Of all Madonna’s many videos, perhaps one of the most standout (while still being simultaneously underrated) for its cinematic qualities is 1993’s “Bad Girl.” And yes, of course, its cinematic nature is due, in part, to David Fincher serving as the director—though Madonna did originally ask Tim Burton to do it. Perhaps because this was fresh off Burton directing Batman Returns, which had just the kind of “dark,” “gritty” aura that Madonna was seeking in order to capture a concept based on something as unflinching as 1977’s Looking for Mr. Goodbar (with a key plot device from Wings of Desire thrown in for good measure).
In many ways designed to be a cautionary tale against the pratfalls of being a “wayward” woman that dares to sleep with whomever she pleases (and as often as she likes), Looking for Mr. Goodbar was also meant to tap into the stigmas that remain, to this day, lobbed at any woman with the audacity to be so “free.” That is to say, sexually free. And to “punish” her for that freeness, Looking for Mr. Goodbar holds up Theresa Dunn (Diane Keaton) as the perfect example of what “can and will” happen to such a salope. At the time, this messaging resonated immensely with Madonna (even more so than usual), who was being torn limb from limb by the media for her “diabolical” trifecta of sexually-charged releases (no ejaculation pun intended): Sex, Erotica and Body of Evidence. All three projects seemed to prove to the masses that Madonna had not only run out of/overused her material, but that she was crossing an unspoken line of “good taste” that was not meant to be crossed.
A line crossed in much the same way as Theresa in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, with her story based on the real-life murder of Roseann Quinn. A murder that ultimately compelled Judith Rossner to write a book inspired by it. Released in 1975, it became a bestseller that quickly led to its adaptation into a film by Richard Brooks. In the lead-up to the film’s release, Keaton took an “oath of secrecy,” as it were, about the finer points of the film’s content, commenting to The New York Times, “Richard Brooks, the director wants it that way. I still don’t know why he chose me for the part. He saw some footage of me in Harry and Walter Go to New York, which didn’t exactly get good reviews. Anyway, it’s done now.” And when it was done, oh how it shocked audiences. Particularly the pearl-clutchers. Even if many of those types would have liked to interpret the film as a “morality plea.” Not just that, but a warning to all women of what “free love” a.k.a. sexual pleasure will result in. Of course, for the viewers, like Madonna, that really understood the core of the film’s message, it isn’t saying that at all.
No, instead Looking for Mr. Goodbar aims to remind people that, for women, true equality isn’t really possible. Is perhaps as much of a fantasy as any far-fetched sexual one. This because men, beasts that they are, can’t seem to tolerate a woman being free in any way, least of all sexually. It drives them insane, to the point of murder. And hearing a woman mock or berate him in the same way that a man freely does to a woman? Fucking forget it. For that’s what apparently set off John Wayne Wilson, the real murderer of Roseann Quinn, whose account of the events leading up to her murder state that when he couldn’t get hard, she insulted him. Something that, to use understatement, clearly set him off. In the film version of events, it plays out mostly the same way, with Gary Cooper White (Tom Berenger)—yes, the nod to John Wayne Wilson is apparent—also failing to “deliver” as they start fooling around in Theresa’s apartment. Except that, in the movie, they make it so that Gary’s sexuality is homo-leaning to add to his sense of “needing” to overcompensate for that “masculine lack” by being hyper-toxic. Ergo, his over-the-top reaction to Theresa telling him it’s fine that he can’t perform. This “condescending” (from his skewed perspective) comment is what sends him on a tirade that includes the rebuke, “Goddamn women. All you gotta do is lay there. Guy’s gotta do all the work.”
Theresa quickly loses patience for his “hot takes” about women and sex, telling him to leave. Instead, his rage continues to escalate and he proceeds to overpower her, leading her back onto the bed, stripping her of her clothes and choking her with her own bra (this aspect appearing in the “Bad Girl” video by way of “Louise Oriole” [Madonna] being strangled by a pair of her own stockings). All of this is what ends up arousing him enough to get an erection—violence, evidently the go-to aphrodisiac for men of all sexual orientations.
As he proceeds to rape her, he asks, “This is what you wanted, right bitch?” Because that’s what it is, to the toxic male, for a woman to want hard dick. It’s for her to be a bitch or a slut who deserves to be treated roughly and cruelly because she wants sex in the same way that men have always been able to get it. And, more than women being “allowed” to make not only their own money, but also more money than men (rare as it is), the idea of a woman being “allowed” to have sex like a man is even more appalling to the quintessential toxic male.
