In a series called Mondo Bullshittio, let’s talk about some of the most glaring hypocrisies and faux pas in pop culture… and all that it affects.
In lieu of The Queen’s Gambit, the end of the year has unveiled that, all along, it’s been Hilaria’s Gambit. And it’s one that, as many media outlets have highlighted, has been played before. With the most notable names guilty of the infraction being Madonna and Lindsay Lohan (though these two should never have their names placed next to each other due to a certain caliber discrepancy). The former is already much different from the latter’s case in that Lohan seemed to offer a one-off press conference featuring her “Lohanese” accent, a mix of imitating someone Arabic, Turkish or Greek speaking English. Madonna, at the very least, could lay claim to her long-standing attachment to British men, starting with Andy Bird in 1997, a squirrelly Englishman who turned out to be a deadbeat cad (rather than at least the deadbeat dad she wanted him to become for another child).
She then transitioned to dating Guy Ritchie, soon after marrying him in 2000. Living in the U.K. and transforming into, for all intents and purposes, a “countryside dame,” made her–sponge-like creature that she is–start speaking with a noticeably British lilt. The accent was so pronounced that it even got mentioned in a 2003 Sex and the City episode (“Boy, Interrupted”) in which Carrie makes fun of Samantha for pretending to be a British woman by remarking, “Someone’s got a case of the Madonnas.” It became such a running joke that when Madonna eventually shed the accent after her divorce, it was palpably felt as the end of an era.
Regardless, “appropriating” Anglican culture just doesn’t invoke that much rage. Especially when England’s entire history is based on pillaging and colonizing other countries. People just don’t feel that much cause for defending it when someone tries to “borrow their culture” or put on a fake accent. Perhaps this is why Emily Mortimer as Phoebe in 30 Rock’s first season (which aired back in 2006) could get away with putting a fake British accent on herself in order to seem more appealing to a man like Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin)–in a plot twist that would eerily echo Alec B’s current marital turmoil. In any event, Madonna had far more legitimate ties to Britain (and now, Madonna’s son, Rocco, will likely carry the British torch with his own fetish for the country) by way of marriage than Hilaria does to Spain. Her descendants are pilgrims of Massachusetts. It doesn’t get more white bread than that.
At the least, Madonna has a claim to bona fide Italian heritage, a fact cemented by having gone back to Italy to visit with her relatives during the Who’s That Girl Tour in 1987 (her origins being Pacentro, where the town once considered erecting a statue of her that never came to fruition. Guess, like Amy Winehouse, a bitch gotta be dead to get a goddamn monument). Her love-hate relationship with the country and its conservative Catholicism overtones also proves she’s an Italian in every way that counts.
As for Hilaria, who wavered in and out of her accent like a drunkard trying to pass a sobriety check, cue the requisite Dad joke, “People falling for her yarn? That’s hilaria!” Perhaps her ability to get away with it for so long stemmed from not really being a “big deal” as a “celebrity.” Certainly not on par with M or even Lohan to be immediately called out. To boot, Spain gets more of a “pass” over South America and Central America–in other words, there’s not as much of a ferocity about protecting it from bastardization. After all, they let Hemingway write all that shit about bullfighting for fuck’s sake. And even Madonna got in on the Spain train with the “Take A Bow” video. The point is, “stealing Spain” was just “inoffensive enough” for Hilaria to also carry on for so long, in addition to not being all that culturally relevant. Ironic, considering her new claim to fame is cultural appropriation. And all-out lying.
With Madonna, there was never a lie, or an intent to profit from her use of a British accent–unless you count her foray into filmmaking that centered on the royal scandal of Prince Edward and Wallis Simpson (called W.E.). But she def did not profit from that. If anything, it further tarnished her reputation in movies (unjustly so, mind you). So, in any case, to repurpose Naomi Campbell’s immortal phrase, “Do not compare Hilaria to Madonna, ever. She is not on her level. She never will be on her level.”
