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Madonna crucified: feminist martyr or martyrdom of feminism?


Luiz Ribeiro
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The pop star turns 60 on the 16th. This is her feminist side. But there is more to know in the notebook 1864, in the Sunday edition of DN.

FROM: https://www.dn.pt/1864/interior/madonna-crucificada-feminista-martir-ou-martirio-do-feminismo-9671897.html

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No woman pop star has reached 60 in the place where she is. Perhaps no one with her statute has fought so many battles at the same time, had so little interest in shocking and alienating. Few people with her iconic and popular relevance were so controversial, so loved and so hated. And few women have questioned the concept of feminism as such and have so inevitably divided feminists. Especially now, that confronts (and us) with the worst of enemies: time. And the decline of that was its main object, its main target, its main asset: power.

There are many interviews of Madonna, but in fact there are not many interviews of Madonna. Of all the ones I read, the one that impressed me the most is Norman Mailer in 1994 in Esquire . It was the time of Sex , the book with photos of Steven Meisel published in 1992, the album Erotica , in the path of the forbidden video (by MTV in 1990 - yes, there was still internet) Justify My Love . It was Madonna's time of latex and whips and evocation of x-rated movies, from the BDSM imaginary brought to popular culture 20 years before The FiftyShades of Gray . It was the time when it seemed she could go no further, be more contested, more hated, more loved and celebrated, subvert more, challenge more, have more power.

It was the time before the mystical twist of the album Ray of Light , before the revelations of motherhood (the first daughter, Lourdes Maria, was born in 1996) had re-sculpted her pose and voice in a new fluidity, in the intended pacification of those who embraced maturity, and discovered that it might not be the only center of his life (" Looking at my life / It's very clear tome / I lived so selfishly ").

 

t was the time when I was 36 and it was already spoken - incredible, is not it? - to be getting "too old" for this and that. The time when she had not yet made a tearful speech - the first and only time we saw her cry was in November 2016, in the acceptance speech of the Billboard Woman of the Year Trophy of the Year - about feeling a a doormat, about being fed up with being hatred and attacked by everything and nothing, about discovering, exactly when from Erotica and Sex , that the rules for girls were not the same as for boys, and recently, that being a woman and pop star and aging is a seemingly impossible thing and that, shit, you never have enough power to not miss it . The first time we saw her vulnerable, the first time we heard her say, "I needed a lot of the women on my side."

 

 

"A revolutionary feminist"

It's 1994, so long before Trump's victory and all that that means. When it seemed that Madonna could do everything, and could always, that no one or anything could overthrow her, beat her, no matter how much they wrote and said horrors about her, no matter how much she explored and expounded interdicts and taboos, battled in cultural and identity wars, (as he did in Letterman's before the conversation with Mailer), advised to do a jerk in the shower, to simulate masturbations and orgasms on stage - to the point of almost being arrested for it ( in Toronto in 1990 ).

The time when I told Mailer after the nickname " Sex Queen of America ": " I have been accused for years and years, especially at the beginning of my career, of harming the feminist movement by being sexually in a traditional way , with my bodices and bras that lift the breasts and garters belts and this and that, and feminists hit me immensely: "What do you do? You're sending the wrong messages to the girls. You should use your head, not your breasts and your ass . "My scene is that if you use everything you have, your sexuality, your femininity, yours - your testosterone, your intellect - use what you want that you have ... "

"My scene is that if you use everything you have, your sexuality, your femininity, your intellect - use whatever you have ..."

Mailer, who says Warhol's daughter, and as he, interpreter of the emptiness of the second half of the twentieth century, Marilyn's guerilla version, cerebral and survivor when the other was intuition and martyrdom, assures her that she is a very important artist and " a lady "-which, if it has any defects, is that of being so attuned-asks for what. "She's a revolutionary. What's her revolution for?" In the name of human beings relate to humans, she responds."And do you think the stereotypical notions of men about how to treat women have to be undone?" Yes. "Destroyed?" Yes. "What about women's attitudes toward men?" Also. (...) I do not know what the women's movement does. It is not my goal or my intention. This is not about me being a woman, but about being human. Yes, it's one of the phrases in her quotations: "I'm not a feminist, I'm a humanist." In the Billboard speech, 22 years later, she admits: "Up to a point I was not very interested in feminism."

