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r I The Didjeridu in World Music ', DISCOG RAPHY Periect Beat v2 n1 July 1994 Alan Dargin Bloodwood, Natural Symphoni es, 1991 Rolf Harris Rolf Rules OK! Phonogra m, 1993 Jamiroqua i Emergency on Planet Earth, Sony 1993 Stephen Kent Songs From the Burnt Earth: Didgeridoo Solos ( alf 2548 Folsom Street. San Francisco , CA 9411 0) 1992 Lights in a Fat City Somewhere THESE 3, 1988 David Hudson/S teve Roach/Sa rah Hopkins Sound of the Earth, Fortuna Records, 1990 Reconciliation Two Stories in One, Natural Symphoni es, 1993 Trance Mission Trance Mission, Mushroom , 1994 Aerosmith Don't Get Mad, Get Even , track off Pump, BMG, 1989 MADONNA - JUSTIFY OUR LOVE? Schwichtenberg, C. (ed)(l993 ) The Madonna Connection: Representational Politics, Subcultural Identities, and Cultural Theory, Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Frank, L. and Smith, P. (eds)(l99 3) Madonnarama: Essays on Sex and Popular Culture, Pittsburgh: Cleis Press. TIFFANY HUTTON l r I Perfect Beat II! v2 n1 July 1994 In the introduction to The Madonna Connection, Schwichtenberg says that for her writing about Madonna produced connections "that dissolved the boundaries between public and private, academic and popular, theory and practice" (2). These words foretell the strong influence of postmodemism on many of the articles that make up this anthology. After all, the Material Girl is often touted as the postmodem (feminist?) heroine, and The Madonna Connectiondaims to be "the first book to address the complexities of race, gender and sexuality in popular culture by using the influence of a cultural heroine to advance cultural theory"(319). It may be the first case of a cross-section of writings about Madonna being compiled into an anthology, but the perspectives themselves are not startlingly new. The anthology is divided into four sections, the focus of each being: race and audiences, sexuality, feminism and the star-commodity. There are interesting points made in all of these areas, as I will go on to discuss, but to say that it will "indicate new directions for Perfect Beat B cultural studies" (3) is a little ambitious, but maybe that's part of Madonna' s effect on people. She is certainly a seductive locus. The first section, focusing on race and audiences, is largely disappointing. It begins with a straightforward and uninspired study of Madonna-haters and the ways in which the hated Madonna is constructed as 'low-Other'. It demonstrates how she is perceived as the lowest form of culture - pop (formulaic, artificial, feminine) as opposed to serious, authentic, masculine rock: she is irresponsible a corrupter of young minds (and bodies): she is the lowest form of the feminine (succubus and whore)and, finally, she is theantithe sisof feminism. The writers agree with Fiske that Madonna' s enjoyment of her sexuality is her most serious transgression and go on to say that her autoeroticism "suggests that when she tires of her playthings, she may not really need men at all" (26). Sex is, after all, what Madonna would like us to think that she does best, with or without a selection of partners of v2 n1 July 1994 ,.... both sexes. The question of whether this actually constitutes a transgression deserves considerably more attention than it receives in this article. racist myths surrounding black men/white women. How this video challenges these assumptions remains unclear to me, even with the idea of spirituality and religion thrown in - Scott argues that rather than being about the "fusion between sexual ecstasy and religious fervor", "the lyrics are nothing more than an acknowledgment of the power of God arriving at midnight" (68). Perhaps it is cynical of me to interpret this as deliberate naivete, but the entire piece seems to me an example of extreme (in this case, positive) bias, which is ultimately counter-productive to Scott's argument. 'Madonna T/Races' is a more interesting piece which explores the nexus of race and readings of Madonna's music videos, and engages in discussion about differential reading practices and whether or not they (necessarily) function as sites of resistance. It is clear from the results of the study (as well as, one would imagine, commonsense) that race and ethnicity are far more complex than just a white or non-white binary opposition, and the range of readings found in the study The second section promises a little more, show that the ''traces of different cultural beginning with Cindy Patton's analysis of experiences, however, are not necessarily Vogue (the video/performance) and its relaoppositional or even resistant to the dominant tionship to voguing as a critique of race, white/European-American readings" {51). gender and sexuality (Voguing itselfoccupies Multiple readings are possible, but the an extremely interesting 'space' in the interdominant position remains unchallenged, and section of race, gender and sexuality, having for this reason the authors are, understandbeen created by black