This is a long essay but worth the read. It is written by Bell Hooks, a black, feminist writer. It makes good and bad points. You may be either angry or agree, but it is good read.

http://www.thecriticalvoi...donna.html

OH PLEASE! That article is bullcrap,and I don't see why the writer spent all that time and effort analyzing an artist that she clearly does not like,or understand.Madonna is not a racist.

I understand some of the points she made concerning black female sexuality being stigmatized,but to say Madonna is a racist is off the mark. If anything she is a smart,and savvy business woman.

You have to admit, Madonna doesn't even have a black best friend. And she has never dated a black man. Food for thought. hmmm.

"You have to admit..." you have to admit she would be accused of showing her black puppet etc...

2freaky4church1 said:

lova, have you seen truth or dare???
i dont think you know what youre talking about...

2freaky4church1 said:

Bullshit! Madonna dated Dennis Rodman and even wanted to have his baby.

2freaky4church1 said:

geezus..you are a trip

nas3110 said:

whjy even answer that sillyness with any info

Madonna has dated a black man, there where rumors going around that she dated 2pac shukur, she dated her background dancer which was black, you all would know this if u watched the truth or dare video. She Kissed a black Jesus feet which was played by leon, in the video Like a Prayer, She tried 2 sound black she can dance like a black woman, madonna maybe alot of things but a racist is not one of them, this person clearly did not do they're research before making this stupid statment.

DigitalLisa said:

and 2 top that all off she slept with prince ... so if madonna is a racist then I just don't know what a racist is :Roll:

2freaky4church1 said:

she dated dennis rodman a few years back, but the split wasn't a friendly one and they have a tendency (or rather HAD a tendency) to be really ugly towards each other when the press would grill them about the reason for the break-up...

2freaky4church1 said:

Stop raising the bar on complete dumbassness.

Stop___it___right___now.

DigitalLisa said:

i'm somewhat in agreement, except that she DID NOT date the dancer from her tour (if we're talking about the same guy, oliver). that kid and i have friends in common in the new york dance world and the word (on the dl) is that though they did not date, he DID try to ride the wave of the publicity from the media's speculation that they were involved...unless you're with a certain handful of companies in new york, it's incredibly hard to get press
or attention as a dancer, so he kind of lucked out with that rumor and definitely got his 15 minutes from it...

ReeseStrongnight said:

plus Oliver, the blond loner dancer in TOD is queer as a 3 dollar bill

.
[This message was edited Sat Feb 1 15:02:05 PST 2003 by rdhull]

not to mention one of her best frineds is one of her permanent backup singers Nicki...

2freaky4church1 said:

IO think ...I hope this was a joke!!

ReeseStrongnight said:

well i wasnt saying that she dated him... she didnt... but there were several black people in truth or dare who are close freinds of madonna... including her back up singer...anyway... bottom line... i dont think that miss ciccone is racist. not in the slightest. freaky...re-think this one, k hun??

Bell Hooks is way off the Mark Here.Madonna has always Dug Brothers before She was a SuperStar.of course I've known Michael Jackson&Prince are Her Musical Role Models.She didn't use them as Tools because She truly Respects there Musical Genius.Madonna is Cool People&still doesn't care.

There is a fine line between appreciation and appropriation these days.

I'll read the whole thing another time but she starts off on point...

"Once I read an interview with Madonna where she talked about her envy of black culture, where she stated that she wanted to be black as a child. It is a sign of white privilege to be able to "see" blackness and black culture from a standpoint where only the rich culture of opposition black people have created in resistance marks and defines us. Such a perspective enables one to ignore white supremacist domination and the hurt it inflicts via oppression, exploitation, and everyday wounds and pains. White folks who do not see black pain never really understand the complexity of black pleasure. And it is no wonder then that when they attempt to imitate the joy in living which they see as the "essence" of soul and blackness, their cultural productions may have an air of sham and falseness that may titillate and even move white audiences yet leave many black folks cold..."

hmmm...I don't think this is a bullshit essay but an interesting look at someone we call an Icon. The essay doesn't only speak on race but sexuality in terms of homophobia.


I'm personally not bothered by her comments. Maybe Madonna isn't racist but I completely understand the underlining points made by Ms Hooks.

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]

NuPwrsoul

See, but here's where I disagree - just because Madonna's white, she will take shit for doing "black" music. If Madonna ever put a rap in one of her singles, she would be "appropriating" it because she's white. Alright, Madonna is not from the ghetto, she was a middle class girl from the suburbs.


