Italian strega Camille Paglia — author of my favorite book of the summer: the electric hot-pink Break, Blow, Burn (a poetry primer for brainy imbeciles) — has finally assumed the role I always knew, always hoped, she would: Pagan High Priestess rumbling out spooky Pop Icon Prophecies that she channels from magazine photos and Access Hollywood.
Case in point: Kabbalah kibitzer Madonna and her recent tweedy romp through the August issue of Vogue:
Camille, like myself, didn’t want to miss that issue, but unlike the rest of us who casually scanned its series of staged Grand Lady Madonna photos, Paglia saw misfortune in the photos. And yet what were they but typical Vogue fare (at least to the naked, uninitiated eye). There was Madonna feeding chickens … Madonna in cozy bed with children … Madonna on the lawn in a summer dress that foamed like a wave on the ground … Madonna on horse…
Madonna! Horse!
Yes, Camille got a flash of future events. Drawing once again from her deep, intuitive well of pagan-witch feelings about art and imagery, Paglia deciphered all sorts of occult equestrian portents and semiotic codes at lightening speed. No doubt about it, an accident was augured and the way it would go down would be felt — ooof! — around the world!
One month later, on her 47th birthday (not a good astrological omen, this soothsayer decrees), Madonna was off her horse and on the ground, stunned and bone shattered. She had been thrown while riding on her English estate. Injury tally:: three ribs, one collar bone and one hand — broken! It was said among her non-Kabbalah-believing friends (with whom our Madge can apparently no longer associate) that this was no mere tumble, but a tumble from a very “high horse” — symbolic, overdue, and what people used to call “getting her comeuppance.”
It was the Vogue covershoot image, Paglia writes in the latest Interview Magazine, that gave Camille the voodoo heebeejeebies. Maddy sits atop her trotter “ostentatiously posing in riding habit and boots on a horse whose reins she is awkwardly and incorrectly holding,” (above).
Paglia continues:
We are told she has been throwing herself into country pursuits to please her macho husband Guy Ritchie. As a professionally trained dancer, tireless jogger and practitioner of extreme yoga, Madonna is an accomplished athlete. But riding is not just another routine challenge she can master through sheer willpower.
Along with physical skills, riding requires relaxation and self-subordination, an intuitive opening to the horse. Knowledge of horses needs to be accumulated by riders over a lifetime.
She will surely persist and may well triumph as a rider. But until then, let’s hope she avoids the facile, disrespectful use of horses as props and fashion statements.
Happy Trails to you, Camille.
And please, Madonna, stay open to horses!
So Mad Madge of the Madonna kind has set up a new Limited company in the UK called, of all things: Semtex Girls. Let’s face it, only a non-Brit without an understanding of recent British history would introduce the word “Semtex” into a company name, and if anyone was likely to put their dainty “plate of meat” into it — mad Madge was a prime candidate. Although you would have thought Guy could have had a word in her “shell” like!
Semtex, as any Brit over the age of 11 probably knows was the preferred “butchering device” of the infamous IRA. Semtex plastic explosive is manufactured in the Czech Republic and is safe to handle but difficult to trace, since it has no smell — unlike the controversial marketing stench wafting from Semtex Girls!
In fact, a quantity of 0.5 kg/1.1 lb of Semtex is thought to have been the cause of an explosion that destroyed a Pan-American Boeing 747 in flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, December 1988, killing 270 people.
Of course, everyone now wants to know the nature of Mad Madge’s new business. Apparently, she won’t reveal the exact purpose of her new venture but apparently issued the following incomprehensible marketing dribble to Contactmusic:
“The Semtex Girl is a girl who is dynamic, a girl who explodes, who doesn’t know the meaning of nine to five, a girl who is unstoppable and who doesn’t take no for an answer. And has excellent taste”.
Apparently Mad Madge also reassured her male fans (does she have any?) that they’re not exempt and can be Semtex Girls too! Presumably after surgery!
It’s been suggested that Madonna’s new Semtex Girls company could be a fashion brand. A number of commentators have suggested we could soon be seeing Semtex Girls Clothing, T-Shirts, Jackets and Jeans. Sounds a bit cheap and tacky.
So has Mad Madge finally lost her marbles and overstepped the accepted bounds of marketing BS. Most people could probably overlook her exploitation of Qabala to glean attention but to glamorise a substance which has been used to murder innocent civilians and could feasibly be used in the future by pseudo-Muslim terrorists to inflict mass murder is nothing less than spiritually retarded!
Oh, my God. Every once in a while stupid writer Camille Paglia comes up with a nonsense (and personal) comment on Madonna. Please, let’s get professional, folks!
Following what Paglia’s said, “Let’s hope she [Madonna] avoids the facile, disrespectful use of horses as props and fashion statements”, I’d say: let’s stop using cars on videos, films and ads – they might be dangerous as well.
Come on. Do you truly think Madonna leads that kind of glamorous life in her state home in England? Then why do we see Madonna in those terrible Adidas/Puma/Von Dutch with no make up on going to her Cabala meetings? HELLOO! Vogue is a magazine that illustrates not only fashion trends, but life style as well. Madonna’s issue (and that photo shoot) was made to illustrate a way of life – not the American, by the way.
Madonna has a whole world around her and we, mere observers, never know whether the regular person or the artist is in charge. When we all thought she was a real British lady that would never do anything kinky again, she shows herself up in leotard in the European Music Awards and fucking a radio in her latest hit, Hung Up.
Well, I still prefer to listen to what Madge has to say, not to what Camille Paglia - who always seems to be a little envious.
Paglia’s clever. Madonna’s a skank.