and Latin bomosexual ably, hesistant to "join the party" celebrating men). Developing the notion that dance such multiple readings {a Ia Fiske) and functions as a cultural memory, Patton argues encourage a more complex approach to such that voguing "constituted a kind of difference audience analysis. and belonging" (85) for these men, a subversion of the signifiers of gender. What of Thus it is a little odd that the following Vogue itself? It is, like everything Madonna chapter, Ronald B. Scott's piece on race and does, full of ambiguities and ambivalence: religion in the Like A Prayer video, reads the "the moves of voguing deconstruct gender clip with almost blinding faith {no pun inand race, but Vogue makes it difficult to recall tended) as one that "promotes the idea of why such a deconstruction might be desirequality and encourages the viewer to make able" (98) - the dance is, in Patton's words the right choices" (57). He argues that it "dequeened". But despite the fact that Vogue representspositiveaspoctsof Afro-American is more comfortable with voguing as chic gay culture {eg the importance of the church) and male dance culture, she maintains that "the also tries (stridently, and I would say unsuccritique of race and genderstillleaks through" cessfully) to counter any reading of the rela(98). tionship between Madonna and the black saint as a sexual one - "Even if the black Lisa Henderson's Justify Our Love is an archaracter is lying atop Madonna's character ticulate depiction of the inherent ambiguities and kissing her, there is no evidence anywhere in the reading of Madonna's 'sexual politics', in the video that anything more than a kiss is specifically her use of homoeroticism in the involved" (68) and, even better, "The (dress) Justify My Love video. Although Henderson straps simply slip down because of her is largely positive about Madonna's forays physical movements" (68); whilst at the same into (images oO gay sex, and her appeal to gay time acknowledging that a dominant reading audiences, she admits the double edged nature would likely make assumptions based on the of it - "But amid the reverie, the skepticism Perfect Beat B v2 n1 July 1994 endures"( 122). She also makes the important point that we all (gay and straight alike) tend to have unrealistic, idealistic expectations of Madonna and what she can and should do for us, a point which is taken up further in Madonnara ma (see below). The feminism question begins not in the third section, but with Schwichtenberg's piece on postmodem feminism, which is expanded upon and challenged (but only once really) in the following chapters. She presents a summaryofthefamiliarpostmodemisrn!ferninism debate, before going on to argue that Baudrillard's concept of simulation can be used to "challenge the stable notion of gender as the edifice of sexual difference" and that therefore postmodemism is not a liability for feminism but rather offers the potential for a radical sexual politics above and beyond the limiting tenets of modernism. Her analysis of the video for Justify My Love is rather scanty and ignores other possible readings - for example, Madonna's playful exit from the hotel room at the end of the 'scene' can be seen as a distancing from the 'deviance' of gay/bi sex, thereby reinforcing the centrality ofheterosex - if this is 'political', it is only in the sense of what Mandziuk's later chapter describes as postmodemism's conflation between private sexual play and social intervention. Mandziuk argues forcibly against the concept and practice of a postmodern feminism. She acknowledges, even describes, the shortcomings of (pre-postmodem!) feminism, its potential for essentialism, and admits to the seductiveness of the "liberating promise of postmodernism" (177), but issues a rather dire warning that "in casting its lot with postmodernism, feminism is, indeed, sleeping with the enemy" ( 170). Reading Madonna as a postmodern feminist heroine, Mandziuk argues "requires replacing the speech of intervention with the discourse of style"( 183)and relegates women from public space and returns them to the bedroom. Mandziuk's chapter follows (and, as above, counters) E. Ann Kaplan's 'Madonna Politics' Perfect Beat in which the author discusses and eventually discards the audience research strand of cultural studies which positions Madonna (or the Madonna Pbenomenon[MP], as she calls it) as subversive because of the meanings that her audience can derive from her- eg teenage girls who find an independent, sexually autonomous role model in her. The fundamental problem with this is the assumption of 'real' individual selves, which maintains gender binarisms intact - Kaplan argues along much the same lines as Schwichtenberg's earlier chapter, i.e. that Madonna's work is more subversive in the sense that it challenges/ subverts the sign system of gender- this is the politics of the signifier at work, which Kaplan believes to have the potential to "make inroads on precisely such oppressive identities" ( 163). E. Deidre