From: mattm@apple.com (Matthew Melmon)
Subject: Re: Dietrich, Madonna, etc.
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 19:07:19 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer, Inc.
Followup-To: soc.motss

In a dialog that isn't really happening, I am ignored with the following
text.:

> Meryl Streep is an extremely talented mimic with a pleasant
> singing voice.  In the annals of great acting in the movies,
> Streep will rate a couple of paragraphs and a small black and
> white photo.
> 
> > Madonna is not an icon?  Could an icon be seen as something, or
> > someone, with symbolic power to some arbitrary number of people?  
> 
> By that definition, Connie Chung is an icon.  No.  

Connie Chung does not cause hundreds of thousands of screaming 
fans to fill the streets of European culture-capitals when
she walks out onto a balcony.  Connie Chung is not asked to host
gala fundraising events.  Connie Chung is not paid eighty-million
dollars a year to be Connie Chung.  Fashion magazines do not trip
over themselves to get Connie Chung on their cover.  

Madonna is all these things.


> The power of Dietrich's image is strong enough for Madonna 
> to have appropriated it.  You should pay attention to who 
> it is Madonna pays homage to.  Monroe.  Dietrich.  Garbo.  
> Kahlo.  Madonna recognizes that they're all more than just
> famous.

The power of Dietrich's image is strong enough to have been forgotten
by a great many people, some of whom have even had the nerve to
say so *here*  Even more remarkable given the two persons involved
in the argument, and the respective sides of said two persons.
 
> This after you've quoted a bit of "Vogue" that invokes her name?
> In any case, doll, you're wrong.  I decided to come home this 
> evening by way of Hollywood Blvd., where I saw huge posters of
> Dietrich in the windows of at least two souvenir shops.  *Huge* 
> close-ups of her face.  I've never seen huge posters of Constance
> Talmadge.  *She* no longer is part of the mass culture.  Dietrich is.


Yes.  Did you, by any *small* chance - notice that there are also
*huge* posters of Madonna along Hollywood Blvd.  Did you, by any
other chance, notice that Madonna's tour jackets are also rather
popular as fashion statements by homosexual youth?  I've seen
*used* *tickets* to her shows worn as jewelry.  Dietrich has 
no such following today.  A goodly number of passers by on that
great boulevard probably did *not* know Dietrich's name.


> What are you talking about?  The number of American-produced 
> movies released annually has decreased steadily since the 1920s.  

American-produced movies are not the only movies people watch.  And
your figure is as full of shit as you are.  Major releases, yes. 
Add in 'made-for-tv' flicks.  Add in direct-to-video flicks.  Add
in the cable industry.  There is a hell of a lot more volume out
there than there ever was.  Then, just for fun, you can throw in
films coming from overseas.


> > Does this change the fact that in the presence, these celebrities
> > are not icons to those living in the present.
> 
> Uhhhh....
> 
> > No, it does not.
> 
> I'll trust you on that one.

Will you, now?  You've said elsewhere that an icon is, by definition,
timeless.  A fine load of crap.  In essence, one cannot be both 
living and an icon?  Madonna has been a major media figure for what,
a decade?  She shows no signs of fading anytime soon.  What was the
length of Dietrich's active movie career, snookums?  Was Dietrich
not 'an icon' when she was a movie star? 


> No, I'm just puzzled.  You might as well have compared Dietrich
> to Paula Abdul or Nell Carter or, I don't know, Regis Philbin. 

Yeah.  Right.  If you say so.  Did you, by any chance, *try* to get
into show business and fail miserably?  Has this left you in the
position of sniffing at those who *have* made it and are still
alive, while idolizing those who made it long ago?  Giving you
a very convenient excuse, yes?  The people running show business
today are idiots, otherwise you'd be in there.  In the past, of
course, in the 'real' era - your genious would have been recognized...

> So you really don't know what it means to compare someone to 
> Jayne Mansfield.  Jayne Mansfield, a woman of no discernable
> talent for *anything* other than self-promotion (and no, gigantic
> tits and a third rate impression of Marilyn Monroe are not evidence
> of talent), managed to become *extremely* famous and *extremely* 
> rich. 

