CORE: MADonna

Walking by a magazine stand literally five minutes, I could not help but spot this month's issue of Vanity Fair, and guess who was on the cover.  None other than Madonna .  Coincidence? I think not.  Genius of Professor McPherson? I think so.  Her name and picture has been everywhere lately, mostly in promotion of her newest album.  I couldn't help but find the irony in opening up the reading for this week and how on pg 158 it states that in an interview Madonna said how jealous she was of Black Culture and how she wanted to be black as a child.  The reason behind my smirk after reading this is her battle in popularity against Mariah Carey's "comeback", in which Madonna is clearly winning, and arguably so, but the motif and theme of this new album and ad campaign is boxing, implying that she is still kicking and punching despite her age of 50.  The cover of Vanity Fair this month confirmed all of this for me, as it added more life to the campaign by having her in boxing boots but this time holding planet earth on her back.  The cover told us that Madonna is stronger than ever, and that both her and VF want to be more GREEN.  The pg number where you can read the cover story of her was even cleverly written on a fig leaf.  Once you turn to the article, its only a page long and its more about the fact that Madonna has successfully mad it to the cover of VF 10 times, and for this one how they chose a studio in West Hollywood, and how when she was done with the shoot she signed the globe...YIPPY!.  The next few pages are conveniently placed ads for Hybrids.  Once again, returning to the words made famous by Alanis Morsette, "Isn't it Ironic?" that her article was only 1 page and most of the magazine is nothing but advertisements for Green related things, thus using MORE paper and MORE ink to make this magazine, when obviously something like the internet is way more environmentally conscious.  

The final thing that made me giggle on the cover of this issue is the astric next to the subtitle: UNBOWED, UNCOWED, STILL TAKING ON THE WORLD *, if you follow the * it says "and she's still 50".  Thank you Vanity Fair for making this clearly not so clear.

The hubris effect of Vanity Fair adds to our ongoing discussion of the contradiction of stardom and to end this let me point out how appro-po the title of the publication starts with the word Vanity, this one just happens to be the "right" (fair) amount.

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”?

Charlton Heston and the NRA

As most of you probably know, Charlton Heston passed away last Saturday night, April 5th. Regardless of your particular stance on his private life, he is widely regarded as one of the biggest cinema stars of the 20th century. He became famous in his first breakthrough role - portraying Moses in "The Ten Commandments." I read an obituary for Mr. Heston in the NY Times (the link is provided below) which got me thinking about his role as the spokesman and president of the NRA.

The author cites Vincent Canby, who called "The Ten Commandments “a gaudy, grandiloquent Hollywood classic,” and went on to describe Mr. Heston's Moses “the rugged American frontiersman of myth.” It is interesting to connect this quote with our discussions on masculinity and the myth of the American west as depicted by John Wayne. Moreover, the article states that this "rugged American frontiersman" is what made Mr. Heston an effective spokesman, specifically for the NRA. It goes on to say: "In Mr. Heston, the N.R.A. found its embodiment of pioneer values — pride, independence and valor."

This connection between celebrities and their political causes is one that has also been discussed in class, most recently with Paul Robeson (and even Arnold Schwarzenegger a bit). What I found so interesting, though, is that in Charlton Heston's case, it was his on-screen characters that made him fitting for his off-screen activism. This is different from other celebrities in that the characters came first and brought upon his fitting role as an activist. For example, Angelina Jolie's global awareness motivated her to make a film like "A Mighty Heart" - the character in "A Mighty Heart" did not make her a perfect candidate to represent the UN. Heston's ability to take the characteristic's of his movie roles and turn them into a powerful political platform is unique and incredibly effective. After all, I don't think he would be as great a representative for the NRA if his filmography consisted of different roles. Think about Jimmy Stewart or Marlin Brando, I hardly think they would be fitting in Heston's role! It's interesting to see how much a person's movie roles can affect their personal life - rather than their personal life affecting their movie roles as we have discussed.

I encourage you all to read the article. I never knew much about Heston other than Moses, Ben-Hur, and the NRA but he was actually incredibly involved in politics and the arts, acting as the president of SAG and the co-chairman of the President’s Task Force on the Arts and Humanities. His life and story are much more interesting than I had realized!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/movies/06heston.html

Core Response 3: The Power of Madonna

I’ve always been a Madonna fan and have perceived her as the unquestionable queen of pop but the screening of Truth or Dare and the articles for this week have somewhat altered my opinion of her. I had already seen Truth or Dare but watching it now was different as suddenly her diva-like behavior, which I had always loved, seemed too over-the-top, particularly towards her dancers. Madonna has always had the reputation of being overly controlling and shrewd (interesting terms to describe a woman who does what male stars do for their own images and careers) but the film highlights the extent of her control and authority. For example, as both bell hooks and Ann Cvetkovich note, Madonna’s back-up dancers are all either gay, minorities, or both, which is clearly no coincidence as Madonna is the one who picked all of them for the tour. But after seeing the often-times humiliating and condescending way she dealt with them, I couldn’t help but wonder if she would do the same with a straight, white, male dancer.

