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Salon.com cover story: Madonna Includes this very provocative excerpt.
A self-described "work Nazi," Madonna is overscheduled and overprogrammed. Remarkably for a Graham dancer, she has become poor at improvisation -- which produces her manic, mechanical stage shows, where little room is left for natural warmth or banter with the audience and where the production is always too small and precious for large arenas. There is a painfully tight calculation to Madonna's self-presentation that has certainly blighted this CD, with its preachy, sepulchral voiceovers. "I hate to waste time," Madonna says. But artists recharge themselves and their imaginations precisely when they are doing nothing.
"How much fortune can you make?" Madonna rhetorically asks in "How High." Exactly: When will she decide she has made enough money for 10 lifetimes and recommit herself to the noble cause of making music? Music never dies. Do we really need another Madonna tour? Does she have to compete with women performers 25 years her junior? Why turn every private moment, including motherhood, into commerce and publicity? (This was then-boyfriend Warren Beatty's complaint about her in "Truth or Dare.") And why does every artistic venture have to be crushed by streamrolling promotional gimmickry (like the depressingly literalist linkage of "Hung Up" to a cellphone company)? At a recent party in New York celebrating Salon's 10th anniversary, the formidable Cintra Wilson said mordantly to me (I scribbled all this down on a cocktail napkin at the bar), "Madonna is the Robo-Celebrity, calcified with discipline -- religiously saintly, physically superhuman, in all ways faultless. She represents the unspoken desires of America -- to be good at everything!" Even allowing for the fact that she must strenuously maintain her hipness for a busy husband 10 years her junior, Madonna is starting to morph into the mature Joan Crawford of "Torch Song," still ferociously dancing but with her fascist willpower signaled by brute, staring eyes and fixed jawline. In cannibalizing her disco diva days, Madonna runs the risk of turning into a pasty powdered crumpet like the aging Bette Davis in "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" Will she become a whooping Charo shaking her geriatric hoochie-coochie hips on TV talk shows? Or should we expect a sudden, grisly collapse from glowing beauty to dust, like Ursula Andress as the 2000-year-old femme fatale in "She"? Too hungry to connect to the youth market, Madonna goes on childishly using naughty words and flipping the finger (as onstage at Live 8 last summer). Marlene Dietrich, her supreme precursor, knew how to preserve her dignity and glamour. So is the author saying that Madonna has made the 21st century's answer to 
? source: http://www.salon.com/ent/...2/madonna/ Good night, sweet Prince | 7 June 1958 - 21 April 2016
Props will be withheld until the showing and proving has commenced. -- Aaron McGruder | |
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I love Camille Paglia. She's nuts. | |
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I love Cintra Wilson. She's such a pop-culture love/hatin' megabitch. | |
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It's good to hear from Camille Paglia again, especially on this topic.
I've been spinning the new Madonna for the past couple weeks. As a matter of fact it's the first I've bought since True Blue way back in the mid-eighties. I like the album becuase I'm a dance music fan, but even I know that compared to some of the classics released over the past few years (some of which Camille actually listed to my wonder and surprise) it pales in comparison. I've been wondering myself how fans, and especially critics, can praise this album so highly while not even giving a second listen to truly great songs like "I Turn To You" or "Skin"? I'm also happy that she agrees with me concerning Madonna's live shows. I said after I saw "Re-invention" (and "All For You") how the venues are way too big for the shows themselves. I know that they'd play better in smaller venues. I'd go so far as to say theaters but the lack of continuity of these concerts would be lost in a theater setting. But she's right. Do we really need another big tour, especially for this album? I wonder what Camille thinks of artists such as Prince or Bjork? She's facinated by Madonna and has wasted a lot of ink over her over the years but I've failed to come across her opinions on these two, artists I feel she'd really dig. Prince for his gender-f!ckitude, and if nothing else Bjork for her audacity of wearing a swan dress to the Oscars! |
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CynicKill said: and if nothing else Bjork for her audacity of wearing a swan dress to the Oscars!
