For thirty some years, Madonna was a household name.
In the 1980s, she recorded music that explored deep and complex topics like: "how it feels to find a new cock to ride that makes you feel not so old and used up." Of course, I am joking; even if I were a fan of Madonna, I would have a hard time convincing you that hits such as "Like a Virgin" offer a deep, intellectual exploration of a complex topic. The same goes for most of Madonna's work. It was just entertainment. Or was it?
In the 1980s, she recorded music that explored deep and complex topics like: "how it feels to find a new cock to ride that makes you feel not so old and used up." Of course, I am joking; even if I were a fan of Madonna, I would have a hard time convincing you that hits such as "Like a Virgin" offer a deep, intellectual exploration of a complex topic. The same goes for most of Madonna's work. It was just entertainment. Or was it?
MTV VMAs. These acronyms will mystify many readers, but others will instantly recognize the letter combinations. You see, for 20 + years, MTV was the portal by which the US fed values, culture and entertainment to youth, and part of that feeding included music videos - often, featuring clips of singers/bands singing their songs while in some virtual world theme pertaining to the song. The VMAs - video music awards - were a show where awards were given out for best videos and the show featured live music performances. It was all part of the cult of projecting and reverberating what was supposed to be "in" to maximize sale and reach.
At the 2003 MTV VMAs, Madonna performed live accompanied by two young and popular female singers at the time. In the performance, Madonna dropped to the knees of the one singer whose legs were spread, as if ready to eat her out. Madonna got rubbed on the inner thigh by that singer as she stood and turned to kiss the other singer. What followed is Madonna's mock lesbian make-out threesome with both young female performers. All the while, Madonna was singing about "Hollywood" - the region in California associated with music and film production, where all the biggest music and television stars congregate. "Hollywood" is the shining diamond exemplar much of the world over when it comes to culture, selling being young, rich and famous and mixing these themes with happiness through uninhibited sexuality. This has never not been the case; what has changed, however, is to what degree of uninhibited sexuality Hollywood has been looking to promote.
Anyway, take a look at the outfits that Madonna and the two younger stars wore for that 2003 performance:
Perhaps it was just to create contrast and symmetry on stage. But Madonna, a some 40 year-old veteran of the music industry, is wearing darkness - all black, including black hand sleeves. Note that the two youthful stars, barely 18, are clad in skimpy white. And, if you watch the video, note how Madonna is the initiator of all the sexual action while singing: "everybody comes to Hollywood, they wanna make it in the neighborhood, they like the smell of it in Hollywood, how could it hurt you when it looks so good?"
There is a lot to unpack here. Do the two younger singers in white represent the innocence and fairness of youth - those not accustomed to the industry and inheriting the torch to be Hollywood's next puppets to sell Hollywood? And are they being lured in by the dark-clad veteran with sexuality and glamour? It sure looks like it. Reload the performance in the current year, and you can almost picture Madonna as a Ghislane Maxwell double, standing downstairs in the lobby to Jeffrey Epstein's - or Harvey Weinstein's - hotel room (or any random casting couch), singing this song as you walk in the door. Here are the primary lyrics to Madonna's song:
Everybody comes to Hollywood
They wanna make it in the neighborhood
They like the smell of it in Hollywood
How could it hurt you when it looks so good?
Shine your light now
This time it's gotta be good
You get it right now, yeah
'Cause you're in Hollywood
There's something in the air in Hollywood
The sun is shining like you knew it would
You're ridin' in your car in Hollywood
You got the top down and it feels so good
Everybody comes to Hollywood
They wanna make it in the neighborhood
They like the smell of it in Hollywood
How could it hurt you when it looks so good?
I lost my memory in Hollywood
I've had a million visions, bad and good
There's something in the air in Hollywood
I tried to leave it, but I never could
They wanna make it in the neighborhood
They like the smell of it in Hollywood
How could it hurt you when it looks so good?