The film thus started raising some questions for me, many of which I think bell hooks tackles in her article yet even so, I found her argument somewhat problematic in its complete criticism of Madonna. I think hooks is accurate in identifying the ways in which Madonna exploits black culture and interestingly, black masculinity as a way to solidify and maintain her own power. But I don’t think that she sufficiently credits Madonna for what she has achieved in her reconfiguration of mainstream culture, which has paved the way for a majority of solo female artists/entertainers (Britney, Gwen Stefani, etc.) who have come after her.

I don’t think that Madonna is perfect by any means. Yes, I do love her but as Truth or Dare makes abundantly clear, she’s a diva, controlling, and quite honestly, a bitch most of the time. But I think that she’s done what she’s done by working within a system dictated by the power of the white male. She used what she could to get to the top and in doing so, at least started to open to door for other women as well. That’s not to justify her exploitation of black culture and in fact raises the question of what she may have sacrificed in terms of her own femininity and position as a woman to become so successful. But the point is that I don’t think it’s completely fair to condemn her for not changing the entire structure of our society in terms of race, gender and sexuality because in the end, no matter how powerful she might be, Madonna is a woman and thus subject to the demands of our white, patriarchal, capitalist society.

She is a white woman as hooks argues, which puts her at some advantage in her quest for power but she is in an exploited position nonetheless which makes the criticism of her more complex and perhaps less black and white than hooks argues. It’s clear that she does manipulate issues of race in order to better serve her own image and stardom, but I also think it’s worth considering the fact that Lourdes, her daughter, was born from a Hispanic father. Obviously black and Hispanic culture are two different entities but this does complicate her own use of and relation to whiteness that hooks criticizes in her examination of the structures and components behind Madonna's stardom.

Madonna Reading Response

Madonna is so contrived. Her costumes, her makeup, her performances, her star image. She has built a career on the exploitation of gender and racial power relations, using her body as the basis for repeated transformations. If I could give Madonna a last name, it would be 'ambiguous.'

On one hand, her hypersexual performances reflect an attempt to use the black male identity for power control. Madonna idealized black culture, thereby exploiting in throughout her shows—most famously by rubbing her crotch (which is apparently a blatant copy-cat of Michael Jackson?!). Interestingly enough, she manages to balance this overt black masculinity with the ‘innocent white girl’ image (another one of Dyer’s contradictions), effectively performing as an abstraction of both the brutish, flauntingly sexual representations of black males and the commercialism of the beautiful and for-some-reason-innocent white female.

Black women apparently hate Madonna, too. In her idolization of black culture, Madonna associates ‘blackness’ with cultural capital, but only in the way that a privileged white female can understand it. For her, the ‘otherness’ that black culture reflects is an exhibition of certain ‘freedoms’—including (but not limited to) sexual liberation. She overlooks, according to Bell Hooks, the struggles that Blacks must suffer in order to have these so-called freedoms.

I am not surprised that Madonna would idolize the underdog-its only another way that she tries to represent herself as the ‘outsider.’ The most interesting aspect of Madonna’s celebrity is her chameleon-like ability to transform herself. Her ridiculously ambiguous identity comes from her constant state of performance. She is never herself, she is always in the limelight.

The notion that Madonna is essentially an abstraction of various ideologies, fantasies and identities seems to give her an astonishing amount of credit for the manufacturing of her star identity. She was crafted like the stars in the studio system without the crutch of an omnipotent studio executive. That is what makes Madonna so interesting.

Madonna: A Family Portrait

Madonna, Guy Ritchie, and baby David Banda
Halloweed 2007

Celebrities and Money

I came across an article tonight that caught my eye, and made me think of this class. It's a slide show of seven celebrities and how they spent their first million dollars. Most of the celebrities were people I had heard of, but not really anyone I care about. It made me think about the everything the public wants to know about celebrities. What is the reason to care that Julianne Moore bought her mother a cashmere sweater with her first steady pay check? It seems like with less image management on the part of stars we get more information, but I have to wonder where the craving for information stops. With a quick Google search you can find any information you want on a celebrity, so what is the appeal if there is no mystique?