Madonna (2 page)

Welcome to the upper-stratosphere world that Madonna lives in—a gilded cage at the pinnacle of fame and fortune. Now that she has everything she has ever desired—everything except someone to share it with—is she really happy? To compensate, she has taken upon herself the task of blatantly shocking as many people as she can with her pronouncements and her behavior.

“Have you ever been butt-fucked?” Madonna asks one of her openly gay dancers in her candid documentary film,
Truth or Dare: On the Road, Behind the Scenes, and In Bed with Madonna
. In another scene, Madonna visits with one of her high school chums. She reminisces with a girlfriend, who she claims “finger-fucked” her when they were teenagers. Also in the film are “Candid Camera”—like scenes of Madonna simulating fellatio on a phallic-shaped Evian water bottle. These were just a few behind-the-scenes events, taped amid Madonna's 1990 concert tour, a show featuring on-stage masturbation and cross-dressing as two of the evening's themes. This is the Madonna of the 1990s: everyone's favorite pop dominatrix.

The mere mention of Madonna's name conjures strong reactions: she is the kind of girl you either love, hate, or love to hate. Rarely does she elicit a blasé response. Brash, bratty, rude, shocking, stunning, controversial, glamorous, and unpredictable—Madonna is the biggest international star of the nineties. Singer, dancer, actress, movie star, pin-up girl, and outrageous celebrity-for-all-seasons, she is the self-created product of shameless media manipulation.

She is a mass of contradictions. The images she so masterfully projects are displays of total extremes. One time she may come across as vulnerable and sincere. The next time she appears crude, abrasive, downright slutty. She is an extremist, and all of the extremes are true. Neither boundless in artistic scope nor wealthy in natural talent, she is undeniably brilliant at working within the range of her limitations and turning everything she touches into classic pop art.

Although she is virtually transparent in her desire and drive to become famous simply for the sake of fame, the public just can't seem to get enough of her. Recordings, magazines, calendars, and concert tickets sell out in record numbers when her name or likeness is on them. In a business that is as fickle as the weather, it seems that Madonna is always in season.

According to
Forbes
magazine, she is the wealthiest and highest paid woman in show business today, and neither scandal nor controversy can touch her rock-solid hold on the public's attention. In less than ten years, she has elevated herself to that rarefied state of celebritydom where the minutiae of her private life have become even more newsworthy than her commercial products.

She is not the most beautiful singer or actress in show business, but Madonna has an indefinable star quality that causes all attention to focus on her when she walks into a room. In fact, anyone who has sat next to her when she is wearing minimal makeup immediately realizes that she has very little natural beauty. Her eyebrows are uncontrollably bushy, her unadorned eyes are rather plain, and the shape of her luscious mouth is as painted on as the strategically placed Marie Antoinette beauty mark penciled on her upper lip. However, when she is made up correctly, with porcelain white skin and ruby red lips, she can look undeniably dazzling.

In a world littered with dozens of flash-in-the-pan media stars, Madonna has a mesmerizing allure which is unstoppable. Censored music videos, nude photos in
Playboy
and
Penthouse
, crude language, marriage to an obnoxious punk, rumors of lesbian affairs, the Pope's ban on her performing in Italy, three bomb movies in a row, lousy reviews on Broadway, and scandals with members of both sexes could spell the end to any normal star's career—but not Madonna! On the contrary, giving her bad publicity is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.

Whenever we get used to one look, sound, or career path, an unpredictable Madonna simply shows us a new side to herself. Not since David Bowie has a pop star been more a chameleon. We've come to know her as a bohemian bare-midriffed waif, a blonde bombshell, a disco tart, a
Cosmopolitan
cover girl, a leather-clad biker girl, the empress of Metropolis, a Brooklynese con artist, a flapper, and a cartoon chanteuse. Every move she makes, and every persona change she goes through, only makes for more front page news. Her combination of seductive warmth and steel-cold aggressive drive has the world transfixed. Hers is the most calculated career romp of the century, and none of the competition—male or female, black or white, gay or straight—can touch her.

