Madonna and me
Apr. 26th, 2010 08:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hazelkI had a Madonna phase in the 80’s (didn’t everyone). It never went as far as bleaching my hair with napalm but I did spend actual money on that Sex book (you can pretend you don’t know me). It started with a review of Desperately Seeking Susan (a perfectly OK movie) where the reviewer was a little damming with faint praise about Madonna’s acting (little did they know then what was to come) but described her as having one of those faces that belongs on a screen, back lit and blown up 30 ft high to be stared at longingly from the safe dark.
Or something like that but I fell for the idea and later the videos. Therein lies the big difference between her Madjness and the latest aspirant. Madonna wants to be a star not a Gagaist deconstruction of one. It’s one of nature’s great ironies that she’s no actress. She can pose and she can dance but she can’t act her way out of a paper bag. Sue Sylvester gives good pose but she still dances like a gym teacher and that’s just one reason why Jane Lynch is a genius.
The Ben Elton oeuvre has given musicals structured around a single band/performer/writer’s songs a bad rep but it wasn’t always that way. Singing in the Rain was originally conceived as a vehicle for Arthur Freed’s back catalogue. The trick, if there is a trick, is really no more than having great numbers, performers and something to say. Singing in the Rain had a whole bunch of things to say about old Hollywood. Also Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor and Lina Lamont to steal the show. Glee’s resident Lina is Sue Sylvester and for all the talk about empowerment and girl equality this was mostly about Sue’s monstrous obsession. Possibly proving a greater force for good than any of Schuester’s clueless well-meaning.
Ray of Light on stilts and 4 minutes by marching band are proof, if proof were needed, that Sue Sylvester is the Busby Berkeley of cheerleading. If the New Directions kids would only see that and team up with the Cheerios they could squash Vocal Adrenaline like a bug but then there’d be no more show. Those two and the boy band version of What it feels like for a girl were the nearest the episode came to musical plausibility, for the rest it gloriously abandoned any hold on realism and let every number spring fully formed and unrehearsed complete with backing choirs, costumes and production values. “Vogue” take one. Take *one* and there you have it but with the twist that, unlike as advertised, it wasn’t Sue Sylvester’s Vogue but Kurt and Mercedes’s. Madonna’s original having been inspired/appropriated from black gay club dancers in a weird way this felt like giving it back to them.
Or something like that but I fell for the idea and later the videos. Therein lies the big difference between her Madjness and the latest aspirant. Madonna wants to be a star not a Gagaist deconstruction of one. It’s one of nature’s great ironies that she’s no actress. She can pose and she can dance but she can’t act her way out of a paper bag. Sue Sylvester gives good pose but she still dances like a gym teacher and that’s just one reason why Jane Lynch is a genius.
The Ben Elton oeuvre has given musicals structured around a single band/performer/writer’s songs a bad rep but it wasn’t always that way. Singing in the Rain was originally conceived as a vehicle for Arthur Freed’s back catalogue. The trick, if there is a trick, is really no more than having great numbers, performers and something to say. Singing in the Rain had a whole bunch of things to say about old Hollywood. Also Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor and Lina Lamont to steal the show. Glee’s resident Lina is Sue Sylvester and for all the talk about empowerment and girl equality this was mostly about Sue’s monstrous obsession. Possibly proving a greater force for good than any of Schuester’s clueless well-meaning.
Ray of Light on stilts and 4 minutes by marching band are proof, if proof were needed, that Sue Sylvester is the Busby Berkeley of cheerleading. If the New Directions kids would only see that and team up with the Cheerios they could squash Vocal Adrenaline like a bug but then there’d be no more show. Those two and the boy band version of What it feels like for a girl were the nearest the episode came to musical plausibility, for the rest it gloriously abandoned any hold on realism and let every number spring fully formed and unrehearsed complete with backing choirs, costumes and production values. “Vogue” take one. Take *one* and there you have it but with the twist that, unlike as advertised, it wasn’t Sue Sylvester’s Vogue but Kurt and Mercedes’s. Madonna’s original having been inspired/appropriated from black gay club dancers in a weird way this felt like giving it back to them.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-26 10:46 pm (UTC)