is. We don't have to throw dishwater on other people's joy in a public forum, like we were an arbiter of absolute taste. It's truly fine to just say -- silently, to one's self -- "self, this is not something I like," and get on with one's day.

On MetaFilter? Throwing dishwater on someone's joy is a staple here on the blue. Yucking someone's yum, as they say, is routine, no matter the taste someone takes delight in. Remember our serious discussion about whether Dave Barry was a fascist menace?

I suspect this dishwatering is one reason some folks report being anxious about posting here.
posted by doctornemo at 8:18 AM on October 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

I suspect this dishwatering is one reason some folks report being anxious about posting here.

Being someone who posts here more than most, I'm someone that people who want to make posts reach out to privately pretty often. The number one thing they all say when they get in contact about advice for making a post can be pulled together and summarized as "the people here are really mean and if I make a post it's going to be a Bad Thing in my life".

I don't know how to explain to them that it won't be, but like honest to god, this is not a community that does anything to make new [or even long-standing] members want to share what they love.
posted by hippybear at 3:02 PM on October 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

Considering we're talking about an artist whose entire art-form relies on creating controversy it's a little strange to envision a conversation about her that did not, y'know, mention controversy.
posted by mittens at 3:09 PM on October 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

the word scandalize is in the title of the fpp!!!
posted by mittens at 3:17 PM on October 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

Remember our serious discussion about whether Dave Barry was a fascist menace?

Haha, wow, I must have missed that hot take.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:26 PM on October 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's funny because this thread is mostly Madonna Fan Club (yay), partly criticism (easy to do), and partly how Dare you! at the criticism, of course.

Madonna is a land of contrasts, symbolic of both feminist empowerment and capitalistic narcissism. Her over-riding genius is image-crafting, and her human imperfection is her striving to be taken seriously with intellectual gravitas (encouraged by Camille Paglia). This conflict is part of what makes her interesting, so a doorstop biography that (I think) mostly plays up to her career without more closely examining both those light and dark aspects seems to miss an interesting opportunity for more depth. (I'll have to read it soon, but it is described as a hagiography).

My personal opinion is that Madonna's greatest talent is as an executive producer of pop-dance records. She hires various guys button-pushing synths to enact her personal creative visions of pure dance-floor grooves, and she plays up her strengths, downplays her limitations, and kills it.

'Evita' is the masterpiece of her conceptual side, she aspires towards pure self-deification, and she kinda achieves it.

A Unique Power to Scandalize the late 20th Century.
posted by ovvl at 6:08 PM on October 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

My personal opinion is that Madonna's greatest talent is as an executive producer of pop-dance records.

Well, and during the many many years she was working with Patrick Leonard, she was part of one of the most successful songwriting teams ever. I feel like she's been chasing that same feeling of productive partnership ever since that one ended so acrimoniously.
posted by hippybear at 6:26 PM on October 13, 2023 [2 favorites]