Re: Truth or Dare?

[dwelch@devnull.mpd.tandem.com (Dan Welch)]

In article <9106271859.AA03335@c5_aspen.aspen>:
>"Truth Or Dare"?  Yikes!  It's been a long time since I was locked in a
>room with someone as boring, selfish, and cunningly shallow as Madonna --
>for two and a half hours.  Yes, she's an expert at generating profitable
>images, and yes, she knows her history (at least of the visual arts...
>nice tribute to Kubrick in one of her dance sequences)
I think you're missing the point here.  Madonna is, IMHO, a fascinating
performer, because she is one of the few (perhaps the only one) who has
openly and unashamedly cast aside the "ars gratia artis" theme which in
today's world has become pretty much a thing of the past.  She is not
pretending to be a great artist, like so many do.  Madonna has made an
art form out of advertising; it's a new thing, and something that is
much more real than a lot of the crap being touted as "true art".

>  Maddonna's motivation stops at her wallet.
If that was the case, then why does she work so hard at her shows?  Didn't
you see the scene where she almost castrated the sound man because her
microphone stopped working?  Or how she expended energy to keep the
personalities of her crew evenly balanced?  None of these things really
made her money.  MOST of the people who went to her shows couldn't probably
care less about sound quality, or dramatic sets, etc.  She could get up
and do virtually nothing for 90 minutes, and have people pay $20 to see
it.

(Get out the flamethrowers, ya'll)
Actually, her shows were very impressive.  I was expecting straight
song-and-kinda-dance.  Instead, there were elaborate sets, friendly
bantering, and impressive linkage (the scene before "Oh, Father" was
particularly effective).  It reminded me of ... no, I won't say it,
the faithful will rise up and kill me.  Let's just say that if Madonna
had been in Hammersmith Odeon about, oh, 12 years ago, I wouldn't be
a bit surprised.

>(Notice how quickly she became a proponent of
>free speech when the Pope threatened to shut down her shows in Rome?)

I think this is really unfair.  Tell me, do you go around every day,
stopping people on the street, telling them that free speech is a good
thing?  Why should she champion the cause until it is threatened?

All this makes me sound like a Madonna fan, which I'm not.  But I respect
her a lot, because I am never quite able to pin her down, as a person
or an artist, and that, to me, is the mark of someone who is very
talented at what he/she is doing.

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| Daniel Welch			      | "Kate Bush is the sort of performer   |
| Tandem Computers, Inc.	      | for whom the word 'superstar' is      |
| Austin, TX, USA		      | belittling."			      |
| dwelch@devnull.mpd.tandem.com	      |		Mike Davies, _Melody_Maker_   |
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