Celebrity Madonna - elderly woman mired in existential crisis.

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When Gaga was inescapable after Born This Way she would really irk me. I felt like she was shamelessly pandering to LGBT people and I couldn't believe anyone (my own best friend included) was buying it. I'm LGBT myself, and while I think having famous allies is great, and they can do a lot of good for the community, it felt like a cynical ploy to capture an audience. I also found her really cringey on American Horror Story and felt like she was only there because Ryan Murphy is one of the gay guys who buys into her fully. Incidentally, after Art Pop my best friend was just like 'what the actual fuck did I just listen to?' and stopped being into her. She definitely was "inspired" by David Bowie, she's open about idolising Bowie and Freddie Mercury and owes a lot to them.

The thing is, I've seen some videos of her doing that quiet piano ballad stuff when she was at Julliard and she is actually pretty damn talented. Even though aside from Dolly Parton I'm not at all into country as a genre I thought her Joanne album had some nice songs. Some people are really made for stripped-back acoustic and soulful piano ballads where you can hear both their instrumental talent and their vocal chops and she seems to me to be at her best doing those things. She's not one of the best, but she's a good sight better than most of her contemporaries like Beyonce or Katy Perry. Neither of them can actually write music or play an instrument. She was pretty decent when she toured with Queen, enough so that I regretted not going due to her fronting the band.

Her acting has really improved. My soul cringes at the thought of her doing a heavy Queens accent and saying Harley Quinn stuff, because if Margot Robbie couldn't pull it off she has no chance, but she's improved a lot in AHS and she wasn't bad in A Star Was Born, all things considered. She is definitely getting roles that she isn't experienced enough to be cast in, but that says more about Hollywood than her. I think she'll improve and be one of the better singers-turned-actresses out there. Certainly she's better than Madonna, although Madonna was okay when she basically played herself.

Madonna's not wrong that she's reductive. She absolutely is. Both of them hide behind outrageous behaviour (I'm using the term liberally here) and outrageous costumes and elaborate shows. The difference is that Gaga actually has talent hiding underneath all those layers of spackle, and Madonna really doesn't. Her talent was honestly mostly marketing herself well early on.


tl;dr Gaga ripped off Madonna/Bowie and Madonna's right about it, but Gaga has some real musical talent to fall back on and Madonna does not.

I agree Gaga is definitely talented, even her haters would agree. She's just incredibly inauthentic and a shameless rip-off. Disagree about her being better than Beyonce though, Beyonce is a better vocalist, dancer, and IMO, performer. I'd say they're about equal, all things considered. Gaga is obviously the better writer, especially given Beyonce's credit thieving reputation. I've heard internet rumours that Beyonce is dumb and her artistic ideas are stupid, but everyone has to pretend they're viable because of who she is, then tactfully work towards doing something else.

Gaga's piano ballads are who she truly is as an artist, but she thinks that's too boring and conventional. Which it probably is to be fair, she may be good but there are lots of competent piano-playing singer-songwriters around. I personally don't like her songs like this, I know she can really sing, but I actually hate her voice because it's so nasal.

Even as a hater I really like the majority of the songs on her first 3 albums, though I couldn't stand her honking dirges like Speechless and You and I. Otherwise, Born This Way was the second shittest song on that album after You and I, and should never have been included. She definitely was cynically marketing herself to the alphabet soupers, and even decided that she would write a gay anthem. Not realising that gays pick their own anthems, you don't get to tell them which songs will be their anthems just to make money off them.

She acted like she was a the world's gay saviour and this "mother monster" shit was a bit groomy. I don't think she's actually done much good except getting herself successfully worshipped. She also entirely got away with pretending to be bisexual, then quietly dropping it like the attention-seeker she is.

I'm no good at telling who is a good actor or not, but one thing I always notice about Gaga is that she tries to portray intense emotion by flaring her nostrils. That may be due to all the filler and botox lol, it's the only moveable part left.

Madonna has minor ability in singing and dancing. She's a good performer. I wouldn't say she's devoid of talent but she certainly made the most of her meagre gifts, a bit like Rihanna has this century.
 
