From: mattm@apple.com (Matthew Melmon)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Ah, Fashion.
Date: 6 Oct 92 23:52:08 GMT
Followup-To: soc.motss
Organization: Apple Computer, Inc.

In response to a response to a response, it was written:

[failure to successfully parse the conditional tense deleted - surely
the individual was suffering from some mild stress, given his
typically stellar grammar]
 
> 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...  Madonna is not an icon?  Could an icon be seen
as something, or someone, with symbolic power to some arbitrary
number of people?  Perhaps the fact that millions of people are
willing to part with fair amounts of money to see this woman bears
witness to her symbolic power?  Perhaps the fact that when Madonna
gives a press conference, people show up attests to her symbolic
power?  Perhaps the fact that when she throws a benefit, celebrities
from around the world can't get into the same room with her fast
enough attest to her symbolic power?


> 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.  *Something* tells me
> that it won't.  Will any of Madonna's scenes in any of her
> movies -- pick one -- retain the power to shock and titillate
> and delight 62 years from now in the same way that Dietrich's 
> opening number in Morocco (released in 1930) still has today?
> I doubt it.

You grossly over-estimate the 'power' of Dietrich's images.  Perhaps
to aging, balding, plump queen's in West Hollywood (you're words,
darling, not mine) - the name Marlene Dietrich still rings a bell. But
Dietrich is no longer a part of the mass culture.  As to what the
next sixty years will be like, who knows.  Will Dietrich still be
an icon sixty years from now?  

Not bloody likely.

Will Madonna?  Will any current celebrity?  

Not bloody likely.  There are a hell of a lot more of them, making a
hell of a lot more movies, putting out a hell of a lot more songs.
When the songs over, it's time for the next.

Does this change the fact that in the presence, these celebrities are
not icons to those living in the present.  No, it does not.  In
the years of the Lord nineteen hundred and ninety plus, Marlene 
Dietrich *does* *not* *matter* and Madonna does.  Plain and simple.
 
> > 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.  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.  No doubt you are sputtering
at this very moment:  Kathleen Turner!  Kathleen Turner!  You *DARE*
to compare THE GODDESS MARLENE DIETRICH to Kathleen Turner!?

Dietrich is dead and buried.  She is not making movies today.  If
she were making movies today, she would be no more than Kathleen
Turner.  Dietrich was very good at playing Dietrich.  That's about
it.

> 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.
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, and
she was making ten thousand dollars a week (not adjusted for 
inflation) before women had the right to vote.  She wasn't some
trumped up plaything of the moguls who couldn't take it, who
ran away blubbering about wanting to be left alone.  She went toe to
toe with those very same moguls, and today - no one has heard of
her.  It does not lessen the woman's accomplishment.  Now, it's Mary who?
But there was a time when openings at Mann's Chinese didn't start
until Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks took their seats, and
the center of the entertainment world was Pickfair.

No one lasts forever.  Thank God you certainly won't.

Melmothra, ACC
Newsgroups: soc.motss