TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/052091/0520520.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 14KB | 299 lines

                                                                                PROFILE, Page 56

Madonna In Bloom: Circe at Her Loom


Roll Over, Ulysses, she's at it again: winking, beckoning,
scandalizing with her new film Truth or Dare, and making one or
two points on the way

By CARL WAYNE ARRINGTON/LOS ANGELES


    So they stood at the outer gate of the fair-tressed
goddess, and within they heard Circe singing in a sweet voice,
as she fared to and fro before the great web imperishable, such
as is the handiwork of goddesses They cried aloud and called to
her. And straightway she came forth and opened the shining
doors and bade them in, and all went with her in their
heedlessness . . . Now when she had given them the cup and they
had drunk it off, presently she smote them with a wand, and in
the sties of swine she penned them. So they had the head and
voice, and bristles and shape of swine, but their mind abode
even as of old.

    -- Homer, the Odyssey



    Beyond the black steel spikes, tall forbidding trees and
gimlet eye of a surveillance camera repairs this modern Circe:
Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone. The air is perfumed with the
sweet fragrance of a floating garland of fresh gardenias. She
plies a visitor with strong drink and cunning smiles. Within
earshot of the murmuring fax machine and the constant siren's
whine of the telephone, Circe reclines in audience on a couch
of golden threads, and speaks:



    "I think the Circe comparison is great. Warren's
((Beatty)) point of view about all of this is that he thinks I
have to humiliate men publicly. That is his overall
simplification of what I do, that I am living out my hatred of
my father for leaving me for my stepmother after my mother died.
That is true, but it is too much of an oversimplification. If
that were all I was doing, it would be a lot less interesting.

    "On one hand, you could say I am turning men into swine,
but I also have this other side of my head that is saying that
I am forcing men -- not forcing, asking men -- to behave in
ways that they are not supposed to have in society. If they
want to wear a bra, they can wear a bra. If they want to cry,
they can cry. If they want to kiss another man, they can kiss
another man. I give them license to do that. My rebellion is not
just against my father but against the priests and all the men
who made the rules while I was growing up.

    "In the Like a Virgin scene in my show, I have these men
whom I have emasculated with bras on who are attending to me
and offering me sex if I so wish. But in the end, I would
rather be alone and masturbate. Until God comes, of course, and
frightens me. (Laughs) Then all of a sudden Like a Prayer
begins, and you hear the voice of God, and the curtain opens.
Figures clothed in black, like priests and nuns, appear onstage
and the cross descends. It's like here comes the Catholic Church
saying `Sex goes here, and spirituality goes there.' And I say
-- but I say, NO, THEY GO TOGETHER! I am supposed to pray,
right? But my praying gets so frenzied and passionate and
frenetic that by the end, I am flailing my body all over the
place, and it becomes a masturbatorysexualpassionate thing."



    Hmmm.

    Madonna's artistic persona has clearly transformed from
daffy Disco Dolly into a more substantial, surrealistic Poly
Dali incarnation. For a long time, she seemed like a rebelette
without a cause vamping for the world's attention. Now she has
it. Not content to continue spinning out mere dance-floor
fodder, she has used her bully pulpit to preach scantily clad
homilies on bigotry, abortion, civic duty, power, love, death,
safe sex, grief and the importance of families.

    Circe Ciccone's alluring attitude is not just a simple
sexual defiance but a symphony of rebellions laced with a deep
sense of responsibility: now she is undraped in Penthouse, now
she is doing a benefit for AIDS research, now she is doing a
Pepsi commercial, now she is the dutiful wife, now she is the
brazen divorcee. Serious feminist scholars defend her
intelligent womanliness. Bluenoses sniff at her every bump and
grind. The Vatican has denounced her. Academics spin doctoral
dissertations based on her canon. The Queer Nation beatifies
her. Wannabes still, well, wanna be.

    Now 32, the Michigan-born Madonna has three world tours,
20-plus music videos, seven feature films and eight albums under
her Boy Toy belt. She has single-handedly created a boom in
music-video sales. That the image refracted in the media-crazed
mirror never settles is hypnotizing. Her throwaway line
``Experience has made me rich/ And now they're after me," from
her tune Material Girl, seems more a wily prophecy than mere
egoistic cant. Her latest public catharsis -- a quantum artistic
growth spurt, if you will -- is Truth or Dare. It is a
panoramic, emetic, beauty-marks-and-all, feature-length
autobiographical documentary shot during her Blond Ambition
tour. The film, which opens nationally on May 17, is a celebrity
voyeur's feast that draws its substance from the dark well of
Madonna's life. It is her bid for serious consideration as a
multimedia artiste who is more attuned to the aesthetic ideas
of Martha Graham (whom she plans to play in a forthcoming film)
and Isadora Duncan than to her contemporary pop-star peers. To
recast a line of her favorite playwright, David Mamet: "She's
eating at the Big Table now." Quoth Circe:



    "I present my view on life in my work. The provocation
slaps you in the face and makes you take notice, and the
ambiguity thing makes you say, Well, is it that or is it that?
You are forced to have a discourse about it in your mind."



    Madonna has many of the classic characteristics of both
the responsible, rule-oriented eldest daughter and the
mediator-rebel middle child. She has the looks and name of her
late mother, who died of cancer when Madonna was only five. She
has now learned the craft of spinning autocinematic tapestries
out of the yarn of her private anguish. Her mother's death left
her to cope with a father, two older brothers and a stepmother
ruling over her, and ample chores helping to raise her five
younger siblings. She grew up with considerable maternal
responsibility but little actual power. So she rebelled and
eventually hearkened to a destiny. Or so she says.



