Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Taste and decency


     Whenever I write on a topic that crosses the border into disgusting, I hear an echo of Australian press lord Nigel Wade's voice ringing across the newsroom on the fourth floor of 401 N. Wabash. "STEINBERG!" he'd bellow. "I was eating my POACHED EGG when I read that!!!" So a warning to those who might be enjoying their breakfast, or just unwilling to read an essay that includes reference to Amy Schumer's husband's anal orifice. You might want to set this aside to read later, or not at all.

 
     "Taste and decency." Now there's a concept that doesn't get floated much nowadays. Yet there it is, twice in one brief Daily Herald article by Jake Griffin on vanity license plates. Honestly, I find even unobjectionable vanity plates — "MOMS VAN" or "LAWYER" or whatever — somewhat suspect. A little blurt of "look-at-me!" that most of us manage to do without. Though I suppose if you're popping $100,000 for a car, what's another $94 to put your own individual spin on it?
     To be honest, I'm reluctant to present myself as the champion of taste and decency in any particular situation. First, it's the oldest gripe in the book. There are cuneiform cylinders sitting unread in drawers in the Oriental Institute (speaking of objection, weren't they going to change their name in January? I see by their website they're still using the language of hate) complaining that these kids nowadays don't give proper reverence to the gods.
     Besides being an antique qualm, taste and decency are both relative. I've heard from enough people to whom just the name of this blog is an objectionable slur on the deity, far outside the bounds of propriety. I once wrote three out of four columns about picking up after my dog. I've written about being flogged by a dominatrix and the people who open the jars of shit at Cologuard. Still, I'd never consider myself "tasteless," though I do like to dance along the boundary, convinced that is often where interest lives.
     Unless it doesn't. Pop icon Madonna recently announced her first tour in years. I was never a particular Madonna fan, from the very start. I happen to remember the first time I saw her first video, "Like a virgin," on that modern marvel, MTV. It was about 1983. She was in her waif-in-lingerie get up, shimmying on a gondola in Venice, if I recall properly. I leaned in, fixed my gaze at her bare midriff, and thought: I'd better get a good look at this bimbo because I'm NEVER seeing her again.
     Predicting the future, not my forte. And apologies for the "bimbo" which indeed was the word that formed in my head nearly 40 years ago. I was 23. I hope we aren't at the point where certain people aren't allowed to express a risque thought.
     That sure doesn't hold for Madonna. "Madonna’s upcoming tour will defy society’s limits on female pop stars" is the headline on the Post critique, by Robin Givhan, which lionizes the singer for "40 years worth of club dancing, provocative shape-shifting and sex-positive proselytizing."
     All true. Back in the Reagan era, when anyone who wasn't Ward and June Cleaver was encouraged to keep out of sight, Madonna put what then were the fringes of human society into her songs, music videos and at least one coffee table book. (I'm old enough to recall when you could reasonably expect her 1992 metal-covered $50 coffee table book, "Sex," to be on a hip Chicago coffee table. I still remember certain shots — the baby powder — so it must have pushed some buttons). That was real society approval, and it's worthwhile to remember that, beside all the commercialism and camp and self-regard, she did do real good. Not to forget the music, which was okay.
     The Washington Post story on her return linked to the video where she announced her "Celebration" tour. She's sitting at some Mad Hatter dinner — an homage to her 1991 "Truth or Dare" movie, apparently — with Jack Black and a few guffawing confederates, playing the adolescent challenge game. At first I focused on Madonna's face, which has that unmistakable immobile plastic surgery mask-like look that makes me think of a line from Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast" about the bedribboned World War I vets he'd see drinking in the 1920s in almost every cafe in Paris. “I watched… the quality of their artificial eyes and the degree of skill with which their faces had been reconstructed. There was always an almost iridescent shiny cast about the considerably reconstructed face, rather like that of a well packed ski run.”
     Madonna takes up a basket of bread rings.
     "I want you to show me, with this bread," she says to Amy Schumer, "how you lick your husband's asshole."
     Ewww. Maybe I'm outing myself as 62, or a prude, but that wasn't something I wanted to know.
     "This is kinda like sad and gross," observes tablemate Eric AndrĂ©, immediately reading my mind. Which is as far as curiosity would take me. Maybe they brilliantly turned the conversation around to why anyone would pop $250 or $500 or $1,000 or whatever tickets cost. But I didn't stick around to find out.
    If Madonna really wanted to transgress societal norms, she should have let herself grow old. I believe women should be allowed to grow old, to age and sag and get wrinkles, just like men do. Judge me harshly if you must.
     Honestly, my self-protective instinct urges me to walk away at this point. With the Washington Post casting every Madonna's excess as the triumph of a female pioneer, any objection becomes by definition the bile of sexists and haters and male pigs, none of which I consider myself to be. To me, based on the brief clip I saw, Madonna is not in the vanguard, but like a dotty old aunt well into the prosecco prattling on about the guys she balled at Woodstock while her younger female relatives exchange worried looks. If Madonna is so freeing, then I'm free to disapprove, yes? Maybe not. 
     Anyway, no hard feelings. I saw Madonna perform once — the paper sent me to a show for her "Blond Ambition Tour" at the Rosemont Horizon in 1990. It was memorable, in that I still remember aspects of it: skillful theatrics at the Rosemont Horizon, with lit candles rising out of the stage, vigorous male dancers, the song "Like A Prayer" and an audience that included 6- and 7-year-old girls in lace bustiers and gloves. But that's about it.
     






