Reading Response #4

I really enjoyed reading bell hooks article about Madonna because it articulated many of the uneasy feelings I had when watching Truth or Dare. I was completely appalled at the way she treated her dancers and the people who worked for her, like they were inferior, and making them bend to her will. I think the most obvious and disgusting manifestation of this was when she made every one of her dancers, all minorities and most gay, come into bed with her and do whatever she asked, strip naked, kiss her, or answer embarrassing questions. This scene made her seem more like some official in an oppressive, dehumanizing government than the flirty, outrageous star that it appears she wants to seem like. bell hooks really encapsulated my reservations about the film in the way she described the Madonna’s view of herself as a mother to the defective children, that were her group of minority and homosexual dancers. I have always looked skeptically upon those who like to arbitrarily deem themselves mothers to other people, especially with a situation like this, in which this mother holds the power in the relationship and the children have no choice but to go with it and secretly resent her patronizing attitude (which it seemed like they did).

hooks brings up another point, although briefly, that I think is very relative today – our willingness to forgive stars of the racist/sexist/classist/homophobic or otherwise regressive aspects to their work because of their support of political causes outside of their profession. I was watching Madonna in the film and wanting to like her for her bold expressions of female sexuality and challenging of puritanical norms, but having trouble ignoring her racist and homophobic actions. This is something we are faced with everyday, stars today are all about showing their support for progressive causes, the environment, international conflicts, end to the war, but their films and music still wreaks of the status quo and corporate greed. Hollywood is extremely conservative in their films and the ways in which they depict race/class/gender/ethnicity/sexual orientation etc, and since this is a critical studies class we are all quite familiar with this. And while not everyone is so persnickety as us when watching films, the reinforcement of the dominant ideology is a clear trend in nearly all Hollywood films. Why do stars come out in support of women’s rights and then star in a romantic comedy that affirms gender stereotypes and the glory of the nuclear family? Or speak out in favor of Tibetan freedom then star in an action movie that glorifies American military power even as it’s currently used for imperialist means? Or, like Madonna, preform at AIDS benefists and then call her gay dancers bitches and their personal lives “emotionally crippled”?