For Madonna, in 1993, there could have been no such message more appropriate to interweave into one of her videos. Because no one on Earth at that moment in time was being as maligned for their sexual freeness and candor than Ms. Ciccone. So while Madonna may have never formed a direct relationship with Keaton—apart from the direct relationship of Warren Beatty’s “special appendage” slipping into each of them at separate times (Keaton in the late 70s and early 80s, and Madonna in the early 90s)—the actress’ work clearly informed one of her best videos. And though, sure, Looking for Mr. Goodbar could have existed without Diane Keaton, it’s plain to see the movie wouldn’t have had the same impact on someone like Madonna without the subtlety and nuance she brought to the part. Able to convey the underlying missive—that women and men are never going to be “equals” so long as violence informs everything that men do and every reaction that they have—in a manner that obviously spoke to Madonna. In short, there would be no “Bad Girl” video without Diane Keaton.
Easily characterizable as yet another example in an endless series of bad tourist behavior (see also: etching your and your girlfriend’s name into a wall of the Colosseum), something about a particular modern abuse in tourism—selfie taking—truly does make one yearn for simpler times in “traveling antics.” Or, in this case, “gondola antics.” This being part of the latest selfie taking snafu captured on camera and shared ad nauseam via various platforms. While the video doesn’t show the moment of the fall, it does reveal the aftermath of a boat capsizing, leaving in its wake a group of very “surprised,” very wet Chinese tourists (for once, the “Dumbfuck Award” didn’t go to American tourists instead). Yet how could they really be surprised when they were told repeatedly to sit the fuck down by their gondolier? Namely, during the “portion of the program” where the gondolier specifically warned them that he was about to make a maneuver whose success was entirely contingent upon the distribution of the weight inside the boat. An artful maneuver that most gondoliers are required to execute when they ferry the gondola under a bridge. You know, Madonna in the “Like A Virgin” video-style.
A video that, for years, inspired many a tourist in Venice to attempt recreating some of M’s iconic writhing and gyrating on a gondola as it went under bridges and wound around canals. All while Madonna made it look so effortless in her blue Spandex pants and sleeveless black dress with cutouts at the sides, her layers of crucifix necklaces bouncing in the wind. Jumping and bopping as tourists on a bridge above her look down in what one might imagine to be awe. After all, back in 1984, such varietals of outrageous behavior in Venice were the exception, not the rule. With the advent of smartphones, not only was existence never the same, but neither was Venice. Already constantly teeming with tourists (to the point where a cap on the number of visitors will take effect), outfitting every single one of them with a pocket-size, easily accessible camera (made all the more appealing because it could also connect to the internet, where they could post the picture they had just taken) undeniably caused a change for the worse in that particular city.
Madonna’s playful jumping intermixed with sensual dancing seems positively tame in retrospect compared to some of the other things tourists will get up to nowadays (on a gondola or elsewhere) in the name of “living for the Insta/TikTok.” And, lest one forget, we never really see Madonna “rocking the boat,” so to speak—thanks to artful camerawork by director Mary Lambert, who shoots Madonna from a low-angle or waist-level position during most of these instances to merely give the illusion that she’s actually engaging in all of this “capsizing behavior” for real.
In the non-cinematic version of this narrative, however, the gondolier would have surely told Madonna the same thing that the Chinese tourists were told: bitch, sit down. Be humble. Granted, the Queen of Pop did appear to have far more reverence for the Queen of the Adriatic than your average tourist of the moment. So it was that during her 1998 episode of VH1’s Behind the Music, Madonna described Venice as a “very, very romantic place.” But of course it would seem that way to her. For one thing, it was “pre-social-media-ruining-every-tourist-destination.” For another, she stayed at Hotel Cipriani, a staple of Venice’s luxury hotel scene since the very year Madonna was born: 1958. It was one of the only options in town with a pool and, per Lambert, Madonna wanted to make sure she had access to one for her workout regimen. She also wanted to make sure she could avoid the video’s producer, Simon Fields, of whom Lambert said, “[He] still wanted to sleep with her—so did everybody else, for that matter.” That kind of “aura” about Madonna is at least part of why the streets and canals were ostensibly cleared for the video shoot…Lambert didn’t want to have a Love Potion No. 9 situation on her hands with one mere cough out of M’s mouth. By the same token, Madonna, being a Leo and still new to fame, relished the crowds that would start to gather behind the scenes and call her, according to her, a “puta”—the Spanish word for whore, though Madonna was looking for the Italian one: “puttana.”
