Goddess: Inside Madonna (56 page)

Artists frequently draw from their personal experiences to express themselves in their art, although they tend to sanitize and edit out certain feelings and facts to make their paintings, books, and music palatable for public consumption. Madonna, unlike the vast majority, has exaggerated and sensationalized those experiences that have touched or traumatized her the most. She finds sitting down to be interviewed boring, and to amuse herself, she creates rumors that she ends up denying. Her attention span is short, her sense of discipline and tenacity are evident only when she is in movement, either dancing or singing or creating a sequence in one of her stage shows. Her efforts produce a sound or an image that gives her the incentive and confidence to keep on creating more sounds and images to be used in future performances.

In the nineteenth century, talent and originality were the ingredients that made a star. The impresario of the era was Phineas T. Barnum, a canny showman whose genius was in his instinctive ability not only to recognize talent but also to convince the public that he was merely responding to their demands and desires rather than setting the trends himself. We live in an era in which image rather than talent is crucial, and aberration rather than originality is vital to success. If any superstar of the last two decades has used image and projected aberration, it is Madonna. A self-invented chameleon who, like Barnum, knows which trends and tendencies will ultimately capture the public’s attention, she has succeeded in recycling ideas and tailoring them to fit her many different images.

While rebellion against her father and the Catholic Church were once the modus vivendi that catapulted her to fame, her rebellion against herself or the different images she has created for herself is now her raison d’être. Fame to Madonna has become an old lover whose every word, gesture, and technique she knows by heart. Though there is comfort in that kind of familiarity, she seems anxious to offer the public a glimpse of yet another side of her personality. Just as she has orchestrated her career from the beginning by challenging some of the most fundamental issues—religion, God, sex, death, life, and birth—she is currently changing her message from sex to birth, from death to spiritual growth.

During the past few years, Madonna has re-created herself once again, and that change was never more evident than when she appeared on Rosie O’Donnell’s show to promote her film
The Next Best Thing
. Madonna, the forty-something single mother of a four-year-old, about to become pregnant with the baby boy she would deliver on August 11, 2000, was dressed smartly in a black Issey Miyake ensemble, her golden hair flowing to her shoulders, her face lightly madeup, her demeanor more coy than carnal. At one point during the program, Rosie ran a tape of Madonna in 1984, one of her first videos in which she appeared wearing the “boy toy” belt. Dressed in crinolines, dozens of chains, charms, and crucifixes draped around her neck, many pierced earrings, white ankle socks and short black boots, Madonna cavorted and danced around the stage. When the clip ended, Madonna responded like an amazed parent who had watched the antics of an adolescent daughter. “What was I thinking?” she asked 20 million spectators. “I mean, can you believe that I used to tie a pair of old tights around my hair?”

The grown-up woman was asking her public to commiserate with her about her rebellious behavior. But then, we are her family, the people from whom she expects unconditional love, the fans who have witnessed her mature as she has passed through all the predictable adolescent stages of anger, frustration, and defiance until she has finally grown up to become a responsible mother. In fact, more than her fans or adoring public, we are all the mother who was taken from her when she was barely six.

In her evolution, Madonna decided to move to London and start a new phase of her life. Unmarried, still sensitive because of her first failure with Sean Penn, having outgrown the subservient male who is all too willing to service her, or in the case of Carlos Leon to impregnate her, determined to excel on another level and, above all, to have another child, Madonna developed a new set of professional priorities when it came to her music as well as personal tastes. Once again, her sense of reality and survivor instinct propelled her to make that decision. From a professional point of view, when she appeared on Rosie O’Donnell’s show with Benjamin Bratt to promote
The Next Best Thing
, the reviews had already been abysmal. This time around, the critics had hurt her more deeply than with any of the other negative press she had received for her previously unsuccessful movie ventures. Painfully aware that she was not getting younger, either for motherhood or stardom, Madonna knew that the time had come to reinvent herself once again. One of her spiritual advisers, a lapsed Catholic priest from Los Angeles, described her state of mind. “Madonna believed that Europe revered and admired older women, and in fact, she was very aware that actresses like Catherine Deneuve, Charlotte Rampling, and Isabelle Adjani, for instance, were still considered beautiful and getting roles. She knew that at forty-something, she couldn’t keep undressing and prancing around a stage, and she was very sensitive to the ridiculous image of the ‘older-woman, younger-man syndrome.’” One of her new friends in London recalled a transatlantic telephone conversation with Madonna long before Guy Ritchie was in her life. Madonna tearfully confessed that it was getting “harder and harder to find a guy that she wanted to go out with and have a relationship with.” The friend continued, “She said it was like high school, when she had this bad reputation before she even lost her virginity. In the States, she had this slutty, vulgar, bad-girl image that she couldn’t shake, and because of it, the kind of men she wanted just didn’t take her seriously.”

Shortly after she arrived in London with her daughter, Lourdes, Madonna called a press conference during which she explained that she was a changed woman. She attributed her past rebellion to the trauma she had experienced after her mother’s death. Having a child had made it possible to make peace with her past. Her intention was to fall in love and eventually have another baby.

Her meeting Guy Ritchie, the British movie director, their affair, the birth of their son, Rocco, and their marriage in Scotland are all part of Madonna’s current incarnation as the proper English wife and mother. It is difficult to imagine that her new English accent, classic Prada wardrobe, Manolo Blahnik mules, and $10 million house in the trendy West End of London means that her life has become static.

From The Madonna to Cinderella, from Marilyn to Evita, from the small-town girl to the woman who captured the attention of millions to become an icon of the last two decades, it is unlikely that she won’t surprise us again.

After Madonna finished filming
Evita
in Buenos Aires, a messenger from the Casa Rosada dropped off a package for her at her hotel. It was a gift from President Menem, Eva Perón’s autobiography, entitled
La Razón de mi vida
, or
The Reason for My Life
. Enclosed was a note written in English and signed by the president, explaining that, for many years, the book had been compulsory reading in every grammar school and was, in fact, still considered as sacred as the Bible by many adults. If one particular phrase had captured people’s imaginations, the note continued, it appeared at the end. “I will return,” Evita had written, “and I will be millions.”

Once again, Eva Perón’s words reflected Madonna’s sentiments.

The abbreviation N/A stands for nonattributable. An asterisk denotes a pseudonym.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

PART ONE: DON’T CRY FOR ME ARGENTINA

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

PART TWO: WHO’S THAT GIRL?

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen