Concussions on the Dancefloor

(Rafael Pavarotti/ Guardian)

In order to get a good insight into the whole picture, we need to wait until the announced release of Madonna’s Confessions 2 album, with the fever already hitting boiling point. If it wasn’t already clear enough who the target audience is, teasers for the new album were published on the gay hookup app Grindr and the singer stopped by a gay club in West Hollywood where she performed the song “I Feel So Free”. The number sounds like Erotica through the lense of William Orbit: a sensual monologue and vibrating house vibes. At the club, she allegedly spanked the owner, her trademark attempt to constantly stir controversy. But the only truly subversive trick she’s got left by now would be to drop the theatrics people are slowly getting tired of because it reminds me of a typical middle-age crisis symptoms of white middle class men. What’s more, The Tribune described it as follows: “During the performance, Madonna playfully spanked a West Hollywood nightclub owner onstage, a moment that quickly grabbed attention for its bold and theatrical nature.”

Now, I know it’s a longshot, but allow me to turn the tables: Bad Bunny spanking Lady Gaga on stage at the Super Bowl, in front of millions of people, without any explicit consent from her. And then imagine the aftermath, where he’s collectively canceled by the industry in America. If he’s lucky, he’ll be left with fans in Puerto Rico, Kanye West and Andrew Tate. Of course, it wouldn’t be like with the Pussy Grabber-in-Chief at the White House. That one still holds on to his power despite constant risks to trigger the 25th amendment due to his dangerous antics. Instead, Bunny would lose most of his sponsors and wait in disgrace until the time is right to reinvent himself, full of remorse for the violence inflicted on the poster girl for empowerment of women and the fight for their rights. They don’t call her Mother Monster for nothing. But, back to Mother, as many call Madonna, as if Queen of Pop weren’t proof of her superiority already.

I don’t see a false equivalency here. Madonna is an icon for women and has been celebrated by the LGBT community as one of their most vocal supporters. Not least because of her frequent use of their aesthetics in her own work. Anyone else would be accused for cultural appropriation, but her signature anthem Vogue is nowadays primarily associated with her instead of Black and Latino LGBT communities where it actually originated. She got away with it, just like with her reinvention as a geisha for her video Nothing Really Matters, where she turned Japanese tradition into a slick postmodern stage set for pop music. On the other hand, Gwen Stefani was dismissed as borderline racist after her Harajuku Girls fiasco. Of course, Ray of Light is a masterpiece of 20th century pop while Stefani’s Japanese experiment wasn’t nearly as successful. After all, Madonna’s countless reinventions paved the path for success for the new generation, not least Sabrina Carpenter. The two women even notouriously shared the stage at Coachella, with Sabrina as a sugar-coated catnip for the masses.

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Why notoriously, you might ask. Well, allegedly, after the performance where the two were the perfect match for each other, and Sabrina’s admiration for the Queen herself was palpable, as if the theft of Madonna’s costumes from her dressing room weren’t already disturbing enough, there was a barrage of derogatory comments on social media. Most of them were directed at Madonna, with the usual repertoire of ageism and a whiff of sexism to top it off. Dress your age, pass the torch and retire gracefully, sitting out the rest of your days on laurels of your past, not unlike Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. The difference being that the latter was both fictional and completely delusional, whereas this one is anything but. After the underwhelming reactions to her recent work, she returned to the last album that truly turned heads in a new direction, published in 2005 as Confessions on a Dancefloor. She stuck to tried and tested successes, sampling ABBA’s hit Gimme!Gimme!Gimme! (A Man After Midnight).

This is another proof of a talent that she’s graced with: the ability to recognize the right people for her projects to maximum effect. From Jean Paul Gaultier whose cone bras she turned into a symbol of modern pop culture to William Orbit who was behind the magic unleashed by the album Ray of Light and ABBA who’s certainly her match when it comes to business-savy decisions. Not least because of stuff like Hollywood hits like Mamma Mia! with Meryl Streep. Benny Anderson and Bjorn Ulvaeus were involved in the production of the musicals and the movie from the very start and expanded their legacy into something bordering on a musical equivalent of the Marvel franchise. Because a marvel it truly is, introducing Gen Z to Scandinavian pop music. Most famously, the film Eurovision Song Contest: the Fire Saga on Netflix. It includes some of the biggest recent Eurovision stars like Loreen, Netta and Alexander Rybak. Of course, these names don’t really ring any serious bells in America. Celine Dion’s connection to the competition and the megawatt hit Waterloo did the trick.

It remains to be seen what the rest of the album will sound like but it was already preemptively showered with many praises on the basis of the released material. While there’s hardly anything to be disappointed with, it’s not exactly mind-blowing either. Judging by the first single, it does exactly what it’s supposed to do: provide loop-friendly sound for clubs and dancefloors, especially those frequented by the target audience of Grindr. More often than not, people contacting you there want to see your tool before they see your face so let’s be audacious enough to say that’s the same approach Madonna has ever since Like a Virgin. In-your-face, honest, raw and without pretense it’s something beyond hookups with occasional long-term happy ending. On the other hand, the published visual for the song is a dizzy mess that’s more likely to trigger an epileptic seizure than your hips into dancing. While I don’t expect them to take it into necessary consideration, nowadays content on digital and analog media with elements like this usually includes a warning, better safe than sorry.