But feminism - or anyone who fears about it - has always been interested in it. In 1990, the infamous Camille Paglia, in an opinion piece in The New York Times , proclaimed: " Finally, a true feminist, " predicting "the future of feminism." For two years later, to improve one of the most glossed characterizations of Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccione, born August 16, 1958 in Bay City, Michigan, into a Catholic family of Italian ancestry (via the father) and French-Canadian maternal), third of six children: "It is the greatest contribution to the history of women, for having joined and healed the wound of the two halves of the woman: Mary, the Virgin and holy mother, and Mary Magdalene, the prostitute." Another black American feminist, the bell hooks feminist theorist (Gloria Jean Watkins' pseudonym, in the lower case anyway), said in 1993, "a revolutionary feminist, a symbol of unrepressed feminine creativity and power - sexy , seductive, serious, strong. "

"Antifeminist, Trashy and Ordinary"

Hooks and Paglia say the reverse today - Madonna is no longer the future of anything, no redemption, neither serious nor strong. On the contrary: treacherous, sold, deplorable, weak.

Moreover, the discussion lasts for decades: does it deconstruct gender stereotypes or reinforce them? Is it "a glamorized sex doll or a queen of critical parody"? In Madonna and Gender Problems , 2013, Reena Mistry links her to the title (and concept) of one of the most important books in feminist theory, Gender Trouble , edited in the USA in 1990, edited here at Orfeu "The idea of this essay is to decide whether we should see Madonna as a political icon, a queer ambassador [on queer theory, who argues that sexual and gender roles are social constructs, biological predetermination] or dismiss it as a failed and episodic example of the variable construction of identity . "

"I do not know what the women's movement does, it's not my purpose or my intention, it's not about being a woman but about being human."

Almost 20 years earlier, a paper entitled Madonna's "Feminist Assumptions of Emancipatory Potential and Contradictory Gender Practices," by Lynn OBrien Hallstein, looks at Madonna as " a place of genuine contradiction ," seeking, through the psychoanalytic analysis of her videos and songs, to determine whether she frees or reinforces the gender roles. And in 2000, "Madonna, a pop icon of feminism and counter-hegemony: blurring the boundaries of race, gender and sexuality" by Audra Gaugler, summarizes dissent , deciding on heroism."Because it occupies such a large slice of media attention, Madonna works like what environmentalists call a charismatic megafauna: a very visible and appreciated species, such as a whale or painted owl, in the name and attention of which whole ecosystems can be protected and safeguarded because of the public's interest.He is now playing this role, as she herself assumes, bringing "subversive sexuality to the mainstream, " and accepted that challenge, including delighting in the risk of her potential martyrdom as a celebrity. "

Generosity and sacrificial and revolutionary spirit, savior who makes himself crucified for us or "only" marketing ? Intellectual gift, carefully calibrated in its terrorist intent, or just a commercial product that goes from "shock" to "shock" and turnaround twist to sell more and better? "While some celebrate it as a subversive cultural revolutionist, others attack it as antifeminist, or hopelessly trashy , ordinary," says American post-modern theorist Douglas Kellner. In Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna , Pamela Robertson compares her to Barbie: "She sells like Mattel's doll because she's always changing the model, making her past sis obsolete." And the latest bell hooks stresses that the same behavior that led many to praise Madonna as revolutionary leads them to criticize her for degrading one of the sectors of society - women - that she intended to elevate .Case of the hooks itself: "The image of an adult Madonna, past her 30s, posing as tiny girl and sexual doll, presumably to keep for as long as possible under the pornographic and patriarchal male look and thus keep attention of the public, exposes how the aging of women in a sexist society can undermine anyone's adherence to radical political action, to feminism . " She continues: "Although she wants to make the public believe that she is a cultural visionary who introduces subversive themes to the masses, the reality is that the ads, the movies, the videos and the TV have already explored these images. marketingchain that explores representations of sexuality and the body for profit, a chain that chooses images that were once considered taboo. "