However, someone like Michael Jackson, just because he's black, can use rap in his music and not take shit for it. Yes, Mike didn't have as easy of a childhood as Madonna did, but he wasn't from the projects where rap was coming from either. By the time rap was mainstream, Mike was living the high life. Why shouldn't he get knocked for using Biggie on his albums?

Remember when Prince started using Rap on his records? I honestly don't think that he even cared for rap music (if "Dead on It" is any indication). He was only trying to win back his R&B crowd that he'd lost with his mid-80's music. Did anyone accuse Prince of stealing black culture? Obviously not, but here's that "aesthetic" that P wasn't "indigenous" to either.

If Bell Hooks is going to completely segregate music, then I don't think ANYONE, regardless of race, should do any sort of music that their "ancestors" didn't help to create. Beethoven was German (right), so anyone using his style of music is appropriating German culture for their benefit.

I just disagree with the portrait Bell Hooks paints of Madonna. She makes it seem like Madonna never had to work to get where she is today; she's "white", so all she had to do was exploit black culture to get to the top. Madonna moved to NYC with no money in her pocket, and made a name for herself in the underground clubs there. Why isn't she allowed to have an affinity for the underground scene then? She's no Britney Spears, who had no obsticles to overcome. Hell, Janet didn't have to face poverty and starvation to be where she is today.

I don't mean to offend anyone, but this segregational mentality has always really bothered me. It's music, whether black, white, yellow, etc... Why should your race dictate what you can and cannot listen to, perform, appreciate, etc...?

I read this article when I was an Undergrad and we had a long discussion about it in my Race and Ethnic Relations class. My professor who was white and arguably the most openminded man I have ever encoutered actually agreed with what Bell Hooks said about Madonna. Although it did ruffle some feathers in my class, he talked about the difference between respecting a culture and appropriating it then taking credit for what you did. He also discussed how she does it to every marginalized group latins, gay men, etc. By the way the she dated black men argument has little weight because there are many people that date outside their race and still have racist views so that argument is flawed. By the way my professor included this essay in his book "Drawing The Color Line" by Charles Gallagher, its an interesting read I suggest all of you check it out.

Axchi696 said:

First, rap music and hip hop culture's aesthetics are not wholly different from those honed in other black cultural / musical traditions. In fact, in terms of cultural ethos, rap is very continuous with negro spirituals, the blues, gospel, and jazz--so someone conversant and indigenous to these other cultural forms can still be conversant with some degree of authenticity with hip hop even if they don't hail from the projects.

Further, even with the protests coming from rap purists who decry the art's use in more mainstream black culture, I think it's different since Michael Jackson got a "real" rapper to guest on his tracks. Having an authentic rapper indigenous to the art form present gives the effort a sense of sincerity and authenticity. Now if Mike had decided to rap himself I think folks in hip hop would have dismissed it (see Prince example below).



I don't think folks accused him of "stealing" anything because he remains conversant with the fundamental ethos running throughout black musical forms (see above), but they did question him on the lack of authenticity in the rap elements of his work. I don't know any hip hop head who took Prince's forays into rap seriously at all. Tony M may have been MPLS greatest, but outside of the Twin Cities that was just shite. And folks in hip hop saw Prince (as they would see MJ or any non-rapper, non-hip hop head) as an outsider.



These are all good points. And as I stated in my first post in this thread, there is a fine line between appreciation and appropriation; and questions of authenticity are frought with their own inexactness. Increasingly the lines are blurred.

That doesn't mean that those lines aren't still there. I think they become a little clearer when examining questions of political economy of music production and consumption, i.e., how music is being marketed, who's benefiting, etc.

Different instances of appropriations can appear to be very similar but going beyond the surface can yield clearer distinctions. Madonna's expropriation of Hindu sacred music into a non-sacred context outside of ritual is disconcerting especially when those experiencing the performance do not have much in the way of additional knowledge to understand the original context and see the gaps. Prince's recitation of The Lord's Prayer is a similar sacred to secular (some would say even profane) transition, but I suspect that most in his audience were quite familiar with The Lord's Prayer prior and saw his deployment of it has serving a specific purpose that did not alter the Prayer's meaning.

To get back to bell hooks's article, I think that while considerations of race are quite necessary, race alone is not going to be sufficient in yielding a more considered analysis. That doesn't mean that it's not still useful though.

A MORE CONSIDERED EDIT.
[This message was edited Sun Feb 2 13:12:17 PST 2003 by NuPwrSoul]

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.

Rhondab said:

a little co-sign, if you will... NPS