The Music Diva Spectacle

Camp, Female Performers and Queer Audiences in the Arena Tour Show

Constantine Chatzipapatheodoridis

• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781789384369
• eBook ISBN: 9781789384383
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

This original new book has a unique focus on diva camp as popular music praxis. The author analyses case studies of diva concert tour shows in order to present a performance studies reading of camp, the culture-sharing process of production, and audience reception. Detailed case studies include contemporary stars Madonna, Kylie, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and a look at audience drag.

The book contains detailed descriptions of artists' performances, along with the analysis of exciting and popular contemporary performers. The emphasis on camp is particularly interesting, as thinking about queerness has pushed camp into the background in recent years. This is an interesting and exciting revival of the question of camp in contemporary queer performance.

The book considers and investigates the relationship between camp theory as an academic subject and the figure of the diva as one that utilizes and expresses camp in various ways. It seeks to establish how camp is appropriated or owned by the diva and how this impacts on, and is in turn appropriated and owned by, the audience.

Primary readership will be among researchers and educators working in the fields of cultural studies, performance studies, theatre studies, music studies, LGBTQ+ studies, critical race studies, as well as undergraduate students interested in these topics. It will be a useful classroom resource and addition to recommended reading lists.

The Music Diva Spectacle may have interest for more general readers with an interest in the subjects of the case studies, but the main focus is on the academic market.

1

Time Goes by so Slowly: Madonna’s Camp Revivals

Madonna’s great period was 1983–1992. She absolutely changed the world. There’s no doubt about it. And since then, it’s cringe-making […] It’s embarrassing […] But what Madonna did was to allow young women to flirt with men, to seduce men, to control men. She showed that you could be sexy, but at the same time, control the negotiations, control the territory between male and female.

(Camille Paglia, Reason)

It’s crazy, what’s happened in my life and what I’ve been through. If I really think about it, I’ve had an amazing life. And I’ve met so many amazing people […] I feel like I’ve survived so much. And sometimes I miss the innocence of those times. Life was different. New York was different. The music business was different. I miss the simplicity of it, the naiveté of everything around me.

(Madonna, Independent.ie)

Madonna’s emergence to stardom in the early 1980s coincides with American popular music taking a turn to the phase of New Pop, a novel condition defined from the rise of MTV and the music video medium, which becomes the primary format of music reception. Simon Reynolds and Joy Press describe New Pop as a deconstructive force (317), picking up the baton from previous music movements, such as the early 1970s glam rock and the 1960s countercultural bohemia in the American and British terrains, which fervently opposed traditional rock (and roll) values. The 1980s, however, lacked the political valence of the preceding decades, which makes the phase-turned-era-turned-culture of New Pop all the more questionable and its politics of subversion, as Reynolds and Press put it, “precarious and complicated,” to say the least (317). Being a decade of a general social backlash, the 1980s witnessed, among other things, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher’s ultraconservative Right-oriented policies and neoliberal tactics, vacillations of the “second wave” feminist movement, and the AIDS crisis afflicting the gay community before turning to a trans-communal epidemic.¹ It is quite ironic, then, how currently Madonna misses “the simplicity” and “innocence” of those times. In rosy retrospection, those times may really appear sugar-coated, but the feeling was rather different when her inflammatory actions of, say, kissing the effigy of a Black Jesus or exposing wedding lingerie on stage, were met with harsh criticism. For Camille Paglia, probably Madonna’s most ardent academic defender who now opts for disdain, this was when the performer changed the world. She may have pushed boundaries in terms of gender and race—“Express Yourself” (1989) was undoubtedly a call to arms—but her feminist/humanist cause was always contained within and curtailed by a neoliberal consumerist ethos as well as a self-centered drive for profit.

