Here's an entry from The Biographical Dictionary of Film in which David Thomson rehearses some of the concerns about "movie" addressed in the new book A Sudden Flicker of Light:
Fortuitously - but purely accidentally - timed for the tenacious Madonna's return to visibility with an alleged return-to-form album.
But what if the form being returned to is of no concern or interest to you? Or even actively repulsive, as with Thomson?
I can't say I have never liked a Madonna record. The early club tracks, when she was almost a nobody, on a par with the great Vicky D - had a husky exuberance. "Into the Groove" conveys a timeless sentiment and really does sound carefree. "Vogue," as record and video, had a certain military ruthlessness that earned one's submission. "Justify My Love" has a good stolen beat and some heavy-breathing soft-porno appeal. "Ray Of Light" - if you could stifle your guffaw at the idea of Madonna taking a spiritual turn, getting into Kabbalah and all that - is pleasant pop trance.
But you know how there are people who are born to sing? Madonna isn't one of them, which is why there is such a sinewy texture to her vocals. Nor is she nice to look at - not because of her looks but because the personality radiates through the face.
I always remember the unsentimental compliment paid by her freshly married husband Guy Ritchie, when you'd think they'd have been in the honeymoon phase: something like "she's a great girl. Such a hard worker".
Can't find the exact quote but searching turned up a post-divorce compliment of sorts:
"She's a manifester, if there ever was one. First-rate manifester. Madonna makes things happen. Put Madonna up against any twenty-three-year-old, she'll outwork them, outdance them, outperform them."
Apparently her four-hour daily exercise sessions were a bone of marital contention.
Still I suppose that stardom-at-all-costs drive does makes her glam, which is why she makes a brief appearance in the Aftershocks section of S+A, with five lines on "Vogue":
1990
March -- Madonna’s B&W retro-glamour video for “Vogue”
either pays tribute to or coopts New York’s gay subculture of balls and
costumed competition, to create an anthem of escape-through-fantasy and magical
masquerade. Learn from the screen gods and goddesses who “gave good face”,
advises Madge; “strike a pose, there’s nothing to it.”
Reviewing "Sex" in '92, Martin Amis remarked on her "innate amorality-- her talent for ruthlessness. The elements of the popular culture that she has melded together may look random and indiscriminate. In fact, they could have been assembled by a corporate computer: pornography, religion, multi-ethnicity, transsexuality, kitsch, camp, worldly power, self-parody and self-invention. ... [she represents] will over talent. Not greatly gifted, not deeply beautiful, Madonna tells America that fame comes from wanting it badly enough".
ReplyDeleteI was very amused to learn the alternate title of "Expressway To Yr. Skull" from your (wonderful) book. Sonic Youth's flirtations with Madonna were understandable, because for a few years they were all loosely in the same NYC ecosystem, and I get Kim Gordon's feminist angle, but in retrospect, after the passage of so much time, I find it kind of bewildering, too. It's a struggle to reconstruct the reasons she was an interesting cultural force for a few years in the 80s. I'd forgotten the days when cool people defended her!
I like a few of the early songs, and "Ray of Light" is nice. Of her movies, she was good in "Desperately Seeking Susan", her one perfectly-tailored role, of course.
It is always embarrassing to play the “you had to be there” card, but really: you had to be there. Your bemusement that Madonna was ever considered interesting or cool seems very common among anyone under 50. But to a large degree Madonna’s reputation is a victim of her success. Her impact on the culture was so overwhelming, people find it hard to imagine what it was like before her, or the impact she had when she became, for a while, the biggest pop star on the planet.
DeleteOh no, I was there. Very much so. My remarks had more to do with the Sonic Youth track, which touched off a certain line of reminiscence for me.
DeleteSonic Youth were a band I never really explored beyond "Daydream Nation". Reading about them in "Still In A Dream" made me want to give them another shot, so I went out and bought "EVOL" (by the way, instantly one of my all-time favorite record sleeves). As I learned, the great "Expressway To Yr. Skull" is titled "Madonna, Sean and Me" on the sleeve. I don't know the back-story behind that name switch, but what struck me was that, in 1986, when that record was released, a scruffy art-rock outfit could add strong resonance to their song merely by name-dropping celebrities in its title. Suddenly, along with the reference to "California Girls", the song seems to be saying much more than its minimalist lyrics sketch out, something about rejecting celebrity culture, pop's escapist fantasies, or whatever.
The point is, Sonic Youth were gnats nipping the (high) heels of a cultural colossus. Madonna was huge, as you say. I do remember all the frenzied coverage of her and Sean Penn. I can even go back to the scandal of her bared mid-riff.
Today, I mostly recall these as little more than a jumble of facts. By the early 90s I'd heard and basically accepted the arguments you and Stylo have laid out about her impact and influence, I get all that. What I struggle to conjure up is the more nebulous atmosphere surrounding all that data, giving them juice, why it is that a title like "Madonna, Sean and Me" would pop the way it did. In those days Madonna would pluck her publicity strings and the whole culture would vibrate.
