What is it about the Erotica era that still captivates Madonna’s fans, yet critics continue to chastise? To this day, I still have people asking me for the ever elusive Making of SEX video in HQ. Not older fans mind you, but twenty-somethings and younger, male and female. Why? I don’t know for certain, but I’ll venture to think it’s because of the iconic status of this era, and what subsequently came out of it. Although it’s a time period that Madonna would admittedly rather not talk about, it seems as if it’s made a lasting impression on her fans. We all know it wasn’t her most zippidy-doo-dah, dance-your-pants-off (no pun intended) period, and that it was considerably darker than her previously released studio album, Like A Prayer (I’m not counting I’m Breathless since it was more of a Dick Tracy soundtrack), but in my opinion, and that of more than a few critics, it was by far one of her most underrated. Madonna’s creative vision during this time flowed from her like lava spewing out of a volcano. Not until 2003′s American Life did we see an equally creative album virtually ignored, but Erotica was different from American Life in that it had that “something else.” It had hutzpah. It had balls.
Now, granted, that wasn’t anything new coming from Madonna. By that time, the public was no stranger to her crotch grabbing, Sandra Bernhard teasing, crucifix adorning antics. Even the pontiff was irritated enough to chime in with his two cents. Actually, “irritated” is an understatement, considering there was actually some talk of excommunication. But I digress. Now, I’m certainly not one of those people who longs for the days of the old Madonna, nor am I one of those people who feels she’s gotten better with age. Statements like these never make any sense to me. She is who she is today because of whom she was in the past, and she makes no apologies for that. In fact, no matter what she has done or where she has been, she has never made any apologies or expressed any regrets for any of the choices she’s made throughout her life or career. How many of us can honestly say that about ourselves? Fact is I’ve liked her exactly as she is every step of the way, including who she is now. The Erotica era, however, was like no other. It was her boundary pushing period par excellence, but the backlash that ensued has since been unrivaled in her career. In order to properly frame this era and to put it into context, let’s take a step back to consider a couple of key points that led up to the whole Erotica fiasco.
Up until her 1989 album, Like A Prayer, Madonna was known as, for lack of a better word, a tart – pretty and sexy but not gorgeous, an okay singer, brash, ambitious as hell, and a professional button pusher. But one word that the critics never used to describe her was “talented.” Then out came the “Like A Prayer” music video, right on the heels of the two minute Pepsi commercial that featured the song. Up until that point, never in the relatively short life span of music video history did we ever get to witness such a blatantly irreverent disregard for religious orthodoxy, combined with an almost out-of-the-blue intuitive side to her artistry. It was a Jehovah’s Witness’s worst nightmare – burning crosses, the stigmata shown on Madonna’s palms, a black Jesus kissing an entertainer who shares her name with the Virgin Mary. If Madonna was looking for a reaction, she got it and then some – along with MTV’s Viewer’s Choice Award for the video. In fact, seventeen years later, the “Like A Prayer” video was voted as the “Number 1 Most Ground Breaking Video of All Time” in an MTV poll conducted in July 2006. It’s that socially and musically influential (among other things), and it paved the way for an equally, if not more influential time period. In my opinion, “Like A Prayer” continues to be her most influential song and video, but this an entirely different blog altogether. And when Madonna decided to tour with this album, segments of the Blond Ambition show were enough to not only have the Canadian police threatening to arrest her if she went on with her performance, but it also had the pope calling for a boycott of the tour in Rome. Not unlike the furor that her “Live To Tell” performance, in which she suspended herself from a mirrored cross, caused among the religious during her Confessions Tour in 2006. Even by this time she was receiving bomb threats from a priest, and the Russian mafia threatened her and her family with harm. The Russian mafia? Are they serious? As if they’re the moral compass on how to live a religious life? Get real. But in all instances, Madonna wasn’t doing it just so she could get her shits and giggles. She was saying something, something deep and profound that most religious people have yet to even attempt to understand and comprehend.
From Madonna’s perspective at this point, one has to realize that if she is going to put herself, her deeply felt spiritual beliefs and ideas, and how she interprets them out for the world to see, she is obviously going to be in an incredibly vulnerable position to people’s reactions. Wouldn’t it be safe to say that reactions such as the ones she received from the Vatican and from the moral majority – i.e. threats to boycott Pepsi and its affiliates if they did not drop Madonna as their spokesperson – would cause her further doubt, angst and confusion, rather than solidify her faith in the Catholic Church? Did people really expect her to submit to or have warm feelings toward an establishment that more or less called her a whore? After all, who’s to say what she should believe, how she should behave, and how she should live her life? Why should she, like masses of people, submit to social disease and mind control? Why did people care so much anyway? And now, after the brutal “Like A Prayer” backlash, wouldn’t she have the fuel she needed for a major rebellion against the mainstream, as well as people’s dearly held religious and social mores? Now even more than ever? Well yeah – duh. And Madonna’s instinct: take it to the extreme.
