"I’m Bettie Page. How do you think I feel?"
MADONNA?
I don’t quite know why I find myself defending Madonna except that Munz sent over the following from Rickie Lee Jones...
"We live in a time where people allow marketing devises to take the place of real events, of real spirits. We allow vacant pop stars to harm the credibility of concepts, to reap the rewards of deeper, more meaningful artists, simply because some publicist evoked images that we identify with greatness. I saw this really flourish with Madonna, and spread like Ebola through the jungle land. I am still stunned, I don't understand why the pretender is just as meaningful to the consumer now and the citizen as the real thing. Is it because the real thing is so hard to come by, we want to feel like we're part of a real thing, too? Finally Madonna's real meaning is the virtue of being the one who forged the way for all pretenders. I am confused in these times. I am glad I stand outside looking in. George Bush, Madonna, the whole show of second best."– Rickie Lee Jones
Okay, so the woman is 47 pretending to be 25, she’s really fucking irritating, and redefines narcissism in the worst way since Norma Desmond, but she actually did invent herself, fully formed like Venus on the half-shell, and should be given whatever credit that deserves. Back in Lower Manhattan in the early eighties, in a world of 12" dance mixes, and with Karen Finley just down the block , pushing produce into her orifices, Ms. Ciccone labored long and hard in some pretty grubby salt mines to make herself a pop-goddess. At the time, she provided a freestanding role model for a lot of young women, and cannot be wholly blamed for the corporate annexation of her act as a marking plan for all the wholly depressing Britneys and Jessicas and multi-national pretteen nymphet-pop that would follow. Back in the day, although I didn’t buy the act (except maybe for her cover of "Love Don’t Live Here Any More") I did feel that she and Patti Smith bookended a weird liberation in the pop culture when all else was Stevie Nicks.
The secret word is Virgin
love ya, doc. but REALLY. defending the authenticity of someone who this very second is speaking with a fake british accent?
ReplyDeletei mean, where in rickie lee jones's screed is she NOT giving madonna credit for "inventing herself" (yeah, by ripping off every subculture she ever came in contact with...)? does she not say that madge is "the one who forged the way for all pretenders"?
also, madonna "provided a freestanding role model for a lot of young women," and yet she cannot be held "wholly" responsible (whatever) for influencing the likes of britney and jessica to follow in her footsteps via the corporate pop-tart-making machine? (as if madonna's emergence and constant presence in the pop landscape weren't wholly depressing from day one.) if she hadn't existed, they wouldn't have wanted to be like her (or their handlers wouldn't have molded them in her image). how come she deserves all the credit but not all the blame?
finally, don't forget that madonna suffered for her art?! hahahahahahahaaaaaa! ms. ciccone dyed for somebody's sins ... but not mine.
Well, blonde ambition didn't do that much for me either, but I did feel that I had to admit that, since trashing Madonna is soooo easy these days, I did like some of her early stuff. There's also a somewhat paradoxial name in all this. It's Seymour Stein, who nurtured Madonna's early work, but also that of The Ramones, also The Deviants first albums. Which makes things a tad more complicated than it appears on the surface.
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