New Pitchfork article: On Gay Fandom & Growing Older with Madonna

[le smoking]

Haven't seen this posted yet and I figured it was more of a general article than a tour review but I took out the names of songs just in case

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/904-i-made-it-through-the-wilderness-on-gay-fandom-and-growing-older-with-madonna/

I Made It Through the Wilderness: On Gay Fandom, and Growing Older with Madonna

By T. Cole Rachel, September 21, 2015 at 3:00 p.m. EDT

Photo by Mert and Marcus

As stereotypically gay music experiences go, you can’t go much gayer than attending the opening night of a Madonna tour. I say this fondly, and as a forty-something gay man who has seen lots of ostensibly very gay things, including but not limited to Kylie Minogue’s Fever tour, a semi-private Celine Dion concert in New York City, and multiple Erasure tours. Within the pantheon of music culture that gay men hold dear, Madonna has been serving as a defacto ambassador for nearly 30 years since. Admittedly, talking about gay diva worship in pop culture is to trade in both old stereotypes and terrible clichés, but standing outside Montreal’s Bell Centre Arena on the opening night of Madonna’s Rebel Heart tour, it’s hard not to ponder the connection, standing amid sea of excited gay men—most of them sporting Madonna shirts from previous tours, with a few of them dressed as Madge herself. A DJ outside the venue was spinning Madonna remixes and a pack of horned dancers provided "Living for Love" photo ops in front of a Rebel Heart backdrop. There were of course women, and perhaps a younger audience than expected, but Madonna’s audience of gay men is holding steady.

Since interviewing Madonna for Pitchfork earlier this year, I have often been thrust into the strange position of being a Madonna apologist in the course of conversations about her. Why does she insist on competing with teenage pop stars? (Why not?) Why does she work with the trendiest young producers?(She always has.) Why is she still showing her ass in public? (Again, why the fuck not?) It’s a curious role for someone who doesn’t even own all of her later records. As a goth teen in the late '80s, my bedroom altar was dedicated to Siouxsie Sioux, who articulated my particular strain of teenage ennui.

Still, I loved Madonna for what she represented. That she spoke about AIDS and advocated for gay people at a time when few else did was inspiring to me. When she showed up on "David Letterman" with Sandra Bernhard, the way she seemed born of a mythical downtown NYC I’d only ever read about was life-giving. Yet, after the interview ran, I was kind of amazed at how much grief I encountered on her behalf, most of which can be summed up with some version of How Dare She STILL Be Doing This. She’s always been a polarizing figure in pop culture, but as she gets older she becomes polarizing in a new ways; her steadfastness and tenacity as a controversial pop icon are taken as an affront.

After all the noise surrounding the leak and subsequent release of Rebel Heart, the cape-yanking tumble at the Brits, her often questionable Instagram activity, her insistence on remaining both sexual and youthful at the age of 57 (despite the fact that media outlets talk about her as if she was 97), being in a room full of liquored up Madonna fans at the opening night of her tour is to experience her influence made manifest. Also, her longtime fans don’t give a fuck about any of that stuff. In the hearts and minds of those whose lives she has religiously soundtracked for the past 30 years, Madonna is pretty much beyond reproach.

It helps that the Rebel Heart tour, as it turns out, is the most retrospective thing Madonna has done in a decade, mostly dispensing with the thematic narratives of previous shows in favor of something altogether lighter. The show is still an outrageously choreographed spectacle—in which dancers clad as nuns poledance, and Madonna herself first appears in a gilded cage that is lowered from the ceiling—but unlike previous tours, in which she danced, sang, and yoga-posed always like a woman with something to prove. Comparatively, the Rebel Heart tour actually seems like, well, fun. She smiles. She jokes about her own image. She belts out ----------- while playing a ukulele. She does faithful renditions of ------ and -------- that resulted in nearly deafening arena-sized sing-alongs. The show itself, while still offering plenty of cuts from the new record, also showed Madonna giving a very sweet nod to her own history, something she’s seemed wary of in the past, as if looking backwards too much somehow nullifies the potential of her future.

Madonna isn’t always easy to love, even if you happen to really love her. But why should she be? She may not always give people what they want, but she reliably gives people what she wants, which is just as admirable. Her legacy at this point is untouchable—though her position in popular culture circa right now is a weirdly untenable one. Were she to abandon making new music and simply play the hits, she’d get called out for finally having become a nostalgia act. When she makes new music now—having already recorded a gazillion iconic singles—she gets shit for it, regardless of said music’s quality. Part of what infuriates people about Madonna is that, despite all of this, she remains unbowed. And this, of course, is why gay men love her.

Gay fandom is a complicated phenomenon and one, quite honestly, that I don’t always understand. But what Madonna means, particular for gay folks of a certain age, is something that is not to be taken lightly. These days it’s de rigueur for pop stars to support, embrace, and court a gay fanbase, but back in the '80s that was hardly the case. At a time when an entire generation was being lost to AIDS, Madonna was one of our biggest advocates. (She’s actually the first person I remember ever seeing utter the word "condom" on television, via her MTV safe sex PSAs) At a time when representations of gay people in mainstream media were few and far between, seeing Truth or Dare—a film that matter-of-factly depicts gay friendships in a way my teenage self had never before seen—was an unexpected lifeline. For a lot of gay kids who felt adrift in our secluded, pre-Internet teenage bedrooms, seeing Madonna cavorting with her gay dancers and actually celebrating their queerness felt like evidence that there was indeed a different kind of life out there for us—a club that might actually want us as a member.

