CORE POST #4: Madonna - Hooks

I found Hooks’s article, “Madonna: Plantation Mistress or Soul Sister?” really jarring. Upon first read, I felt pretty swayed by Hooks’s view of Madonna as an exploiter of black culture, “endorsing and perpetuating” the patriarchal status quo (163). Like many of the cultural critics Hooks critiques, I’ve never thought of Madonna in this sense, and Hooks well-phrased, rather convincing contention pushed me to watch the “Like A Prayer” music video for myself.

In this video, Madonna fades in. Hair and dress whirling underneath a romantic blue sky, Madonna daintily flails down a hill and falls – prettily – on her face, aligning well to the “innocent white womanhood” image that Hooks suggests. Hooks goes further to say that Madonna exploits the “white girl” image to “position herself as an outsider in relation to black culture,” which, in turn, allows her to appropriate it. However, as the video played out, at many points, I found myself increasingly skeptical of Hooks’s argument.

While I do judge multiple points of the “Like A Prayer” music video to be offensive and pointless, I think it is difficult to claim that the video is a deliberate “attempt to exploit and transgress traditional racial taboos” (161). Like many white female pop singers, Madonna’s sacrilegious approach to “Like A Prayer” an attempt to craft her provocative image. And, like many white female pop singers, the way in which she tries to accomplish this comes off in bad taste. With that said, I would like to briefly mention a successful female pop singer who truly does mock black culture in her music videos – Taylor Swift. In “Shake It Off,” Taylor Swift, dances to the backdrop of black bodies twerking; in “Wildest Dreams” Taylor Swift sings in a glamorous colonized Africa. To this, I argue that Madonna’s errors, by far, pale in comparison.

This is directly related to how blackness is are portrayed in Madonna’s “Like A Prayer.” Here, Hooks argues that the black chorus women are similar to Hollywood’s “Mammy” (162). With that, Hooks continues her point that Madonna bounces off of black stereotypes in order to promote herself, here, through juxtaposing “black non-Catholic representations with the image of the black saint” (162). By “black non-Catholic representations,” I think Hooks means the chorus singers. Yes, the putting a gospel in a Catholic church is absurd, but it is just like the entire tone of “Like A Prayer.” Madonna randomly falls; Madonna is caged behind bars; Madonna dances in front of huge crucifixes on fire. Hooks falls short in her argument that Madonna intends to “exploit traditional racial taboos” (162).

Hooks’s picture of Madonna as an embodiment of white supremacist culture is ultimately undermined by something that she herself mentions many times: Madonna’s large black fan base. Hooks writes, “It should come as no surprise that many of her fans are gay men, and that the majority of non-white men, particularly black men, are among that group” (159). Further: “It was only among young black females that I could find die-hard Madonna fans” (157). The fact that Hooks herself has documented a quantifiable number of black people who identify as “die-hard Madonna fans” is the most glaring evidence to oppose her claims.

At her core, Madonna is provocative. Addressing blackness is provocative, and absolutely, Madonna is far from perfect in doing this. Hooks’s argument, condemning Madonna as an exploiter of black culture, is derived from her establishment of Madonna's love for black culture, and the way in which Madonna incorporates black people and black culture into her work and image. So, if not with "affinity and envy," what I really want to ask Hooks is what she believes to be the best, most tactful way to approach blackness. To me, it seems like the answer might simply be not at all.