As for reasons why Madonna and Lambert homed in on Venice for the bulk of the video shoot, the former remarked, “We felt Venice symbolized so many things, like virginity. And I’m Madonna, and I’m Italian.” Except for when she can’t find the correct word for whore in said language. Nonetheless, there’s no denying that Madonna had far more legitimate reasons for “making Venice her playground” than the artless tourists in the vein of the capsized Chinese ones mentioned above. Which brings us to how the real puttani of the moment are those who can’t resist the temptation of vanity that comes with “peddling themselves” online. And not even for the sake of “influencing,” but rather, the sake of the errant likes that might validate their existence. Including, of course, a selfie taken while crossing under a Venetian bridge in a gondola. The very same thing Madonna did back in 1984…without the selfie part. For, you see, there was a benefit to a lack of democratization in “art” (selfies being deemed as such by “influencers” such as Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian): it meant that not just any old asshole could try to bill what they were doing as precisely that.
This extends, to be sure, to “social media curation.” What historians, should there be any trace of humanity left in the future, will look back on as the “preeminent” “art form” of the twenty-first century. Perhaps forgetting altogether there was a time when tourist “hot spots” like Venice weren’t so drenched in stupidity in service of social media, as opposed to in service of more reined-in postmodern art à la the “Like A Virgin” video. Now that was an instance of (semi-)controlled antics one could actually get behind. For there remains in its wake a true piece of art that stands the test of time…as opposed to an embarrassing viral TikTok video that will be lost to a black hole once the next short clip captivates the millions who use the app.
The first introduction to Lourdes Leon a.k.a. Lolahol as a singer was 2022’s “Lock&Key.” More to the point, that introduction revealed Lolahol’s unexpected preference for one, Lady Gaga (via incorporating a very specific Gaga quote into the lyrics). The other pop star often cited as being rebellious, unafraid to push boundaries and a constant LGBTQIA+ ally. Needless to say, Madonna was all of these things decades before Lady Gaga came ‘round to continue the “trend.” And yes, it could be said that Madonna did make all of those things “trendy,” during a time when everything she stood for was branded as terminally taboo or, quite simply, uncool. Even her children took a while to come around to her music, with Madonna citing on more than one occasion that they didn’t really like it. Or would simply tell her when a song she was making rubbed them the wrong way.
However, one song that only the most heartless of fools would try to deride as anything less than extraordinary is Madonna’s 1998 track, “Frozen.” And, boldly enough, it served as the first single from Ray of Light. For not every pop star would be so willing to set the tone for a record with something as “moody” (a.k.a. not Top 40 radio-friendly) as this. But then, Madonna had never done anything by the book before that point, either. In choosing to “update” this video for her new song, “Spelling” (a witchy reference, not a language arts one), Lourdes Leon invites further automatic comparisons to her mother (so much for wanting to stand apart as one’s own artist). And, in that spirit, the “Frozen” video, directed by Chris Cunningham, must be mentioned before even bothering to unpack the visuals of “Spelling.”
Opening on the cracked ground of the Mojave Desert (“Can’t take the heat in a desert dream,” Lolahol sings at one point), “Frozen” is quick to show us a witchy, Elvira-like Madonna suspended in mid-air as she tells us, “You only see what your eyes want to see/How can life be what you want it to be?/You’re frozen.” These lyrics, of course, are leaps and bounds above Lolahol’s patchier offerings on “Spelling,” including, “You stay in the water/Remind you/Followin’ in black, whatever/Cyclical, bicycle, oh, yeah.” In a way, it comes off trying to sound like a “classier” version of Nicki Minaj rapping, “Wrist icicle, ride dick bicycle/Come true yo, get you this type of blow/If you wanna menage I got a tricycle.” Apart from that, it’s obviously just Lolahol grasping at straws for a word that pairs well with “cyclical.” And yes, that’s what “Spelling” is, one supposes. Proof that, as Madonna says on “Extreme Occident,” “Life is a circle.”
