Unphased by years of painstaking Kabbalah study, with her new MDNA Tour DVD, Madonna proves she's still the ultimate Material Girl

After seeing Madonna's new MDNA tour DVD last night, I'm not sure I will continue to consider myself a "fan" of her work. Of course I will always admire her as a performer, and I do see some *slight* growth in her spirituality since 1991. But the main message seems to be, "I want you to love me. More than you do Lady Gaga please, because I'm the real queen and she's a fake. If you don't believe me, please just recognize on my behalf that endless consumerism is wonderful. And I have a right to do it since I'm rich rich rich. Hell I can even hire double-jointed dancers if I want to, and require them to do routines that will inevitably result in major premature arthritis! Love is a good thing, and so is dancing free. Only when dancing to my songs will you feel this free. Especially if you're on MDMA. And go ahead and swear a lot and threaten people with guns, especially if you live in Miami. Oh and p.s. by the way, I haven't aged a day! Ta!"

That said, I truly enjoyed the Like a Virgin vaudeville torch singing moment, which was staged a la Marlene Dietrich. The melody was slowed down substantially and modulated into a minor-key variation, which proved to be a wise and lovely move, as it added a nostalgic melancholic feeling to a song that had previously been about maintaining a feeling of youth. For the song, M bravely wore nothing but her hallmark black lace agent provocateur pantigirdle, which allowed us to witness both the stunning discipline that she has apparently brought to her physical upkeep, and also, the inevitability of the body's decline no matter the hard work. Her velvety singing, multi-contoured and even growly at times, was accompanied only by a tuxedo-clad dark-skinned pianist and the sounds of the crowd's delight. The wistfulness worked for me here because, regardless of the ironic nature of M's salacious wardrobe choices (some might say she looked like an unashamed washed up hooker in that outfit... certainly she looks further than ever from "vestal" or "immaculate"), it functioned as one of the few moments in the show that Madonna seemed to be acknowledging her age with poignant candor, fearlessness, and depth. While performing this vintage reworked song, Madonna touched herself in her "ageless" nether regions and writhed around sensually on the floor, reaching greedily like a rookie-turned-professional-drag-queen-stripper for the crumpled dollars and other large bills that front-row audience members carelessly tossed onto the stage. I thought this part showed real emotional connection, honesty, and spiritual growth.

No spring chicken myself, I felt inspired by the unabashed character she brought to her self-representation as a fully sexually-realized (if slightly desperate) woman, insistent that "aging gracefully" is in the eye of the beholder. (That said, I couldn't help but cringe during the part where the muscular young dancer tightened her corset to the point where she looked like her ribs might crack. Gross!)

I also sincerely loved the numbers with the Spanish drummers, that were more "old world" musically. Also when she picked up the guitar (this happened several times... wow... she sure can strum!) Admittedly, it was hard for me not to appreciate the fabulosity of the costumes in the Vogue section, which were the most stunning to date that I've seen for that number (especially notable on her was the female exoskeleton-like black leather piece over a man's pinstripe pants and white silky blouse). But the "new" version of the song comes off as being less about "letting your body come with the flow" and more about the potential for endless consumption and acquisition, especially if you managed to pull off appropriating (stealing) a black gay inner-city art form and got really rich doing it. In this way, Madonna proves herself to remain the ultimate Material Girl, reminding us all that she was slapping her colorfully non-white female backup singers long before Miley Cyrus ever went anime-punk, swatting and ogling a 21st Century Hottentot buttock.

I'll give that M's use of religious imagery was still edgy and cool, especially during her entrance, in which her makeup evoked Gina Lollobrigida with Anita Ekberg hair (holding a pistol in this getup, she seemed to be attempting to evoke a character in Russ Meyer's 1965 exploitation film Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!)

Film still from:
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Lots of blood-red cardinal robes over bare rosary-draped waifish bodies, some bearded horn-blowing Kabbalists, and meditating Tibetan  monks framed the opening and closing numbers nicely. (Although the ecumenism of M invoking St. Sebastian, St. Anthony, and Christ on the cross while Hindu gods and goddesses performed mudra-esque hand/wrist circular gestures in the background was somewhat lost on me, and felt a tad forced.) The majorette routine for her bubble-gum single Give Me All Your Luvin was well-choreographed, and Madonna's highly physical risk-laden dancing was mostly flawless throughout the evening, no easy feat for a 55-year-old of any gender. Her warbly singing seemed live and on key for the most part. I honestly do admire her precision as a performer. 