The first inkling we had of this rebellion was her 1990 “Justify My Love” video. It was a prelude to the Erotica era that spanned 1992-1993, and it also happened to be not only the first Madonna video that was banned by MTV, but one of the first videos banned by MTV period. It is set in a Parisian hotel and features mild nudity, themes of homosexuality, overtly sexual situations and sadomasochism, all done in black and white with the lyrics spoken/whispered by Madonna. Her suitor is played by her then model boyfriend, Tony Ward. This remains one of my favorite music videos to date – very artistic and bold, and it was, with the exception of “Bad Girl,” better than any of the music videos from the Erotica album. But it wasn’t just about audacity. Here is Madonna, for the first time ever, showcasing her deepest, darkest sexual fantasies for the world to see, no holds barred, and it slowly helped to give women the validity and reassurance they needed to accept and embrace their own fantasies. But she got the reaction she expected from the media and from conservatives, so in typical Madonna fashion, she decided to take it a step further. Not only did she release a concept album that centered on this theme and a coffee table book, called SEX, in which she took on the alter ego, Dita, and chronicled every sexual fantasy she’s ever had with explicit detail, but she also recorded a one hour video, called the Making of SEX and set it to 1940s French music. And, as if that weren’t enough, she also starred in the sexually explicit box office failure, Body of Evidence. Like many people at the time, some of you may be thinking, “What a tramp! She obviously took it too far. Why would she do this anyway?” Actually, you don’t even need to be a Madonna fan to understand the significance of this. But just to give you an idea of what the tone of the book is like, here is the intro:
“This book is about sex. Sex is not love. Love is not sex. But the best of both worlds is created when they come together. You can love God, you can love the planet, you can love the human race and you can love all things, but the best way for human beings to show love is to love one another. It’s the way we spread love through the universe: one to one. Love is something we make. Pass it on.
This book does not condone unsafe sex. These are fantasies I have dreamed up. Like most human beings, when I let my mind wander, when I let myself go, I rarely think of condoms. My fantasies take place in a perfect world, a place without AIDS.
Unfortunately the world is not perfect and I know that condoms are not only necessary but mandatory. Everything you are about to see and read is a fantasy, a dream, pretend. But if I were to make my dreams read, I would certainly use condoms. Safe sex saves lives. Pass it on.
And by the way, any similarity between characters and events depicted in this book and real persons and events is not only purely coincidental, it’s ridiculous. Nothing in this book is true. I made it all up.”
When Madonna set out to make Erotica and write SEX, her particular goal this time around was to defy the notion that women couldn’t be both smart and sexy at the same time. According to Madonna, SEX was meant to be a satirical prod, taken to the extreme, at the notion that smart women couldn’t enjoy their sexuality in any manner of their choosing. After all, if a man could do it, why couldn’t she? A few years later in January 1999, Madonna said to CNN’s Larry King, “I didn’t write a book about sex. I wrote a book that – I mean I published a book that basically was sort of a – an ironic tongue-in-cheek, sticking-my-tongue-out-at-society photo essay…” But although SEX sold a record 150,000 copies in the U.S. alone on the first day of its release, and over 1.5 million copies worldwide, Erotica was dubbed a commercial flop, even though it has sold an estimated 5 million copies worldwide. Not too shabby by normal standards, but this is Madonna we’re talking about. Despite all this, Madonna suffered a backlash that sent her into a period that what was, more or less, a bottoming out for her. While she had always expressed her sexuality suggestively through her art – primarily through music and videos – she was never as explicit as she had been during the Erotica period of her career, and many considered it to be in poor taste and a gross misstep. Critics even went so far as to herald it as the end of her career. So, as one might guess, the Erotica album was overshadowed by all the drama and people never really gave it the chance it deserved, even though reviews that concentrated only on the musical aspect of the album were mostly positive; Rolling Stone hailed the album as one of Madonna’s best. That’s a shame, since this album has a lot of great music on it, although personally I didn’t really appreciate it until I was a bit older (I was about 14 years old when it was released).
Take the title song for instance. It’s one of, if not the best song on the album. The video for “Erotica” (as well as the “Deeper and Deeper” video) is shot Andy Warhol style, and it was the second of Madonna’s videos to be banned by MTV. Later, Madonna would admit that Warhol was a major influence during this period. The song features a dark, underground sound with some funky Middle Eastern beats, as well as a sampling of “Alyoum Olek Ala Khashaba,” a traditional Middle Eastern Orthodox Easter song sung by the legendary Fairuz that speaks of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Madonna first used this sampling in “The Beast Within,” the “Justify My Love” remix that was released on the maxi-single, but it worked brilliantly with “Erotica.” “Deeper and Deeper” was a dance club hit, and featured a line from the Sound of Music, “when you know the notes to sing, you can sing most anything.” “Bad Girl” is another one of my favorites from Erotica, and the video is by far not only the best from the album, but one of the best overall in her career. At first listen, it may seem as if “Rain” is the odd song out, but taking into consideration the musical progression of the album, it actually fits quite well, and it was one of the album’s most successful radio hits. “Bye Bye Baby,” “Why’s It So Hard,” “Waiting” – all excellent songs in terms of composition, sound and lyrics. Overall, although Erotica’s sound and feel had a very dark, underground vibe to it, it was one of her best, and it set the stage for a turning point in the musical industry and in society.
So was this backlash a bad thing? Well, since hindsight is always 20/20, it’s now easy for me to say no, it wasn’t. Over the years, both fans and critics have warmed to the album, and in its fifteenth anniversary review of Erotica, Slant Magazine called it, “Madonna at her most important, at her most relevant.” Through it all, not only did Madonna manage to persevere and re-emerge at the top of a brutal musical industry, but she almost single handedly revolutionized it, as well as society’s perception of women. She got women thinking and talking about how they viewed themselves in terms of their own sexuality, and she made it okay for them to take control of and demand more out of this aspect of their lives without apologizing for it, feeling guilty or being stigmatized. She initiated the shift in womens’ minds and attitudes that they are equally as capable and deserving as a man of having a fulfilling sex life, without being labeled a whore. Unfortunately, many people refuse to give her credit for this. Madonna had something to say, and she said it against all odds. Like it or not, the world eventually listened. It may not be a message that is easy palpable or clearly visible to the less perceptive, but her message is there, nonetheless. And if you don’t get it, well, then at least you get one hell of a show.