From the rarefied heights she has attained in the entertainment business, she has few competitors. Her original rival, Cyndi Lauper, has watched her own ship sink after a long series of ill-chosen career moves. Bruce Springsteen perpetually seems to be kicking back. Whitney Houston suffers from a case of style over substance and massive media overexposure. And, while immature and childlike Michael Jackson is busy playing with his zoo animals, Madonna goes straight for the crotch, toying with everyone's libido.

Instead of getting into a rut, Madonna simply continues to reinvent herself. By constantly changing her persona and image, no matter what moves she makes, the public will eagerly eat it up. With anticipation we all stand in awe—waiting for that next move. One moment she's dressed trashy, with crucifixes dangling from every appendage, the next minute she is chic and glamorous. As soon as you get used to one look or sound from her,
voilà!
—she's changed her fashion, her hair color, her lover, and/or all of the above.

As the eighties ended Madonna was at the top of everyone's media sensations list: Time's top ten “Faces of the Decade,”
Billboard's
“Top Ten Recording Artists”; she was even named by
Musician
magazine as the undisputed “Artist of the Decade.”

Although she is clearly a product of the “Me Generation,” Madonna is also a champion of her personally selected causes. While in her songs and videos she serves up sex with the ease of someone scooping ice cream, she is also very up-front in declaring that the sex she advertises is “safe sex.” She is second only to Elizabeth Taylor in her aggressive public stance in support of the war on AIDS. She has turned several of her concerts into AIDS fundraisers, inserted safe-sex pamphlets into her albums, cassettes, and compact discs, and admonished her live audiences with “Don't be silly, put a rubber on your willy!”

Apart from the videos, the headlines, and the fashion statements, what is it that makes Madonna tick? And what aspect of her does the public find so fascinating? As a singer she doesn't have a very versatile vocal range. She is often too stiff and cardboard as an actress. In fact, her film career may go down in history as the world's longest and costliest on-the-job training session since the movies were invented.

Her most fully realized screen role is that of a unidimensional cartoon character—Breathless Mahoney. As a sex symbol she isn't the most voluptuous or the most breathtakingly beautiful girl around. In the charm department she's neither gracious nor tactful. Often she comes across like a precocious little girl who lifts her dress over her head for attention.

What fuels her drive and makes her a legend while other women in the music business merely reign as flavor of the month?
Rolling Stone
has called her “the most notorious living blonde in the modern world.” And, although she occasionally dyes her hair back to its natural brunette, they're absolutely correct. Maybe it's just some sort of magical combination of all of her attributes, thrust before the public in a frank, shameless, sex-kitten-in-heat style. She is the first to admit, “Manipulating people, that's what I'm good at.”
³

In the 1930s it was platinum blonde Jean Harlow who oozed sex, and who caused the then-uncensored movie business to establish the Hayes Code to restore “moral decency” to the screen. In the 1950s, Marilyn Monroe became Hollywood's reigning blonde bombshell with her seemingly innocent and purring sexuality. In the 1990s we have Madonna. Times have changed since Harlow and Monroe, but our hunger for movie star glamour has not.

If the unique niche Madonna has carved for herself is any indication, the world craves a sex goddess who is streetwise, smart, and liberated. Madonna isn't some studio-manufactured doll with blonde hair and a pretty smile. She's a gutsy young woman who is entirely in control of her every move. Who else could get away with simulated masturbation on stage one minute and promoting her role in a Disney film the next? She's clearly got her finger on the pulse of what the public wants—even if that pulse point is in the groin. She is one smart cookie who has, in the words of Bette Midler, “pulled herself up by her own bra straps.”
⁴

Her gutsy determination and flamboyant style have charmed the world, even if her controversies have shaken it up a bit from time to time. While people scoff when comparisons are made to Marilyn Monroe, Madonna has the staying power and the drive to stand uniquely on her own. She uses the blonde temptress image when it works to her advantage. Although she occasionally enrages feminists with her sex-as-a-weapon antics, it's clear that she is in control of her destiny at all times. As the head of three of her own corporations, she has proven that she can play hardball with the big boys—matching them tit for tat in the corporate boardroom.

