"Qualitatively Different"

Madonna before the alter of the cross

The above image is from Madonna's 2012 MDNA tour. Notice how Madonna uses MDNA to reference INRI. She is gyrating on the embers of Hell, reaching out to the blood-red cross. One thing one can say about MDNA is her creative energy, and image-producing capacity.

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Laura Wood at The Thinking Housewife writes about Madonna's latest "artistic" foray:

Madonna has always produced trash but this is qualitatively different. It is much worse.

I fully agree with her. A couple of months ago I wrote two posts on Madonna. In one, which I titled Madonna and Her Mirror, I review her new perfume Truth or Dare, and I write:

The official ad for the perfume (see image above) has Madonna, Narcissus-like, contemplating her reflection. Except, unlike Narcissus, it is not her beauty that she is entranced with, but has made her reflection into a Freudian, self-sexual-gratification...

Her creative ability has spiraled in recent years. All that anti-Catholicism, homosexual advocacy, sexual perversion, etc. has spiraled into nihilism, resulting with her ugly and perverted new video. (Full review at the blog post here.)

In another, which I titled Madonna: Modern Day Cybele, I describe the transgendered, homosexual dancers that perform in her latest horror show for her video Girl Gone Wild. This video, and its song, are a far cry from her relatively innocent boppy tune Like a Virgin, which propelled her to her strange fame. But don't get me wrong, Like a Virgin was simply the beginning of the spiral. I wrote about her earlier tunes in a post titled Madonna and Her Mirror:

I used to like the early Madonna. Even her very first Like a Virgin was cute and innocent [I have to qualify that now, since as I write above, it is simply the beginning of the spiral downward]. She does have talent, which she showed in her Latin-beat inspired Papa Don't Preach and with (the well-photographed black-and-white video) Vogue.

Madonna takes her two children with her in her decent to perversion. Lourdes, her illegitimate daughter, recently started a clothing brand called Material Girl, after Madonna's early tune of the same name. This is a clever take on material, as in textile, as well as a reference to Madonna to capitalize on her name. The clothes, as the name (and dynasty) suggest, are the cut-out, skin-revealing items that Madonna made famous in her heyday.

Lourdes' Material Girl fashion line

Madonna with Lourdes. Ripped stockings complete the look.

Madonna has a weird, sexualized interaction, with her children. In the photo above with Lourdes, Madonna looks like the girlfriend being led by her, well, younger girlfriend. But Lourdes also has the hard glint of a narcissist, and plays willingly into the "leader" role that Madonna has given her (or is forced to give her).

Madonna also has strange, competitive relations with much younger female pop stars. Remember the Britney Kiss (and later on the one with Christina Aguilera)? Lourdes is now her young competition, and there is no reason why she should treat her different.

Rocco, Madonna's legitimate son with British film director Guy Ritchie, whom Madonna married him briefly, is now going on stage with her quite possibly to work his way into pop stardom. He prefers the art-bereft rap.

Madonna is "dating" a much younger boyfriend (he is twenty-four to her fifty-three), and adds "much younger man" to her list of exoticisms which so far include Muslim and Arab (or simply non-white). He looks like a slightly older, and darker, version of her own son Rocco.

Madonna's dancing boyfriend from her troop

In the photo below, Madonna brings on Rocco during her MDNA tour in costumes representing her various sexualized songs and videos. She has him dressed as a monk for her gospel choir version of her infamous Like a Prayer video in which she frolicked around trying to seduce a black Jesus (burning crosses are also - not so gratuitously - thrown into the melee). And she reverts to some adolescent stage to partner with her rapping son.

Rocco on stage with Madonna during her recent MDNA tour

Her MDNA tour is garnering the usual controversy (actually, juxtaposing Madonna with Controversy is boring, and twenty years too late). In Israel, she showed up in jackboots and a machine gun, of course "protesting" the "Occupation."

Jackboots and machine guns in Israel to kick-off her MDNA tour

In Abu Dhabi, she gyrates on a pedestal of fire, in front of a red-hot cross (see top image). Burning in Hell? Expiating her sins? I've written before that the current popularity of the cross has nothing to do with Christianity, but fulfills people's innate need for spirituality. Of course, spirituality without God simply ends up being idol worship, and the cross without God is not exempt from that. Here's what I wrote about Madonna and the cross:

Madonna cannot separate herself from the cross. This is of course, her own version of the cross (and religion - I cannot call it Christianity). As I've written before, people cannot do without religion, and have to create their own, joining together what they already know, with what they desire. Why throw out such a powerful symbol as the cross?

Madonna just took this one step further, and made the cross an emblem for Hell, with her burning at its pyre like some she-devil. I expect she expects to be resurrected once she's fulfilled her rites.