The queen of pop has just unveiled a new clip in which she simulates a sex scene in the toilets of a nightclub. A way, at 67 years old, to stay in the spotlight and capture attention as the release of his new album approaches?
Would Madonna be ready to do anything to get people talking about her again? Relatively discreet for several years, the queen of pop is making a thunderous comeback by playing the card of provocation, as she knows how to do so well. After forty years of career, hits and scandals, the singer flirts with the limits of sulphurousness and propriety with videos where she enjoys putting herself on stage in very suggestive postures. To mark Pride Month, she recently filmed herself smoking a cigarillo, lying on the tiles of her bathroom in a slip dress revealing a very plunging neckline: a video which delighted her 20 million fans on Instagram.
His last stroke of brilliance? A ten-minute clip aimed at promoting his new album, Confessions IIexpected on July 3. The Madonna sings the first six songs of the disc, including I Feel So Free et Love Sensation, dancing alone on a table in stilettos, or on the dance floor of a New York rave party. She then reappears dressed in a turquoise blue corset and thigh-high boots, in the toilets of a nightclub, where she locks herself in with a man in his thirties. The camera follows them when Madonna begins to slowly get down on her knees, caressing the torso and then the thighs of her one-night lover. A young woman observes the scene from the nearby toilet, looking amazed and shocked.
Skip the ad
When she leaves the toilet, Madonna finds herself face to face with Kate Moss with whom she wiggles her hips in front of the mirror. Then appears the British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, also in the casting of the singer’s short film bringing together a whole audience of celebrities, including the pop star Sabrina Carpenter, who interprets him in Like a Virgin considers him his heir, as well as the actress Julia Garner, chosen to play his role in the cinema. Lourdes Leon, Madonna’s eldest daughter, is also there, proof that this project is particularly close to her heart. With its lights, its incessant flashes, and its half-naked bodies dancing frenetically, the clip evokes him Is the whole universe of the singer, who built her myth around queer culture and a trashy aesthetic, more subversive? Not really, since it is in line with what Madonna has always done.
Icon of transgression
In the 1980s, Madonna’s career exploded because she openly displayed her sexuality and assumed her desires, an attitude absolutely rare at the time for a female pop artist. She became a planetary star by surpassing limits that seemed insurmountable and by breaking countless taboos through her songs and performances. In 1984, the young Louise Ciccone (her real name), 26 years old, shocked puritanical America when she arrived on the stage of the MTV Video Music Awards disguised as a bride with a belt decorated with these two words “boy toy” (toy for a boy, Editor’s note) and began to simulate a masturbation scene by performing Like A Virgin. Five years later, in 1989, the singer attracted the wrath of the Vatican with the clip for her hit Like A Prayer, in which she caresses a black Christ and sways lasciviously in front of burning crucifixes reminiscent of those used during Ku Klux Klan rituals. Scandalized, Pope John Paul II calls for a boycott of the song. Faced with controversy, the Pepsi brand terminated its five million dollar contract with the singer.
These moments, which marked pop culture, also shaped the legend of Madonna, icon of transgression defying sexual and religious norms. If the artist has kept his rebel soul, his provocations no longer seem so transgressive today, undoubtedly because the times have changed, and mentalities have evolved on questions linked to the representation of bodies and female desire.
Also read
Madonna takes us inside her cleavage in a video right on her bathroom floor
Madonna’s new short film is nevertheless already creating a buzz on social networks, not for its explicit sex scenes but because the star is 67 years old, and she would therefore be too “old” to perform them. Unsurprisingly, her detractors, mostly men, accuse her of being “too sexy” for her age, and “too naked” too.
Fight against agism
Some Internet users believe that she puts herself on stage in this way to stay at the front of the stage, and “compete” with singers younger than them, more put forward in the music industry. “She doesn’t do anything she hasn’t done before. People just criticize her for her age, but she’s still as talented as ever,” replies, still on Like her, most of her fans salute her musical “genius”. “In an era dominated by two-minute songs and fifteen-second amateur videos filmed with a cell phone, Madonna offers us a ten-minute cinematic musical experience, full of art and narration,” enthuses one of them on X, reports theDaily Mail.
Skip the ad
With this new clip, the singer moves the lines differently, showing that she will never give up dressing and dancing the way she wants despite criticism and prejudice about what is acceptable or not for a woman past a certain age. In 2023, the star had already denounced ageism and misogyny in a fiery message shared on Instagram. “We live in a world that refuses to celebrate women over 45 and feels the need to punish them if they continue to be determined, hardworking and adventurous,” she was indignant after being criticized for her use of aesthetic medicine. She then assured that she would remain “subversive” for many more years and that she would always push the limits of patriarchy to “enjoy her life”. A promise that she continues to honor.