Pribram's analysis of the film Truth or Dare (screened in Australia and Europe as In Bed With MadonTUJ) takes up the question of the 'real' defined subject, arguing that it is the question itself which is no longer appropriate. She suggests that the breakdown of the subject-ob ject categories in a postmodern universe does not necessarily eliminate a feminist position - women have always been relegated to object, but (once again we return to Baudrillard) "the simulated object that seduces takes precedent over the previously defined subject that believed itself in the sovereign position of power in the equation" (208). She concludes that "If Madonna is a model of seduction, ... the simulated object's primacy, then her striking ability to seduce with some measure of control over the dissemination of her irnage(s) may be a point of departure in the articulation of postrnodern feminism" (208). In which direction? Melanie Morton makes use of both musicological and filmic analysis of the video of Express Yourself to argue her case that "Madonna's strategies engage in an ideological critique of the standard fare ofliberal humanist truisms" (214) by refusing the standard heirarchies of domination and subordination and leaving us with a "radical Ill v2 n1 July 1994 r ambiguity"(223). According to Morton the Susan Bordo takes up the issue of power and power relations established in Fritz Lang's control in her piece, focusing on the film Metropolis are not simply reversed but effacements of postmodern plasticity, its desubjugation is subverted. Although she nial of material and social realities, particupresents fairly convincing analyses of the larly in the realm of the body. This reduces all video, I found it hard to infer exactly this body transformations to 'the same', simply meaning out of its ambiguities or conclude something that 'women do'. But as Bordo that we<:an negotiate (negotiate what?) "if we argues, there are fundamental differences in express ourselves, ... , and do not posit our the ways in which women are required to power in domination over others"{233). In normalise themselves, particularly in relation what other ways can power express itself? to racially defined images of beauty. We all Both Morton's and Pribham' s analyses appear watched Madonna's transformation from to rest on the powerof sexuality and seduction: fleshy sexpot to muscular diva - and it was this is perhaps inevitable, given Madonna's taken as anotherexample ofthe Blonde One's interest in it, but they veer dangerously close control over her own image. But her selfto a {Paglia-like) elevation of women's normalisation to fit the dominant contemposexuality as their only route to power. This rary ideal sure! y re-affirms the female body as sexuality still operates within a patriarchal object: Bordo sees the Open Your Hean paradigm, which remains essentially video, despite various claims of androgynous unthreatened by Madonna's 'bad girl' tactics, ambiguity, etc., as predominantly a showcase as David Tetzlaffargues in 'Metatextual Girl'. for Madonna's 'new body'. The liberating Positing an historical shift from patriarchy to promise of postmodem plasticity appears to capitalism as the dominant discourse for midbe nothing more than a new mask for old dle-class women, he describes how Madonna oppressions. {apparently) epitomises power- after all, her highly successful self-commodification is Finally, Greg Seigworth's The Distance often quoted as one of her most admirable Between Me and You begins with the premise achievements. But he argues that this is a that it is by mapping the stars {along similar power which has its prices: the cynical use of lines to Jameson's cognitive mapping) that the sexual female body as a unit of economic we might be able to "narrow the distance, - , exchange ('well hell, I might as well make that separates us one from the other"(296). some money/have some power, since things But having discussed the creation of the star, aren't going to change') being one. Madonself-creation and creation of the starstruck, na's position is neatly balanced between culthe way in which Madonna is not only a star, ture and the economy (if there can be a 'bebut is about the very act (process of productween') - her cultural rebelliousness doesn't tion of) being a star, he has to concede "that threatentheeconomy,andhermerelyeconomic I'm not exactly sure how one might successcomplicity with the powers that be means she fully complete a cognitive map". He remains can still represent a rebellious image for a firm in his beliefhowever, that we need "to ref subordinate audience to identify with. And connect ideological maps with theexperiental finally, Madonna's power represents an maps of everyday Iife"(312) - is Madonna unrealisable dream to this audience - one that part of the answer? is not achievable by the masses, one that does not actually empower them in any way. "MaMadonnarama: Essays on Sex and Popular donna can be idolized but not really emulated. Culture is a very