Madonna Turns 50: Wither Feminism?
During the first decade of her megastarhood, Madonna perfected not only the arts of pop music, bothering feminists, arousing boys (and girls), and wearing her underwear on the outside, but -- maybe uniquely -- the ability to use feminism to generate controversy and promote herself commercially. On the occasion of her 50th birthday this August 16, this stands as one of her signature achievements.
In 1989 she was paid $5 million by Pepsi for a commercial using her video for "Like a Prayer," which the company then canceled. Apparently they didn't realize that praying wasn't the only thing she did on her knees to "take you there."
But the most masterful media turn might have been the next year, when she perfectly balanced outrage and opportunism, producing a video for "Justify My Love" that the music channel MTV (remember that? It's where you used to go to watch "music videos") refused to broadcast - only to see it aired in its entirety on the real news program "Nightline," December 3, 1990. The video featured a grainy nipple image, some bisexual group sex, and a lot of heavy breathing.
After listening to her complain about MTV's censorship, "Nightline" host Forrest Sawyer, almost as if he didn't realize the game she was playing on Nightline, allowed his solemn tone to turn slightly exasperated: "But in the end you're going to wind up making even more money than you would have."
Madonna smiled a little and said, "Yeah, so lucky me."
Sawyer also brought up the feminist irritation with Madonna: "You've taken some heat . . . from some women who feel that maybe you're not expressing the values that they want feminism to express . . . [all the way back to] when you wore the belt buckle that said 'boy toy' for the 'Material Girl' video, which they feel reflects old values of women."
"Well, I would like to point out that they're missing a couple of things," she replied. "Because, you know, I may be dressing like the typical bimbo, whatever, but I'm in charge. You know. I'm in charge of my fantasies. I put myself in these situations with men, you know, and . . . people don't think of me as a person who's not in charge of my career or my life, okay. And isn't that what feminism is all about, you know, equality for men and women? And aren't I in charge of my life, doing the things I want to do? Making my own decisions?"
In that and many other examples, direct and indirect, verbal and aesthetic, Madonna's striking of this chord reverberated profoundly. In today's version of this argument, some high-profile and professional women have replanted the proverbial feminist flag in the reclamation of women's once-nonvoluntary subordinate status: opting to stay home with their kids. (This small group of women doesn't account for much of women's recently-declining employment rates, but it is nevertheless a real phenomenon.)
If you weren't in college in a culture studies program in 1989, it's understandable if you don't appreciate the fervor with which these issues were once debated. (And you're not necessarily worse off for it.) And if you weren't willing to forgive a little nostalgia on my part you probably wouldn't have read this far. But I get a little misty-eyed when I go back to passages like this one, by Carla Freccero from the journal boundary in 1992, 20 pages into a radical "reading" of Madonna's work: "These texts [videos] may suggest strategies for the empowerment of the subordinated, marginal, and de-centered in advanced capitalist culture, strategies that are not anachronistic but born of the medium of advanced capital and the gaps that are produced within it."
Madonna really was lucky - in the right place at the right time - but she was also brilliant. It wasn't exactly original for popular culture to promote the image of women embracing bimboism, or putting themselves in chains and claiming to love it. What made her different was that she was the one writing the material, and reaping the millions (billions, eventually) of dollars it attracted. That she was using a Pepsi commercial scandal not to sell Pepsi but to sell her own image, like she played the producers of "Nightline."
Madonna's Material Girl feminism didn't represent the death of the movement - or its revival as a girls-just-want-to-have-fun party. She was more incidental than that. What she did reverberated because it represented the opportunity for some women to claim gains that were only possible because of America's wealth and power in the world - and the access women had won to those rewards - the opportunity to get a piece of what was theirs. To her credit, Madonna has forwarded some of what was hers to the cause of supporting orphans in Malawi.
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Madonna is NOT turning 50, she is turning 51. I can't believe no one has picked up on this. The day my hubby and I got married was Madonna's 40th birthday--I remember it well, it was all over the news. Well, tomorrow 8/16/08 is our 11th wedding anniversary, which would make Madonna 51! By the time we're celebrating our 50th anniversary she'll only be "75" instead of 90! Seriously--someone has pulled the snow over EVERY media outlet's eyes because she is FIFTY ONE!
