From: adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Dietrich, Madonna, etc.
Date: 7 Oct 1992 01:45:37 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: mizar.usc.edu

Yet once more.

> > Meryl Streep is your idea of a good actress?  It figures.
> > And I would suggest you find out what an icon *is* before you
> > start asserting that Madonna is one.  What a laugh.
> 
> Pathetic.  Streep is not a good actress?  Perhaps not as good an
> actress as you...  

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.  

[...]
> > I'm talking about icons and you're talking about successful
> > mass marketing.  I wonder if Madonna's image (oh, say, the
> > Like a Virgin Tour space-titted model) will remain fresh
> > for the next 60-odd years in the same way that Dietrich's image
> > in Blue Angel has over the *last* 60-odd.  [...]
> 
> You grossly over-estimate the 'power' of Dietrich's images.  

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.

> Perhaps to aging, balding, plump queen's in West Hollywood 
> (you're words, darling, not mine) -

Not quite.  I never said I was plump.  "Skinny/flabby", yes, 
but not plump.  (I'm 5'10" and weigh 150 pounds.  Is that
plump?)

> the name Marlene Dietrich still rings a bell. But Dietrich is no
> longer a part of the mass culture.  

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.

> As to what the next sixty years will be like, who knows.  Will
> Dietrich still be an icon sixty years from now?  

Yes.
 
> Will Madonna?  Will any current celebrity?  

Of course Madonna will still be remembered.  Heavens, we 
still remember who Kate Smith was, don't we?  But I think
it highly unlikely that the sight of Madonna jiggling around 
in a parking garage singing "Borderline" will strike people 50 
years hence with the same force that people are struck with even
today when they see Dietrich in a tuxedo kissing a woman full on 
the lips in the 62-year old "Morocco".

> Not bloody likely.  There are a hell of a lot more of them, making a
> hell of a lot more movies, 

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

> putting out a hell of a lot more songs.  When the songs over, it's
> time for the next.

Aren't you a Reagan Republican?

> 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.

> > > Madonna is just 'acting' vulgar - same sense, different decade.
> > 
> > You couldn't possibly be more wrong.
> 
> How so?  You seriously believe Dietrich would be considered vulgar
> by current standards.  

Not so surprisingly, you entirely missed what it was that Dietrich 
was getting at.  Again, Dietrich said about herself and Madonna: "I
acted vulgar; she *is* vulgar".  Think about it.

> You, snookums, are the one who couldn't possibly be more wrong. 
> Tame.  The woman would be seen as tame.  If seen at all.  Perhaps
> the best that she could hope for is some kind of Kathleen Turner
> sex-appeal.  

Kathleen Turner kind of sex-appeal?  I can't imagine what 
that might be.  Are you speaking of her Ava Gardner impression
in "Body Heat"?

> No doubt you are sputtering at this very moment:  Kathleen Turner! 
> Kathleen Turner!  You *DARE* to compare THE GODDESS MARLENE DIETRICH
> to Kathleen Turner!?

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. 
 
[...]
> Dietrich was very good at playing Dietrich.  That's about it.

You haven't *any* idea how funny that is.  You really
*are* a moron, aren't you?
 
> > As I said before, Madonna is the Jayne Mansfield of the 
> > '80s and '90s, and if you don't know what that means, then
> > you have absolutely no business talking about who is or
> > is not an icon.
> 
> You have to go back a lot further than Jayne.  Further than
> Dietrich, or Davis, or Garbo, or even Swanson, to find the only
> other woman in Hollywood who has achieved the fame, fortune, and
> influence of Madonna.

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. 

> 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.]

> ...  She went toe to toe with those very same moguls, and today - no
> one has heard of her.  

No one has heard of her.  Yeah, right. 

> It does not lessen the woman's accomplishment.  Now, it's Mary who?
> But there was a time when openings at Mann's Chinese 

*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.]

> 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.

> No one lasts forever.  

Icons do.  

> Thank God you certainly won't.

*Kisses*.

Arne