Translated material
The girl is in a hurry to go on a date
Today Madonna will finally perform in Moscow
In Dan Brown’s novel Angels and Demons, cryptographer Bob Langdon, who had not yet cracked the Da Vinci Code, explained, discussing Renaissance morals: “Raphael avoided using his last name, just as modern pop idols do. Madonna, for example, runs away from the name Ciccone like the plague.” Just a year after the book's release, Madonna refuted this claim by ordering her full title - Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone Richie - to be written down on a new credit card. But even this didn’t help much: recently, in one of the British TV quiz shows, even her own husband, director Guy Ritchie, could not remember the singer’s real name. For him, as for millions of people on the planet, she was, is and, probably, until the end of time will remain simply Madonna (especially since in fact this is not an elaborate pseudonym, but a real name given at birth in honor of her housewife mother Madonna Fortini, who died of cancer when Mandy Jr. was not even six years old).And it’s like that for us too. Despite the fact that the excitement about her long-awaited arrival in Moscow (comparable either to Sorokin’s endless “Queue” for some unknown reason, or to the end of the world hysterically announced by a certain totalitarian sect in one single cultural center) is almost to the least degree directly related with her creativity. It cannot be said that her numerous albums have enjoyed any particular popularity among us, that Madonna is listened to, and it is unlikely that the Luzhniki flock will sing along with her tonight even on the most popular hits. People go to look at Madonna first of all as a certain phenomenon, which will, moreover, be hardly possible to see in the future - in much the same way (of course, on a much smaller scale and especially for much more modest money) people gathered several years ago look at a couple of giant pandas brought briefly from China to the Moscow Zoo.
At the same time, Madonna, oddly enough, has existed in the domestic mass consciousness for quite a long time - almost from her first steps on the path of show business. At first, of course, as a bogeyman of counter-propaganda: today it’s hard to believe, but back in early perestroika times, the author of these lines provided his middle school-aged peers with special political information dedicated to the scandalous singer, prepared based on materials from the weekly Argumenty, which unexpectedly radicalized just in those years and facts." You could not hear a single bar of her songs, but you could absolutely accurately quote the singer’s statements about the sexuality of the crucifixion, and also know that in the video for the song Papa Don’t Preach, the lyrical heroine dealt with her own boring moralist father with a chainsaw. Later, with the development of mass media, Madonna continued to remain a rather visual symbol: amazing clips, photo sessions (sometimes very candid) of the world's best photographers, video recordings of breathtaking shows, unclear, but even more intriguing, paparazzi photographs. Finally, cinema, which simply could not help but pay attention to this kind of rare bird and paid for it more than once: practically not a single film with the participation of a star became more or less profitable. “Shanghai Surprise,” in which Madonna starred alongside her then-husband Sean Penn, went down in history as one of the most egregious commercial failures, and since 1987, Madonna has won as many as seven cinematic anti-Razzie Awards—more than anyone no matter what happened in history. Despite the fact that watching her in a feature film is at least interesting: just remember how famously Madonna transformed the image of her beloved Katharine Hepburn into the style of “white trash” in the film “Who’s That Girl?”, luxurious in its kitschishness and a very free remake Howard Hawks' classic masterpiece Bringing Up Baby.
Everything else - marriages and divorces, the birth of children and writing fairy tales for them, scandals and revelations, hobbies for Kabbalah and other “incredible bounties of existence” - seemed to deliberately divert the audience’s attention from the main purpose of this short wonder woman, who, no less, a very impressive IQ. It seemed that everything was being done so as not to listen to her. And completely in vain. It's actually very good music for the most part. If you look at Madonna’s discography with an open mind, you can find in it at least a dozen absolutely amazing hits that you don’t want to part with for any price. Among them, of course, is Love Profusion from the three-year-old American Life album - certainly one of the most exciting and beautiful compositions that could ever be heard on the radio or in the TV box. And the visceral, indescribable eroticism of this song's refrain - I got you under my skin, lifted from Cole Porter's classic song, sung by the great Frank Sinatra - no matter how blasphemous it sounds, perhaps it surpasses the original. Behind the guise of a “marketing genius”, an iron woman with a multimillion-dollar account and a bull terrier business acumen, it is criminally difficult to see the woman. The one who sings. And he sings superbly. So at today's show, in the kaleidoscope of lighting effects, dance numbers and under the translucent shadow of the crystal cross, it is worth opening not only your eyes, but also your ears. And if it works out, then so does the heart.