Madonna’s Secular Liturgy
As one wag said, there seems to have been a football game at the recent Madonna concert in Indianapolis. No one ever said Madonna didn’t know how to put on a show. I was blown away by her entrance (to Vogue) and the last dance number (to Like a Prayer).
Madonna, who was raised Catholic, has long been involved in Kabbalah–Jewish Mysticism. But there were rumors last year that she was returning to Catholicism–and to Opus Dei, specifically. She has not been shy to explore religious themes-even in very controversial ways. But my guess is that Opus Dei isn’t a good fit for Madonna. Among other things, she is going to have trouble getting her, um, mode of transportation (see above) through the same door with her at the Opus Dei Center in New York–I’ve heard there are separate entrances for men and women–separate entrances–that’s not exactly Madonna’s modus operandi.
What struck me watching this, and her other videos, is the attention to detail. No one has ever said Madonna wasn’t a hard worker, a perfectionist, even. Think about the Superbowl performance: hours and hours of work for a nine minute spectacle, and then it’s gone. More generally, performers have something to tell us, it seems, about the relationship between chronos (the extension of time) and kairos (a transformative moment).
Here, by the way, are the original videos of Vogue and Like a Prayer. Clearly influenced by the religion of her upbringing, I think Madonna has forged a secular liturgical sensibility.
I’m all for the destabilization of categories and the permeability of boundaries, but it probably makes more sense to say that Madonna has long been associated with the Kabbalah Centre than with Kabbalah per se.
I can’t believe I’m even taking the time to write anything about the eternal “Material Girl” Madonna. Please, don’t take anything seriously from this woman.
Her performance at the Super Bowl [the ultimate pagan ritual to the capitalist gods] reaffirmed for me that Madonna is a hopelessly shallow person and artist. Didn’t she look a bit past her time/peak stumbling around trying to keep up with all those nearly naked, nubile, and way-to-nimble dancers? It seems that the NFL went trolling in strip bars looking for pole dancers to market all that over-priced commercial time spaced between some violent football.
If, IF, Madonna has now developed an interest in Opus Dei, it is probably more rooted in the hooky sadomasochistic sexual arousal Madonna felt at the sight of the Opus Dei homicidal albino “numerary” flagellating himself as he prepared to assassinate some nun????????????
Madonna’s pretty boring, but Nicki Minaj… ain’t. Ergo my tuning in for the halftime interlude to the ultimate pagan ritual to the capitalist gods.
Liturgical or not, the “world peace” at the end was the kind of overreach that makes Madonna Madonna, and makes me hoot with laughter (but in an appreciative way). I’m not sure about the “nine-minute spectacle and then it’s gone,” though — I think the hours and hours of work and the show itself were about launching a comeback. I was hoping for a greatest-hits performance, myself, but she was in it to promote her (awful) new single and her upcoming tour. Just heard on the radio that she’ll be at Yankee Stadium in the fall!
Ms. Kaveny,
Madonna lip synced her performance. It was pre-recorded. This invalidates her performance in the eyes of many people. Of all the musical acts I saw many years ago (The Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead, Beach Boys, The Who, Bob Dylan, The Band, Rod Stewart, Joni Mitchell, The Allman Brothers, Eric Clapton, etc, etc) no one ever lip synced. They would have been hooted off of the stage if they had. The acts I see today never contain lip syncing. Is it really a “live act” when the vocals are pre-recorded? I think you have to get by this fact before you can start talking about liturgical sensibilities and transformative moments.
Yes, she’s a hoot–and I actually didn’t like the new song all that much.
But in understanding Madonna, I think Susan Sontag’s “Notes on Camp” is helpful.
http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/Sontag-NotesOnCamp-1964.html
I give her credit for walking in those shoes!
Frank, I’m afraid everybody lip synchs at the Super Bowl. The alternative is sounding terrible. I thought she did a fairly good job compared to other acts I’ve seen, probably because she does it plenty (vigorous dancing and singing at the same time is another recipe for sounding terrible, especially when your voice is only middling in the first place).
Little children on hand; so Madonna got turned off. Seems like that was the right decision!
She was very modestly dressed, Peggy!
The Who didn’t lip-sync and did sound terrible (which pains me to say as a big fan of the Who). U2 didn’t lip sync in 2002 and it was a great show (the 9/11 tribute obviously helped make it special): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqtkik7nTik
I don’t think Prince lip-synced in 2007 and I recall it being a good show (purple rain in the rain, iirc).
