Rewind your clocks, if you will, back to around July 9, 1990. It is the night before Madonna is to perform her first show at the Stadio Flaminio in Rome. The controversy surrounding reports of masturbation, “offensive” sexuality, androgyny and (gasp!) homoeroticism–all intermixed against the backdrop of Catholic emblems and imagery–sent the Vatican into a furor. At the time still the end all, be all authority in Italy (though one has seen this clout gradually wane amid impropriety after impropriety), Pope John Paul II and his mafia declared the show immoral and indecent, which, in part, contributed to Madonna cancelling her intended second show in Rome as a result of low ticket sales in accordance with Italians’ adherence to the Catholic Church’s every decree with regard to how to think and feel. Especially about pop culture. That ticket sales were low at a time when Madonna was at the peak of her popularity is telling of just how much influence the Vatican had. And it enraged and offended her sensibilities as an artist to endure censure in such a blind manner, prompting her to attempt to explain herself to Italians with an impassioned speech on July 11, 1990. But you can’t explain art of a provoking nature to someone with a closed mind. Least of all when it’s to one of the most old guard institutions in existence. Naturally, the content of the Blond Ambition Tour wasn’t the first time Madonna had angered the “Holy Ones,” however, getting excommunicated for her “Like A Prayer” video in 1989, featuring, among other scandals, burning crosses and an interracial dalliance with a saint.
But even before that, dedicating “Papa Don’t Preach” to John Paul II didn’t help, the Vatican none too appreciative of her sense of irony–1987’s Who’s That Girl Tour also being another instance of the Pope encouraging Italians not to attend her show. And being that Madonna had already set the precedent for her career as intermixing fashion and sexuality with the Catholic religion, she was never going to be a fan favorite of the Vatican. Despite the fact that she’s been their most ardent publicist–and for free no less. The old flames of controversy re-ignited between them when Madonna propped herself up on a mirrorball cross for a performance of “Live to Tell” during 2006’s Confessions Tour. But it was the Blond Ambition Tour that brought all of Madonna’s persistent explorations of this religion to a thunderous crescendo heard ’round the boot. Seeking “redemption and salvation” herself for something she could never understand–losing her mother and feeling forever without a place to call home–Madonna’s search for truth and meaning was at its ultimate in the narrative of the tour that shocked the world, but most particularly the Vatican.
So what does all this long-standing contention and nerve-rattling between Madonna and the Catholic Church mean? Basically that, were it not for her, there would have been an angry mob with fire and brimstone showing up to the Met last night to protest the very blatantly sacrilegious theme of the evening: Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination. Of course, if anyone had ever been more tailor-made for a theme, it was Madonna, whose entire repressive Catholic upbringing turned her into the perpetual rebel she still remains and punctuated all of her work with the tortured motifs associated with having Catholicism indoctrinated into your brain at a young age.
If not for, once again, Madonna having shattered every boundary and taboo all in one fell swoop with the BA Tour, the Met Gala of 2018 might have been met with far more resistance than it was from worn down Catholics, as opposed to resigned eyerolls on the parts of remaining “religious” types still attempting to wield “purity” and “moral righteousness” as a means of control. But everyone knows Internet is the new god.
In any event, you motherfuckers all have Madonna to thank for your blithe freedom. Your ability to show up dressed as the Pope and receive nothing but praise and worship instead of the river of shit Madonna got for incorporating Catholicism into her wardrobe and work for the vast majority of her life. But at long last, she was permitted the “luxury” of appearing as an Immaculate Goth Queen without any of that unpleasant smearing that began from the moment she declared, “Crucifixes are sexy because there’s a naked man on them.”
