What is Madge good for?(Madonna tanking badly)

The only thing Madonna provokes with her latest tour is sadness at how lame she's become

Those readers under the age of 18 may have to ask their parents about this, but, believe it or not, Madonna used to be quite shocking. Edgy even. Testing with each new album, video or tour the Western world's sexual, religious and political boundaries. Hers was an arsenal of burning crosses, simulated masturbation, virginal squeals, S & M, a black Jesus and a picture book about sex.

But this was long before jihad and Abu Ghraib became the stuff of family dinner conversations. Before the video of Nick Berg's beheading was put on the high school curriculum. Before gay marriage seemed less an outrage than an inevitability, and Michael Moore wasn't just a fat guy schlepping around Flint, but a fat guy swaggering through Cannes.

Her latest tour, not-so-subtly- titled Re-invention, is apparently an orgy of burkas, Bush-bashing, Kabbalah and her greatest hits. Oh, and at one point she straps herself into an electric chair.

The centrepiece is her performance of American Life, the ridiculous title track to her last album, one of 2003's more dramatic disasters (Sample lyric: "I'm drinking a soy latte/ I get a double shot-ay"). It is, in all its clumsy glory (Mini Cooper is also rhymed with "super-duper"), an attack on the American ideal and the commercialism that used to define the Material Girl. On stage, though, it becomes a gaudy anti-war protest.

"American Life was a massive anti-war production piece, helicopters and firebombing on the giant screens behind her as she moved with her troupe, all clad in fatigues," explained the Hollywood Reporter of the tour's opening show in Los Angeles.

"In the creaky song ... dancers sternly march around in military fatigues as images of bloodied and terrified Iraqi children flash on the video screens," reported the New York Daily News.

Feel like you've seen that before? Well, you haven't. But a little deja vu is warranted all the same. Last year, Madonna cut a video for the song that reportedly featured much of the same content.

"Starting as a runway show of couture army fatigues, the fashion show escalates into a mad frenzy depicting the catastrophic repercussions and horror of war," Madonna's spokeswoman Liz Rosenberg explained last February. "This will be a stirring and extremely controversial piece of work from the artist who created the medium of the small film set to music."

But, before it could be premiered, Matt Drudge began to leak details of the Jonas Akerland-directed clip, including word of transvestite soldiers and Madonna tossing a grenade at a George W. Bush look-alike. The resulting outcry from Drudge's core conservative constituency convinced Madonna to do what she had never done: back down.

"Due to the volatile state of the world and out of sensitivity and respect to the armed forces, who I support and pray for, I do not want to risk offending anyone who might misinterpret the meaning of this video," Madonna explained in shelving the clip in favour of a neutered flag-waving second cut.

At the time we still believed in weapons of mass destruction. Support for the President and his war was high. And Madonna had sales to worry about.

A year later, critics have turned and that album has tanked, as has the popularity of the President. More importantly, several hundred thousand concert tickets have gone on sale. So here (again) comes Madonna the anti-war agitator, seeming not so much brave as desperate. Odd all the more because her original inspiration for the military fatigues was reportedly Moore, specifically his rant at last year's Oscars.

Since using his moment at the podium to discuss America's "fictitious President," Moore has made Fahrenheit 9/11, which includes embarrassing footage of President Bush and graphic images of casualties and prisoner abuse in Iraq. Intended for distribution by Disney, Michael Eisner's Mickey Mouse regime refused to do so, only to see the resulting controversy lead to a triumphant reception in Cannes where Moore won the prestigious Palme d'Or, the first time in nearly 50 years a documentary has won.

Some of Moore's most remarkable footage, an interview with Berg, was left out of the film. Moore has subsequently refused to release the footage and sent copies to Berg's family members.

Which is where Moore differentiates himself from many an American high school social studies teacher. Approximately a dozen such educators in Texas, California, Oregon, Oklahoma and other states have been suspended or disciplined for showing their wide-eyed students the video of Berg's beheading at the hands of al-Qaeda terrorists. The video, widely available on the Internet after release by the perpetrators, has been among the most searched-for items on the World Wide Web for weeks now, besting the war in Iraq and even, speaking of gruesome video footage, Paris Hilton (high school sex-ed teachers take note).

