Madonna (50 page)

The title cut, “Erotica,” is similar to “Justify My Love”—dark, rhythmic, with a pumping beat. The song is an offshoot of the poem by her sexual alter ego, Dita, which was printed in the
Sex
book. Madonna's version of the old Peggy Lee hit, “Fever,” with a new, sexier beat, follows it. “Fever” is an appealingly sexy song about desire that was a great song for her to cover. Several cuts on the album recount stories, like “Thief of Hearts,” in which Madonna tells off a boyfriend-stealing woman, and “In This Life,” a song about the AIDS-related death of her beloved dance instructor, Christopher Flynn. “Rain,” one of the most beautiful pop ballads that Madonna has ever recorded, takes its sexual meaning from another song on the album (“Where Life Begins”) that likens rain to vaginal wetness.

This was the first (and so far only) Madonna album to carry a printed warning on the cover: “Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics.” She had been suggestive in her music in the past, but never before had she been so blatant. The disclaimer was put there because of two specific songs on the album, “Where Life Begins” and “Did You Do It?” From the minute the song “Where Life Begins” starts, Madonna sings about receiving oral sex from her male partner, complete with crude in-your-face metaphors. Only the pubescent masturbation fantasies she wrote about in
Sex
rival the song's silliness. The song “Did You Do It?” features Mark Goodman and Dave Murphy carrying on a rap-style conversation in which they brag about their sexual exploits, while Madonna bleats the chorus of her song “Waiting for You” in the background. It sounds something like a joke without a punchline, and is neither amusing nor tuneful.

One of Madonna's main promotional ploys—a scandalous video—naturally fanned the flame of her biggest sex escapade to date. The video version of “Erotica” was so steamy and so laden with S&M fantasies that MTV would air it only after midnight. It was just another publicity “ace” perfectly played.

To further assure the success of both
Sex
and
Erotica
, Madonna threw a huge sex-themed, by-invitation-only party in a lower Manhattan loft on October 15, 1992. The 800 guests included filmmaker Spike Lee, who saluted Madonna's “courage” for publishing
Sex;
ex-Van Halen lead singer David Lee Roth; TV personality Robin Leach; and Rosie O'Donnell, who praised her pal for being “a genius at marketing herself.” (249)

One of the party's prime amusements were living theater tableaus being performed during the evening. One actress in lingerie relaxed in a bathtub filled with caramel-coated popcorn, while other groups in leather and chains whipped each other in sadomasochistic scenarios. However, the rumor circulating at the party was that the guest of honor, Madonna, was going to enter the party totally nude. In a typical about-face Madonna looked more like Heidi of the Alps, with her braided hair wrapped in buns atop her head, and a low-cut Bavarian-style dress with piping and rickrack sewn to it. To complete this bizarre shepherdess get-up, Madonna arrived with a stuffed toy lamb under her arm. When it comes to dressing for attention, Madonna is a pro.

The neighborhood that night was teaming with uninvited Madonna onlookers who lined the streets, waiting for a glimpse of the former Material Girl in her new persona as sexual guru. Located in the meat-packing district of Manhattan—a neighborhood normally frequented by drag queens and hustlers—that night around the loft it was impossible to tell the party-goers from the local sex trade.

At over 2,000,000 copies sold,
Erotica
was the least commercially successful of her releases to date. It did reach Number Two on
Billboard's
album chart, but by Christmas had fallen to Number 25. This was not typical chart activity for a Madonna album. The X-rated subject matter and the off-putting photo of her sucking a man's toe on the back cover were elements that were a bit too much, even for some of her fans.

Erotica
spent over a year on the
Billboard
charts and spawned three hit singles that kept Madonna and her whole
Sex/Erotica
publicity machinery in everyone's eyes throughout the next year. The 1992 singles from the album were “Erotica” (peak American pop-chart position Number Three) and “Deeper and Deeper” (Number Seven). In 1993 she released the songs “Bad Girl” (Number 36) and “Rain” (Number Fourteen).

