Madonnarama

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This collection of commentary on Madonna's oeuvre Sex is engaging and diverse, no small task considering the overwhelming media attention it has already earned . All of the contributors have reservations about the book but feel the volume is worthy of consideration. In a playful introduction Frank and Smith ( Clint Eastwood: A Cultural Production ) toy with the effects of Time-Warner's ``lengthy prepublication foreplay'' on the media and the public. bell hooks mourns Madonna's turnaround from supporter of feminist issues to ``sex kitten.'' Carol A. Queen announces that the book moved her to masturbate as a lead-in to commenting on the inability of critics to respond to erotic material without denigrating it. Kirsten Marthe Lentz disputes Madonna's assertion, ``Whether I'm gay or not is irrelevant,'' while Pat Califia claims that even the performer's distorted lesbian imagery is better than none at all. Two more creative pieces are the standouts. Cathay Che's letters to ``Dita'' mimic Madonna's style in Sex and point out its prejudices, and in an ironic poem Thomas Allen Harris chronicles the reactions of his mother, his therapist and others to the book and punctuates their remarks with the ``flip flip'' of turning pages. (July)

Marie Kuda

Just as the heat over Madonna's "Sex" finally cools down, this book fires things up again. Editors Frank and Smith suggest that the media and, to some extent, the intellectual community as a whole did a disservice by not dealing with some of the larger issues of "sex, power and capital" raised by the book and its marketing by Time-Warner. The 12 contributors ("Most . . . in one way or another on the left . . . certainly pro-lesbigay and sex-positive") accordingly tramp upon that no-man's-land where media self-censorship is so influenced and controlled as to belie the illusion that the public can be truly informed. Their discussions lead them more broadly afield in popular culture, so that they explore, in addition to Madonna, such icons of sex and power as Ice T, Malcolm X, and Warren Beatty. Although largely the work of academics, the book is recommended where interest in the subject and the issues runs high.