As for madonna, I watched it with the wife & kids and didn’t find too much to object too (I didn;t notice the middle finger from MIA but did notice the screen blur afterwards). My kids liked that she sang with LMFAO (they know parts of the song from the kia commercial with the dancing hamsters and robots and haven’t asked what LMFAO means). I really liked the graphic display on the field in front of the stage, which had living magazine covers and pictures of garbo, hayworth, et al during “vogue”, made it look like the numbers on the field were bouncing off the turf during the drum line portion, and provided the world peace image at the end.
Maybe it was the shoes she is said (above) to have been stumbling around in….
For what it’s worth, my absolutely beautiful and brilliant 11 year old granddaughter turned a vigorous two thumbs down on Madonna’s performance.
I’m glad I was doing something else!
What was up, I mean down, with the Don Giovanni exit?
Is this a serious discussion? Admittedly it beats continuing to beat the contraceptive/HHS/outraged Catholic bishop victims horses to death, as has been done here.
But come on – Madonna??
Opine on something momentous –
The California Appeals Court declaring Prop 8 to be unconstitutional.
The 4 Italian priests being indicted for money-laundering via the IOR.
If you want to deal with humor, talk about the Vatican abuse summit.
Bernard – clearly, she’s exceptionally gifted :-)
Cathleen – I don’t want to be curmudgeonly about this – I’m glad that you like Madonna. I’m just wondering if “secular liturgy” is the most apt term. Istm there really are examples of ‘secular liturgy’ in our society: social, ritual acts that have no particularly religious meaning but are part of the glue that binds us together. A couple of simple examples would be in schoolrooms all over the country, where the school day begins with a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, or the ceremony with the national anthem at sporting events. Or a 4th of July parade.
What Madonna does, istm, is bring elements of religious ritual into her act – into that blend of artistry, ideology and commerce that characterizes pop music.
Christina Aguilera didn’t lip-sync the national anthem at the Super Bowl; hence, her flub of the lyrics.
As for Madonna, I’m just glad she went for subtlety and understatement.
The young people of today are as far removed in time from Madonna’s early career (early 1980s) as those of us who came of age when the Beatles were first popular (early 1960s) were from the music of the early 1930s.
Here are the top artists and hits of 1932:
Al Jolson
Hallelujah, I’m A Bum
Bert Ambrose and his Orchestra
The Clouds Will Soon Roll By
Bing Crosby and the Mills Brothers
Dinah
Bing Crosby
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
Love Me Tonight, Please
Where The Blue Of The Night (Meets The Gold of the Day)
Cab Colloway and his Cotton Club Orchestra
I’ve Got The World On A String
Charlie Kunz
Lovely To Look At
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
Duke Ellington
Blue Ramble
Moon Over Dixie
Rose Room (In Sunny Roseland),
Fred Astaire and Leo Reisman
Night and Day
George Olson
Say It Isn’t So, Lullaby of the Leaves
Guy Lombardo
How Deep Is The Ocean?
Paradise
Too Many Tears
We Just Couldn’t Say Goodbye
Joe Rines and his Orchestra
Underneath the Harlem Moon
Kate Smith and Guy Lombardo
River, Stay ‘Way From My Door
Kate Smith
River, Stay ‘Way My Door, Too late
Leo Reisman
Paradise
Louis Armstrong
All of Me
Between The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Body and Soul
China My Chinatown
Home
Keepin Out of Mischief Now
Kickin’ The Gong Around
Lawd, You Made the NIght Too Long
Love You Funny Thing
Shine
Sweethearts on Parade
You Can Depend On Me
Maurice Chevalier
MiMi
Pat O’Malley
Goopy Geer
Paul Whiteman
All of Me
How Deep Is The Ocean?
I’ll Follow You
I’ll Never Be The Same
Let’s Put Out The Lights
Three On a Match
We Just Couldn’t Say Goodbye
Willow Weep For Me
Ray Noble
Try A Little Tenderness
Rudy Vallee and his Connecticut Yankees
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
Ruth Etting
It WAs So Beautiful
Ted Fio Rito
Willow Weep For Me
Ted Lewis and his Orchestra
In a Shanty In a shanty Old Town
Tommy Dorsey
Take My Hand, Precious Lord
I didn’t have much use for the music of the early 1930s when I was listening to the Beatles.
I think the Superbowl is a secular feast–and her event was, in my view, a secular liturgy.
