Madonna (49 page)

From 1992 to 2000, Madonna recorded one of the finest albums of her career, starred in a film that makes the rest of her movie roles forgettable, and won a major film award for her acting. On the other side of the coin, Madonna grabbed negative headlines with her controversial book,
Sex
, set the record for the number of times the word “fuck” could be said on network television in one half-hour appearance, and recorded an embarrassingly crude song about cunnilingus. Just about the same time that the world's shock reflexes thought that Madonna could finally surprise them no more, she announced that she was pregnant—for real this time!

During the same era, several pop singers who were once Madonna's prime competition on the record charts have seriously veered off course and/or stagnated. Prince changed his name to some ridiculous symbol and has continued to release forgettable albums comprised of previously unreleased cuts from his golden era of the 1980s. Michael Jackson's career skidded to a complete halt when a lawsuit claimed that his interest in underage boys reached beyond a normal concern for children: he kept them around him at all times. Boy George is in rehab, and in spite of periodic comebacks like his hit song “The Crying Game” (1992), he is no longer in Madonna's league of popularity or success. And, although Cyndi Lauper had released some critically acclaimed albums in the 1990s, she finished the decade as Cher's opening act and seemed to lose her once-sharp cutting edge.

Unlike many of her rivals, Madonna has only one thing on her mind at all times: herself. She never loses sight of her goals. During the 1990s, the fiercest competition that she confronted in the musical arena came from Whitney Houston and Cher. Whitney has also made the transition from recording star to movie star. It was a truly incredible feat when she took her recording of “I Will Always Love You” from her debut film,
The Bodyguard
, and turned it into the longest-running Number One hit of the century. Fortunately for Madonna, Whitney can't act convincingly either—
Waiting to Exhale
confirmed that fact. She is great to watch when she sings, but she can't deliver believable dialogue on camera to save her soul. Houston has also garnered a reputation for having a surly attitude, and her marriage to often drunken and disorderly singer Bobby Brown is as bizarre and tabloid-worthy as Madonna's marriage to Sean Penn. One of the main parallels between Whitney and Madonna is that they both change and develop with each album. However, Madonna has the most in common with Cher. Although Cher seemed to disappear from the forefront of high-profile projects during the middle of the decade, she became 1999's greatest comeback story with the song “Believe,” which went to Number One in dozens of countries.

Comparing Madonna's career activities to those of her contemporaries, it is fascinating to note that she never really disappears from the spotlight for long. Even when her latest projects are labeled artistic “bombs,” she still continues to make headlines. As always, she is as well known for her soap-opera personal life as she is heralded for her music or her acting career.

In the summer of 1992, it appeared the Madonna was debuting a new, mellower, more sensitive persona. On movie screens that season, her brief appearance as Marie in Woody Allen's black comedy
Shadows and Fog
was about as fleeting as that film's box-office life. She was next seen as a supporting player in the Penny Marshall—directed film about a woman's baseball team,
A League of Their Own
. It was a wise choice for Madonna. Not only did it put her in a box-office hit film, but through it she became very close friends with one of her costars, Rosie O'Donnell. It was stand-up comedienne O'Donnell's first major movie role, and on the set she and Madonna found that they had much in common, including the fact that both of them had lost their mothers to a fatal illness at an early age.

On radio airwaves Madonna logged her tenth Number One pop hit with the song “This Used to Be My Playground,” written by Madonna with Shep Pettibone and used in
A League of Their Own
. A sentimental ballad regretting the passage of time, it is still one of Madonna's most memorable and beautiful recordings. As a further goodwill gesture, that summer the only album that the song was featured on was the official album of the 1992 Olympics,
Barcelona Gold
.

Also, keeping consistent with her career-long AIDS awareness stance, and her on-going assistance to AIDS-oriented organizations, she contributed a song to the 1992 album
Red, Hot & Dance
, which also featured music from George Michael, Lisa Stansfield, and Seal. Her song was “Supernatural,” written by Madonna with Patrick Leonard and remixed by the Jamaican musical team of Sly & Robbie. Instead of giving the album a techno or house-music cut, her “Supernatural” is a sparse but percolating bossa nova number.