Sorry, I think you're wrong about her being 51. Madonna has always been 8 years older than me....Always. I was 18 when she started becoming popular and she was 26....and she's still 8 years older. I just turned 42.
See Philip N. Cohen's Profile
I can't verify her actual age, but I can verify that the major wire services reported that she turned 40 10 years ago, August 16, 1998. For example, an AP story from the next day (August 17, 1998) was headlined, "Madonna's Hometown Marks Her 40th." The good news is this is actually your 10th anniversay, not your 11th. Congratulations.
Hmmm, how 'bout that. You have certainly done your homework! I guess I stand corrected. What do you think the chances are I can convince hubby to spring for a honeymoon suite again tonight? He'll probably accuse me of of vast-material girl conspiracy!
08.16.58 is her birthdate. Happy 10th anniversary!
As I recall (and I remember the early 80’s quite well) most of us who called ourselves Feminists watched the Boy Toy Material Girl set all the 1970s gains of Feminism back 20 years as she did her sanitized Marilyn Monroe impersonations and marketed her image to preteen girls. Teen-zines had cover stories like “Madonna Tells You How to Dress and Act”
The Madonna/Fashion/MTV Complex brought into the mainstream a business model for stealing ideas from the underclass and the marginalized, and calling it their own. This was the beginning of what I call the Gentrification of Bohemia.
As for Punk being a major influence on Madonna, I couldn’t disagree more. I’m 52, I was there and she wasn’t. Madonna is an opportunist and she didn’t embrace Punk until the 90’s during its commercial revival in the shadow of Grunge. The role she played in ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’ was based on Cyndi Lauper as a New-Wave party girl from the suburbs. Not an Iggy Pop in sight. Or a Ramone for that matter.
A social criticism of the logical conclusion to ‘Cool Mining’ as it later became called, can be found in the cover story of the latest edition of AdBusters ‘Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization’
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html
See Philip N. Cohen's Profile
You're right, RMC, that feminists considered her arrival a disaster in the early 80s. That John Fiske quote below was part of an attempt to make lemonade from those lemons in the late 80s and early 90s, which I attributed to culture studies academics (because that's what I saw at the time). Eventually, I think, it all went down as post-feminism - which has its own lemonade-making followers. Hope springs eternal. But clearly some people aren't buying that lemonade.
As a fan of Madonna, she hit the scene when I was in Junior High, she cornered the market and has her finger on the pulse of the next trend, you knew just watching the video that she was bigger than some under dressed bimbo, the boys were behind her in the video, she didn't writhe for them, they writhed for her and always have. To a teen she was in control of her look, her content and her life and she was completely human and not some archetypal image conjured up by some adman somewhere, she took was she learned/lived/loved, internalized it and gave it back to the world with her reinvention and homage to what went before. The fact that she shocked the staid quiet 80s was a fresh breeze in a stale industry still trying to figure itself out after the disco burn out and over-played country on the radio, she was the future, she inspired with each and every thing she turned out, even her mis-steps informed and pushed others to keep up and transformed the music industry into what it is currently. Last year she signed a huge deal after parting ways with her label and it was big news and trend setting, still she moves forward. I just hope when I'm 50 I look that bloody good! Still a fan as she collaborates and reinvents yet again.
"transformed the music industry into what it is currently."
Some would not consider that to be a good thing, ruchild.
Marshall MacLuen accurately observed that the medium becomes the message, and some of our greatest practitioners of this are Madonna and Apple computers. It is no longer about the product, but the way people feel and identify with it that makes it successful.
Madonna manipulates publicity, image and sex to keep her product relevant. She no longer sells music or entertainment, but an identity, a brand and a lifestyle. I believe everything she does is calculated and calibrated to promote her next tour/album/clothesline to the point where the person is no longer distinguishable from the product.
Andy Warhol was one of the first to recognise how the power of celebrity can be fused with selling mass quantities of art. It seemed a joke at the time, but his work has since been accepted as highly influential and desirable art.
Many musicians have followed suit, though sometimes unwittingly. Bruce Springsteen's blue collar working man values, the glitter and androgeny of Prince, and the hippy dippy jam culture of the Grateful Dead, the created cultural identity soon overwhelms the good music and the product eventually triumphs over content.
I won't pass judgement on whether her art or cultural influence is good or bad, but Madonna is one of the few artists that has changed the world. Someone was bound to rise up in the mass media and become its master, and that genius is Madonna.
