bell

hooks writes:

This, along with people's emotional attachment to Madonna, will probably limit how many people give hooks's article a fair shake.

Madonna is an appropriator. Always has been. She has made her living off of appropriating "underground" styles, whether it be Latin club music (freestyle aka the Jellybean Benitez days), house, black gay culture (voguing), gay culture in general, black culture in general, and recently east Indian religion and rave/electronica, and packaging it for sale to a larger audience. She spots a trend and then works it to no end.

To my knowledge, she is not indigenous to any of these aesthetics, but has skillfully learned them and incorporated them into her persona. While helping to popularize heretofore subaltern (underground) styles, such appropriations are nonetheless frought with lost meanings, half-meanings, misinterpretations, misuse, and other risks of expropriating elements of an aesthetic from its original context.

Because of their unfamiliarity with these original contexts, many in the mainstream audience will not recognize these risks. They will just simply marvel at Madonna's multicultural and multicontextual appearance and sound. However for those whose cultural practices are firmly rooted in these original contexts, they will recognize the lapses and the gaps created by the expropriation. My sense is that hooks is one of these who criticizes a partial appropriation of an element of black culture while ignoring or omitting other parts that she deems just as crucial.

Madonna would not be the first to engage in the practice of "slumming"--beat poets and writers like Jack Kerouac epitomized this practice in "Nigger Heaven," jazz age whites who flocked into Harlem to get "spade kicks" and then go back home for their "regular" lives, etc. all did this. It is using the oppositional element of the black cultural aesthetic to express adolescent rebellion (as many are doing today with hip hop) or black pleasure to further a hyper sexualized project.

A recent example of a questionable appropriation by Madonna was her foray into east Indian Hindu philosophy/religion in her "Ray of Light" CD, where she had a song which featured a ritual Hindu chant. While some thought this to be an affirmation of Hinduism in popular culture, others felt that the track along with her performance of it OUTSIDE of its original ritual context amounted to nothing short of sacrilege; and that if something is to be AFFIRMED that it be done on its own terms with deference to its intended purpose, which they felt that Madonna was not doing.

APPROPRIATE AND APPRECIATE THE EDIT.
[This message was edited Sun Feb 2 4:41:53 PST 2003 by NuPwrSoul]

Supernova said:

Yea, Meshell definitely has reasons not to speak critically about Madonna publicly. I'm trying to understand how pointing the finger at Meshell = supposed lies told by bell hooks, that's where Maxxx lost me...

NuPwrSoul said:

Very well put...and you hit this argument on so many accurate levels, especially the part about the Hindu aspect on Ray of Light. My girlfriend who is Indian talked to me about how Madonna completely disrespected their culture by grasping on to it like that. And wouldn't u know she dropped it on her next album. Yet for some reason when she is through with something she never mentions her respect and love for it again.

Fuck Bell Hooks Madonna ain't took nothing.Michael Jackson Grew up in the Hood in Gary Indiana&they had to pay dues before they blew up.Joe Jackson is Straight up Black Period.Madonna is Cool Ass People only Haters gonna talk Stupid Shit about Madonna.Bell Hooks is Just a Hater&She wants to Be Madonna So Bad.I'll Defend Madonna before I speak for that Trashy Piece by Bell Hooks.

mistermaxxx said:

HUH mister, do you know who Bell Hooks is? I don' think she ever wants to be Madonna.

Lastly, did you guys really READ the essay?

another brick to my head

Rhondab said:

I Know who that trick is.Give Me Nikki Giovanni anyday&she has given Madonna Props.give somebody like Michael Eric Dyson who spins Circles around Bell Hooks on dropping the Science.I study Writers from all backgrounds ain't nobody gonna talk silly shit about Madonna.Camile Paglia gave Madonna mad Props for flipping the script.

All the talk going on is as much bollocks as the actual essay itself. Im not saying I disagree with all that was written in the essay, nor am I disagreeing with the fact that Madonna has drawn from many different cultures / ethnicities throughout her career.

The idea to me to question somebody's "agenda" when it comes to race, particularly when they have spent a large part of their career speaking out against such intollerances, is totally disrespectful.

I dont think anyone really believes madonna is a racist, its clear as day she's not. It only goes to highlight what serious and contentious issues race and prejudice still are within our society, when someone such as madonna can spur such a debate as to whether or not she's a racist. To my mind she's consistently been one of the most liberal minded figure heads of modern culture.

Ms Hooks should perhaps look toward those in positions of higher power and importance (i.e the elected "president" of the USA) to focus her intellectual insights upon when it comes to race and prejudice. Such speculative nonsense only serves to create bad feeling.