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Lady Gaga was Millennial Madonna, if it hadn't been her it would have been someone else. Madonna was too old by the 2000s to really court younger audiences, yeah she still put stuff out and it did well, but that was mostly from Gen X women and gays. Hell, even when she did the infamous kiss with Britney Spears I remember there were a lot of kids in my school who only had a vague idea of who she was. Lady Gaga's gay support was just a reflection of Millennials at the time. Every 20-year-old woman in 2010 was bi and voted for Obama and supported gay marriage, no shit the quirky meat-dress wearing singer was too. I expect in the next few years Gen Alpha's Madonna/Lady Gaga will pop up.
 
I agree Gaga is definitely talented, even her haters would agree. She's just incredibly inauthentic and a shameless rip-off. Disagree about her being better than Beyonce though, Beyonce is a better vocalist, dancer, and IMO, performer. I'd say they're about equal, all things considered. Gaga is obviously the better writer, especially given Beyonce's credit thieving reputation. I've heard internet rumours that Beyonce is dumb and her artistic ideas are stupid, but everyone has to pretend they're viable because of who she is, then tactfully work towards doing something else.

Gaga's piano ballads are who she truly is as an artist, but she thinks that's too boring and conventional. Which it probably is to be fair, she may be good but there are lots of competent piano-playing singer-songwriters around. I personally don't like her songs like this, I know she can really sing, but I actually hate her voice because it's so nasal.

Even as a hater I really like the majority of the songs on her first 3 albums, though I couldn't stand her honking dirges like Speechless and You and I. Otherwise, Born This Way was the second shittest song on that album after You and I, and should never have been included. She definitely was cynically marketing herself to the alphabet soupers, and even decided that she would write a gay anthem. Not realising that gays pick their own anthems, you don't get to tell them which songs will be their anthems just to make money off them.

She acted like she was a the world's gay saviour and this "mother monster" shit was a bit groomy. I don't think she's actually done much good except getting herself successfully worshipped. She also entirely got away with pretending to be bisexual, then quietly dropping it like the attention-seeker she is.

I'm no good at telling who is a good actor or not, but one thing I always notice about Gaga is that she tries to portray intense emotion by flaring her nostrils. That may be due to all the filler and botox lol, it's the only moveable part left.

Madonna has minor ability in singing and dancing. She's a good performer. I wouldn't say she's devoid of talent but she certainly made the most of her meagre gifts, a bit like Rihanna has this century.

My issue with Beyonce is really mostly based in her lack of musicianship (ie she can't compose music, write songs or play any musical instruments). Totally agree she's a better performer and dancer . Very few people put on a show as well as her. I also agree that there's a lot of people who out-compete Gaga, but back during her peak it was a weird time in top 40 pop where there were a lot of acts who had no skill in composing or writing and didn't play instruments. She never had the best voice, but she had musicianship where many others didn't. Then again, you had people like Taylor Swift and Adele who competed with her in those exact things even then. She's just never been the best in any given category.

I feel more qualified to judge her acting than her musicianship, personally, since I spent time working in the industry. I've noticed her doing the flaring nostril thing too, it's kind of distracting. As a screen actor you need to be able to emote with the individual muscles of your face, so nostril-flaring could be appropriate when you're angry. Having said that, you need to do other things too, not just that. A subtle furrowing of the brow, or holding tension in your jaw, intense eye contact, stuff like that. You can't just sound angry and flare your nostrils. Maybe you're right and it's botox/filler, but if it is she needs to really dial it back if she wants to be a Serious Actress™, because you need to have mastery over your facial muscles. If you're a longtime screen actor who goes on to get mild botox and filler you can work around it, but she's not at that point.

Her improvement in acting is (imo) mostly better delivery and that her body language is more complex than it was, but she's currently getting roles based on who she is as a person rather than who she is as an actor. She's done musical theatre but theatre demands a whole different set of skills to screen acting. Theatre is about projecting to the back rows and screen is about projecting to the person (camera) in front of you. You don't use those same subtle expressions and movements in theatre, because only the front row might see it. It's a pretty difficult skill (again, imo) to project to a large audience without overacting. Loudly delivering a soliloquy while sounding like you're quietly thinking to yourself, and emoting in a way that seems genuine whilst projecting that emotion all the way back to the worst seats is very complex and takes a great deal of skill.

To bring things back around to Madonna, she doesn't offer much as an actress or a musician except the image of Madonna, if that makes sense. If you divorce Madonna as a musician from her identity, you don't get a performer who can firmly stand shoulder-to-shoulder with her peers in the industry. The Madonna you see in music videos is the same Madonna you see on stage, is the same Madonna you see in interviews and is the same Madonna you see in all her movie roles. When you watch Evita, you don't see Eva Perón. You see Madonna playing Madonna as Eva Perón. She really only knows how to be Madonna on camera, and her best movie roles (or at least most enjoyable to watch) are when she's in an ensemble cast playing a version of herself.