Madonna is more than 'famous' and more than 'rich.' Madonna has
power to influence the Majors.  Madonna is, herself, a 'Major.'
Madonna is a movie-star's movie star.  
 
> > Back to the beginning of the industry - the *very* beginning - and 
> > a fiesty blond Irish woman, who I would maintain is the original
> > model for Norma Desmond.  The woman's name was Mary Pickford, 
> 
> Mary Pickford!  The model for Norma Desmond!  That's just 
> too delicious!  [Listen, moron, Norma Desmond is quite 
> explicitly based on the Gloria Swanson/Pola Negri type of 
> *glamorous* silent movie star.  Little Mary Pickford was 
> many things -- rich, powerful, a control freak -- but never,
> ever, ever in a million years would anyone, *could* anyone,
> describe her as *glamorous*, on screen or off.]

This is bullshit.  Pure and simple.  Her screen character was
never glamorous.  She was the sweet little thing.  In 'real'
life, Pickford set fashions for twenty years.  It was the
Pickford of Hollywood, not the Pickford of the screen, on which
Desmond was modeled.  Perhaps you are aware that Pickford
was approached *before* Swanson for the part?

Desmond lived in a walled up castle in Beverly Hills.  Desmond
"Had more money than all this 'new' Hollywood trash."  Desmond
owned chunks of downtown Los Angeles.  Desmond owned oil wells.
Norma Desmond was all these things in the forties.  What was
Gloria Swanson in the forties?  A washed up was-been.  Gloria
Swanson did not live in Pickfair.  Gloria Swanson did not have
more money that all the new Hollywood trash.  The phantom party
that Swanson threw alluded to the hey-day of Pickfair's bashes -
or would have were it more than phantom dreams.  Gloria Swanson
was not Mary Pickford, and Norma Desmond was.  

But here's the clincher.  "I (Desmond) made Paramount Pictures."

Zukor himself, dining with Pickford in the New York Paramount
Building in the twenties, said to her:

"You built this building, Mary"

Pickford defined 'drawing power.'  Mary Pickford's name above
a film meant it would be a smash.  Paramount's early days
were lived because Mary Pickford was theirs.

So as educated as you are, Dolphie, on this one you can eat shit
and die.  You don't know what the fuck you're talking about, 
you are responding off the top of your over-stuffed brain, without
considering the reality of the two women's careers.

And again:

> Little Mary Pickford was many things -- rich, powerful, a control
> freak...,

Yes.  An *excellent* model for Madonna.  Which was my original
point.  Again, you're puking up examples without thinking about
them, simply because they are bouncing around in your mind.


> *Mann's* Chinese!!!  Snort.  [Moron, the name of the theater
> is *Grauman's* Chinese.  Sure, the Mann's chain bought it 15
> years ago, but the theater always was and always will be
> Grauman's.]

This is true. You got me.  Though, perhaps, fewer people now
think of the theater as *Grauman's Chinese* than think of
Marlene.
 
> > didn't start until Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks took their
> > seats, and the center of the entertainment world was Pickfair.
 
> <Snore>  So what?  Whoever said Mary Pickford was an icon?  Mary 
> Pickford was an extremely successful, extremely powerful (she was
> one of the artists of United Artists), extremely rich movie star.
> And that's it.
> 

*I* said Pickford was an icon.  As one of the participants in
this argument, such is my right. It is obvious our definitions
of icon cannot be reconciled.  For *moi*, Dietrich was an icon
and is no longer.  Pickford was an icon and is no longer.

Madonna is an icon.

Flash a picture of Madonna on the screen and a hell of a lot
of people are going to immediately form opinions, good or
bad, about her.  Flash a picture of Dietrich on the screen
and a few aging, balding, *thin* artsy fucks will faint, and
the rest of the world will say "Who's that bimbo?"

Melmothra, ACC
Newsgroups: soc.motss