That seems to be why, just three days before her twenty-seventh birthday (with “Spelling” released on October 11th), Leon says goodbye to twenty-six (the age Madonna was when she rose to meteoric fame with “Like A Virgin,” complete with that iconic MTV VMAs performance) by saying hello to her inner Madonna. Something she appeared to have been fighting for a while in her bid to become “her own person.” Yet perhaps the wisest thing she could have done is realize that trying to run away from a juggernaut like Madonna is impossible. Especially when she’s your mother. Plus, Leon is no stranger to “Frozen,” aware of its every sonic nuances after making a dramatic choreographed video to accompany Madonna’s live performance of the song during the Madame X Tour. Shot in black and white, the video’s presentation makes it so that Lourdes is larger than life behind Madonna, holding her literally in the palms of her hands at the beginning. Superimposed over one another throughout, this moment on the tour was consistently singled out as a highlight by many critics. And when Madonna sings, “Give yourself to me,” it has an eerie effect, as though she’s asking Lourdes to be “hers” for all of eternity.
In effect, that’s what a child is (read: property) to a parent in general. Unless, like Madonna, you suffer the blow of losing your mother too soon. As many know by now, Madonna was just five when her mother, Madonna Sr., died of breast cancer, creating an emotional void in the singer’s life that she would seek to fulfill until the birth of Lourdes in 1996. And yes, her name does refer to being something of a miracle to Madonna, who perhaps never thought she would find a love so fulfilling. Enter the cheesy headline that some magazine (in this case, Vanity Fair) was bound to use right after Lourdes’ birth: “Madonna and Child.” This was a far cry from a 1991 Vanity Fair cover story on Madonna called “The Misfit.” In it, Madonna mentions a palm reader who came to a New Year’s Eve party at her house on that last day of 1990. According to M, “She looked at my palm and she said I’m never going to have any children.” So much for being prophetic. And yet, knowing Madonna, she probably set out to have as many children as possible after hearing a fortune teller insist that she wouldn’t. For Madonna’s entire drive in life has been to prove people wrong when they tell her she “can’t” do something.
This can be attributed to her oppressive patriarch, Tony Ciccone, who gave his eldest daughter a strict Catholic upbringing. One that, without the gentleness of a mother, likely seemed particularly stifling. As Madonna said, “When you grow up without a mother… you are on a mad search for love. Unconditional love.” Madonna’s comments on mothering (long before the overused “mother is mothering” phrase came along) also stood out in Truth or Dare, during which she discusses her maternal feelings toward her dancers, noting, “I think I have unconsciously chosen people that are emotionally crippled in some way. Or who need mothering in some way. Because I think it comes real natural to me. It fulfills a need in me to be mothered.” That more than slight tinge of non-altrusim in Madonna’s motives for wanting to “nurture” would come across in later interviews after she had Lourdes.
For instance, in a 2003 interview with Megan Mullally called “Madonna Speaks,” she once again mentions how the birth of her daughter was the beginning of her losing her sense of narcissism (timed to coincide with her study of Kabbalah). She adds antithetically to that declaration, “My children help me see myself… I see my daughter being, you know, reacting to things and I get kind of anxiety-ridden watching her do it and I go, ‘My god, that’s me.’ It’s kind of like a mirror thing that happens… ‘cause your children really are mirrors of you, they’re sparks of your soul. And when you learn to embrace your children for all of their shortcomings, in a way, you’re doing that to yourself.”
Phrased like that, Madonna comes across as one of those parents who definitely relishes having children for the benefit of making a “carbon copy” of oneself. This only adding to Madonna’s legacy—one that assures she will live on long after she’s left this Earth. Not just through her work, but through her children. After all, Madonna has called them her greatest work of art (more property allusions), not any of the music or other media she’s put out into the world. And Lolahol’s tribute to Madonna and “Frozen” builds on that secured legacy.
In the post that accompanied Lolahol’s announcement of the video’s release, she wrote, “This piece is very special. It’s an homage to my mother’s timeless piece of art ‘Frozen’ [obviously]. That piece has come up countless times in my life, connecting the two of us. I would be nothing without the woman who brought me into the world. I revere her, and hope that this translates.” This feels like a far cry from previous, less than reverent statements Lourdes has made about Mama Madonna. But maybe with age comes wisdom. Or a “softening.” That’s what happened to Madonna much later in life, circa forty, with Ray of Light marking her complete transition into “Ethereal Girl” in lieu of “Material Girl.”
