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HARD TO SWALLOW CANDY
HARD TO SWALLOW CANDY She’s ba-a-a-aaa-ck! Just when it seemed like we had moved on and finally took that vital step toward acceptance, having lingered far too long in denial, anger, bargaining and depression, my god, didn’t it seem like we were headed toward a post-Madonna world? I mean, weren’t there all those stories about her living the life of landed gentry in the highlands of Scotland, complete with a faux English accent? Couldn’t she busy herself abducting impoverished Malawian children.. I’m sorry, did I say abducting? I meant adopting Malawian children and just leave us alone? What else was there to prove? We’d been more than kind in the time we gave her, the riches and attention we heaped upon her. Why couldn’t she step away from the spotlight and call it a day? Instead, there she is again, going back to the well, clad in black latex, provocatively posed on the cover of her new album, Hard Candy, which I guess, is supposed to mean something acceptably lewd. Oh look, dear. That Madonna woman is at it again. Will she never tire of scandalizing the nation? If I sound personally offended, it’s not so much about moral outrage. Perhaps it might be classified as outrage fatigue, tired that someone keeps trying to be outrageous but is so bereft of ideas that they can only play the same note over and over again. Shock eventually becomes indifference. Remember Andrew Dice Clay? Now a reality show D-lister. What truly grates is that I feel personally responsible for Madonna’s continued presence on our cultural landscape. No, I don’t own any of her music although I did pay to see a couple of her movies back in the day. It’s more than that. As a contemporary of Madonna, I feel I didn’t do enough to stop her early on in her career. No wide-eyed adolescent innocent when she first appeared on the scene in 1983, I stood by and merely watched as her star rose, smugly convinced that like so many previous pretenders, she would flame out just as quickly. My inaction proved fatal as her appeal gained traction and those who should’ve known better began talking in hushed, serious tones about her status as a post-feminist feminist and icon of Girl Power, blah, blah, blah. We had the opportunity to smother her with a pillow in the cradle of her celebrity and blew it. Who would’ve guessed that 25 years later, we’d still be living with the consequences of this failure? Fame is a funny, fickle thing. There’s no accounting for mass taste but Madonna’s longevity is particularly confounding. She is not endowed with an overabundance of talent. Her voice is eminently forgettable and at times obviously technically enhanced. A good pole dancer, maybe, but Michael Jackson she ain’t. Song writing has never been her strong suit. As for her transition into acting.. well, well, well. With so many dogs to choose from, I’ll mention just one and arguably the most egregious, 2002’s Swept Away. Star power overwhelmed plausibility, and Madonna sank her husband, Guy Ritchie’s career like she nearly did Sean Penn’s a decade-and-a-half earlier with Shanghai Surprise. OK. That’s two. Like a semi that’s lost its brakes on a downhill straightaway, it’s so hard to stop once you’re on a roll.Her 1991 documentary, Truth or Dare, put her vacuity on full display. This was a woman obsessed with little more than celebrity status. She was as catty and back-stabbing as a teenage girl and, by all rights, this revelation should’ve served as the final nail in the coffin of her career. Alas, it was not to be. Apparently, I was unable to comprehend that the key to her success and prolonged appeal was her uncanny ability for reinvention. Madonna had a preternatural grasp of the zeitgeist. She knew what we wanted long before we knew and was waiting for us when we finally got there. No one could market themselves and their image like Madonna. We live in an age where this is the measure of true genius, the height of achievement. Marketing is king. So saturated are we in the wisdom of business that what should merely be a tool, a simple part of the equation, is extolled as an end rather than a means. The product no longer matters. It’s how effective, unique and compelling the presentation is that makes all the difference, that determines a who’s-who over a who’s-out. It is the ultimate triumph of commerce over art. There’s nothing new about this except, perhaps, the depth to which it’s fact. Money and art have been tussling since there’s been money to spend and someone to figure out that art could be commodified. In other words, pretty much from the get-go. It was a ‘you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours’, symbiotic relationship. Money had to be made for art to be created. Without art, money could not be made. Until, that is, someone figured out that it could be just as profitable to give the impression of art. Proclaim someone a musician, produce for them a pleasing if innocuous sound, go nuclear with the p.r., and then stand back to watch the money roll in. Beware the charlatan telling you that’s why it’s called ‘show business’ with the emphasis on the second word. They are driven solely by business not creative impulses. Madonna is hardly the first entertainer to employ naked marketing (ha, ha) acumen to its full extent. Pop culture may owe its very existence to such profiteers. Her shamelessness and the fact she is applauded heartily for it in many circles is what’s so disconcerting. I’m not shocked by her slutty, pansexual persona or even the attention it continues to generate. If swapping spit with Britney Spears in 2003 was anything deeper than a publicity stunt, it would be worthy of serious discussion. What offends is that she is all glimmering, one-dimensional image and her sluttishness is really and truly glaringly apparent in her lascivious, insatiable pursuit of fame and money.
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