Material Watch: Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991)

Watched:  07/22/2023

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Alek Kesheshian

It's probably a cultural bellwether that the biggest name in music right now is Taylor Swift, who is a fine singer/ songwriter and who is about as challenging as a pair of fuzzy socks.  Like, I get that she speaks to the suburban experience like no one's business, but she's not exactly out there getting angry notes from the Pope.

But not so Madonna circa 1990 when this documentary was shot and subsequently released.  The Material Girl was not poking anyone in the eye, but she was giddily pushing the envelope enough that she was constantly getting free publicity from outraged pearl clutchers.

I was something of a secret Madonna fan around the time this movie came out.  Attempting a persona as a fan of music which sat outside of pop and the Top 40, I didn't advertise that I knew all the words to La Isla Bonita.  That said, it was expected you'd seen Madonna's videos and knew her songs as both were inescapable through the mid 80's to the mid-90's.  And I wasn't avoiding Madonna.  She, uh, was not funny looking, and her songs were catchy, and on the radio, fairly non-threatening.  And, right out of the gate, she started with Like a Virgin, which always felt like it should be dirty, but you had to make it so, and so it landed on regular MTV rotation.  

By the time the Blond Ambition tour happened, Madonna was a household name.  She was famously coupled with infamous womanizer Warren Beatty, and in some ways - this spot from 1990 through about 1994 would mark the absolute peak of Madonna's power.  She was regular news in the paper and on national news, having harnessed the power of the easily duped media machine who loved nothing more than a good ginned up scandal.  

If she'd been outrageous to some pre-1989, her twin decisions to sign on to do a Superbowl Ad with Pepsi and then make an erotic-Jesus/ awkward blasphemy video for Like a Prayer wound up in wacky legal troubles and condemnation from religious leaders.  Mostly it reads like a very expensive student film.

All this to say, Madonna's whole brand at this point was "sexy controversy".  Which, when you're 15, is amazing and something one gets very onboard with (and, of course, the video for Express Yourself just destroyed any reservations you may have previously held).  

Now, as mentioned, in this same era, I was the age where I'm trying to maintain a brand, and it was not pop stars.*  But Madonna *mostly* got a pass.  I do remember borrowing a taped HBO concert video of Blond Ambition from a pal and a mutual high-fiving.  And it took zero sale to a different pal who was mostly into Ministry and whatnot to go see Truth or Dare (1991) in the theater.  It really didn't matter what else you were into, Madonna was kind of something we could all agree on.

Honestly, my memory of that viewing, which was likely early 1992 at the North Oaks dollar theater, was that Madonna seemed way less cool than I was hoping for.  I mean, back then, you only knew musicians through interviews and videos and the paparazzi's relentless pestering.  

The Madonna of this film is narcissistic, bullying and endlessly manipulative.  She claims the role of "mother" to her tour company, but the film also starts with her basically saying "I'm already over it and the emotion everyone else felt here and you'll see expressed here is something I've moved past" actively delegitimizing the experiences and feelings she cultivated herself.  And then we watch for two hours as she works to build an illusions of intimacy with people who mostly seem to annoy her.   

Part of me gets it:  she's the thing at the center of everything.  She literally does not have time for nonsense.   But at the same time she wants everyone to love her.  Even the idea that she wants to be a mother-figure is complicated by the later-investigated reality that she never knew her own mother.  There's no model there.

Watching the movie now, I don't think teen-me was necessarily wrong.  But I'm older and wiser, and while I believe the film is a true documentary of something, I'm less confident that Madonna wasn't putting on a show for the cameras at every opportunity, and that the director didn't play along.  After all, Madonna financed the thing herself and is listed as the Executive Producer.  Nothing in the doc is not something she didn't want people to see.  This is not journalism.  It's Madonna propaganda.  And, honestly, that's fine.

But it also has some of the same misfiring that has plagued Madonna on and off during her career, making some things noteworthy and approaching controversy, and other things just feeling a wee bit cringey.  Ie: Madonna is not always as ahead of everyone else as she believes.  But they all live in a world where it's agreed that if Madonna talks, everyone shuts up and listens.

The film includes bits that are almost confusing in their intimacy and leaves other portions on the table.  Why is the scene included with the awkward reunion with a former childhood friend that mostly seems to focus on humiliating this person?  Why do we linger on Madonna rolling around her mother's grave?  But then - why doesn't her brother Christopher ever say a word to Madonna or to the camera?  He's constantly around, but it's not clear what he's doing other than wrangling his sister.

What I'd forgotten, because we were offered up fresh Madonna on a regular basis at the time of the film's release, is that the doc contains lengthy, in-color, bits of performance from the Blond Ambition tour.  And then you remember why people adored Madonna.  On stage, she's amazing and all the things she says she wants to be - artist, provocateur, den mother....  And while the comparison (the doc portions are black and white) is obvious, it's weird that Madonna propaganda intended to humanize makes her less sympathetic.

The movie is broken down into the starting portion in Japan and the difficulties of getting the show going and forging of relations, etc... and then the US/ Canada portion which looks at the cast in part and Madonna's relations with people around her outside of the cast.  And winds up in Europe where it attempts to finally define how Madonna interacts with her cast, and then a sequence intended to make her seem like an ethereal, unknowable mystery with multiple facets.  But she doesn't feel that way.  It's people who are very young working through their brush with Madonna and her fame-mongering and inability to maybe see other people as people.

At the time and to its credit, the movie was very progressive for its time, candidly showing Madonna's dancers as the gay men that they were - still a rocky topic in 1991.  Especially as the AIDS crisis continued to fill headlines and devastate the LGBQT+ community.  In many ways, at the time, this earned the movie a lot of kudos and legitimacy.  I wouldn't ever want to take that away from the film or its fans, because I very much remember this era, and to see gay men portrayed openly and honestly was highly unusual.  Further, I know much ado is made about Madonna co-opting "Vogueing", which is a fact.  But, also, it mainstreamed a little known bit of gay culture, forcing open some doors.

I don't really know what to make of the film.  It is what it is.  It clearly thinks its about family and community in this weird little world of Madonna's sideshow.  But she also states it doesn't matter at the outset, that it's already over, and you - the audience - missed out.  And for all the inclusion, this is still a Madonna who rolls her eyes at well-meaning people paying her compliments and who reacts to a report one of her team has been roofied and raped with a shocked laugh.  

The only person who seems to have a grasp on what was happening here was Warren Beatty who successfully sued Madonna to have parts of his appearance removed from the movie, and who points out that having a doc crew around all the time is probably dumb, and only really fulfills Madonna's need to be recorded.

In 2016, btw, a documentary was produced that wondered "what became of those dancers?"  We'll seek it out, maybe.  

Is this "the truth" as promised?  Certainly it's *a* truth.  Was I a little disappointed in Madonna then?  Yes.  Now?  I dunno.  It's beyond me, even if I find her a bit unpleasant.  But knowing how much control she had over the film, and this is what she wanted to show, the overall film raises more questions than it answers.

*I've long ago mended my ways, and will be happy to talk Kylie Minogue