I've seen people defend the Madonna-as-Madonna thing by saying it's impossible to strip Madonna of her star and identity so it's impossible for her to blend in. My rebuttal is that A-list actors are also huge celebrities, but when you see them in a movie you're typically able to suspend your disbelief and forget about the identity of the actor and buy into the character without the actor's real identity looming in the forefront of your mind the entire time.

I think she's had some cute movie roles. When she's propped up by other actors in fluffy popcorn flicks like A League of Their Own or Desperately Seeking Susan is (imo) when she's at her best. Evita is just too demanding. Eva is a role that demands a certain pathos, but it's hard to connect to Madonna's Eva since she doesn't successfully project that pathos. You don't sympathise as much as they want you to because Madonna doesn't forge that kind of relationship with the viewer. There are other problems with the movie, like its thirsty and distracting Oscar bait scenes, but it was supposed to be a star vehicle carried on Madonna's shoulders in order to make her a legitimate actor in her own right. It failed on all levels in that regard.
 
Madonna was too old by the 2000s to really court younger audiences, yeah she still put stuff out and it did well, but that was mostly from Gen X women and gays.
I don’t know about that, Madonna had some pretty big albums in the 2000s, and iirc lots of millennials were into her music. ‘Music’ was huge, she did the theme to Die Another Day, and ‘Hung Up’ was a massive hit, at least where I was at that time. Hard Candy was where she started losing traction imao, ‘4 Minutes’ was a successful enough song, but I think millennials were moving on to the likes of Gaga and Perry.
 
Jamie Lee Curtis is also the same age as Madonna and has stayed away from whatever Madonna is doing. I don’t doubt the the beautiful elders of Hollywood don’t get minor procedures and lots of skin care, but as was said, the point is to look good for your age, not like you are 25. It’s sad how many don’t get that.

I think people like Madonna know they are famous for looks and style rather than talent, so feel they must keep it up. While truly talented people-who are really about the music, or really into acting , they just adjust for their age.

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That and Madonna is on Jeffry Epstein's Flightlog to Little St. James. I want to believe that Jamie did not sell her soul to Satan as Madonna has. Again I used to love her music but I refuse to pay attention to child abusers.
 
Lola looks both coked-out and constipated.

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I couldn’t resist. Elle Woods can out-HOT Lola any day too😂


Can we talk about this piece of shit outfit Her Madgesty is wearing below??? I’m sure it’s expensive and designer and all that, but it’s also ugly, uninspired and frankly very pedestrian 💅…..
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ICK

It’s like someone tried to blend a dowdy dominatrix and varsity jacket couture and got…..what looks like a succubus who became entangled in a Marshall’s clearance rack…..

 
Lady Gaga was Millennial Madonna, if it hadn't been her it would have been someone else.
I thought her being Millennial Madonna was her shtick. She got a pretty lucky second wind a few years ago and now seems to be her own thing versus a copy of Madonna.
I don’t know about that, Madonna had some pretty big albums in the 2000s, and iirc lots of millennials were into her music. ‘Music’ was huge, she did the theme to Die Another Day, and ‘Hung Up’ was a massive hit, at least where I was at that time. Hard Candy was where she started losing traction imao, ‘4 Minutes’ was a successful enough song, but I think millennials were moving on to the likes of Gaga and Perry.
I agree. She stumbled hard on American Life, though, but her stunt with kissing Britney Spears effectively memoryholed the album. That was the last time she got any kind of positive press for doing something “controversial.” I agree that Hard Candy was truly the beginning of the end, because her irreversible decline happened simultaneously with the revival of Britney’s career and then Gaga’s ascendancy was a 1-2 punch Madonna never recovered from.

Ironically enough, her biggest hits in the 2000s did not require being a twentysomething sex goddess. She had the perfect runway to start doing more “mature” pop starting with Ray of Light, which sold over 15 million copies. So she never needed to get all the plastic surgery, she was well positioned to age “gracefully” along with her music.
Nah, Lana's dad is a millionaire and paid her way in. No need for any cock servicing. Same with Sam Smith, and Lady Gaga: they had rich parents who helped them get their feet in the door.
There’s no shortage of millionaires pushing Daddy’s Little Girl into a music career with a major record label. I recall Lana Del Rey talking about banging Weinstein as well as being a sugar baby. It’s competitive at this stage.
 
