Another day, another Madonna controversy. At a small club show in Paris last week, the pop superstar was booed mercilessly by fans who shouted for refunds after the brief, 45-minute set. Now, however, it appears the unrest wasn't the result of the show's length. According to TMZ, a small group of concertgoers started the trouble in response to Madonna's treatment of French politician Marine Le Pen.
As you may have heard, Madonna has caused quite a stir during her MDNA tour by showing a photo of the French National Front leader with a swastika superimposed on her face.
Per TMZ, the irate audience members who started the trouble at the Olympia club "were overheard yelling about Marine Le Pen."
Following the show, Madonna's public relations team released the following statement:
Madonna's Paris club show was planned as her heartfelt thank you to France which she expressed at the start of her show. Despite a grueling concert tour, she desperately wanted to perform for her fans in an intimate setting at the historic Olympia as a means to honor her love for French artists, French cinema and a tribute to France's long history of welcoming and inspiring artists, authors, painters, poets and minorities from other countries over the years. The show was not billed as her full MDNA concert and tremendous effort was made to keep the ticket prices reasonable ($100 for 2000 floor seats) and keep them strictly for her fans. The show cost Madonna close to a million dollars to produce. She has done a handful of club dates in the past and they were never more than 45 minutes. And by the way, she put on a fabulous show which was streamed for millions of fans around the world.
[UPDATE: In response to that, one Madonna fan wrote in to HuffPost Entertainment to say there were many fans upset because of the abbreviated set.]
For her part, Madonna isn't backing down from the inflammatory imagery. She defended the swastika use as highlighting "the intolerance human beings have for one another."
"I always like to tell a story," the 53-year-old singer told a Brazilian television station (via the New York Times. "Music should be about ideas, right? Ideas inspire music."
As previously reported on HuffPost Entertainment, your one-stop shop for Madonna news, the image appears behind the popstar during her rendition of "Nobody Knows Me." Earlier this month, National Front vowed to sue the singer after the image appeared during a concert in Paris.
For more on Madonna's recent dust-up, click over to TMZ.
[via TMZ]
