I love this song and video (and Madge, obvs). It’s really really good.
But listening to the lyrics, I wonder about what Foucault might have said if he’d lived to see Madonna’s adoption of S&M aesthetics in the mid 90s.
[int. music video set, excitable barely-legal production assistants are running everywhere painting everyone’s faces geisha white and Windex-ing all the black PVC]
Madonna (rehearsing to camera): And I’m not sorry…It’s human nature..
Michel (interrupting from offset): There’s no such thing, it’s a product of power relations!
Madonna (sarcastically): Oops, I didn’t know I couldn’t talk about sex
Michel: Yes you did, that’s why you’ve been talking about it for years
[assistants are looking annoyed]
Madonna: Express yourself, don’t repress yourself!
Michel: You are talking about the same linguistic phenomena!
Madonna (sarcastically): Oops, I didn’t know I couldnt talk about you.
Michel: Yes this applies to me too. I used to like to travel to Switzerland, when homosexuality was illegal. Made the sex feel more subversive.
Madonna: I’m breakin all the rules I didn’t make
Michel: You participate in making the rules! You are not outside the regulation of sexuality.
Madonna: I’m not your bitch, don’t hang your shit on me.
[security arrives]
Michel: All I’m saying is that you ‘repudiating repression’ is actually part of your sexuality, not a gateway to some kind of unsituated sexuality. There is no ‘human nature’
Madonna: Would you like me better if I was a man?
Michel: … Probably
Madonna: You took my words and made a trap for silly fools…You punished me for telling you my fantasies..
Michel: I’m sorry
Madonna: I’m not sorry
[he is escorted from the set]
- Javed de Costa