But go ahead and call me a prude: I just felt that the offensive repeated images of her blowing random swarthy male dancers' brains out (some wearing hoodies, if memory serves) with a rifle at the beginning of the show was not so much horrendously tasteless as unforgivably rotten, no matter how much anti-violence charity work she does in Africa or elsewhere when not on stage. This section seemed a Lady Gaga/Beyonce Telephone rip-off (which was, in turn, a parody/rip-off of Quentin Tarantino's oevre), only without the Thelma-and-Louise-as-biracial-lesbian-girl-power connotation. Madonna apparently claimed the violence here was necessary for the show to "move from darkness to light" (I paraphrase), yet I found that the concert never fully did so. Unlike in Meyer or Tarantino or Telephone, the violence here was not situated within a narrative that justified its love/camp/shock-value, but rather seemed to come glamor-wrapped / tidily prepackaged as "violence/murder/stardom/celebrity/wealth/consumption/joy/fabulous" (that was the progression for me, rather than darkness => light.) I hate to write this, but the violence here was not nearly as premeditated, intentional, or self-critical as Gaga's fame monster paradigm, in my opinion, and it was disappointing to see M pulling this thievery so artlessly.

Without intending to underestimate her audience's analytical abilities, I have very little faith that she included these violent images with any conscious intent about how they should be interpreted in terms of their contributing to an overall coherent "meaning" for her performance. The violence seemed plunked and gratuitous, although on the other hand, it did evoke a feeling of Greek tragedy. (Madonna as Clytemnestra Zimmerman?) But her blatant encouragement of the crowd's presumed use of MDMA/Ecstasy in an-expletive-laden rant just seemed immature and stupid, and counteracted the possibility of the performance having any positive Brechtian effect or sustainable catharsis.

I guess I'm glad that Madonna still sees herself as a person with a reason to rebel. After all, the world has never let her express herself (although she does throw in a nice moment of nationalism, where she professes her pride in being a freedom-loving, fully-expressed citizen of the U.S.A. So which is it? Are you oppressed or not? Are you a global citizen or an American patriot?) It is difficult not to admire her "I don't give a shit what people think of me" attitude, and I truly enjoyed the celebratory moments of joy in the show. I just think there might have been more of them if she hadn't spent as much time saying "me me me me me."

At its best, like many of her earlier performances, Madonna's MDNA concert functions in a mode similar to an ancient ritual: a blood sacrifice, like a Greek tragedy or a prehistoric rite of spring, when the immortal virgin dances her backup dancers to death for the sake of Durkheimian collective effervescence. When this happens, Madonna's performance reminds us of the best and worst in ourselves, of the fleeting nature of our own desires, and of our own chameleon-like vacillations between innocence/kindness and power-hungry ambition, even cruelty. As the many captured crowd scenes in the video attest, Madonna's ability to use both vivid imagery and her sensual body and voice evoke powerful emotions in her audience, and for this alone, one must admit her performative success. No matter how one interprets her oeuvre critically, one can't deny that people are affected strongly by her work (if nothing else, their wallets are much lighter.) On the other hand, the seemingly endless closing credits at the end of the film also attest to the mammoth number of people she employs (I wonder if Mitt Romney would consider her a "job creator"?) and perhaps help explain why a ticket to one of her shows is so expensive.

A consummate pop star, Madonna learned the Warhol lesson early: she turned her image into a brand to ensure her fame would endure longer than 15 minutes. The video montages of her past incarnations in this latest show proves that she's been doing this for a long time, she knows who she is, and she's been relatively disciplined despite her inordinate wealth-slash-ability-to-consume-whatever-she-wants, including the symbolism of other cultures, without permission, and without fully understanding or participating in them. 

At any rate, even if this show didn't exactly break new ground, I'm glad Madonna no longer seems ashamed of the sex kitten she used to be before she turned into Guy Ritchie's Victorian housewife. And I'm especially glad Larry made a bunch of money by e-scalping some tickets to her show in Miami for double what he paid for them. (If she's a hooker, I guess we should admit what that makes us..?)

We used the profits to finance two holiday visits with family last fall. Go ahead. Call us greedy capitalist pimps if you want to. To that I will quote her: I'm a sinner. I'm a sinner. I'm a sinner and I like it that way.