She May Have Reinvented Herself, but Maddona Still Inspires Nostalgia...
In the early 1980s, there were a number of hourly TV shows, which attempted to satisfy the teenage craving for music videos. This craving proved to be insatiable and thus 24-hour music video channels such as Muchmusic and MTV were born. The networks of these hourly music video programs were not idiots. The programming slot was in the 4:30pm to 7:00pm time slot -- just in time for the kiddies to make it home for school.
My best friend Tom and I would tear down the street from public school in a frantic effort to make it home in time for Toronto Rocks. I was partial to the new wave of British heavy metal so the Wednesday “power hours” were my favourite. Tom was decidedly more mainstream, with a healthy (and completely understandable) appetite for Samantha Fox.
I cannot remember the date, but there was a day in which my schoolbag hit the floor, my arse hit the couch, the TV was turned on, and I saw Madonna for the first time. This completely sensual and erotic woman was telling me that when my fourteen-year-old self touched her, she felt like a virgin. Meanwhile, a man with a lion’s head alternated between rowing her around in Venice, and sneaking up on her behind medieval columns. My heart was captured forever as she traded in the wedding dress for a fabulously outrageous mid 80s outfit. I shrieked in horror thinking that she would be clocked in the head by one of those low Venetian bridges. She smiled as bent forwards and backwards, dancing her way out of danger.
With the advent of Muchmusic came the Muchmusic spotlights. The Madonna spotlight introduced me to her earlier singles such as “Holiday” and “Borderline”. At a Christmas get together, I looked up from my baklava and noticed that my female cousins were all looking suspiciously like my favourite boy toy. I did not bother asking my Greek Orthodox parents if I could go to the concert because my mother was mortified by the behaviour of this young Italian girl from New York. Friends and cousins lucky enough to go returned with scandalous reports of what they had seen. A year later my parents allowed me to go see Alice Cooper with Moterhead opening… go figure.
I have found Madonna’s terrible movies endear me ever closer to her. She wants to make a great movie so bad. Madonna takes up the next script with the same determination I have in baking banana bread that will not have a soft soggy centre. I commended Sean Penn when he began knocking out cameramen who dared intrude on himself and his bride. I understood his rage and I will confess I love watching an actor give paparazzi a good thumping.
I have watched Madonna change her image countless times. I watched her put out a coffee table book, and without a shred of shame entitle that coffee table book “Sex.” She is a scandal on two gorgeous legs. Madonna has mastered the art of manipulating the press, and then giggling at their hippopotamus rampages to the nearest telephone to tell their editors the latest scoop on this delicious diva.
It is 2004. I am thirty-two and the Material Girl is 45. Madonna opened her show in Toronto with the song Vogue. She emerged from beneath the stage and then did a stand where she placed her entire body weight on her forearms. I breathe heavy after lugging a bag of kitty litter to the apartment.
Madonna now has two kids, a British filmmaker husband, and a worldwide fan base. Her three dates in Toronto sold out in 80 minutes. She has danced with Missy, kissed Brittany, and written children’s books. Madonna still enchants me in my thirties and I dare say is even more stunning in her mid forties. She stole my heart and captured the lustful imagination of others like me. Madonna is beautiful.
When asked by 20/20’s Cynthia McFadden if there was a reigning philosophy in the Madonna household, Madonna replied, “Clean up your s—t.”
Yes maam.
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