different book. The pieces in Her power exists only in the hyperreality of it focus almost exclusively on the discussion the postmodern media spectacle, which is surrounding Sex, Madonna's metal-bound, available to regular folks only as something to Mylar-wrapped coffee table book of sexual sit and watch, something to buy"(262). phantasies. It is a far more personal collection Perfect Beat 11m v2 n1 July 1994 of essays than The Madonna Connection, and it is this very subjectivity of perspectives that makes it such interesting, sometimes annoying, occasionally confronting reading. Some of it, particularly for those of us more accustomed to reading standard academic texts, is perhaps a little too personal, self-conscious, casual, explicit, even self-indulgent. Nevertheless, the two least 'academic' pieces in Madonnarama , Cathay Che's 'Wannabe' and thomas allen harris's 'phallus momma sell my pussy make a dollar' are important and significant, because they are the subjective imaginings/accounts of a (self-defined) Asian female sex-radical and a black afrekete queen, not carefully constructed academic critiques of how Madonna can be read by minority audienoes. 'Wannabe' is fictional( ish), amusing and ironic, but also expresses a sense of being somehow duped or disappointed by Madonna,arecurringthemeinMadonnarama. Although the editors introduce it by saying "even proponents of Sex would have to admit that, once you've passed over the book's perfunctory waves in the direction of 'sexeducation' or AIDS-awareness, there's little between these spiral-bound pages that even hints at what you might call political desire" (13), it doesn't stop Madonna's 'advocates' expecting her to exploit her position for political (sex -radical) ends. But as Andrew Ross points out in 'This Bridge Called my Pussy', the "most skilled interpreters of the rules {conventions of musical culture], like Madonna herself, will always disappoint us since we always expect too much of them" (63). What is particularly interesting about Madonnarama is the multiplicity and oppositional nature of readings/negotiations of Madonna and her body of work (pun intended), corning from writers of apparently similar 'backgrounds' (race, gender, sexual orientation). It is well-constructed in the sense that each chapter forces a reassessment, even a re-reading, of what one has just read. For bell hooks, the initial sense of promise and Perfect Beat possibility that Madonna offered later became (another example) "feelings of betrayal and loss" (67) engendered by her apparent move away from transgression. Whether or not one agrees that the Boy Toy was ever genuinely (can we use that word any more?) transgressive,it'stemptingtoagreewithhooks that Madonna's 'sex kitten' photos in Vanity Fair represent some kind of abandonment of a challenging use of female sexuality, a regression into standard patriarchal pornographic images. Echoing what Mandziuk says in The Madonna Connection, hooks argues that in Sex, Madonna "assumes the role of high priestess of a cultural hedonism that seeks to substitute unlimited production and pursuit of sexual pleasure for a radical, liberating political practice, one that would freeourrnindsandourbodies"(69). Shereads the homosex as functioning as nothing more than "an extension of heterosexual pleasure" (72 ), not as a desire or practice in its own right. Susie Bright on the other hand applauds Madonna and credits her with possessing "the outspoken feminist idealism and compassionate philanthropy that made liberal heroines out of Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg, and Jane Fonda" (86) (before the marriage to Ted Turner and the breast implants, one assumes) and acgues that the only reason Madonna is not a favourite with the politically correct is that she is an in-your-face sex maniac. There is no doubt a little truth in this, but I remain unconvinced that this should make Madonna my heroine. I tend to agree with Simon Frith, whose analysis of Erotica ends with the statement that he ends up as usual "admiring a Madonna album but not being touched by it; as usual the fascination is not what Madonna reveals but how she's been dressed up"(92). Douglas Crimp and Michael Warner's 'conversation' about Madonna and Sex is one of the most readable chapters in the book although casual in form. often flippant and amusing, it is an extremely succinct summary of the issues, problems, contradictions that llll v2 n 1 July 1994 .,.... Sex brings up(and fails to address?)- why it's not 'queer enough', why it's boring, and (my favourite) why it is the true sequel to Gone With the Wind. John Champagne is a lot more serious (and a lot more graphic, one assumes partly in reaction to the fact that Sex is ')ust not foul enough" [116]) but also deals with the numerous contradictory critical responses aroused by Sex. Interestingly, unlike hooks, Champagne saw the Vanity Fair spread as parodies of 1950sPlayboy layouts, exhibiting a 'campsensib ility'thatbod edwellforSe x,but he was ultimately disappointed. 