Madonna, the only pop star with superlative taste consistently written off as having none, was quick to pay homage to both her combined Italian heritage and love of film by posting an image of the recently deceased auteur Bernardo Bertolucci (perhaps now best remembered for facilitating the onscreen violation of Maria Schneider) on her Instagram story on the day of his death, November 26th. While, sure, there is nothing patently out of the ordinary about this–especially since Madonna is known for displaying images of those she has admired or worked with who inevitably die before her–it is somewhat of a hot button issue for one of the most commercialized feminists (fuck you, Beyonce) to show her respect for a man whose work (and the process behind it) is overtly misogynistic (granted, all work from straight men is unavoidably so, but Bertolucci is of marked note in part due to the non-virtue of being an Italian male).
And yet, as the unspoken platitude of appreciating art goes, one (particularly one with a vagina) must be able to “learn” to separate the output from the artist, regardless of medium–though, to be frank, it does seem that male painters, writers and directors are the most narcissistic blowhards of them all. For if she cannot, then it would be something of a challenge to enjoy and absorb much of anything of the artistic realm (thank you so much old guard, for creating centuries’ worth of nothing but male-dominated “crafts” that have forced us all to be subjected to it whether we want to be or not). Even so, as the sands of time hurtle us evermore into a future where the phrase “boys will be boys” sounds increasingly like insane propaganda from a bygone era, it won’t be so easy to either 1) accept the work of men with a dubious approach to their treatment of women or 2) allow men to make the claim that they did something nefarious for the sake of their art (as Bertolucci did with regard to explaining his motive in not forewarning Schneider of the full extent of the butter scene in Last Tango in Paris).
Being that Madonna is as close to misandry as it gets in the mainstream (sorry, Valerie Solanas), it is something of a strange dichotomy for her to parade her fandom of a regista so blatantly out of touch with the correct way to “handle” women (as a misogynist might say in an aside to one of his fellow eunuchs) when she herself has founded a career on fighting against sexism, chauvinism and overall male fuckery.
At the same time, however, how can anyone–least of all an aestheticist like Madonna–deny the beauty, the visual poetry (thanks to his dad) of Bertolucci’s impressive filmography? It is thus an incredibly internally splitting phenomenon, to be a female artist (therefore infinitely less prone to engaging in the priggish behavior that comes so naturally to men) with the taste to respect and esteem work that is, separate from the man, “good,” while also being cognizant that said work is in possession of a taint that can’t be overlooked because of having this awareness of how it came to exist in the world. In the case of that Last Tango… scene, it was an outright conspiracy against the will and wishes of Schneider to shoot something so degrading that wasn’t even hinted at in the script. That she was also too young to know how to react or proceed in such a situation only further adds to the condemnation Bertolucci’s legacy is worthy of–despite Eva Green’s condescending remark in an article praising the director, “I do not want to undermine Maria Schneider’s experience. I’m sure she really suffered. But as for my own experience, he was always a gentleman.”
So while this film, which inspired Green to want to work with Bertolucci in the first place, may be continuously hailed as “one of the best” (primarily something that stems from the lore of the controversy behind it without many people having actually seen it) of his oeuvre, it cannot be digested in a pure way as a result of knowing the backstory behind its so-called most iconic scene. And regardless of what Madonna’s favorite Bertolucci film might be (surely it cannot be Last Tango…), his cruel method of directing–of eliciting a “genuine reaction”–looms large over his entire canon.
Sure, a feminist can find it unavoidable to fall into the trap of “cherishing” the work of a misogynist. But maybe this is only because female artists still have a very long way to go when it comes to respecting themselves. Of knowing the value of their own work, which is, thank God or whoever, only augmenting in the twenty-first century so that none of us have to feel obliged to turn to the art of prickheads for inspiration. No matter how much they insist that acting as a prickhead was essential to creating the consummate final product.