There is little Madonna can show us that we, or our Internet-literate sons and daughters, haven't already seen. So what is left to slander?

The Catholic church? That wee little sex scandal has left little to add. Global warming? Sting tried that and we all know what happened to him. The evils of commercialism? Hard to battle when you're asking several hundred dollars a ticket. The sins of excess? Those in glass houses, etc, etc.

So while it might be easy to conclude Madonna has lost her edge, it seems reality has, in many cases, simply outpaced her. Even homoeroticism, an old Madonna stand-by, seems tired at this late date, same-sex marriages in Massachusetts dominating the headlines on the rare day Berg or Iraq does not.

Consider, for a moment, how different a conclusion we'd be making today had she gone ahead and premiered the inflammatory original video for American Life. Some sort of boycott would have ensued -- likely by Wal-mart -- and the usual conservative suspects would have raised their voices in hyperbolic protest. But months later, with the American public forced to confront the violent, inhumane and homoerotic images from Abu Ghraib, she might be basking in the same anti-war afterglow that now surrounds Moore.

Lone salvation for the Kabbalah convert might have come, oddly enough, in Israel. Tentatively scheduled to play several dates there, Madonna backed away citing security concerns. If there was a way to ensure the safety of her audience, shows there, especially in light of cancellations in the Middle East by other pop stars (most recently Missy Elliott), would have sent the sort of defiant message she now so desperately seems to be seeking.

Until then, any buttons Madonna had left to press have been hammered harder and faster by more-willing provocateurs, if not reality itself. And Madonna is a ground-breaking artist in need of new ground.

MTV? No idea what drives their programming. Actually, I have no idea what drives a lot of TV programming. But I could
never understand the appeal of a lot of shows, either.

Madonna jumped the shark with all the publicity about getting pregnant by her trainer(?)or the like.

My guess is her acting career was swepted away with that movie by one of her husbands.

She's at a loss to further her career by respectable means, so she reverts to the LCD usually reserved for younger generations.

I used to admire her business acumen, but she's lost that too.

I can't stand MTV any more. Do they (Viacom/SeeBS/etc.) buy a lot of ads in [music-oriented] print media? Maybe its
the implied payola of the ad dollar that's protecting any irregularities at MTV?

Madonna was never much of a singer, but she did get more tolerable after she'd been around a few years. She started singing in a lower, less chipmunky register, and I think took some voice lessons.

Unfortunately, at the same time she was finally improving her voice, she dumped earlier collaborators who created her catchy hits like "Borderline" and "Cherish" in favor of trendy hip-hop/house/trance music producers. She was probably trying to stay "hip," but the result was a series of tuneless "songs" that have flopped like carp. A critic the other day made a good point when he dared readers to hum any Madonna song cut after 1992. That's why she needs manufactured "controversy" to sell tickets: because the music is GODAWFUL.

""This will be a stirring and extremely controversial piece of work from the artist who created the medium of the small film set to music."

Setting aside any number of earlier incarnations, doesn't Michael Jackson deserve this honor with Thriller?

My (gay male) hair dresser (nice guy/great hair cutter) was all atwitter over the fact that he was going someplace to see her in concert. I thought, but didn't say, I wouldn't go out in my front yard to see Madonna, even if it was free.

She had a good run, but Madonner is now facing what every aging performer must eventually come to terms with late in their careers, and that's IRRELEVANCE.

A vanishingly small minority of pop music artists reach even a fraction of Madonner's commercial success. An even smaller number of those blessed with such success manage to keep it going all the way into and past middle age.

Compare the decades-spanning careers of the Rolling Stones, Ozzy Osbourne, or KISS to, say, 70s rockers like Styx. The former are still selling out stadiums, while the latter toil on in the county fair and bar circuit, minus an original band member of three.

Madonner needs to chill out for a few years, lay low, and enjoy the fruits of her labors. Maybe in 10 years or so, she can go back to performing, and make a ton of money when she does.

Note: Misspellings intentional! Call it an homage to my old buddies Beavis and Butthead

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