Her head would probably implode if she started thinking about Bjork, much less writing about her.  | |
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Well, I read all that, not sure what to make of it though. Is she over-analyzing Madonna and her work, or is my appreciation for Madonna too superficial? I'm no big fan, but I've enjoyed a lot of her music. However I can't say I've been looking to her for much more, i.e. as some kind of idol or whatever--I guess others have.
I would, however, enjoy seeing Camille write about Prince.  If anyone finds anything she wrote about him, please share that info here!"I would say that Prince's top thirty percent is great. Of that thirty percent, I'll bet the public has heard twenty percent of it." - Susan Rogers, "Hunting for Prince's Vault", BBC, 2015 |
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Why turn every private moment, including motherhood, into commerce and publicity?
I think this is pretty unfair. I think Madonna has been very protective of her kids. I've seen an interview with Madonna commenting on Paglia's opinions basically saying she takes her premises too far. The idea that Madonna represents Americas unspoken desire to be good at everything is flatout bullshit. If anything her attempts at acting have proved the opposite - you can't be good at everything. | |
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CynicKill said: I wonder what Camille thinks of artists such as Prince or Bjork? She's facinated by Madonna and has wasted a lot of ink over her over the years but I've failed to come across her opinions on these two, artists I feel she'd really dig. Prince for his gender-f!ckitude, and if nothing else Bjork for her audacity of wearing a swan dress to the Oscars!
If you read to the end of that article, there's a link to a list of Camille's favourite "disco" songs... She's listed some Prince tracks there - but none of them scream "disco". I mean, she's named "Let's Go Crazy". 
Also on her list is "You Spin Me Around" by Dead Or Alive featuring Pete Best - The Beatles' original drummer!
Some of the inaccuracies in her essay are embarassingly evident - but I love her all the same. She churns out Madonna-laden rhetoric like a lover spurned. It's almost like Sandra Bernhard had swallowed a dictinary and has too much time on her hands. | |
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mynameisnotsusan said: Why turn every private moment, including motherhood, into commerce and publicity?
I think this is pretty unfair. I think Madonna has been very protective of her kids. I've seen an interview with Madonna commenting on Paglia's opinions basically saying she takes her premises too far. Yet she her public piety re: Kabbalah and her mockery of other religions (use of holy symbols as fashion statements or costumes) reeks of the most public of hypocrisies. The idea that Madonna represents America's unspoken desire to be good at everything is flatout bullshit. If anything her attempts at acting have proved the opposite - you can't be good at everything.
To the contrary. As you yourself pointed out, she tried acting because she desires to be good at everything. Good night, sweet Prince | 7 June 1958 - 21 April 2016
Props will be withheld until the showing and proving has commenced. -- Aaron McGruder | |
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Justin1972UK said: CynicKill said: I wonder what Camille thinks of artists such as Prince or Bjork? She's facinated by Madonna and has wasted a lot of ink over her over the years but I've failed to come across her opinions on these two, artists I feel she'd really dig. Prince for his gender-f!ckitude, and if nothing else Bjork for her audacity of wearing a swan dress to the Oscars!
If you read to the end of that article, there's a link to a list of Camille's favourite "disco" songs... She's listed some Prince tracks there - but none of them scream "disco". I mean, she's named "Let's Go Crazy".
Also on her list is "You Spin Me Around" by Dead Or Alive featuring Pete Best - The Beatles' original drummer!
Some of the inaccuracies in her essay are embarassingly evident - but I love her all the same. She churns out Madonna-laden rhetoric like a lover spurned. It's almost like Sandra Bernhard had swallowed a dictinary and has too much time on her hands. Camilla has a love hate thing with Madge. very sapphric. you sandra comment is too funny You CANNOT use the name of God, or religion, to justify acts of violence, to hurt, to hate, to discriminate- Madonna
authentic power is service- Pope Francis | |
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