Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (Routledge Classics) Read Online Free PDF

wilderness of black culture (gay and straight), of white gay subculture. Within these new and different realms of experience she never divests herself of white privilege. She maintains both the purity of her representation and her dominance. This is especially evident in Sex. In stories of sexual adventures told in Sex, people of color appear as primary protagonists. In one, the young Puerto Rican boy virgin is the “object” of the fictive Dita/Madonna’s lust. We are told: “He was fearless. He would do anything … I was so turned on; it was probably the most erotic sex I ever had. But he gave me crabs.” The stereotypes here are obvious, a fact which makes them no less damaging. Madonna’s text constructs a narrative of pure white womanhood contaminated by contact with the colored “other.” It would be easy to dismiss this construction as merely playful if it were not so consistent throughout Sex. In another adventure story, an apparently well-off white male enters a fancy department store where he is seduced by a Cuban salesgirl. She is, of course, as stereotype would have it, hot and whorish, ready to cheat on her boyfriend when any anonymous “desiring” white man looks her way. The structure of this narrative suggests that it, like the previous one, appeals directly to white supremacist sexual fantasies.
    Though Sex appears to be culturally diverse, people of color are strategically located, always and only in a subordinate position. Our images and culture appear always in a context that mirrors racist hierarchies. We are always present to serve white desire. And while Sex exploits the myth of jungle fever, Madonnais carefully positioned within a visual framework where the big black man and the black woman appear as a couple who are her sexual servants; no readers could imagine that Madonna is partnering herself with a black male. No, all her images of conventional heterosexual coupling are with “nice” white boys. Black female sexuality is stereotypically represented as degraded. In the much-remarked and visually powerful come shot. Madonna stands over the prostrate naked body of black female model Naomi Campbell (not an anonymous fantasy image) and mimics a golden shower, by squirting lotion on the reclining figure. This image conveys a serious visual message about race, gender, and nationality. Madonna can be seen here as representing the imperialism of the United States, its triumph over Britain (Campbell is British Caribbean) as well as the conquest of “exotic” black cultures. Campbell has been called by the white-dominated fashion media the new Josephine Baker, a persona which directly contrasts that of idealized white womanhood. As the celebrated “primitive” icon, she must learn her place in relation to the white mistress and master. To conquer and subordinate this representation of “wild black sexuality,” Madonna must occupy a phallic position. In keeping with sexist/racist iconography, the black female is symbolically subordinated by white male power; in this case it is Madonna assuming the white supremacist patriarchal role.
    Throughout Sex, Madonna appears as the white imperialist wielding patriarchal power to assert control over the realm of sexual difference. None of this is mitigated by the recognition— emphasized by Madonna herself—that gender is an act of social construction. Nor can Madonna’s disguises, however richly layered, ultimately mask her violence and cruelty towards women. Discussing gender parity, Carol-Anne Tyler (“Boys Will Be Girls: The Politics of Gay Drag”) suggests that the male drag queen’s femininity is “a put on, not the real thing, signalling he has what women like, the phallus.” Though Madonna, of course,cannot do male drag, she does appropriate a drag queen look or style. Tyler identifies this female impersonator of the male impersonator as a phallic mother, insisting that “when the active desiring woman still reflects man’s desires,