Arguably, Madonna’s challenging of social notions and cultural clichés with overt visual and conceptual expressivity has remained keen throughout her 30-year-long career in the entertainment business. Her envelope-pushing attempts were and still are the axis around which her work rotates. What has changed, though, is the chronological and sociopolitical context wherein this work is placed. For instance, the Spinal Tap-like documentary Madonna: Truth or Dare, with a camera following the artist on a daily basis on- and offstage during her Blond Ambition World Tour, in 1990, can also be read as a racy reality show, long before reality TV even existed. A celebrity discussing openly her sex life to the point of even releasing a soft-porn coffee-table book boldly titled SEX, featuring photographic material with her in all kinds of sexual fantasies, was groundbreaking in a post-1980s context when music artists could only be erotically envisioned by their audience either through their music video narratives and live performances, in which sexuality was always contained, or via tabloid culture. One can imagine that an entire erotic novella created and embraced openly by Madonna herself was surely a provocative move, not to mention an ideal media magnet in light of the Erotica album. Currently, though, responses vary when Madonna openly provokes the public with overt sexuality, especially when one takes into account that she is a middle-aged performer in a youth-targeting business; for example, consider social media criticism on the artist’s age that followed her live-streamed French kiss with hip-hop artist Drake during one of her Coachella showcases.² Ageism aside, women showing flesh in music performances has currently become a/the norm compared to Madonna’s 1980s and early 1990s peers. What is then the point of a derrière-exposing Madonna now?

Concerning her feminist advocacy, Madonna’s artistic endeavors have been meticulously examined by scholars and music critics mostly in terms of gender norm subversions. Academic literature and press on Madonna entail some of the most crucial conundrums permeating the ontology of her persona(e) and performances, including the always problematic binary of the Madonna/whore complex along with issues of censorship (Pisters), voyeurism and exhibitionism (Herr), fetishism and objectification (McRobbie, “Second-Hand Dresses”; Peñaloza), cultural appropriation (hooks, Black Looks; Robertson, Guilty Pleasures), women in business (Gairola), and, currently, ageism (McMahon; Naiman; Sullivan). Interestingly, there is no clear-cut division in these debates that would allow reading Madonna monolithically. Throughout her career and the long-lasting influence of her icon, she has indeed pushed the envelope as regards sex or artistic expression on stage; yet, she has time and again sustained and encouraged ideological power structures, most notably, White patriarchal supremacy, according to bell hooks (hooks, Black Looks, 157), or the inevitably capitalist-bound nature of her work. Thus, it is intriguing to explore how the approaches behind all these–isms reveal the profound and productive, but still intricate and problematic character of the Material Girl.

In this light, Madonna’s camp is another question that is tangential with the abovementioned topics and is what this chapter seeks to problematize further. With critics of camp long debating on Madonna’s oeuvre (Robertson, Guilty Pleasures; Shugart and Waggoner; Hawkins, “Draggin Out”), it would be axiomatic to argue that the performer’s show is camp-fuelled. As totalizing as this argument may sound, one cannot help but acknowledge that the icon of Madonna has been structured upon and cemented with camp qualities. In this perspective, critics have attempted to examine grounds of camp production and reception inhabited solely by gay male subjectivity, thus offering alternative readings against camp’s gay essentialism. For instance, in Guilty Pleasures, Robertson points out the misogynist aspects of camp and recuperates female agency behind camp practices. The camp of glamorous divas has been attractive to gay male subjectivity, yet it has always worked restrictively against women, putting them on a pedestal of dubious worship and attributing passive qualities to them. Robertson challenged this very thesis of gay male camp through Madonna and other Hollywood stars by highlighting the subversive feminist nuances in their performances of female masquerade. Regarding Madonna’s agency behind the production of camp, the critic suggests that it functions on two parallel lines:

The first predominantly heterosexual pop and/or postmodern style of camp applies to Madonna’s career as a whole—in her extraordinary self-marketing, her changing images, and her retro-cinephilia. The second, more explicitly homosexual and political style of camp inheres primarily in Madonna’s explicit references to gay subcultures, especially drag and voguing, in her stated identification with gay men, her flirtation with lesbianism, and her AIDS charity work. (119)

Robertson provides accurate remarks regarding Madonna’s career up until Guilty Pleasures was written. Twenty years later, however, there are instances where the political nuances of female/feminist camp are still ambiguous. When it comes to camp’s high appeal to queer audiences and female divas exploiting it toward lucrative ends, it becomes rather problematic to sanction such production regardless of it being female- or male-authored.

