Madonna: What It Feels Like for a Girl
The outrage surrounding the violent content in Madonna's video for "What It Feels Like for a Girl" is a bit of a controversy itself. Look  at any episode of any cop show filmed during the last 25 years and you'll easily  find more car crashes and human assault, containing far less artful context,  than director Guy Ritchie (Madonna's husband) injects here. Madonna plays  something of a femme fatale Robin Hood, who removes a blank-faced elderly woman  from a nursing home and, with the old lady sitting shotgun, races around town in  a yellow vintage Camaro wreaking havoc on unsuspecting males. She crashes into a  car containing leering young men, stun-guns a fat-cat fellow at an ATM, gives  his cash to a waitress at a drive-in, and steals another hot rod after she's  banged up her own. While enjoying a milkshake with her octogenarian partner-in- crime, she pulls out a pistol and aims it at the heads of two stupefied-looking  policemen (but she doesn't spray them with bullets--the weapon is a squirt gun).  TheThelma & Louise-themed video hints that the entire scenario is  imagined by the old woman, who fantasizes vengeance for a lifetime of  indignities suffered. Satisfying, yes. Outrageous, hardly.--Beth Massa