That and Madonna is on Jeffry Epstein's Flightlog to Little St. James. I want to believe that Jamie did not sell her soul to Satan as Madonna has. Again I used to love her music but I refuse to pay attention to child abusers.

I am suspicious that her adopted son David Banda is so campy. He was wearing slutty clothes and strutting in heels when he was only 15. It makes me wonder whether he was groomed, or whether she specifically adopted an effeminate little kid to be her fabulous gay pet.
 
I am suspicious that her adopted son David Banda is so campy. He was wearing slutty clothes and strutting in heels when he was only 15. It makes me wonder whether he was groomed, or whether she specifically adopted an effeminate little kid to be her fabulous gay pet.
David was 1 when she bought him so he's definitely be groomed to behave this way. Same as that poor black boy Charlize Theron is trooning out.
 
David was 1 when she bought him so he's definitely be groomed to behave this way. Same as that poor black boy Charlize Theron is trooning out.

OK definitely grooming then.

Charlize's parenting is sheer batshittery. She transed her child as soon as he started taking interest in the Elsa character from Frozen. He was wearing Elsa wigs and stuff. Imagine if every primary school aged child got a whole identity change every time they wanted to be a fictional character.

I can't decide whether Charlize wants the ultimate oppressed status symbol child, is a pure groomer who is sacrificing him for some Hollywood cult, or is so open minded her brains have fallen out and she thinks this is actually helpful.
 
Haven't fully read through the thread yet so my bad if someone else had made this point, but I think the one of the reasons people give Madonna so much shit for her surgery (besides the fact that it looks awful) is that she's always been so fucking unpleasant. At the risk of sounding like a baby, she's always come off mean and pretentious and plenty of people have stories about her being a raging bitch to back that impression up so of course people want bad things to happen to her and relish in it when they do. (Plus the comments she made years ago about fat people being unpleasant to look at resurfacing gave people even more reason to shit on her for her perceived hypocrisy, which I mean...she was right, but look at you now sis.)

In comparison, look at Pamela Anderson. She and Madonna are similar in that they built a lot of their careers on sex appeal and then got some iffy surgery to try and keep their looks up, but Pam comes off as a nice person so people give her more leeway.

Ok, rant over, but is Lourdes just absolutely sexless to anyone else? Idk what it is. She's not an ugly girl, but seeing her half naked just seems wrong. She's always so stiff and 99% of the time it seems like she's just going through the motions in her modelling and shit. Idk this probably sounds dumb but ffs she didn't inherit even a bit of her mom's sex appeal.
 
I've never thought Pam Anderson was a good person, I've heard she's rather bitchy and catty to anyone she sees as possible competition.
And she has a bad habit of going after men that are married/in relationships. She also marries said men for money/free labor.

And Lourdes thinking she's a model? Just no. Her walk is terrible. You want to walk the runway? Take some walking lessons, I have no idea why she didn't do that first.
 
I don't understand why she decided eyebrows are bad.
It's part of the #Sex30 thing I think. She looked terrible without eyebrows in 1992, thirty years on... well...

She also briefly flirted with blown-up lips around 1990 (see the Omnibus documentary 'Behind The American Dream') and they also looked crap then, and thirty years on... see above.

Agree Mylène Farmer is a goddess who is ageing well - she's had a fair amount of work for sure but it's subtle and well done. Mylène also doesn't do a shit ton of exercise every day either - she famously only stops smoking, quits the Tagada Haribo and does exercise before she tours. I do think Mylène is naturally skinny whereas Madge would probably be prone to blobbiness if she did nothing, but the denying herself has probably cost Madonna body and looks wise.
 
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It's part of the #Sex30 thing I think. She looked terrible without eyebrows in 1992, thirty years on... well...

She also briefly flirted with blown-up lips around 1990 (see the Omnibus documentary 'Behind The American Dream') and they also looked crap then, and thirty years on... see above.

Agree Mylène Farmer is a goddess who is ageing well - she's had a fair amount of work for sure but it's subtle and well done. Mylène also doesn't do a shit ton of exercise every day either - she famously only stops smoking, quits the Tagada Haribo and does exercise before she tours. I do think Mylène is naturally skinny whereas Madge would probably be prone to blobbiness if she did nothing, but the denying herself has probably cost Madonna body and looks wise.

