Like a virgin queen

Few would dispute that Madonna is the key cultural icon of our times.  The material success of this material girl speaks for itself: her earnings are already over $100 million, and there is no reason why she should not go on to become the first pop billionaire.  Her standing with the audience is also not in doubt: as the sales figures indicate, people keep on buying her singles and albums, which almost invariably reach number one on both sides of the Atlantic.  And the public seems to love her as much for her flouting of taboos as for her fabulous tunes.  More remarkably perhaps, her favour with the critics is also not in question: her lyrics are endlessly analysed and explained by commentators and academics, and in them are found and applauded trenchant critiques of modern hypocrisies.

But it is because of her ability to tap into so many powerful currents that course through the body politic - and her knack for channelling them into a form that gets that body on to the dance floor - that her real importance lies.  In one of her key songs - 'Get into the groove' - she manages through a disco beat, matching cavernous acoustic and an unrelenting bass riff to forge the tangled worlds of love, sex, desire, music, fantasy and power into an irresistible pop anthem.  In it, she demands that we prove our love by getting into the groove of today, the groove of the music, the groove of the record, her groove.

And yet this remarkable woman seems trapped by her own success as a myth-maker, even by the power of her hits.  Her unbroken public success seems horribly mirrored by persistent personal failure.  After the public failure of her famously fraught marriage, her subsequent liaisons have either been hopelessly self-promotional, strangely furtive, or simply gossip-column fantasies.  One of the richest people in the world, totally dominant within her sphere, and often projecting through her songs an image of a confident woman both sexually capable and demanding, she now finds herself conspicuously and ironically alone.

Much of the problem lies with society's inability to cope with the reality of the strong woman: it has so few precedents and models.  Indeed, it is probably necessary to go back to someone like Elizabeth I to find Madonna's equivalent if not equal.  There, four hundred years before, was the same imperiousness, the same power, the same steely will to succeed, to be better than a man - and the same loneliness, the same inability to find a match.  There was even the same shadowy, haunting figure of a mate found then lost: The Earl of Essex, perhaps Elizabeth's one love, a love she herself had to destroy because of his chronic stupidity.  Madonna may not have executed Sean Penn, but his subsequent remarriage seems to have been for her another kind of irrevocable death. 

It is hard to know what will become of Madonna.  Icons do not age well, and today's consumer society has a callow bias towards youth which may in due course rob her of her power over it.  Perhaps she will marry again - anyone, almost - marry to have a family while she can.  But perhaps she will find another way forward, staying alone except for passionate affairs accepted as always to be doomed, remaining aloof, regal, another wise, sad but mighty Virgin Queen, untouched since that very first time.

(18.1.92)

Index

Of Africa

It is hard to formulate an adequate response to Africa.  Especially on the basis of a one-week strip to The Gambia.  At first sight this tiny tongue of land in the bulge of western Africa seems negligible.  And yet for various reasons it is probably a remarkably faithful synecdoche for the continent.

First, like Africa itself, The Gambia is not one nation; the concept is not even particularly meaningful.  Its border are arbitrary, roughly defined by the course of the river Gambia.  Mandinka speakers form the largest group in the population, except in the capital where Wolof predominates.  But other languages and associated tribes abound, including the Fula, Jola, Sarahuleys and Aku.  The muslim religion provides another strand – and language.  But Christianity and paganism flourish alongside it, further blurring neat categorisations.  The Gambia’s history as a British colony has added many elements to this heady cultural brew, as has the extensive trade with francophone Senegal, which provides many of the country’s luxury goods and even its television service.

The second reason for The Gambia’s unexpectedly representative position is partly geographical, and partly historical.  Its position on the coast coincides with the start of the main Trade winds across the Atlantic, and the broad navigable river Gambia provided the perfect means of transport and point of embarkation for slaves en route to the American colonies.  As a result, it developed into one of the main slaving stations.  It is not so surprising therefore that Alex Haley in his seminal book Roots should have traced his putative ancestors back to The Gambia.  As a result, the country has assumed a tremendous symbolic importance for America, and hence the modern world: it has enacted the tragedy of Africa.

The Gambia is also an effective introduction because it presents such a telling contrast to anything in the Old or New Worlds, and hence is truly of the Third.  It is desperately poor; its people for the most part eke out a bare subsistence agriculture from the unforgiving land.  There is no local industry, and the nearest thing the country has to exports are a few peanuts and what souvenirs the tourists take home with them.  Disease is a real problem.  Apart from yellow fever, typhoid, cholera and polio, there is malaria, which affects many of the population.  All too often a young and bright Gambian will shiver, sway slightly, and halt in his or her discourse.

And yet for all these outward tokens of the continent, the multiplicity of cultures happily co-existing, for the bright and exotic colours of the dress and the thrilling music and dance, the people remain an enigma.  Their inscrutability in the face of the alien Westerners makes the Chinese look extrovert.  For all that we gain by visiting this rich and generous country, what we take out of Africa is ultimately a sense of how little we know, and also a sense of what we left.  Back home as we travel along dustless made-up roads, past neat suburban houses peeping out from behind prim and proper shrubbery, we can begin to see our world with new eyes.  Perhaps this is the only valid response which we can make to something as huge and unknowable as Africa.

(15.3.86)

Index