TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=90TT3398> <link 93HT0702> <link 90TT2033> <title> Dec. 17, 1990: Madonna Draws A Line </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990 Dec. 17, 1990 The Sleep Gap </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> PEOPLE, Page 74 Madonna Draws a Line </hdr> <body> 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. </body> </article> </text>