That summer, between her charming performance in
A League of Their Own
and the beautifully emotional ballad “This Used to Be My Playground,” a kinder, gentler side of Madonna was finally emerging, like a delicate flower after the rain. True to form, Madonna was simply setting herself in an innocent light to throw her fans off guard, in preparation for launching two of her most ambitious and overtly sexual creations: the
Sex
book and the equally shocking
Erotica
album.

The minute that summer ended, Madonna was back to showing her true colors—and her bare breasts. On September 24, the second day of autumn, during an AMFAR AIDS-benefit fashion show in Los Angeles, entitled “Jean-Paul Gaultier at the Shrine Auditorium,” Madonna strode onto the runway in a striped suspendered pant suit with her perky breasts fully exposed. As the photographers' cameras flashed like lightning during a desert storm, she stole the show. Who remembered the clothing designs after that? Only Madonna could turn an all-star celebrity fashion show into a night at Hooters and get away with it.

From a publishing and media-hype standpoint, Madonna's debut book was a smashing success. From the day it was released,
Sex
disappeared from book stores at an astonishing rate. Instantly selling out everywhere, it lodged itself at Number One on
The New York Times
best-seller list. At the time of its publication, with over a million copies of its first edition printed,
Sex
set the all-time record for an initial print-run of a book. Reportedly, it sold an astonishing 500,000 copies during the first week of its release. Physically, it was also an ambitious book to touch and behold. An unconventionally oversized photo book measuring 13
³
A by 11 inches,
Sex
featured embossed stainless steel covers, a metal spiral binding, and a CD included on the inside of every book. In addition, each copy was numbered with a stamped steel numeral on its cover. The contents were so controversial—and guarded—that each book came sealed in a silver mylar outer wrapper, with an overexposed life-size photograph of Madonna on the outer side of it, appearing to be writhing in sexual ecstasy. Inside, the 120-page book included arty brown cardboard end-pages and an eight-page photographic comic book.

After receiving extensive prepublication publicity,
Sex
was the “must see” item of the season when it appeared in stores on October 21, 1992. “Have you read Madonna's
Sex
book?” became the cocktail party question of the month, as the limited-edition book disappeared from bookshelves. Bookstores at shopping malls across America had store copies available for perusal only for persons over the age of eighteen. Another safeguard, insuring that the book would not be for children's eyes, was the book's steep cost, which sold briskly at $49.95.

Sex
is a book dealing with sexual activity in every configuration: men having sex with Madonna, women having sex with Madonna, men having sex with men while Madonna watches, Madonna having sex with herself, even Madonna in a sexually suggestive pose with a dog. A plotless picture book, some pages contain text in the form of poems, sexual fantasies, and ponderings about sex. Some of it is very sexy, some of it is lewd, some of it is purposely unsettling, and some of it is embarrassingly silly. Several of the pages feature Madonna in sexual situations, with largely pornographic text superimposed over the image.

A calculatingly naughty art book,
Sex
was photographed by Madonna's pal Steven Meisel, who has photographed her through much of her career. Some of the shots feature Madonna at her most beautiful. Photographed mainly in black and white, some of the pages were printed with different colors of ink to convey different moods.
Sex
must truly have been an art director's dream to work on.

Opening the stainless steel cover of
Sex
, the first thing that pops out is the exclusive mix of the song “Erotic,” which was naturally Madonna's latest single release. It comes packaged in a silver mylar zip-lock bag, purposely looking like a large sealed condom.

On the inside of the brown cardboard end page Madonna writes, “This is a book about sex. Sex is not love.” She then goes on to say that if she were to perform any of the “fantasies” that take place in the book, her sex partner would assuredly be wearing a condom. She ends the introduction to
Sex
with the disclaimer, “Nothing in this book is true. I made it all up.” (247)

One of the things that she made up for the
Sex
book was the dominatrix named “Dita.” As Madonna's sexual alter ego, Dita crafted handwritten messages to her fictional boyfriend Johnny. In these letters she talks about having sex with her girlfriend Ingrid, and how they both long to have sex with Johnny again.