Madonna (Rafael Pavarotti/Rolling Stone)

The cheap shots aimed at the star because of her audacity to assume she can dress however the fuck she likes are nothing new and it happened to others before her as well, notably Cher, who dared to step out with a boyfriend who truly puts the “boy” into boyfriend in terms of age difference. Imagine the nerve of a woman who’s got nothing to prove to anyone anymore, to live her life on her own terms and prance around with a young guy just because she can! I’m sure there are people who come up with thoughts like these but I’m fortunately not one of those. Too busy for sexist bullshit, sorry bros. Yet, in spite of the seemingly unbreakable facade of empowerment, charisma as polished as stainless steel, there are palpable cracks. They hint at the possibility that the ageist prejudices are there for good reason. And they’re there to stay. It’s enough to have a look at the image on the cover of the album. The three parts of the human body which are the biggest window into someone’s true age: neck, hands and face, are all covered either by a purple veil or fingerless gloves.

In her beginnings, with the famous wedding dress performance, the veil was simply a prop. Now it turned into a protection from the reality she can’t escape from. While lecturing her about her age is stupid, it doesn’t diminish the fact she’s far beyond the prime of youth and that’s perfectly ok, in my opinion at least. People will sometimes tell you you’re not getting any younger, because it’s true. Each phase of our life carries its own blessings and burdens. Someone like her, however, carries a burden of a much bigger size because the music industry lets you get away even with murder, but not with aging. Especially not women. If we ignore disfigured creeps like Mickey Rourke and Tom Cruise, most male stars either age naturally or fix their looks in a way that usually doesn’t make them look like a fugitive from a wax museum. Cue people like Brad Pitt, David Beckham and Morgan Freeman. That is, if you can ignore the tattoos making Becks look like an inmate in a maximum security prison.

Let’s not forget the embodiment of botched plastic surgery in showbusiness, Michael Jackson. Along with Madonna, they’re the symbols of the golden age of American pop music in the 1980s and arguably the biggest stars to grace the global stage in that particular industry. Although Jackson’s legacy is still tarnished by accusations of sexual misconduct, they got reduced to noisy gossip where now and then, someone else emerges with new testimonies, most recently on time for the release of the biopic “Michael”. While his case is still wrapped in controversy, it’s more due to his eccentricities because he was never convicted of anything despite detailed investigations that dragged on for years and contributed to the decline that led to his premature death. Most people who accused him had a lot to gain from associating with him and even more from accusing him for abuse. Parents who let their children spend time with an eccentric stranger should have faced social service scrutiny. They did not.

Madonna never had to deal with something like this. Instead, she stepped on the toes of conservative groups and the Catholic Church where she did bite off more than she could chew, especially after the release of her book Sex. There’s only so far you can go before someone decides it’s one step too far. Not that it ever stopped her, but looking at it from this point in time, most of these things eventually brushed off because every time she reinvented herself again, she’d flood the zone so much there was no room left for bad press. If she ventured into political activism, it was always failsafe and well calculated, like the time she participated in the march in Washington after Trump took office. Every drop of mud now thrown at her from various bots and online trolls will equally quickly dry and fall off. That’s why it makes no sense to obsess about this in terms of patriarchy trying to turn America into a real-life equivalent of the Handmaid’s Tale.

Why? Because everything we accuse her critics of is mainly a thing of classism, to which every other issue goes back to however much we try to ignore it. Try as they might, unless they physically hurt her, people with a taste for hissing can’t touch her. She’s a billionaire whose closest contact to normal people is on stage, while they’re full of adoration for the Queen of Pop. More likely than not, they’re middle class, because the working class can’t afford the tickets for the front row here. Just like in the final scene of Hamnet, they’re reaching out in a borderline orgasmic trance while she’s doing her routine and reigning supreme over the playlists and cultural discourse. The way she did for decades and that’s unlikely to change. The ageist jabs at her on social media are like peasants throwing eggs at the queen’s gilded carriage while she passes through a muddy street on the way to her palace. There, she won’t let the unworthy eat cake. Marie Antoinette did, and still lost her head.

However, Madonna will walk away basking in glitter and glory as she did before and I can’t wait for the full release. Both those attacking and defending her are of the same class. The most important difference from her angle might be who’ll be paying for the streams, tickets and other paraphernalia of her success. They’ll keep bickering in the gutters while the billionaire Queen sits on her throne high above their sad little lives. She doesn’t need to care, but she does, at least for the LGBT community which makes for a considerable part of her target audience. They’ll have all kinds of attitudes about other stuff, but when it comes to her, adoration is predictable. She embodies both the beautiful audacity and the tacky aesthetics of the movement which she so powefully embraced and championed. There’s no doubt Confessions 2 will also reign supremely in the DJ booths of every Pride Parade from Paris to Pittsburgh, London to Los Angeles and beyond. Why not, after all? In a world on the verge of a disaster, it’s one of the few good things we can still count on.