Bernard, ask your granddaughter what she thinks of Madonna’s “Vogue” music video. And whom does she like?
Yes, I’m old. But I did fly back from London to Detroit with LMFAO last summer. I had no idea who they were. None of us got upgraded, as I recall, so we were all kind of cranky. Their business manager sat next to me–he seemed remarkably level-headed and nice.
David, if Al Jolson had still been touring and releasing albums in the 60s–and not, you know, mouldering in a hole in the ground–you may have been on your radar.
Cathleen, would that you had stormed the cockpit and brought that plane down into the Atlantic. Surely removing LMFAO from the world would be worth the sacrifice?
Cathleen, surely you know that you do not interrogate an 11 year old.
As I watch Madonna desperately inventing and reinventing herself, I think she becomes more and more some kind of caricature. What in the world is she looking for? As the ursatz Roman soldiers enter, pulling her conveyance whose details escape me, it seemed so forced and overstated. Lots of attention to detail, I guess. Kind of like that house Chevy Chase decorated for Christmas. And the “peace” at the end? Like the tin cans dragging behind a car at a wedding.
“I think the Superbowl is a secular feast”
That is very true! And in fact, it’s been known to pre-empt Sunday evening masses around here.
Re Willian Taylor: I thought Madonna look-alike Lady Gaga did the Roman soldier/slave trek. I know this will put a black mark on my rep, but for some time I thought Lady Gaga was Madonna reinventing herself! Apparently not.
William Nickol: what about Patti Page, “How Much Is That Little Doggie in the Window?”
Madonna’s time has come and gone. Lady Gaga has now filled the spot previously occupied by Madonna including the whole Catholic rebellion thing. If I hear the song, Judas, one more time I will scream thanks to my daughter. I had a long talk with her about that and she explained that it is about inner conflict and I must say her video has more interesting imagery than Madonna’s like a prayer. The waterfall and pause and silence as baptism imagery, etc.
As for Madonna’s performance….well…. lets just say that she is no Cher or Tina Turner when it comes to being able to move and perform as she ages.
When I look at Madonna I immediately identify her with Michelangelo’s David in drag. Only she moves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo#Statue_of_David
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-Invention_World_Tour
Lady Gaga and her liturgy are welcomed at her alma mater, Sacred Heart School:
“no one questioned Ms. Germanotta’s performance of her song ‘Bad Romance’ in front of the high school students singing into a phallic-shaped microphone. Were a priest or a religious sister to do something of the sort, the law suits would (rightly) accumulate faster than Lady Gaga’s costume changes. As it stands, parents, children and teaching faculty proudly stood by and applauded. The New York notion of protecting youth and setting a good example for young women seems oddly contradictory.”
http://www.zenit.org/article-34147?l=english
Patrick, if Sacred Heart School didn’t want to invite her, they didn’t have to invite her. I’m not sure what Ms. Lev means about law suits–any one can complain about Lady Gaga, and protest the invitation.
And, I don’t know how to put this any other way: aren’t most standard issue hand-held microphones “phallic-shaped”?
mics: maybe most, but I’ve seen some breast-shaped ones.
I just think Cathy should be congratulated for bein gone of the(few) posters here who tries to look at contemporary pop culture wit hall its warts and bring some thought on its impact in the value systems operating today.
If we want to reach out to our young, we better have a better understanding of their view than seeming to be more like the crazy guy who shows up on Anderson Cooper talikng abou tall the evil phallic symbols at the Denver airport.
It’s nice to know that there’s gender complementarity in the field of electronics, Peggy!
FYI, the story about the Material Girl and Opus Dei was simply untrue.
After the story was published, we (in Opus Dei’s press office) did our own research trying to figure out what had actually happened. The newspaper told us they had seen a car, with someone from Madonna’s house in London, go somewhere near a local center of Opus Dei. Well, we made our own inquiries, and, no, Madonna wasn’t involved at all in any of our activities, had not been by to visit the center. There was nothing to the story.
(Full disclosure: I work in the press office of Opus Dei.)
That Opus Dei “story” reminds me of the time I happened to see Madonna on The Rosie O’Donnell Show, years ago. As I recall it, Madonna had recently had a baby, and when Rosie announced her next guest (“Please welcome Madonna!”) she walked out onto the set carrying an infant. The studio audience went wild. After they quieted down, Rosie said, “Madonna… This is not your baby.” Madonna said, “I know, but I read someplace that I’d be bringing my baby onto the show, so I didn’t want to disappoint.”