'Camp' reappears (frequently) in Carol A. Queen's championing ofSex -perhaps we are all being prudes in that the thing we talk least about is the sex, but then again, maybe the point is that it isn't really sex, in which case how can we applaud Madonna for "making us talk about sex" (150)? Kirsten Marthe Lentz approaches the everenticingque stionofMad onna's 'authenticity' or otherwise - the "frustration with the inability to know her, to identify her - sexually or otherwise"( l66). Of course this is one of the secrets of her success - because we can't definitely identify her as gay or bi, she can appropriate gay imagery (and sell it) without any real taint. .. Lentz discusses the issue of Madonna's (use of images of) bisexuality in some depth, but concludes "I do not thinkthat an unconditional celebration of Madonna's work is a good political choice"(l67 ). Pat Califa, discussing the S/M element ofSex, also says "I feel deeply ambivalent about somebody who has not paid her dues using my community as a series of bizarre backdrops for a photo shoot"(l77) , but nevertheless argues from an anti-antiporn position that the S/ M community "will still find itself in the awkward position of defending Sex''(l84). Perhaps the most telling testament to Madonna's charisma and star power is that none of the writers in the two volumes (other than Simon Frith) devote more than a passing mention to the fact that Madonna has a voice, sings and (co) writes much of her material; and that her voice, delivery and music have developed and altered over her career. Far from being the 'primary text' (in Alan Moore's phrase) music is, in these books, largely the 'missing text'. Given that the very raison d'etre of these books is that Madonna should be taken seriously as an object of analysis it seems odd that her music is relegated to the sidelines. American Cultural Studies might be learning to look, but it still seems deafto the sounds of popular culture. Perfect Beat v2 n1 July 1994 ~ Lewis, G.H. (ed) (1993) All that Glitters - Country Music in America, Bowling Green State Univer- sity Popular Press. I I. r I As a number of contributions to this volume observe, the popularity of country music has steadily increased over the past two decades. Although the writers make this assertion in connection only with the music's growing American audience, the same is equally true in many other parts of the globe. In Britain, for instance, both Nanci Griffith and k.d.lang followed in the footsteps of rock star Eric Clapton by playing London's prestige classical music venue, the Royal Albert Hall, on their last UK tours. And both Griffith and Lang, together with other S(H;alled 'new country' singer-song writers such as Lyle Lovett, enjoy fairly regular airplay on radio stations and programs that are not exclusively devoted to country music. Yet, as George Lewis himself argues in his introduction, country music has on the whole failed to attract substantial interest within popular music studies. This anthology of wideranging articles, essays and conference papers written by historians, sociologists, musicologists, folklorists, anthropologists, ethnographers, communication specialists and journalists is, then, both timely and to be welcomed. Although the very diversity of perspectives brings its own problems, All Thar Glitters not only makes a valuable contribution to a burgeoning academic discipline, but as the book's cover notes assert (absolutely Perfect Beat correctly), "these diverse views of country begin to suggest what a fascinating and multifaceted phenomeno n this music is". ID] v2 n 1 July 1994 Perfect Beat The book's principal focus is on what Lewis terms 'modem' country music in America that is, country music as it developed from the 1950s onwards - and this is explored through seven sections which address performers who have been major influences on modem country, regional forms and influences, hookytonk culture; aspects of the country music industry, the emotions and values espoused by country music, the socio-political issues raised by and within the music, and the advent of a 'new country' sound via a new generation of performers. Each section is prefaced by an introduction which usefully concludes with a play list. Given the range of disciplines from which the writers are drawn, the approaches, styles and methodologies employed in the articles vary enormously (from the anecdotal to the interpretatio n of statistical data) and unsurprisingly, I feel - any reader will find some pieces more immediately interesting than others. One of the more illuminating contributions for this reader, for instance, is Joli Jensen's essay on Patsy Cline which examines a whole range of factors which shaped the singer's career and public image, and the way Cline initially resisted performing the,more popular material which contributed substantially to her success and has since helped redefine her as 'classic' country. Equally excellent is Lewis's own chapter on Ill v2 n1 July 1994