Although there are undeniable cons to the presence of “Like A Prayer” in Deadpool & Wolverine, one assured pro is the fact that it’s definitely knocked “If I Could Turn Back Time”’s dick in the water. The latter was featured at the end of 2018’s Deadpool 2, placed directly after Pat Benatar’s “We Belong” (making “If I Could Turn Back Time” feel somewhat “unspecial” and sort of like just another eighties song Ryan Reynolds wanted to cram in before the movie’s conclusion). Its use was, of course, much more on the nose for the occasion than “Like A Prayer,” with Wade Wilson a.k.a. Deadpool using Cable’s (Josh Brolin) time-traveling device to correct some glaring mistakes in his life…and other assorted timelines.
These mistakes include not only letting Ryan Reynolds star in Green Lantern, but letting the love of his life, Vanessa Carlysle (Morena Baccarin), die at the hands of one of the targets he missed while on a job. Although Vanessa originally gets caught in the crossfire of the retaliative bullet meant for Deadpool, thanks to Cable’s trusty time-traveling device, he knows exactly when and what to expect so that he can kill the target before Vanessa can be harmed. And, as “If I Could Turn Back Time” plays in the background, Deadpool gleefully declares, “We’re definitely naming our kid Cher!”
Obviously, that didn’t happen and, to add to the gay icon one-eighty in Deadpool & Wolverine, Deadpool is now all about Madonna. Although it isn’t often discussed because most prefer to say that Madonna paved the way for all female pop stars after her, there’s no denying that Cher was the OG blueprint even before Madonna. Which is perhaps why she’s often been salty toward Ms. Ciccone over the years, well-documentedly offering up cunty comments in interviews starting in the early nineties—convenient timing since it was after Madonna’s divorce from Sean Penn, and she seemed to favor the latter as her friendship was with him (as evidenced by her wedding invite in 1985).
The first major gauntlet-throwing was in 1991, when Steve Kmetko of CBS asked what Cher thought of Madonna (as he said that, “career-wise,” they were similar). Cher ultimately replied, “There’s something about her that I don’t like. She’s…mean. And I don’t like that.” Which was an ironic thing to say considering Cher went no holds barred on meanness in this interview. She then added, “And I remember having her over to my house a couple of times ‘cause Sean and I were friends, and she just was…so rude to everybody, it seems to me that she’s got so much that she doesn’t have to act the way that she does. She acts like a spoiled brat all the time, and it seems to me when you reach the kind of acclaim that she’s reached and can do whatever you wanna do, you should be a little bit more magnanimous and a little bit less of a cunt.” Ah, such biting words. And, oddly enough, the lyrics to “If I Could Turn Back Time” read like they could be an apology to M, particularly the verses, “If I could find a way, I’d take back those words that’ve hurt you” and “I don’t know why I did the things I did/I don’t know why I said the things I said/Pride’s like a knife, it can cut deep inside/Words are like weapons, they wound sometimes.”
In any case, Cher didn’t seem to understand that “cunt” was Madonna’s brand long before it was chic to be cunty. And while part of it was an act to shield the eternal wound of losing her mother to breast cancer when Madonna was just five, the other part was knowing that a woman doesn’t get ahead in life, least of all in the entertainment industry, without being a quote unquote bitch. Everyone was aware of Madonna’s so-called reputation, but it took a long time for other people to applaud her for it. Norman Mailer was one of the earlier appreciators in this regard, commenting that she’s “a pint-size wop with a heart built out of the cast-iron balls of a hundred peasant ancestors.”
It would take that kind of heart to steel oneself against Cher’s running commentary (though Madonna would have the last laugh by featuring the “She’s mean” comment during an interlude segment of The Celebration Tour). For, the same year, when asked what she thought of Madonna again, she offered yet another backhanded compliment in the form of, “She’s unbelievably creative, because she’s not unbelievably talented, she’s not beautiful, but she’s kind of—she’s rude, and so this man said, ‘How do you feel about her?’ ‘Well, she’s nice…she’s creative, but she’s rude…’ I do respect that she goes much farther than anyone should go.” Again, more backhanded “praise.”
At a time when everyone thought Madonna had, indeed, gone too far after Erotica and the Sex book, in a 1992 interview with Des O’Connor, Cher continued her shade parade, remarking of M’s superstardom, “That’s a special art to be able to turn whatever you have into…it’s like spinning straw into gold.” As the other Cher would say, “That was way harsh, Tai.” But no matter to Madonna, who continued to remain more relevant and in the mainstream as the nineties went on, while Cher arguably jumped on her bandwagon with the Believe album after Ray of Light was released many months earlier in 1998. In fact, a reviewer in Entertainment Weekly noted of Believe, “One minute, this dance grab bag is mimicking Ray of Light; the next, paying homage to Donna Summer’s disco days—then both at once!”
Indeed, that wasn’t the only time when Madonna and Cher’s musical releases “dovetailed”: both “Like A Prayer” and “If I Could Turn Back Time,” one of each woman’s biggest hits, came out in 1989. Released a month after Cher’s forty-third birthday and three months after “Like A Prayer” came out in March of 1989, “If I Could Turn Back Time” would become an anthem not just for regret, but an ongoing joke about how Cher actually did seem capable of turning back time by never really aging. The two women’s releases collided again that year at the VMAs, held on September 6th. While Madonna—far more white-hot at that time than Cher—got to open the ceremony with a choreo-heavy performance of “Express Yourself,” Cher was placed toward the end with other “legacy” acts like The Rolling Stones and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (joined by Axl Rose).
In spite of Cher’s open ire for Madonna in the nineties, by 1999, things between the two seemed “calm” enough for Cher to be willing to “let” Madonna direct the video for the fourth single from Believe, “Dov’è l’amore.” Only it didn’t pan out due to “scheduling conflicts.” In 2013, Cher told Andy Cohen, “Madge and I have gone through our thing, but I’m totally good with her.” It appeared that still rang true in 2017, when the duo posed for a photo together during the Women’s March. But who knows if Cher’s old feelings of ill will haven’t been reignited by Madonna majorly upstaging her Deadpool moment with “Like A Prayer”? Which, unlike “If I Could Turn Back Time,” has had a major surge in streaming and sales as a result of being featured in the movie. And not just during one scene, but two. So yes, it has to be said that Madonna wins this round of gay icon vs. gay icon…much to Cher’s chagrin.
