Interview with Madonna's biographer: Reflections on a rebel's enduring legacy

This weekend, Madonna is celebrating her 66th birthday, and in the meantime, she is working tirelessly on the script for a movie about her life. Before the production hits theatres, her fans can delve into her new biography "Madonna. A Rebel Life." The author of the book is Mary Gabriel, an acclaimed writer nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for her book about Karl Marx, "Love and Capital".

In an interview, the author reveals her hopes related to the film about the Queen of Pop. She discusses the numerous controversies surrounding the star and the backstage of her conflict with the Pope.

Where did the idea come from to write about a great pop star this time? It's quite a contrast to your previous books.

Mary Gabriel: Indeed, until now, I have written about Karl Marx and the first woman who ran for president (Victoria Woodhull – ed.), but in my opinion - and I know I risk criticism here - writing about Marx and Madonna is not as far apart as it seems because both played an extremely important role in their time and were very controversial. Just mentioning their names evokes extreme reactions. It may seem like a completely different topic for me, but in reality, it wasn’t.

I see Madonna as a very important historical and cultural figure, and that’s the Madonna I wanted to write about. Most publications present her as a pop star and focus on her colourful private life, but there was a much more interesting and important story to tell. Madonna is one of the few artists who had and still has a global impact on culture and society.

So far, unauthorized biographies of Madonna have attracted audiences with the promise of spicy stories, but you consciously avoided that. And that’s what sells books!

That's true; I didn’t want to catch readers with the promise of scandalous anecdotes because I care about people who want to know Madonna. For anyone else, this might be boring, but not with her. Her longest and most enduring relationship is with controversy, so whatever you write about her will be interesting. There’s a quote in the book from a Hollywood producer who, in response to the question of why Madonna is so fascinating, says: "Everything she does, whether it’s a movie, a song, or a music video, you can’t take your eyes off it, and it’s always good. She has this amazing ability not only to catch your attention but to keep it." Very few people can do that. She’s so fascinating that you don’t need to drag out the dirt from her life. Just watching her is enough; no commentary is needed.

You mentioned that before writing "Madonna. A Rebel Life," you didn’t know much about her and weren’t her fan. Has that changed?

Absolutely! During the writing and research process, I became a huge fan. I was astounded by her work and how great and ahead of her time she was, full of risk and experiments. And this, despite being strongly associated with the pop category, makes many people view her as not very important or minimize her artistic contribution to everything she does. It made a huge impression on me – that she was the core of her work, her inspiration and creator simultaneously, incredibly courageous throughout all these years. Madonna created Madonna. She didn’t have a team of people and marketers behind her who would invent her persona. She was a young girl from Detroit, and she still is on stage today – tough, strong, beautiful, powerful, and always looking for new ways to express herself.

One of the impulses that made you undertake the story of Madonna’s life was her feminist speech at the "Billboard Woman of the Year" gala in 2016, where she talked about the hardships of being a woman in the entertainment industry. But wasn’t Madonna always the favourite of feminists, right?

Madonna was the first female pop star to openly and strongly present her sexuality, and that was her decision. There was no man behind her saying, "unbutton your blouse and show your belly." She did it to tell young girls: "You can be yourself, look, and express your sexuality however you want, and still be strong and free, because only you can decide for yourself, no one should have that power over you!".

Honestly, that message from the beginning of her career was so liberating that I’m really surprised that feminists didn’t catch onto it. Probably because they looked at her in terms of a virgin and a [frivolous woman], and in their eyes, she was clearly [the second one]. The controversy and duality of her figure made it hard to figure her out and fit her into a box. She couldn’t be a feminist because she was this overly sexualized creature. According to Madonna herself, of course, you don’t have to be just one or the other. Her message was simple: you don’t have to be either a woman or a man. Neither straight nor gay. Neither white nor black. You can be everything and go through life that way. It’s a great approach!

You said that Madonna’s longest and most enduring relationship is with controversy. In your book, you devote a lot of space to it, but you enrich it with historical and social context. Where did this idea come from?

We’ve been reading about Madonna for over 40 years, and we think we know everything about her, but it’s worth asking: what do we REALLY know? Something that goes beyond the headlines and gossip columns, and how much of it is not just journalists’ fantasies? So I pulled Madonna out of the tabloid frames and wanted to show the path she walked as an artist.

All artists create in response to what’s happening around them. If you don’t know that background, you won’t understand why Madonna decided to create such another music video for "Like A Prayer" in 1989, with all that religious imagery and the black saint. In America at that time, racial tensions were incredibly high, so of course, Madonna joined this discussion with a song and video where she danced in front of burning crosses, a symbol of the racist Ku Klux Klan association. That’s an example showing that if you don’t know and understand the history of those specific periods, you won’t know and fully understand Madonna herself.

This thread of confrontation with the Catholic Church, and even with John Paul II himself, may be particularly interesting. The Polish Pope called her 1990 Blond Ambition concert "the most satanic show in the history of mankind."

The Church was terrified of her activities because she was one of them, a Catholic from home, challenging them. As a young girl, she quickly heard that on the list of sinners, Eve is at the top, and automatically, all women are behind her, and the Church is much more restrictive towards women and what they are socially allowed to do. I think what really motivated Madonna to go to the knives with the Church was its heartless response to the AIDS crisis.

Joseph Ratzinger, supported by John Paul II, wrote an open letter in 1986 stating that AIDS victims should be left alone and that gays dying of this terrible disease are to blame and will not enter heaven. To say something like that to people who are dying... Instead of giving them hope that in this last moment of their lives, the Church and God will open their arms to them, the Church cruelly slammed the door shut and said, "No, you are a sinner and you will burn in hell." It was horrible!

In my opinion, that was what tipped the scales and pushed Madonna to confront this institution. When she was supposed to give concerts in Rome in 1990 during the "Blond Ambition" tour, and the Vatican and the Pope openly called for their boycott, she received death threats. In the Italian press, especially the Catholic one, there were many critical and dangerous articles about her at that time, which could have really led to a tragedy, and Madonna was forced to cancel one show, which was unthinkable at the time. Such a strong reaction from the Church could only have been provoked by the fact that the gloves were thrown by a Catholic who knew what she was talking about.

Do you think this will be one of the threads in the film about her life that she is currently working on? Your book could serve her as a cheat sheet...

I’m dying of curiosity to see that movie and what idea she has for it. Biographical star films already have a pretty worn-out formula: noble beginnings, struggles with adversity, crises, and falls from which they rise and come out victorious from oppression. I can’t wait to see how she approaches it because whatever branch of art she takes up, she does it her way and differently than everyone else. Something tells me that, in this case, it will be similar, and among other biographies, it will stand out not only by the story but also by the way it is told and shot.

The media repeatedly crowns young and popular singers as the "new Madonna". Do you think it’s an insult or a compliment to her, because "there is only one queen"?

I think she might take it as a compliment. If you design cars and someone tells you that you created a new Ferrari, you would think, "Wow, I really achieved something!". I don’t think Madonna has ever felt threatened, it was rather a narrative of the media counting on controversy. When a journalist writes about someone as the "new Madonna," they say, "You’ve achieved everything; there is nothing higher anymore" except... Madonna herself.