It's the magnitude of her stardom in relation to the music she made: what was the fuss? Was there a there there? Something real was underneath the publicity, okay, but how much, and what was it, did it age well? I agree that it's remarkable to have left behind a double album of bangers-- few artists have-- I simply cannot match up her actual artistic output with her quasi-divinity of the 80s and early 90s.
I mean, saying "you had to be there" is kind of a negative judgment, isn't it? If you praise Madonna, you're almost forced to play that card. Listening to "Holiday" or "Lucky Star" (two decent club tracks and nothing more), you almost *have* to say, "What a brilliant businesswoman she was!" She's like one of those Criterion DVDs of an obscure French film where the commentary track is vastly more interesting than the movie itself.
Again, not trying to trash her. I like some of her songs. In her own historical context, she obviously possessed something unique to which many intelligent observers responded. I'm just trying to look back and place her properly. Maybe more than any other 80s icon, I find her superhuman image, critical reputation, and alleged cultural legacy incredibly difficult to reconcile with her actual music.
I agree with all of this - the music is so far below all the other stuff. Whereas with say Prince, the image / fame / mystique is supported by incredible music. .
DeleteSorry Nick S: I stand corrected! I guess in that case my main conclusion from our discussion is that it was possible for different people to perceive her very differently, even in the moment. For me the memory of her impact on the discourse around feminism, gay identity, AIDS, religion, the tension between art and commerce, etc, explains why she was seen as interesting. And like the aftershocks from the Big Bang, that casts an aura on the way I feel about her music of the time, even four decades later.
DeleteOn another note: I hope you are enjoying EVOL, which I also love. On the right day I will think it’s SY’s best album. But I do think ‘Expressway’ is one of Thurston Moore’s weakest lyrics. There’s some juvenile misogyny in there that thankfully faded from SY’s work pretty completely. Chuck Eddy has a funny bit complaining about the line: “we’re going to find out the meaning of feeling good”, which he spins up into a whole riff identifying that as SY’s great problem: they were the kind of band who thought feeling good needed to have a meaning. It’s a good jab, but for me it’s irrelevant. The music is so great, I will buy whatever Moore is selling.
With reference to Nick S (sorry, I thought my reply deserved its own post), from what I understand of Madonna's appeal to cis women (the LGBTQ+ appeal is a whole field of semiotics for which I haven't got the right wellies) is her command of her image. At her peak, Madonna was a fiercely intelligent woman in charge of her business, her art, her sexuality, her style. There's the oft-made point the Madonna is as shapeshifting as Bowie, and with a similar interest in upcoming trends (albeit in not as exploratory a fashion as Bowie).
ReplyDeleteHowever, that leads to the question: where's Madonna's Low? Has Madonna produced anything that'll last beyond her own lifetime? She has outdone Elvis in terms of cinematic embarrassments (and Elvis had the excuse of the Colonel). Lady Gaga hasn't so much emulated her as supplanted her. Her best songs were in the Reagan era. Her Sex book had her being felt up by Vanilla Ice, for fuck's sake. I remember a quote by Pauline Kael about Paul Schrader: "He's smarter than he is talented." I feel that applies to Madonna massively. A seriously clever, seriously ambitious woman whose intelligence and ambition led her to play it safe musically, and court marketable outrage outside of the music lest it become less marketable. That's all very well, but it implies that her music will not stand she's pegged it. Let's hope she does a Johnny Cash and reminds us of the artistry.
Madonna's best song is Like a Prayer, by the by. I've asked many people over the years, and that's always, without exception, been the choice.
I finished Still in a Dream last week. The stuff on Nirvana was great, but you could have said more about how the Mondays were the greatest band of the period (surely you can find parallels with MBV and Martin Hannett's production of Bummed?).
I would say "Like A Prayer" might be my least favorite Madonna single, simply because it strains so strenuously for some kind of profundity - and in the video, for iconoclastic edge. The strain is audible - the construction creaks. "What is she trying to say?" battles with "I don't care" and "I don't care" wins.
DeleteBut then I remember "La Isla Bonita" . And "Papa Don't Preach" There are quite a few contenders for the least liked Madonna singles and then there are the many that don't leave a trace in memory.
At the risk of being accused of Poptimist sympathies, I want to say that I think "where is Madonna's Low?" is the wrong question. She prefigured Taylor Swift in that her real medium was not music or film, but the creation of a persona through photoshoots, news stories, interviews, fan interactions, etc. She never made a 'Low', itis true. But David Bowie never went on Letterman with Sandra Bernhard.
ReplyDeleteAlthough that said, her real 'Low' equivalent is the incredible 2009 hits compilation 'Celebration', especially in its double album version. Banger after banger after banger. Given the choice, I'd take that to a desert island over 'Low', every time.