I couldn’t stop thinking about all of these things while watching Madonna do a writhing version of ------ some 20 feet in front of me, a bizarro "I made it through the wilderness" moment that apparently a lot of the people in the room were also having. Aging along with your heroes is often weird. Some people—David Bowie, Patti Smith, for example—make it seem easy, cool even, while others (George Michael, I’m looking at you) make it really uncomfortable. For me, Madonna exists somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. Given that her whole career has been defined by pushing back against the status quo, it makes sense that she would continue to do so now. If she bristles at the mention of retirement (as she did when I talked to her), it’s totally understandable. People have been asking her about "aging gracefully" since she entered her thirties. Her career begs the question, at what point is anyone expected to give up doing what they love? And at what point is it considered necessary to give up on your idols and surrender to the tyranny of coolness?

As I get older, I increasingly hope the answer to those questions is never. Singing ------ along with several thousand other gay men at the Montreal show proved to be surprisingly emotional for me, a rare instance of feeling part of some shared, mainstream gay experience. Watching Madonna medley her way back through the past three decades, I kept thinking about the guy in the lobby I’d seen earlier wearing a Keith Haring t-shirt and how Madonna herself had gotten choked up talking about Keith, as well as the countless other people who supported her career early on and were lost to AIDS. At some point during the show—maybe around the time she pulled out ---------- —I scarcely noticed when my own cynicism about the whole thing evaporated while I danced. As a person who works in a culture that gleefully encourages snark and bitchiness and in which expressing admiration in a non-ironic way is often seen as a sign of weakness, it’s nice to be reminded how refreshing it is to simply love something because it makes you feel alive.

As Madonna neared the end of the show, it was nice to see that she too seemed genuinely moved by the feeling in the room. She gave up her tightly rehearsed performer posturing for a few minutes and simply became human, smiling and pausing to address the crowd. "Thank you so much for sticking with me all these years," she said. As me and my boyfriend started to drunkenly applaud, we were drowned out by the queen behind me who seemed to sum up everyone’s feelings by screaming out, "That’s right, bitch! Somehow we’re all still here. Aren’t we lucky?"

Edited September 21, 2015 by le smoking

[Mensch]

i know the guy who wrote this review! a mutual friend sent it to me! i love it! lol it's amazing!

[spotlight]

Great article

[velvet]

wow

what a great article!

[mad4mad2]

Old, older,gay, old, old songs, older gays, older, old, old ,old, old memories, old, older, growing old blah blah blah No wonder why Mnation loves this shit! I feel sorry for M sometimes.

[Jazzy Jan]

I am not having a go at the guy who wrote the article as loved his passion and love for Madonna. Just something interesting though, often people try to find reasons why they love Madonna. It has always been totally natural to me - loved her music from the word go. Also the fact she is charismatic and beautiful helps of course. I never internalise or try to work out why I love her or what she stands for. I admire her for everything she stands for but the ultimate reason I love her still is her music and performances. Everything else is a cherry on top.

[maxdamien]

This "review" is horrible.

[Skin]

I saw my first Madonna show almost ten years ago with Confessions, and it always amazes me how she is still able to attract such a diverse crowd age wise. (at least at MSG)

Still you see people from their 20s all the way up to their 50s and 60s. To me its a testament to how she is constantly making an impact on each new generation in some way shape or form.

I could be dead wrong, but I don't picture that same kind of diversity in the crowd for a lot of acts that started in the 80s like Bruce, U2, or Bon Jovi when they tour.

[Jazzy Jan]

I saw my first Madonna show almost ten years ago with Confessions, and it always amazes me how she is still able to attract such a diverse crowd age wise. (at least at MSG)

Still you see people from their 20s all the way up to their 50s and 60s. To me its a testament to how she is constantly making an impact on each new generation in some way shape or form.

I could be dead wrong, but I don't picture that same kind of diversity in the crowd for a lot of acts that started in the 80s like Bruce, U2, or Bon Jovi when they tour.

True Skin, something that I wish Madonna fans would all get and understand. We are all fans - all ages, genders, sexuality, nationalities and personalities. No other artist can do this, attract so many diverse groups of people. Too much bitching between older and younger fans. I know that some older ex fans are horrible - we have all seen them on other forums and blogs etc - but they truly are in the minority, just make a lot of noise unfortunately. Younger fans react to that and then bitch about older fans which is a shame as well. Who wants those kill-joys to represent Madonna fans. It is a fantastic achievement and testament to Madonna herself that she has so many fans - fans that have stuck fast and new fans that are discovering her. I love it.