One of the first photographs of Madonna features her in a pair of crotchless leather panties, a nipple-revealing black-leather studded bra, and a leather eye mask on her face. The middle finger of her left hand is in her mouth, and the middle of her right hand disappears deep in the crotch of her panties. On the facing page are the words: “I'll teach you how to fuck.” Any questions?

Progressing into this photo essay of a book, the first section is filled with full-page photographs of Madonna romping with two intimidating-looking, shaven-headed, nipple-pierced lesbians. On one page the lesbians have Madonna tied to a chair with rope. On another, Madonna, in leather, straddles a drinking fountain while one of her butch lady friends drinks from it. The next section takes place in a male-and-female S&M dungeon. Bare-breasted, Madonna whips a woman's behind, has oral sex performed on her while her legs are in the air in a sling, and has intercourse on a jukebox. Handwritten messages from “Dita” deal with the merits of “ass fucking.”

There is a disturbing photo of Madonna in a Catholic school-girl's skirt being raped by two skinheads, as well as images of her licking a man's ass and tugging on his jockstrap, putting lipstick on a pretty boy she has in bed, shaving someone's pubic hair off, and sucking on a man's big toe.

One page contains a five-sentence memoir about discovering masturbation. The episode ends with the phrase, “honey poured from my 14-year-old gash and I wept.” (247) Opposite it, there is a photograph of Madonna, shaded in the screen of a baby crib, sucking her thumb. It is more embarrassing than erotic.

Another segment depicts a glamourously dressed Madonna and a tuxedo-wearing male date attending a male strip show, and finally having sex with the strippers. Throughout the book, some of the photography is beautiful, including a nude of Madonna straddling a giant sculpture of a fish that spouts water into a swimming pool. There are also photographic guest stars in various states of dress and undress, including Naomi Campbell, Vanilla Ice, Big Daddy Kane, and Isabella Rossellini. Also featured are the women and the man with whom Madonna was personally involved at the time: Ingrid Casaras and Tony Ward.

Probably the most famous shot from the book is one of Madonna stark naked—except for a pair of high heels, a purse in her hand, and a cigarette dangling from her mouth—hitchhiking on a Miami street in broad daylight. From Vanilla Ice with his hand down Madonna's pants, to Isabella Rossellini in male drag fondling Madonna, to Big Daddy Kane and Naomi Campbell forming a sexual Oreo-cookie threesome with creamy white Madonna in the middle,
Sex
thrust itself right in America's face, flaunting sexual activity in every possible variation. According to Madonna, this was a book with a statement. She referred to it as “a challenge to the hypocrisy of the world.” (246) Whatever.

Explaining her visual influences, Madonna claimed, “In the
Sex
book, we [she and photographer Meisel] were influenced by everything from Visconti to Warhol to a kind of
Valley of the Dolls
aesthetic—you know, the sort of drunken, bored housewife wandering naked down a street hitchhiking in her high heels. I pushed that as far as I could.” (246) And
push it
she did.

Although it was a huge hit at bookstores for several weeks, the critics were less than kind. Richard Harrington of
The Washington Post
laughingly called it “an over-sized, overpriced coffee-table book of hardcore sexual fantasies sure to separate the wannabes from the wanna-be-far-aways…. Is
Sex
shocking? Not really. Mostly because it's Madonna, and in a way we've come to expect this from her…. Is
Sex
boring? Actually, yes.” (248)

Ever the cross-promoter, Madonna simultaneously released her ninth album,
Erotica
. The cover duplicated the same monochromatic blue-ink cover shot of Madonna that appeared on the mylar cover of
Sex
, and the back cover of
Erotica
featured the photo of Madonna sucking a man's big toe. Echoing the themes and stylistic mood swings of the
Sex
book,
Erotica
follows much the same path. Some of it is artistic yet suggestive, some of it is genuinely sexy, and some of it is lewd and musically unappealing.