Claire Farin, the director of “Spelling,” seeks to bring the same hard edge to that softening that reveals itself in the “Frozen” video (swapping out the desert in favor of a quintessentially creepy woods setting). Which is why her interpretation of the latter echoes something more tantamount to Chilling Adventures of Sabrina meets the witchy scenes in Lana Del Rey’s “Chemtrails Over the Country Club” video. After all, this is still a Gen Z project. Or “piece,” as Leon kept repeating. Such deliberate use of that word also calls attention to her “weird art kid” status. That same phrase being used by a Madonna fan after seeing the Madame X Tour. Madonna then promptly reposted the comment in her story. And yes, of late, Madonna is being re-evaluated as someone who has always been more “pure artist” than pop star. At least, this is the approach Mary Gabriel takes in the latest biography about the star, called Madonna: A Rebel Life. And maybe Leon finally saw some of that rebellion as being worthy of deference.
Even if her single cover smacks more of Evanescence’s Fallen than it does Madonna’s “Frozen.” The point is, Leon is trying. To “do homage,” that is. She even nods more subtly to another video of Madonna’s, “Die Another Day,” by wrapping black bands around her arms, tefillin-style. Another American Life-era track that seems to have an influence is “I’m So Stupid,” with Lolahol singing, “Everybody’s looking for something” in the same tone as Madonna when she declares, “Everybody’s lookin’ for somethin’/Everybody’s stupid, stupid.” Lolahol instead accuses herself of stupidity by remarking, “I was stupid and it doesn’t work like that.” Whether she meant to reference “I’m So Stupid” or not, it’s clear Leon has been paying more attention to her mother’s work (even if only through osmosis) than she might have previously let on.
Though she’s vague about the “it” in “doesn’t work like that,” maybe what Lolahol is referring to pertains to the presumed ease with which she could kick start her own career by sheer virtue of being Madonna’s daughter. To that point, Madonna said of Lourdes in 2019, “She doesn’t have the same drive [as me]—and again, I feel social media plagues her and makes her feel like: ‘People are going to give me things because I’m [Madonna’s] daughter.’ I try to give her examples of other children of celebrities who have to work through that ‘Oh yeah, you’re the daughter of…’ and then eventually you are taken seriously for what you do.”
This seems to be gradually happening to Lourdes. But it might actually be a detriment to call further attention to her nepo baby status by emulating such an iconic visual of her mother’s (as we also saw in the video for Go’s “Cuntradiction”). At the same time, if anyone “deserves” to emulate, who else but Lourdes ought to? (But don’t try telling that to a drag queen.) It’s something she’s been doing since at least 2009 (or 2003, if you count her cameo during the Britney/Xtina performance of “Like A Virgin”), when she appeared in Madonna’s “Celebration” video dressed in M’s “Like A Virgin” regalia, complete with wedding dress and “Boy Toy” belt. At the time, she was just shy of turning thirteen. In the years since, Leon has proven to be a quick study in the ways of her mother, even going to the same university Madonna dropped out of (University of Michigan) before herself “dropping out” to transfer to SUNY Purchase. Pursuing the same love of dance that Madonna possessed when she went to college (indeed, there are moments during the aforementioned Madame X Tour performance of “Frozen” where Lourdes becomes U of M-era Madonna), Leon has been quoted as saying of dance: “You’re using your body to define the space around you—to change it. That’s a very naked form of expression.”
Nakedness becomes more literal in “Spelling,” with Leon opting to differentiate her version of “Frozen” from Madonna’s by entering into a body of water wearing only her birthday suit. As though baptizing herself a fully-formed star. Something Madonna also did by choosing to move to New York and reinvent herself for the very first time. Having schooled both Lourdes and several generations of women on not being ashamed of nudity (see: Madonna declaring, “I’m not ashamed” when her pre-fame nude photos were leaked to Playboy and Penthouse), Lourdes pointedly chooses to “sex up” this “Frozen” homage with one of her mother’s tried-and-true shock value staples. Except that, as a direct result of Madonna, women who are comfortable with their sexuality are no longer even half as shocking.
In 2019, Madonna gave an interview to iHeartRadio, during which she was asked if she thought any of her children would follow in her footsteps. She replied, “Following in my footsteps? I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.” Yet it seems as though, suddenly, Lourdes wants to do something like that, or as close to it as someone from Gen Z (bordering dangerously on millennial) can get to imitating Madonna. With imitation still being, so they insist, the sincerest form of flattery. Not, instead, the greatest sign that there is nothing original left to do or say.