Her entire career is one well-orchestrated combination of business politics and bedroom politics. Her affairs with powerful and influential men who can help her are more and more carefully calculated as time goes on. She used one boyfriend to get a record deal; she used another to obtain a hit sound; she used her husband to ensconce her firmly in Hollywood; and she used Warren Beatty to gain credibility in the film world. On the one hand, she used men long enough to fulfill her purpose and then she dumped them. On the other, those men never received so much publicity and media fame as when they were on Madonna's arm. The role that Sean Penn will best be remembered for is that of Madonna's husband.

Madonna isn't so much a star as she is a headline-grabbing media manipulator extraordinaire. The
National Enquirer
, the
Star
, and Britain's the
Sun
aren't her adversaries, they're her personal playgrounds. MTV,
Time, Forbes, The New Republic
, “Nightline”—there's no media outlet that hasn't succumbed to her ability to sell copies, gather viewers, or draw advertising dollars. More of a public performer than a respected singer and actress, Madonna is a star—which for her is a role unto itself. She has become media philosopher Marshall McLuhan's worst nightmare: a woman with supreme control over both the medium and the “massage.”

When it comes to social climbing, there is no one like Madonna. It's common knowledge that the best way to get something from someone is to have them fall in love with you. To say that Madonna resorted to her sexual charms early in her career sounds a bit careless now, especially from the perspective of the nineties. However, life in Manhattan from 1978 to 1982 was far from prudish, and Madonna didn't do anything more outrageous or loose in the morals department than anyone else at that time. If she slept her way to the top, so what? She was simply better at calculating her moves than the rest of the pack who were trying to claw their way up the ladder of success.

When she moved to Manhattan in 1978 and was disastrously bombing out in a dance career, she “just happened to” move in with musician Dan Gilroy, who gave her a crash course in musical training. When she was eating out of garbage cans in the Music Building and lacked direction, she “just happened to” move into her manager Camille Barbone's apartment, where she was taught all about the business of managing a band. When she needed someone to plug her into the record business, she “just happened to” charm disc jockey Mark Kamins into getting her a deal at Sire Records. When she needed someone to sharpen her musical sound and find a hit record, she “just happened to” start dating aspiring record producer Jellybean Benitez, who introduced her to the movers and shakers in the music production business. When she longed to break into film, Madonna “just happened to” marry movie star Sean Penn. When her movie career was floundering, she “just happened to” start dating superstar Warren Beatty. Madonna's personal life from 1978 to 1985 represents creative dating at its finest.

Her instinctive and admirably calculating self-education has extended beyond the bedroom as well. When she wanted to learn about how to promote a record in the dance clubs, she pumped record company executive Bobby Shaw for all that he could teach her. When she wanted to learn the ropes about publicity, she quizzed people in the know, including Jellybean's publicist, David Salidor, for tips on how to do it correctly. When she needed a high-powered manager to pull all of her business together, she went right to the top, and pushed herself into the office of Freddy DeMann.

Madonna is one smart cookie. She didn't stumble into the spotlight, she pushed her way into it. She knew where she wanted to go, and she did everything in her power to get herself there. This sounds cold and calculating, but in reality, it is 100 percent true. To her credit, she has never stabbed anyone in the back to get what she wanted. She never has had to. She is kind to and appreciative of people who are loyal to her. However, when she is finished with anyone who has been useful, she feels no remorse about turning the corner and leaving them in her dust. If you can't keep up with Madonna when she is ready to make one of her career moves, the bus is simply going to leave without you. She carries no excess baggage, and anyone who can't keep the pace suddenly finds themselves left behind, wondering: “What happened?”

She is a strong, self-determined woman who has conveniently used her relationships with men to help her get what she wants. But, who can help her now?