Madonna is indeed a woman in power who is now in control of her own image and artistic creation. Robertson does not fail to see this, too: “no analysis of feminist camp would be complete without an acknowledgement of Madonna’s role in bringing camp to the forefront in a transnational consumer society” (119). Helene Shugart and Catherine Egley Waggoner support that “although Madonna has had and continues to have camp moments, her performance is not consistently camp” and this “may well be a function of the fact that she was and continuous to be an innovator with regard to disrupting the confines of female sexuality in popular culture” (136). In agreement with Robertson, Shugart and Waggoner underline Madonna’s agency behind her icon and camp in an effort to emphasize the feminist politics in the artist’s projects. However, both analyses see Madonna as the sole proprietor behind her production of camp. Madonna may now manage much of her work’s final outcome, always in line though with music market needs, yet there is still at work a complex power and business network around her. For one thing, queer culture, the primary source of camp production, comprises a large part of this network and its contribution is to be found in Madonna’s fields of fashion and music production, artistic creation as well as audience attendance. The point of this argument is not, of course, to downgrade the feminist valence inherent in Madonna’s camp, but rather to reclaim and reimagine the queer roots of camp as cooperative in the star construct that is “Madonna.”

The Madonna reader has always had to deal with ambiguities regarding the persona that eventually led to polarities. Is she Madonna or whore? Is she ultimately in control of her objectification or is she the pink-ribboned package of pop consumerism? Is her artistic palette indeed driven by cultural appropriation or simply cultural borrowing or, worse, copying for lack of original creativity? Is “Madonna” a camp object or an object of camp? Or, no object at all? Despite the either/or nature of these questions, there is not a single correct answer; in fact, every answer seems valid because Madonna’s icon remains fluid. Each of these, though, especially those concerning the very essence of her camp, must be treated contextually. For example, the controversy that the release of the video of “Justify My Love”³ generated in 1990 resulted in it being banned from music television due to its risqué depiction of S&M and queer action. Consider now the 2012 video of “Girl Gone Wild,” which features Kazaki, an all-gay-male Ukrainian group, dancing semi-naked in tights and high heels next to Madonna. MTV critic Jocelyn Vena reviewed the video as “the perfect homage to the singer’s foxy ‘Sex’ book and Erotica days of the ’90s. Crunchy, sexy and edgy, the ‘GGW’ clip is certainly the perfect response for anyone yearning for that Madge of yesteryear” (“Madonna Owns”, original emphasis). For, in 1990 Madonna fans might have never seen “Girl Gone Wild” uncensored or even aired, but in 2012 the video moves from “crunchy” to iconic. Cultural criticism changing with time allows for new spaces to revisit Madonna’s camp, with questions arising as to whether her political risqué camp retreated into a celebrated iconicity, a mere nostalgia, and, by extension, whether the said camp nostalgia should be treated that simply.

Madonna’s tour history attests to such nostalgia and celebration. Unlike her albums, videos, and singles that incrementally build on her icon, her tours offer a rich and condensed projection of who “Madonna” is supposed to be. Within a span of two to three hours, the shows are capable of (re)introducing, glamorizing, and verifying Madonna as the Queen of Pop in a self-referential and icon-affirming spectacle. Through the processes of sampling and (re)mixing Madonna’s songs (or her songs with other artists’ songs) into brief medleys, the shows are created to be reflective of club culture. Intertextuality and pop culture references lie at the core of her spectacle. Typically, each one of her tours’ audiovisual staging (with the exception of Confessions Tour that I will shortly address) positions Madonna within current trends, thereby affirming her designated place in the pop world. Her Sticky & Sweet Tour (in 2008–09), for example, opened with Madonna sitting on a throne under the sonic influences of Timbaland and Kanye West, whose music projects were both on the spotlight at the time. As Madonna’s icon is being further ingrained in the spectacle fair year by year, her tours indulge more and more in a celebratory excess of her icon and its longevity.