Instead of making the rounds of the television shows in the fall of 1992, Madonna remained silent about her
Sex
book and
Erotica
album. She let the product, and the resulting music videos, speak for her. Television programs like
The Joan Rivers Show
and
Maury Povich
based whole shows and/or segments around the theme “Has Madonna gone too far?” As usual, Madonna was laughing all the way to the bank. Since
Erotica
was her first album release on her own Maverick Records label, a 2,000,000-selling album and four Top 40 singles were great to start.

Not until four years and three albums later was she willing to discuss the project with a sense of perspective. According to Madonna: “Sexuality has always been forced down our throats, but it's always been from a male point of view. The woman is always objectified. And in this circumstance it was the opposite. I think that not only men but women responded in a really hostile way. People didn't attack me in a personal way before the book. After the book, they did. I'm talking about criticizing everything from my choice of men to my body—things that have nothing to do with my work. I also found myself the subject of almost any interview anyone did with a female. Writers used to just throw my name up there just to get six paragraphs of sensationalist journalism.” (250) Did she think that she could actually release an album with songs about “eating out” a vagina, and a book that romanticized sadomasochism, and
not
be the subject of criticism?

She later whined to
Time
magazine that her witty sense of humor was simply misinterpreted. “If you read the text [of
Sex]
, it was completely tongue-in-cheek. It was a joke. Unfortunately, my sense of humor is not something that a mainstream audience picks up. For me, all it did was expose our society's hangups about our sexuality. Yes, I took a beating, and yes, a lot of things that were said were hurtful and unfair. And, yes, it did make my life really difficult for a while. But there were no mistakes. It was a great learning experience.” (251) Some lessons in life are harder learned than others.

Four years after
Sex
was released in bookstores, she was still trying to justify her love of shocking people. She claimed, “Most people want to hear me say I regret putting out my
Sex
book. I don't. What was problematic was putting out my
Erotica
album at the same time. I love that record, and it was overlooked. Everything I did for the next three years was dwarfed by my book.” (252) It was true. With
Sex
, she had lowered the benchmark in an effort to turn controversy into a huge profit.

While this was percolating in her career, her personal life was rather colorful as well. Madonna dated not one—but
two
—of the most high-profile black basketball players in sports: Charles Barclay and Dennis Rodman. Flamboyant Rodman—known to dye his hair cherry red, orange, and lime green—has been photographed in drag and is excessively tattooed and pierced. He seemed like the perfect match for Madonna. However, after several months of an on-and-off affair, they parted under less-than-friendly terms.

Meanwhile, during the same time period that the
Sex
and
Erotica
controversies were raging, Madonna was still struggling to be taken seriously as a film actress. In 1993 she released two separate films in which she starred. One was a dreadful bomb, despite its high-profile release. The other was so awful it went almost instantly to video, and to this day few people even know it exists.

The first film,
Body of Evidence
, starred Madonna as Rebecca Carlson, an oversexed vixen on trial for murder. The role certainly seemed tailor-made for her new sexual-guru persona. In the plot, Rebecca is accused of killing her rich lover via too much rough sex. While defending the case, her laywer (Willem Dafoe) becomes involved with her emotionally and physically. The most famous scene in the movie, involving hot candle wax and steamy sex, made more audience members squirm in their seats than get turned on. Legally, Rebecca gets away with murder. However, the acquittal proves a dark useless victory: during the film's final moments someone kills her. The film was so awful that Rebecca's demise caused some audience members to cheer. Despite a fine supporting cast, including Anne Archer, Frank Langela, and Joe Mantegna, this cinematic effort was a sheer disaster.

Evidently, in the original script Madonna's character lived to cherish her wrongful acquittal, but this was changed at the last minute. Such treatment wasn't half as severe as the way film critics slaughtered
Body of Evidence. People
magazine referred to the film as “Madonna's Movie Misadventure”; Susan Stark, in
The Detroit News
, denounced it as sheer “trash”; Roger Ebert awarded it half a star; and, according to one review, in the middle-American city of Peoria, Illinois, “52 people gathered in a 237-seat theater and giggled.” (253)