Shine your light now
This time it's gotta be good
You get it right now, yeah
'Cause you're in Hollywood
There's something in the air in Hollywood
The sun is shining like you knew it would
You're ridin' in your car in Hollywood
You got the top down and it feels so good
Everybody comes to Hollywood
They wanna make it in the neighborhood
They like the smell of it in Hollywood
How could it hurt you when it looks so good?
I lost my memory in Hollywood
I've had a million visions, bad and good
There's something in the air in Hollywood
I tried to leave it, but I never could
Shine your light now
This time it's gotta be good
You get it right now, yeah
'Cause you're in Hollywood
There's something in the air in Hollywood
I've lost my reputation, bad and good
You're riding in your car in Hollywood
You got the top down and it feels so good
Music stations always play the same songs
I'm bored with the concept of right and wrong
This time it's gotta be good
You get it right now, yeah
'Cause you're in Hollywood
There's something in the air in Hollywood
I've lost my reputation, bad and good
You're riding in your car in Hollywood
You got the top down and it feels so good
Music stations always play the same songs
I'm bored with the concept of right and wrong
Perhaps the public would have gotten it if, during the performance of this song, Madonna had disappeared as she did the kissing and the greasy, fat, slobbering Hollywood Jew Weinstein had appeared to finish the job. But that's just the thing. However the lyrics feel now that we, the audience, actually know what is going on in the Hollywood industry, it's interesting how Madonna, an insider, presents a depiction of a package adventure; coupled with Madonna's performance, and sexual action on the stage, you're almost being groomed to know it will be sexual and to pardon - even look forward to - all the corruption that goes with it. Hollywood projects - not just to sell you its morals, but to pardon its morals based on the fact that they are now yours, too.
We can also see Madonna's Super Bowl performance in connection with other social initiatives, such as presenting the idea that age knows no boundary for women; after all, here are these two fit baby pop-stars who are barely 18, adored by millions of girls and considered hot, hip and in, give her sexual access and respond to her advances. The message here is sexuality is eternal, and certainly not some fleeting characteristic linked to nature promoting that which is in prime fertility. And, of course, Madonna is the prime specimen because the exception - pregnant and bearing at 40, still considered sexy - can thus become the rule.
Meanwhile, what is conveyed to young girls who are looking at two young pop singers who, pushed as models who "made it", are kissing an older woman singing "how could it hurt you when it looks so good?" It is hard to consider this not a blatant effort to sell unchecked-impulse bisexuality to the new generation, and certainly acceptance thereof. Especially when, after the making out, the camera switches to the ex-boyfriend of one of the singers, sitting in the audience. "Look child, maybe a boy is not good enough for you - even this attractive young singer explores her sexuality.
And these points, collectively, are the legacy of Madonna. God knows how many lives she has "touched" with her libertine outlook and message to "just slut it up"; how many women, their minds intoxicated with music encouraging vanity and vice, have gone on to cheat on their significant others or randomly act on urges; how many babies-to-be, developed up to a heartbeat, have been ripped from existence in consequence; how many of the never-married, diseased and divorced - or those with half-born babies sucked up and ripped apart inside of them - were groomed by the type of "entertainment" Madonna helped to market and mass produce. These are questions I cannot answer. But that a singer would take such a sacred name - Madonna - and it might come to be associated with and linked to such things is disturbing on its own.
Of course, Madonna is not the first of her kind. In fact, the successors to her act - the new lineup of puppets - were even replaced with puppets to take over for them. And as we stand back and look at the lineage, the inheritance, we can see it did not start with Madonna. Marilyn Monroe clearly paved the way for Madonna, who gave us brief replacements that were soon tossed away with for Miley Cyrus. It would be a good topic for expansion, the Marilyn-Madonna-Miley pipeline. Looking at its likely impact, before the next leap, you would hope someone might stop to ask: "is this good for society? If so, who is it good for and to what end?" If we cannot answer these questions to the affirmative, why are we giving this material mainstream promotion? And why is it that the brainchild of those in jail for what they did in connection with this sort of promotion (Weinstein, Maxwell, etc) are deciding what is culture? Why do we allow this?