    "Sometimes growing up I felt like the unhired help. I was
the oldest girl and always got stuck with the main housekeeping
chores. I changed so many diapers that I swore I'd never have
kids. I felt like I didn't really have a childhood. I was
forced to grow up fast. Everybody should have a few years where
they are not feeling too responsible, guilty or upset. I really
saw myself as a Cinderella with a wicked stepmother.

    "My family life at home was very repressive, very
Catholic, and I was very unhappy. I was considered the sissy of
the family because I relied on feminine wiles to get my way. I
wasn't quiet at all. I remember always being told to shut up.
I got tape put over my mouth. I got my mouth washed out with
soap. Mouthing off comes naturally.

    "When I was a Brownie, I ate all of the cookies. From the
start I was a very bad girl. I already knew that people were
never going to think of me as a nice girl when I was in the
fifth grade. I tried to wear go-go boots with my
parochial-school uniform.

    "I wanted to do everything everybody told me I couldn't
do. `I didn't fit in because I don't belong here,' I thought.
`I belong in some special world. Madonna is a strange name.' I
felt like there was a reason. I felt like I had to live up to my
name."



    Growing up with an icon for a name, Madonna has developed
a distinctly democratic attitude toward sacred symbols: they
belong to the common man and woman. She hangs multiple
crucifixes around her neck, has draped herself undraped in the
American flag and made freewheeling use of the hallowed peace
symbol.



    "My idea is to take these iconographic symbols that are
held away from everybody in glass cases and say, Here is
another way of looking at it. I can hang this around my neck.
I can have this coming out of my crotch if I want. The idea is
to somehow bring it down to a level that everyone can relate to.

    "I had to cancel two of my shows in Italy because of the
Vatican. Rome and Florence. It was propaganda. Even though there
were all of these profane gestures and masturbatory
demonstrations, I think that my show was very religious and
spiritual. I feel fairly in touch with my Italian roots, so when
I got to Italy, I expected to be embraced because my show has
so much Catholicism in it. Fellini -- whatever! And they slammed
the door in my face. They were basically saying that I was a
whore and no one should go to my shows and that I was taunting
the youth and making them have bad thoughts and blah-blah-blah."



    In Italy, under direct attack from the Vatican, Madonna
appeared under kliegs in shades and her flaxen halo to defy the
prelates with her artistic manifesto:



    "My show is not a conventional rock show but a theatrical
presentation of my music. And like theater, it asks questions,
provokes thoughts and takes you on an emotional journey
portraying good and bad, light and dark, joy and sorrow,
redemption and salvation. I do not endorse a way of life but
describe one, and the audience is left to make its own decisions
and judgments."



    To use a technical psychiatric term, Madonna is a
complicated nut. A darker shadow of her libido has been peeking
forth in her recent work. She appeared bound in chains and
wearing a black leather dog collar in her video epic Express
Yourself. In Hanky Panky she pleaded for corporal punishment,
asking for "a good spanking." She frolicked as a stern,
let-them-eat-cake fop queen in a send-up of Les Liaisons
Dangereuses at the MTV Video Awards ceremony. In her
controversial medium-core mini-film, Justify My Love, she played
an O-like character drifting through a hypnagogic sexscape
worthy of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Truth or Dare takes her
into murkier erotic territory still: Circe with a wink and a
whip. A common theme of these artistic explorations by this
former cheerleader is masochism.



    "Yeah, well I am a masochist. Why? Because I felt
persecuted as a child. My father made a never-ending impression
on me. He had a philosophy, little pearls of wisdom he would
drop on us. One of them was, `If it feels good, you are doing
something wrong. If you are suffering, you are doing something
right.' I tried not to compartmentalize those feelings, so that
they are rooted in the same impulse. Another was, `If there
were more virgins, the world would be a better place.' "



    In Truth or Dare, a stylized icon of the Madonna appears
dreamlike over her head and then dissolves into the form of the
black-clad chanteuse spinning beneath the cross in an act of
contrition: Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.



    "I guess you do get a certain sense of power if you are
carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders and taking
care of people. I certainly did when I was on tour in a hundred
ways. I felt like I literally had not only my personal family
that I was traveling with, that I was in charge of and
responsible for, but then I had to go out onstage to the public
-- the impersonal family -- and give them what they came for.
But I am much more conscious of my masochism than any messianic
feelings I may have.

    "I think about death a lot, maybe because I don't know
about life after death. So I strive as hard as I can to suck
every drop out of life. The great thing about being an artist
is that artists are immortal by the fact that they leave their
work behind them. There is something comforting about knowing
that my life was not just a waste.

    "Finally I see what has happened to me is a blessing
because I am able to express myself in many ways that I never
would have if I hadn't had this kind of career. And I don't
think my career is just for myself. I know this is going to
sound horrible, but I think I help a lot of people. It is my
responsibility to do that. I never wish I had a different life.
I am lucky to be in the position of power that I am in and to
be intelligent. Most people in my position say, `Listen, you
don't have to do any of that. Just kick back, man. Just enjoy
your riches. Go get a house in Tahiti. Why do you keep getting
yourself into trouble?'

    "It's not in my nature to just kick back. I am not going
to be anybody's patsy. I am not going to be anybody's good
girl. I will always be this way. Am I misunderstood? Yes, but
less now than I have been."



    Whether you want to swing upon her tarnished star, burn her
at the media stake or just ponder her anatomy, Madonna is ready
with an orchestra of masks for your pleasuring and
consternation. Call them out-of-bawdy Madonna experiences. True,
and daring. What is most astonishing about Madonna is not her
originality or even the commercial success of any particular
artistic venture, but her willingness to reinvent herself boldly
again and again. The force that keeps her a moving target is a
naked defiance that is nothing if not original sin: she wants
to live forever, if only in our dreams.