Simultaneously, the camp pastiche of her stage derives its power from the past and explodes extravagantly into the present. In every tour show, Madonna makes sure to cite from queer culture. As is the case with Hispanic and Black culture, the artist makes sure she flaunts her queer affiliations by presenting herself amidst queer-inflected scenes, thereby reaffirming her lasting relationship with the culture’s histories and origins. In doing so, she cements her gay icon status, one that exhibits and promotes aspects of this long-established intertwinement. Of course, the relationship between Madonna and queer fandom is one of mutual adoration: in response, queer groups comprise many of her arena audiences and are a considerable cultural and economic factor endorsing her artistry and contributing to her legacy.

Nostalgias on a dance floor

Madonna’s prefame story has been retold many times throughout her career, because, according to her, “it is good to look back and tell a story of how a girl from Detroit came to New York” (Hiatt). In her personal realization of the American Dream, it is admitted that her gay dance teacher Christopher Flynn played a key role in exposing Madonna to gay culture.⁴ Ever since, her support for and by the community has been keen while one could argue that the development of her career and status as a gay icon are inextricably linked. In addition to that, her longevity in the entertainment industry has bound Madonna, the individual, and “Madonna,” the icon, into a single person, at least in the public mind. Her identity as “Little Nonnie” Ciccone, the teenage girl from Michigan, has long been surpassed by her status as Madonna/“Madonna.” Philip Auslander

see[s]‌ the performer in popular music as defined by three layers: the real person (the performer as human being), the performance persona (the performer’s self representation), and the character (a figure portrayed in a song text). All three layers may be active simultaneously in a given musical performance. (Performing Glam Rock, 4)

Auslander’s explication of the pop performer is vital in our understanding of the Madonna/“Madonna” symbiosis. The fact that the audience has to deal with two or more aspects of the performer’s identity instills into the persona various facades of mystique. Essentially, this layered subjectivity, this power to don different masks and to build each time a different narrative around them, is where the power of Madonna’s diva camp exists.

As Madonna’s artistic palette is growing, so is her need not only to reinvent herself but, most importantly, to reaffirm herself as the chameleonic persona who skillfully evades fixity. The first two decades of her career saw Madonna emulating different personae, such as the “Marilyn Monroe” or the “Marie Antoinette”.⁵ In the years after 2005, however—with the exception of the “Madame X” persona for 2019’s namesake album—instead of reinvention, she has settled for either revisiting past personae or acting out “Madonna” in various settings and scenes. For instance, Confessions on a Dance Floor and its accompanying Confessions Tour saw Madonna drawing heavily from the 1970s music scene, paying homage to ABBA, and recreating a Saturday Night Fever-ish aesthetic. Unlike, however, Mistress Dita, her alter-ego dominatrix from her Erotica days (circa 1992), or the geisha persona from the Ray of Light album (in 1998), the performer in the Confessions era rather opted for a Madonna-goes-disco project, which can either be viewed as an inability to creatively reinvent her persona or, quite the opposite, as an attempt to place her icon on the imaginative forefront through the disco scene. “Madonna” is a red-hot, politically charged persona that can no longer be contained inside other personae. Indeed, her icon ends up copying itself in true Baudrillardian fashion, drawing referential power from itself. In fact, her persona, which more often than not stands synonymous with controversy, can simply rely on its own power to provoke. Her mechanisms of metamorphosis are now no secret to her audience. It is Madonna, the provocateur, the always Catholic-inspired, the mother, the activist, the business woman, the Kabbalah devotee, the feminist, the poly-sexual, behind the mask. The project-like quality behind her reinventions immediately renders such acts as strictly professional. In this light, her inspirations are nothing but a careful study of her social surroundings that aims toward artistic and, by extension, lucrative goals. As her artistic trajectory from 2005 onward reveals, the performer did not really embrace any ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Time Goes by so Slowly: Madonna’s Camp Revivals
• 2 LaLaLas and WowWowWows: Approaching Kylie Minogue’s Extravaganzas
• 3 We Flawless: Beyoncé’s Politics of Black Camp
• 4 Highway Unicorns: Camp Aesthet(h)ics and Utopias in Lady Gaga’s Tours
• 5 Dressed for the Ball: Audience Drag in the Arena Space
• Conclusion
• References
• Index