[Lucky Star One]

I am not having a go at the guy who wrote the article as loved his passion and love for Madonna. Just something interesting though, often people try to find reasons why they love Madonna. It has always been totally natural to me - loved her music from the word go. Also the fact she is charismatic and beautiful helps of course. I never internalise or try to work out why I love her or what she stands for. I admire her for everything she stands for but the ultimate reason I love her still is her music and performances. Everything else is a cherry on top.

[mad4mad2]

Let's be honest some of the older fans are not really interested in Madonna anymore they are no longer fans they are just into what a certain Madonna song or album and what memeories it brings to them. Madonna the Artist has nothing to offer to them other than occasionally reminded them of a special time from their past. Madonna's Art has always been about NOW about the future and these people keep dragging her down with their sentimental bull shit. The video for Iconic shows her in a cage, I get it now.

[Jazzy Jan]

Let's be honest some of the older fans are not really interested in Madonna anymore they are no longer fans they are just into what a certain Madonna song or album and what memeories it brings to them. Madonna the Artist has nothing to offer to them other than occasionally reminded them of a special time from their past. Madonna's Art has always been about NOW about the future and these people keep dragging her down with their sentimental bull shit. The video for Iconic shows her in a cage, I get it now.

Dave, Love your passion for Madonna but these constant and often aggressive outbursts you have at older fans is doing you no favours. Have you been turned off at other forums that have been taken over by ex-fans and bullies ? I have a feeling that is what happened because you have an almost hatred for older fans. Don't let them warp your view. As for sentimental bull-shit, Madonna is sentimental herself. Look at the way she constantly talks about her mother and Keith, Martin and dedicated True Blue to Debi. She lives in the moment but still respects her past. Loving and referencing the past is just as important as moving ahead in the future. Embrace it all. I know I do.

[Mattress]

This doesn't properly review the tour but it does rather sweetly express the view of one older, gay male fan. It's personal and largely positive in tone and she's obviously meant a lot to him as (I would assume) she has to everyone posting on these forums.

Ain't nothing wrong with that.

[VogueMusic]

I am not having a go at the guy who wrote the article as loved his passion and love for Madonna. Just something interesting though, often people try to find reasons why they love Madonna. It has always been totally natural to me - loved her music from the word go. Also the fact she is charismatic and beautiful helps of course. I never internalise or try to work out why I love her or what she stands for. I admire her for everything she stands for but the ultimate reason I love her still is her music and performances. Everything else is a cherry on top.

THIS.

I always find it funny how people have to "figure out why they love Madonna".... like, really? Is it that hard? I think far too many of these types get caught up in how other people perceive them for liking Madonna...or they just pay far too much attention to the media when it comes to her, which we all know how that goes...and it really affects their thinking. Then they have to 'figure out' why Madonna is what she is and why they like her all over again. Odd...

[Mattress]

Let's be honest some of the older fans are not really interested in Madonna anymore they are no longer fans they are just into what a certain Madonna song or album and what memeories it brings to them. Madonna the Artist has nothing to offer to them other than occasionally reminded them of a special time from their past. Madonna's Art has always been about NOW about the future and these people keep dragging her down with their sentimental bull shit. The video for Iconic shows her in a cage, I get it now.

Old, older,gay, old, old songs, older gays, older, old, old ,old, old memories, old, older, growing old blah blah blah No wonder why Mnation loves this shit! I feel sorry for M sometimes.

Considering the vitriol M endures with regard to her age, I'm sorry to see she has such an ageist fan.

[Jazzy Jan]

Considering the vitriol M endures with regard to her age, I'm sorry to see she has such an ageist fan.

Agree. Age is but a number and we are all here because we love Madonna.

Mattress, love that gif, how beautiful is Madonna here.

[mad4mad2]

Considering the vitriol M endures with regard to her age, I'm sorry to see she has such an ageist fan.

I'm not an ageist at all I say embrace whatever age you are but don't let that number cripple you and put you in a box which is exacly what is happening to Madonna unfortunately. Fans and haters alike won't shut the fuck up about her age I mean WTF?! You want to be stuck in one single, Album or Era of hers That is your problem but don't expect her to do the same.

[Crystal Coffin]

[anastaza]

Dave, Love your passion for Madonna but these constant and often aggressive outbursts you have at older fans is doing you no favours. Have you been turned off at other forums that have been taken over by ex-fans and bullies ? I have a feeling that is what happened because you have an almost hatred for older fans. Don't let them warp your view. As for sentimental bull-shit, Madonna is sentimental herself. Look at the way she constantly talks about her mother and Keith, Martin and dedicated True Blue to Debi. She lives in the moment but still respects her past. Loving and referencing the past is just as important as moving ahead in the future. Embrace it all. I know I do.

+1

[Guest CzarnaWisnia]

I'm not an ageist at all I say embrace whatever age you are but don't let that number cripple you and put you in a box which is exacly what is happening to Madonna unfortunately. Fans and haters alike won't shut the fuck up about her age I mean WTF?! You want to be stuck in one single, Album or Era of hers That is your problem but don't expect her to do the same.

and what exactly is your age? I'm sure you have tons of experience about getting older.

[Genevieve Vavance]

but it's true some people are stuck in 1991, that's sad and unfair to Madonna