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book
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A vicious love
As Madonna hit 50, she is rewritten by her brother Christopher
Ciccone in his book, Life with my sister Madonna. It's the Madonna
you wish you didn't know and a memoir that ultimately does injustice
to the most iconic female singer the world has ever seen…
By Maheen
Sabeeh
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ife with my
sister Madonna by Christopher Ciccone, Madonna's younger brother,
should have been titled, With much venom, chrissy.
The loving brother, as CC portrays himself has turned this memoir,
which could've been a gem, into a book that sees sibling-rivalry
hit a new high or low easily.
Madonna, the queen of pop music, the woman whose reinvention stories
in the music business is legendary, who escalated to fame with her
debut album in the eighties and continued to rise, gets the nastiest
slap of her life with this book.
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What
comes across is a woman who is nasty, truly selfish, incapable of
caring and ultimately despicable.
There are various instances which prove this point. Madonna using
her mother's grave as a "movie location" for the documentary
Truth or Dare, outing her brother as gay in an interview without getting
his consent, asking him to come to Scotland for her wedding to Guy
Ritchie and making him pay for the ticket, are just some examples.
But then Madonna's tendency to be extremely ruthless is not exactly
hidden nor are the notions that she is an attention-seeker or even
slightly obsessive. It is relatively easier to be a critically acclaimed
songwriter - there are many of them in the world - but to become the
world's highest selling female singer of all times, to score a record
deal without a godfather, constantly reinvent her self to up her game
and survive in a business that has changed drastically in the last
two decades, these just aren't achievements that just any woman can
boast. Does any other name come to mind? No and that is because Madonna
has spent her entire life, building brand Madonna.
Some of the things she has pulled make her sound like a tyrant. And
to some extent, she maybe just that. But of the eight siblings, Chris
was the one who chose to stick with her. He didn't have to. There
were no compulsions. And his entire career is built because of Madonna.
The interior designing, show designing, music videos… it pulled
through because of her.
The lifestyle he lived and the people he hung out with - Kate Moss,
Warren Beatty, Naomi Campbell, Demi Moore, Courtney Love, Sting and
Trudie Styler, Jack Nicholson and Sean Penn - and the whole Hollywood
shebang that came with it, this too came because Christopher was Madonna's
brother.
Christopher states in the first few pages, "Before she takes
her place onstage, out of habit I hold out my palm and she spits her
Ricola cough drop straight into it"
This was Madonna on her The Girlie Show tour in 1993. Yet what Chris
forgets is the fact that this isn't what brothers do. He lets her
spit for years and then decides she is an awful human being who has
been abusing his love. No one in the right frame of mind, especially
a sibling, would spit in each other's hands, not even out of love.
That isn't how even professionals work and the ones who do put up
with such attitude make money.
There are some surreal moments, though. One, Madonna in '87 at The
Tube, television show, in UK, where Madonna, despite the success of
her tunes such as 'Everybody' and 'Holiday' gets hit from British
audiences, by rolls, crumpled napkins.
In another scenario, Madonna is stranded on a Moroccan desert to shoot
a video and its Ramadan, her bus breaks downs, there are no cell phones
and she spends hours in a rickshaw, trying to find a way out to the
city.
In another story, Sean Penn, Madonna's ex-husband and Christopher
drink each other's blood and become blood brothers. |
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The
missing factors
The revelations about Madonna's turn to Kabbalah don't give much insight.
The fact that Madonna's own mother, who died when Madonna was five
years old and was slightly fanatical about religion, that theme isn't
explored. Was there a connection between Madonna's turn to Kabbalah
and her mother's constant references to god?
Then there is the childhood factor. If there is one part of Madonna's
life that is hardly known, it is the childhood. The years she spent
growing up and they are the smallest part of this book, touched upon
and portraying one fact alone: Madonna using her resemblance to her
dead mother to be the favourite of the father.
The how factor behind the Madonna-Guy Ritchie marriage and its success
is also not explored. Chris states that the marriage survives because
of Kabbalah but if Madonna once hated England, what is she doing living
there? She isn't a woman who puts up with crap and she, according
to Chris, has always wanted a masculine man, which was the reason
why Sean Penn came into her life. Guy, being the complete opposite
has managed to make it work.
The third factor is Madonna as a mother. But it comes out shredding
her. For instance, Madonna's adoption of David Banda from Malawi,
according to Chris is this: "Madonna is competing with Angelina
Jolie. So she isn't going to stop with one child, she is going to
help an entire country, and she wants the world to know about it."
This fact kills the real story that Madonna has been supporting AIDS,
a disease that plagues Malawi, from the start of her career. She has
been attached to AMFar, the organization which has the mighty weight
of American designer Kenneth Cole and actress Sharon Stone since eighties.
Then there are the professional moves. After four super successful
albums, Madonna's downfall began in the mid-nineties. It started with
Erotica in 1993, which rem | |