15 comments:

  1. I bought my last remoteless TV at Polk Bros. in the spring of 1983, just in time for South Evanston to be wired for cable, so I definitely remember the first time I saw MTV. Those videos were mesmerizing, even though I was already an old fart of 35. Spent hours watching them. Took me some time before I finally got sick of them and disdained them.

    Michael Jackson impressed me, but...truth be told, if I dare...I really didn't give a shit about Madonna. I never have. She does nothing for me, Mr. S, and she never will. She's 64 now, which pretty well puts her into hag territory, and she should know better, and just hang them up.

    That was only five years after March 4, 1978, when I was unceremoniously booted from the fourth floor and kicked to the curb in front of 401 N. Wabash. Which it still was when you started working there less than a decade later. Wacker was across the river and over the bridge.

    When I think about that hallowed ground, and the little plaza next to it (where so many good folks ate and drank and smoked and toked), I want to cry. Or throw up. Mainly because all of it is now buried under 1,400 feet of the Hotel Hell...named for He Who Must Not be Named. Which I won't do.

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    1. While I believe a pass might be offered for thinking "bimbo" in 1983, "hag territory" to refer to a 64-year-old woman in 2023 seems a bit much. Though your following comment perhaps helps redeem it a bit!

      I'm just glad you pointed out the Wacker / Wabash slip, however...

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    2. 64 is “hag territory”? Talk about tasteless and indecent.

      Coey

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  2. And if you want examples of women who have been allowed to grow old, to age and sag and get wrinkles, just check out a few who have. Like, say, Cyndi Lauper, who will turn 70 this year. Or Lily Tomlin, who will be 84. Or Rita Moreno, who just turned 91. Ay, caramba! Say it ain't so, Anita!

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    1. It certainly is so and I for one would be glad to call her "mi vieja."

      john

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  3. I've ignored Madonna, ever since she ripped off Godfrey Reggio's absolutely magnificent & mesmerizing movie, "Koyaanisqatsi" for her Ray Of Light video & didn't give him credit!

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    1. The Madonna video is unseen by me, but any opportunity to make mention of “Koyaanisqatsi” should be seized. The only flick that compares to it is Ron Fricke’s “Samsara”, which I highly recommend.

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  4. I saw Marlena Dietrich, who must have been in her 60's, doing cabaret in London. When she launched into 'They call me naughty Lolo, the wisest girl on earth. At home my pianola, it plays for all its worth' she became a 16-year-old strumpet.

    Tom

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  5. "I've heard from enough people to whom just the name of this blog is an objectionable slur on the deity, far outside the bounds of propriety."

    Neil, are you aware that when you appear on the The Mincing Rascals podcast, WGN bleeps the "objectionable" portion of the title of your book? And that in the written description of the show, while they link to both the blog and the UChicago Press EGD book page, there's no actual reference to the title of either? Standards! ; )

    https://wgnradio.com/wgn-plus/the-mincing-rascals/the-mincing-rascals-1-18-23-mayoral-race-biden-documents-and-george-santos/?

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  6. I realize that the word “Oriental” has fallen somewhat out of vogue, but language of hate? It’s just a term that describes a particular geographic and cultural part of the world. Why is that a denigration? Is it also hateful to describe the Central an South American region as Latin America? Are Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway still Scandinavia, or is that term now verboten?

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    1. "Language of hate" was sarcastic. But it's "just a term that describes a particular geographic and cultural part of the world" in the same way "darkest Africa" is. It's consider exotic, rendering people who are in reality simply people as some sort of incense-wreathed characters out of 1930s radio mysteries. Does that help? I didn't push it from favor, I'm just sharing the fact that it is, which you can either choose to grasp or not.

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    2. I grasp that, but it still seems like a minor transgression for which the only penalty can be, as William S Burroughs would have said, to rub out the word. You could say that “Scananavian” is a distortion because, thanks to Ingmar Bergman, it conjures images of bitter, cheerless, melancholic mopes who like to vomit up all of their despair, existential dread, and visceral contempt for family members while filmed in extreme close up, and occasionally expressing their angst by inserting broken shards of wine glass inside their most sensitive private parts. But of course, without ever having been there, most people would understand that there’s a lot more to life in Sweden (or Norway, etc) than the Bergmanian despair, and it would be silly to stigmatize “Scandinavian” on that basis.

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    3. My continuing livelihood depends on being sensitive to such nuances. You are mistaking whether a person SHOULD be concerned with a particular description with whether they ARE. The truth is I could say whatever is the worst slur is for Scandinavians, assuming there is one, and the pushback would be minimal, because they are not in the practice of aggrievement. That is not true for everybody, alas.

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  7. Back in the day, around 1986 or so, Royko did a hilarious column that asked his readers why there were really not too many ethnic slurs for Scandinavians. His theory was simple: "They're just too nice." Other than "dumb Swede" or "dumb Norwegian"...he couldn't find any ways to insult them. So he decided to just make one up.

    He claimed to have tried it out on his Norwegian pal. Called him a "noogin" (A new-gin? A new-gan? Probably got it from "Lugan" ...an unflattering South Side word for Lithuanians). After asking "What the hell is that?"...the guy said he still didn't like it. Then he told Royko that the only real Scandinavian slur was "herring-choker"...supposedly because they consume so much of it.

    When my father-in law at the time, a six-six blond Norwegian who grew up in Duluth, told me the same thing, I almost choked on the creamed herring we were sharing at the moment (true story). I washed it down with a glass of schnapps. Eventually, I came to like both. And my ex-wife's old man, as well. He was nice.

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