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What is more, Madonna paraphernalia -- posters, at least ten different kinds of shirts, bracelets and cross-shaped earrings like the ones Madonna wears in salute to herself for having survived a strict Catholic upbringing -- are selling at concerts at a rate not seen even in the mega-meltdown tours of Michael Jackson and Prince. This is very important, and not just because it brings in money by the front-end loaderful. Fathers new to the bubblegum rock ramble (though they may have hung out at the Stones' concerts only a few years ago) may think that all they have to spring for is a pair of $15 tickets, a couple of $1.50 hot dogs and the parking fee. Not so. The young fans are telling their dads that they have to have some jewelry costing between $5 and $30, which is on display so that the dads can say no, feeling wise and fatherly, lawgivers. Then the dads compromise on the shirts, which turn out to cost $13 to $22, and Jennifer has something to wear in school the next day to prove that she's seen Madonna.
Why the hard little hearts of all of the Jennifers, and quite a few of the Kevins, ache for Madonna is another question. Big-time show biz is three- fourths mass hysteria, especially when teenagers and rock music are involved, and anyone who thinks he can explain it fully is dreaming. But incredibly lucky timing is clearly part of the Madonna craze. As it happens, few other big rock stars are diluting media attention. Also the neoconservative mood of the kid culture seems to be just right for an entertainer whose personality is an outrageous blend of Little Orphan Annie, Margaret Thatcher and Mae West.
Madonna's best bit of luck may be her uproariously appropriate part in Desperately Seeking Susan. Here too, the timing was superb. As Director Susan Seidelman points out, when the movie was cast in the summer of 1984, Madonna was not quite a star. She was just another pretty pop singer, just beginning to be widely known. Madonna's style and attitude got her the part, though not without a lot of hesitation among male executives of Orion Pictures who had never heard of her. A year later she would have been too famous and too expensive for a nonsinging role in a low-budget comedy. Any film cast then would have been the usual rock-star exploitation flick, with songs, writhing dancers, guitarists with their shirts off and too much tricky camera work.
As things are, Susan gives Madonna an audience she can't reach with MTV or disco. When she sings she lacks the all-there quality of a great pop singer like Linda Ronstadt or Tina Turner. She disguises this with vocal intensity and good dance moves. The kids are so caught up in their own emotional storms that they don't notice it, but in the love songs Madonna is not in love, and in the heat songs, like Burning Up, she is not in heat. But in the funny songs, like the pop reggae Material Girl, she is very funny. All-there people are not funny, most of the time, but detached, cool people like Madonna often are. And if you watch Madonna's video routines more than once, you begin to realize that almost all of her songs, as she belly-rolls her way through them, are sharply comic send-ups, mostly of rock-'n'-roll sexual gyrations as delivered by male rockers from Mick Jagger to Prince.