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

the mirrors of the patriarchal imagination cannot have been shattered.” In Madonna’s latest persona as phallic mother she lets us know that she has no desire to shatter patriarchy. She can occupy the space of phallocentrism, be the patriarch, even as she appears to be the embodiment of idealized femininity.
    She claims not to envy men, asserting: “I wouldn’t want a penis. It would be like having a third leg. It would seem like a contraption that would get in the way. I think I have a dick in my brain. I don’t need to have one between my legs.” No doubt that “dick” in her brain accounts for Madonna’s inability to grasp that feminism, or for that matter, women’s liberation, was never about trying to gain the right to be dicks in drag. But wait a minute, I seem to recall that the men I knew back when the contemporary feminist movement was “hot” all believed that us little women didn’t really want our freedom, we just wanted to be one of the boys. And in fact those same men, no doubt thinking through the dicks in their brains, told us that if we “women libbers” just had a good fuck, we would all come to our senses and forget all about liberation. We would in fact learn to find pleasure in being dominated. And when feminists did not fall for this dick rap, men tried to seduce us into believing with our brains and our bodies that the ultimate power was to be found in being able to choose to dominate or be dominated. Well, many of us said “thanks but no thanks.” And some of us, well, some of us were tempted and began to think that if we could not really have our freedom, then the next best thing would be to have the right to be dicks in drag, phallocentric girls doing everything the boys do—only better.
    This message has so seduced Madonna that now she can share the same phallic rap with her feminist sisters and all her otherfans. Most of the recent images she projects in videos, films, and photographs tell women and everyone that the thrill, the big orgasm, the real freedom is having the power to choose to dominate or be dominated. This is the message of Sex.
    Madonna’s feminist fans, once so adoring, are on the positive tip when we insist that we want an end to domination, when we resist her allure by saying no—no more seduction and betrayal. We long for the return of the feminist Madonna, the kind of cultural icon Susan Griffin celebrates in Women and Nature when she writes:
    We heard of this woman who was out of control. We heard that she was led by her feelings. That her emotions were violent. That she was impetuous. That she violated tradition and overrode convention … We say we have listened to her voice asking, “Of what materials can that heart be composed which can melt when insulted and instead of revolting at injustice, kiss the rod? … And from what is dark and deep within us, we say, tyranny revolts us; we will not kiss the rod.

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ALTARS OF SACRIFICE
    Re-membering Basquiat
    Is your all on the altar of sacrifice laid?
    —Black church song
    At the opening of the 1992 Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition at the Whitney Museum last fall, I wandered through the crowd talking to the folks about the art. I had just one question. It was about emotional responses to the work. I asked, what did people feel looking at Basquiat’s paintings? No one I talked with answered the question. They went off on tangents, said what they liked about him, recalled meetings, generally talked about the show, but something seemed to stand in the way, preventing them from spontaneously articulating feelings the work evoked. If art moves us, touches our spirit, it is not easily forgotten. Images will reappear in our heads against our will. I often think that many of the works that are canonically labeled “great” aresimply those that lingered longest in individual memory. And that they lingered because while looking at them someone was moved, touched, taken to another place, momentarily born