Audra Gaugler does not think so. He sees in these criticisms the endless sexism: "If a man is extroverted, aggressive, and designing power, he is considered assertive; if a woman does the same, she is a whore or a goat." "The power and unique character of Madonna comes from the fact that she tries to crush patriarchy by raising and empowering all the groups that have been ostracized by the power of the white man. It assaults the territory of mainstreamculture, knocking down boundaries and commanding their army out of the patriarchal regime, to a place where they can feel protected in safety .... It transforms the world in which it lives and works a more comfortable place for the people considered the other, and then grabs in this image and design in the rest of the world. "

What does it feel like for a girl?

"If you're a girl, you have to play the game, you can be beautiful and sexy and spin it, but do not get too smart." Do not have an opinion that is out of alignment with the status quo.Youcan be objectified by men and dress like a whore but do not assume that, do not use that as power, and I never, ever again, share your sexual fantasies with the world. Be what men want you to be and, more importantly, what makes women comfortable when you're at it. and finally, do not grow old, because age is a sin.You're going to be criticized, vilified.And they definitely will not get you on the radio. "

We return to the Billboard speech, the bitter speech of someone who acknowledges that he was wrong. But how much? Paglia, who in response wrote a very crude article in the Daily Mail describing it as "a horrible combination of a desmond Norman and vampiric norm and a bitter and drunken Joan Crawford ... prisoner of his wealth and fame ..." a chilling pastiche of ragged blonde extensions and bloated cheeks ... incapable of coping with aging, "on the pathway more than one of the international papists of feminism, Germaine Greer, had hissed in a 2006 text (" Her features have become and gradually become so immobile that Dietrich is the only remaining option "), says that she should do self-criticism instead of whining. Realize what failed and why.

Undoubtedly, Madonna is often caricaturedly contradictory. In an interview with Vanity Fair , more than ten years ago, he criticized anyone who looks obscure. How is it that someone who lives so much in his image, someone who is above all else and who improves in this, as he tells us in the documentary Truth or Dare ( In Bed with Madonna , 1991) only eats vegetable soup to keep the line, who spends his life exercising, now on a ride of plastic, says something like that? The contradiction in respect to feminism, however, is much deeper, much more serious, tragic, and painful. Madonna is the evidence of the essential crossroads in which the movement finds itself, kind of body of crime.

"For women, the situation has evolved very little since 1983. We are practically in the same place, it is the last great frontier."

The woman who wanted to believe in her and those who see her as an avatar of a cultural revolution, to dynamite the gender roles and to contribute to the liberation of all, that's right - a woman. And as such he discovered the place that these terribly resilient roles attach to women of his age: irrelevant, invisible, asexual and asexual . For someone who has built his whole career and all his liberating and subversive deliberation from image and sexuality, which now, when even who should be his ally - above all ally - is pleased to certify that it is ridiculous, pathetic , "not knowing how to get old", "being a lady", "putting yourself in your place", "giving up"? Does anyone say that to Iggy Pop, who is over 11 years old, and does bare-leg concerts and leather pants? Does anyone think Jagger, at 14, is ridiculous when he dances in a bad boy ? And Chico Buarque, 75, does not remain a sex symbol ?Why can not she be? Who has decreed that women from "a certain age" are repulsive?

Yes, we are still here, in these questions. Little thing moved from Sunset Boulevard and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane . She, a gay icon, was very early in the frontlines of the fight against discrimination of homosexuals, transgenders, said in 2015 : " Gay rights have advanced much more than women's. People have a much more open mind in relation to the gay community than in relation to women, a final paragraph. "For women, the situation has evolved very little since 1983. We are practically in the same place, it is the last great frontier."

The border where she is, now and as always alone, exposed, martyred but standing (" I'm still standing ", said in the speech of 2016). "People say that I am very controversial, but I think the most controversial thing what I did was put up with it "). Because it is what it does: go forward, forward. And withstand .

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