Speaking of
Body of Evidence
, Madonna later lamented, “In all the movies of the ‘40s, the bad girl has to die. What I loved about the role was that she didn't die. And in the end, they killed me. So I felt that I was sabotaged to a certain extent. For some reason, when that movie came out, I was held responsible for it entirely. It was my fault, which is absurd, because we all make bad movies. I mean,
Diabolique
[1996] came out and Sharon Stone was not held responsible for the fact that it was a crap movie.” (251)

Watching her second film of 1993,
Dangerous Game
, is similar to undergoing Chinese water torture—it never seems to end. The saddest part about this film is that Madonna spent her own money to star in this tale of a director (Harvey Keitel) whose latest film, concerning the demise of a marriage, parallels his own failed relationship with his wife (Nancy Ferrara). In the film, Madonna's character just happens to be sleeping with everyone but the director's wife. The ironic aspect of this film is watching Madonna—a famous celebrity whom critics have claimed “can't act”—portray a fictional actress of whom everyone in the film seems to have the same opinion. This is truly a case of art imitating life, imitating art, imitating entertainment.

Longtime Madonna pal Marlene Stewart designed the costumes in
Dangerous Game
. The singer's manager, Freddie DeMann, was credited as one of its Executive Producers, while Madonna's Maverick Productions got all the blame for this mess. The original shooting title was
Snake Eyes
, and the director was Abel Ferrara. Madonna's best scene depicts her telling a series of “blonde” jokes at a restaurant. It seems to be the only one in which she doesn't look like she's acting. The movie's funniest line comes from actor James Russo, who says of Madonna's character, Sarah Jennings, “We both know she's a fucking whore and she can't act.”

The film is moody, much of it shot either in a film noir fashion or a stark documentary style. The action is nothing more than rambling improvisation, with Madonna, Keitel, and the rest of the cast pointlessly chatting and complaining. Madonna seizes several opportunities to undress in this film, and does so with nonchalance. She laughs, she cries, she does drugs, and in the end her screen husband in the film-within-the-film (James Russo) blows Madonna's brains out. The sex is violent, but the plot sags. Ultimately, you don't care what happens to any of these people or their dysfunctional relationships.

Madonna thought she had a winner on her hands. She certainly had a worthy director—or so it seemed. Abel Ferrara had received rave notices for his 1992 police drama,
The Bad Lieutenant
, starring Harvey Keitel. Madonna complained that her best work ended up on the cutting-room floor. According to her: “The movie had such a different texture and meaning and outcome for me. When I went to see a screening of it, I cried, because I really think I did a good job as an actress. I don't think it should be called
Dangerous Game
. It should be called
The Bad Director:'
(251)

In the June 1993 issue of
Interview
magazine Madonna comically pondered future movie roles with friend and celebrity interviewer Mike Myers, of
Saturday Night Live
and
Wayne's World
fame. According to her: “I have this idea that we should do a remake of
Some Like It Hot
, only with you and Garth [Dana Carvey] playing the Tony Curtis/Jack Lemmon parts. Sharon Stone should play the Marilyn Monroe part and I'm gonna play the bandleader. Only I want to change it slightly. I'm going to fire the Marilyn Monroe character for being unprofessional, and then we'll see what develops from there.” (254)

While her two 1993 films were playing to lukewarm movie audiences, Madonna was playing live to ecstatic concert audiences and rave reviews. In October she launched her first tour in four years, the elaborate production known as
The Girlie Show Tour
. The twenty-date, four-continent tour included dates in Toronto, Detroit, New York, and Sydney. A costume-filled
Ziegfeld Follies
kind of show, it presented Madonna at her brazen best. Critic Richard Corliss in
Time
magazine claimed: “Her current caravan… is a smash. Biggest thing since the Who tour… biggest thing since the Rolling Stones…. Madonna, once a Harlow harlot and now a perky harlequin, is the greatest show-off on earth.” (255) The concert itself was a heavily choreographed extravaganza. Even “Justify My Love” received a black-and-white costumed production treatment, emerging as a 1990s take-off on the “Ascot Gavot” number from
My Fair Lady
. A highly successful international concert extravaganza, the event was captured on video and is currently available on DVD. Taped in Australia, the release title is
The Girlie Show—Live Down Under
. It encompasses some of her biggest hits as well as new material from
Erotica
.