Madonna sings "Give Me All Your Luvin'/Express Yourself" during her MDNA Tour stop at the New Orleans Arena Oct. 27. (Photo by David Grunfeld, The Times-Picayune/NOLA.com)
"Madonna surely might have been expected to be particularly provocative in New Orleans. In fact, she was disappointingly inoffensive."
If that walk-out from Madonna's concert at the Arena last Saturday was a PR stunt, it certainly worked.?The publicity was probably worth many times whatever Madonna's handlers might have paid audience members to fake outrage and flounce off into the night.
News reports and on-line comments suggested the protest over a pro-President Barrack Obama aside was spontaneous. But that would require us to believe that some of Madonna's fans are more than a bit simple.
While that is not entirely beyond the bounds of possibility, to be shocked that Madonna should veer into politics bespeaks a lamentable unfamiliarity with her career. It is no secret that there is more to a Madonna concert than the gyrations of an aging frame and shaky renditions of ancient hits.
Her most prominent recent causes are the imprisoned Russian punk band Pussy Riot and Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old Pakistani the Taliban tried to murder for advocating girls' education. Whether they benefit from the media coverage is debatable, but she certainly does.
Her current tour, which began in Tel Aviv several months ago, has courted controversy at every stop. Just before she arrived in New Orleans, she was in Colorado, where the simulated gunfire in her show struck some, so soon after the Aurora massacre, as somewhat crass.
She got everyone's attention, though, and Madonna's press agent, Liz Rosenberg, was wheeled out to explain that the gun scenes were essential for artistic integrity. Removing them, she said, would be like excising Act 3 of Hamlet. Never having seen Madonna's show, yours truly is going out on a limb here to suggest that the analogy with Shakespeare could only be made by a wisecracking showbiz flak.
Act 3 of Hamlet has "To be or not to be," whereas Madonna's show, according to our reviewer, features a great deal of "audiovisual bang" with "hydraulics, fire, lasers, break-dancing clowns, contortionists, acrobatic slackwire-walking, gunfire" and other delights.
After decades of controversy, including a generous helping of Catholic bashing, Madonna surely might have been expected to be particularly provocative in New Orleans. In fact, she was disappointingly inoffensive. The burden of the complaints from those who booed, and walked out, was they paid to hear her sing, and not to advance a political agenda. That is a most eccentric frame of mind in which to show up at one of her gigs.
All she said anyway was that she didn't care how her fans voted in the election, so long as they voted for Obama. That Madonna was for the Democrats was not exactly classified information, but she then backed off and declared she didn't care who got her fans' vote. She just urged everyone to go to the polls, which is what every editorial page in the country does before every election. Hardly a bold stance. Madonna was really starting to sound like an old woman.
But by then a chunk of the audience was in quite a huff and took off. This is unlikely to have caused Madonna any material distress. Tickets cost up to $400, and there were no refunds for leaving at half time. They call Republicans pachyderms, but the ones who go to Madonna gigs are so thin-skinned they'll cut off their noses to spite their faces. The media coverage just made them look dumb.
But not Madonna, who is such a gifted publicity hog that she will probably still be selling out concerts when she's 100. She cannot have expected that anyone in her audience would vote for Obama because she said so, and it wouldn't have mattered anyway. If the whole arena had fallen in line, Romney would still have carried Louisiana.
It is not necessary to have been in the business as long as Madonna to realize that pop stars who dabble in politics seldom change minds. Indeed, venturing into politics can be devastating for a career, as the Dixie Chicks discovered when their opposition to the Iraq war was taken as treason. Such stars as John Mellencamp and Neil Young saw ticket sales plummet when they urged giving President Bush the heave-ho in 2004.
So maybe nobody had to pay the fans to walk out. But it probably suits Madonna just fine that they did.
James Gill is a columnist for The Times-Picayune. He can be reached at jamessydneygill@gmail.com.
Source: http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2012/10/madonnas_politics_couldnt_have.html
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