You forgot to mention the Master Chameleon Himself, Mr. David Bowie. He'd already metamorphosed several times before Madonna joined in. He started in the '60s, so he had quite a large head start on Madge and Prince.
Springsteen isn't one of the changelings. Madonna did hair & makeup, but each persona was a slight variation on a theme. Prince is more akin to Bowie in that he went through serious changes is his musical style as well as his accoutrement. But, I have to give the award for "So Many Rock Stars Rolled Into One" to David Bowie (born at the wrong time to use his given name, David Jones.)
Oh, I totally credit Bowie with inventing the concept of redefining his image to keep his music relevant.
My larger point is the trend for the artist becoming a brand, and the brand overpowering what used to be percieved as art or entertainment. It is no longer about music, but how people are forging their personal identifies based on the products they consume or identify with.
Having been an adult at the time of Madonna's arrival on the scene, neither I nor my acquaintances were impressed by anything Madonna did except the marketing of herself and her body. Good for her; she was in charge. She made a ton of money. Dress it up as post-feminist as you like, her "shock" and "expose" theory of pandering to the mass market is all about capitalism, not feminism. JMO.
See Philip N. Cohen's Profile
Well put expat and chatto.
Btw, I found the thing I was looking for the other day: "Madonna is circulated among some feminists as a reinscription of patriarchal values, among some men as an object of voyeuristic pleasure, and among many girl fans as an agent of empowerment. . . . She contains the patriarchal meanings of feminine sexuality and the resisting ones that her sexuality is hers to use as she wishes in ways that do not require masculine approval. . . . She is excessive and obvious; she exceeds all the norms of the sexualized female body and exposes their obviousness along with her midriff. Her sexualization of her naval is a parody of patriarchy’s eroticization of female body fragments – she is a patriarchal text shot through with skepticism.” Etc. (From Understanding Popular Culture, by John Fiske (Unwin Hyman, 1989).
At least Madonna is admitting to turning 50. Michelle Pfeiffer has got to be 52 or 53 now and is just now admitting to turning 50. She has different ages in the press. Madonna is at least honest about it. She is trying to get love, I think. She lost her Mom when she was five years old. That explains a lot.
As someone who was in grad school, studying culture, during the early 1990s, I remember the rise of postfeminism -- and I am sympathetic with the idea that feminists shouldn't have to follow a narrow definition of personal expression. However, what struck me then -- and now -- is the incredible selfishness of the postfeminist outlook --"it's all about me, and what I want." This stands in sharp contrast to the collectivist impulse that was so much a part of earlier feminism (even if it didn't play out in reality all the time) -- the idea that even if something doesn't impact me negatively, it might impact you. Madonna can argue that "she's in charge" of the scenarios she placed herself in, but for all the women who have been placed into those situations against their will or to their detriment, that's cold comfort. The greatest irony to me is that the woman who argued for personal freedom of expression is now purported to reign over her children (esp. her teenaged daughter) with an iron fist. I guess liberation philosophy doesn't extend beyond the self, in Madonna's case.
"Personal freedom" and being a responsible parent are two completely seperate issues. I don't see how Madonna setting boundries for her kids has anything to do with an artist being able to expressing themselves.
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Madonna drew from two traditions as I understood them in popular music and neither one is readily apparent unless you think about it. One was punk, reflected in her having Iggy and the Stooges play her music at her Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. The importance of shock for her was/is not just for shock's sake but because there was/is some kernel of an idea or provocation there that was necessary to put into the world. She was punk in being fully who she was, as a sexual person, regardless of the comfort level of those who were watching/listening. Her other influence in terms of presentation was David Bowie, whom she inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Like Bowie, who introduced ambiguous sexuality to rock, as well as the need to change his image with each album, she accelerated the process, changing her image with each video, each single, each appearance. The idol worship of the fans was the same (more apparent here in the UK than in the US with him).This accelerated delivery of her punk "content" (though punk was much more political) kept people shocked and guessing. That to me is Madonna. Her form makes her a feminist, but her content does not (well, not always).
I don't know if this makes sense but I'm a grad student who doesn't want to start transcribing interviews yet. Thanks.
You got it just right with the punk thing. It was great to see her shock the crap out of all those uptight Reganites by being who she was and not who they insisted she be. She's got bigger balls than Lech Walesa!!
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