TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/121790/1217500.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 7.9 KB | 179 lines

                )└                                                            PEOPLE, Page 74

Madonna Draws a Line


After MTV rejects her latest video, the Material Girl launches
a  program of self-defense and self-promotion

By JAY COCKS -- Reported by Patrick E. Cole and Jeanne
McDowell/ Los Angeles


    The latest -- the very latest -- from the Madonna hotline
(dial  1-800-BOY-TOYS): she has to trim her hedges. And a pine
tree. A Donald  Robinson, who lives next to Madonna's spread in
the Hollywood Hills,  groused that his view was being obstructed
by overweening foliage.  Madonna claimed the greenery was
necessary to preserve her privacy.  Lawyers looked into it. A
Los Angeles superior court judge decided  that Madonna should
get out the shears. Or maybe she could invite  Edward
Scissorhands over for a photo op.

    And the next latest from the hotline: the video. That video.
The  one that MTV wouldn't play. The one that got shown last
week on Nightline,  with its star and perpetrator in fine form,
sitting in the hot seat  often occupied by representatives of
upstart Third World nations  and handling tough questions with
brass and smarts. "I draw the line,"  she announced to anyone
wondering how far she'd go, "[at] violence  and humiliation and
degradation, O.K.?"

    Fine. It was good to see the Justify My Love video -- sleek,
fairly  harmless stuff, as it turns out -- and a kick to watch
Madonna go  a round or two with Nightline's Forrest Sawyer. The
program scored  some excellent ratings and a bracing dose of sex
appeal, while allowing  any interested party to get a look at
the video without laying out  $9.98 for it at the local media
outlet. Preorders have been "incredible,"  according to a V.P.
at its distributor, Warner Reprise Home Video,  who says, "We're
shipping a quarter of a million."

    Nightline's Sawyer knew the controversy would boost sales
of the  video and of The Immaculate Collection, a recently
released greatest-hits  package on which Justify My Love is the
lead single. "In the end,  you're going to wind up making even
more money than you would have,"  he said. "Yeah," the lady
replied, with one of her crinkly Mae West  grins. "So, lucky
me."

    But how does she keep lucking out like this? Why is
everything Madonna  does of such consuming interest? From her
hedges to her hairdo, her  love affairs to her videos, her
up-to-the-minute music to her ahead-of-the-fashion  persona --
why does all this grab so much attention from so many  places?
Whether Madonna deserves the attention -- or manipulates  it
shrewdly -- is an open question. What's plain to see, from TV
infotainment shows to magazine covers, is that she's got it.
And  knows how to keep it.

    Her friend David Geffen, the film and record impresario, has
an elegantly  simple explanation. She is, he says, the
"superstar sex goddess of  the video generation." Such attention
just accrues, almost by gravitational  force, to such a
creature. "She gets as much out of her talent as  anyone ever
has," says entertainment lawyer John Branca, who has
represented Michael Jackson and the Rolling Stones. Branca
counts  "controversy and sex appeal and great music" as
Madonna's major assets.  "Plus," he adds, "she's always
reinventing herself."

    It's all that well-timed invention that keeps the fans
interested  and the media poised, sometimes at odd angles.
Glamour got her on  its December cover by declaring her one of
its 10 Women of the Year  "for personifying women's power of
self-determination." Forbes brought  her right out front on its
October issue with a headline that asked,  AMERICA'S SMARTEST
BUSINESS WOMAN? By estimating that Madonna had  earned at least
$125 million over the past half-decade, the magazine
effectively answered its own question. But Madonna -- a high
school  graduate with a doctorate in street smarts -- likes to
do business,  not talk about it. Conversation is reserved for
matters of greater  moment, like music, AIDS, teenage pregnancy
and turning out the vote,  all issues on which she has taken a
strong and sometimes striking  stand.

    Before she can get anyone interested in what she thinks,
however,  she has to keep everyone interested in her. In this
vital skill of  show-biz survival she has no current rival. The
Justify My Love video  is a long way from shocking, but it is
a tad more risque than the  usual MTV fare. Madonna claims that
when she sent the music network  the video, "half of me thought
I was going to get away with it."  Surely she must have known
she was provoking a showdown, just as  surely as she knew what
to do about it when it happened.

    Her surprise may not be entirely disingenuous, but it is
understandable.  Justify My Love, shot at the Royal Monceau
Hotel in Paris and featuring  Madonna in heavy make-out mode
with current lover Tony Ward, has  the high-gloss,
fashion-magazine look of a Helmut Newton layout.  Directed by
rock-video ace Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Justify My Love  borrows
imagery from sources as various as The Night Porter and The
Blue Angel, then spices the proceedings with suggestions of
bondage,  voyeurism and multiple couplings among various
partners and genders.

    Except for the bisexuality and a certain tone of tenderness,
that's  pretty much what you get in the average heavy-metal
video too. But  because this is Madonna and not a band of metal
brains, the video  transcends its function as a marketing tool
and becomes something  closer to a statement.

    It treats sexual adventurism and fantasy playfully, the way
Madonna  always has. Her videos are at one with her music and
her personality:  they are all, in a figurative way, about safe
sex. The deliberate  artfulness of her various personas stresses
artificiality above all.  The common coolness of each role she
plays keeps everything at a  safe distance, stylizing all the
sensuality out of passion until  only the appearance remains.
In that way she can be provocative and  protective at the same
time. Watching Madonna on tape or in concert  work her way
through a tune like Express Yourself is not, say, like  watching
Rita Hayworth steam through Put the Blame on Mame. Hayworth
embodied sexuality; Madonna ritualizes it, teasingly and
compellingly,  but puts it right where it belongs for the
entertainment purposes  of an AIDS-ridden time: just out of
reach.

    "I wouldn't have turned out the way I was if I didn't have
all those  old-fashioned values to rebel against," Madonna once
told Johnny  Carson, and right there is the very core of her
appeal. Forget the  wild costumes and media teasing, the
flirtatious sacrilege and bluenose  bashing. She's fascinating
because she is America's favorite kind  of hero: a winner. The
old-fashioned value she would never rebel  against is success,
and in every controversy, whether spontaneous  or engineered,
she emerges victorious.

    Madonna wouldn't back off when Pepsi, having paid her $5
million  for a commercial endorsement, got nervous over the
possible fallout  from the Like a Prayer video, which showed her
boogying in front  of a burning crucifix. The company pulled its
Madonna commercial  after a single airing, but Madonna kept her
full fee. Winner by a  decision.

    In her current imbroglio, Madonna, against heavy odds, makes
MTV  look like an organization of aging church elders, and
herself a champion  of feminism and free expression in the
process. Winner by a knockout.

    At the end of Justify My Love, having given expression to
a free  range of sexual fantasy, she lopes down the hotel
corridor, rumpled  and laughing, satisfied and triumphant. Is
there anyone out there  who is still discomfited by the image
of a woman taking pleasure  in her own flights of erotic fancy?
Then Madonna is not only the  winner again, but she's the champ.