Madonna has probably exercised herself into early arthritis. (Early then if she'd been a bit more moderate).
 
I've never thought Pam Anderson was a good person, I've heard she's rather bitchy and catty to anyone she sees as possible competition.
And she has a bad habit of going after men that are married/in relationships. She also marries said men for money/free labor.

And Lourdes thinking she's a model? Just no. Her walk is terrible. You want to walk the runway? Take some walking lessons, I have no idea why she didn't do that first.
I think perception has a lot to do with it. Pam may not actually be nice, but the stuff she did with Assange made a lot of people look past her bimbo persona and the documentary/memoir she put out recently was pretty humanizing so people feel bad for her and don't want to shit on her any further. Madonna hasn't really had those moments of vulnerability/introspection aside from maybe the Ray of Light era, and I personally think it's because she's super image-obsessed and doesn't want to look bad in any way.

And yea, Lourdes shambles along like some kind of re-awoken primordial beast. She photographs well, but she's an absolute travesty in motion. Maybe stick to being an instagram influencer?
 
In comparison, look at Pamela Anderson. She and Madonna are similar in that they built a lot of their careers on sex appeal and then got some iffy surgery to try and keep their looks up, but Pam comes off as a nice person so people give her more leeway.

I've never thought Pam Anderson was a good person, I've heard she's rather bitchy and catty to anyone she sees as possible competition.
And she has a bad habit of going after men that are married/in relationships. She also marries said men for money/free labor.

Pam is no saint- she’s a late 90’s sex icon. She spread it for playboy and ruthlessly surgically augmented her body for male sexual pleasure, and published it, and was chagrined when what she sowed didn’t reap a mountain of money. But she always felt way different from Madonna.
She felt like Marilyn, a real bleeding sex icon who existed in the world and lived through some tough shit and blew everyone’s expectations out of the water.
To me, Madonna never had any shine. Maybe I’m too young, but the only genuine experience I ever had with Madge was Evita. Everything else- like a virgin, her movies, all her other singles- felt manufactured and cheap and worst of all, untalented.

Pam might be a dime-a-dozen trailer park mom, but at least those women have children who love them. At least Pam has two boys who she took the time to raise. Madonna stole little boys and girls from around the world, to twist them for her sexual pleasure. Like a brother’s Grimm witch.

but is Lourdes just absolutely sexless to anyone else? Idk what it is. She's not an ugly girl, but seeing her half naked just seems wrong. She's always so stiff and 99% of the time it seems like she's just going through the motions in her modelling and shit

She has that sexless sex doll thing going because her mother ruthlessly exposed her to sexual degeneracy at a young age, teaching her by example that being a hole is the highest calling a woman can pursue. She’s just 25 years ahead of her mum by skipping the normal childhood
 
She has that sexless sex doll thing going because her mother ruthlessly exposed her to sexual degeneracy at a young age, teaching her by example that being a hole is the highest calling a woman can pursue. She’s just 25 years ahead of her mum by skipping the normal childhood
Yea now that I think about it I feel kind of bad for her. Problem is I have no idea what other talents she has, so this half-assed modelling thing may be all she can pursue.

I will say Pam's kids seem remarkably normal for celebrity children and seem to have a good relationship with her, so small blessings I guess. On the other hand, I wonder if Lourdes being young and getting more attention for her own antics made Madonna spiral the way she has in the last few years. It's been a topic of conversation for years. On one hand, I want to give her the benefit of the doubt and say it's unrelated, but on the other hand, I've seen moms who feel the need to compete with their daughters, and Madge seems like she'd be the type.

OT, but didn't her son with Guy Ritchie straight up say he didn't want to live with her? That has to sting.
 
To me, Madonna never had any shine. Maybe I’m too young, but the only genuine experience I ever had with Madge was Evita. Everything else- like a virgin, her movies, all her other singles- felt manufactured and cheap and worst of all, untalented.

Madonna peaked I think around Vogue, then shortly after, Rain. I literally can't think of any other Madonna song off the top of my head. But I'm pretty sure most people would associate Madonna with Vogue. You may say Material Girl right? But that era and that image and sound during the 80's, I will absolutely fuck up sometimes and think it was Cindi Lauper that did that song. It's so far removed from the most notable image of Madonna in my mind it may as well be another person.
 
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