Material Girl by Madonna: Deep Thoughts About Pink Cocktail Dresses, Authenticity, and Why Financially Independent Women Are Terrifying

Experience has made me rich / And now they're after me

On this week's episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Emily and Tracie discuss Madonna's 1985 music video Material Girl in front of a live studio audience. As a six-year-old child, Emily did not recognize how Madonna's video was intentionally in conversation with Marilyn Monroe's performance of Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend from 30 years prior. Both women are singing about the importance of financial security, although Monroe's cultural commentary is more of a practical guide for navigating misogyny than rallying cry for feminism and women owning their financial and sexual freedom. What a difference 30 years makes.

Of course, baby Emily was unaware of this pop culture homage within Madonna's video. She was much more concerned by the storytelling intercut within the music video, wherein a rich producer woos Madonna by pretending to be a poor suitor. It bothered the budding financial expert that the producer spent more money trying to look poor than he would have paid for expensive gifts, and it truly annoyed her that Madonna seemed to be taken in by his fakery. Women with her level of financial and sexual agency should be savvier than that! 

Ultimately, Emily and Tracie are glad they had Material Girl as an example as little kids. It helped them recognize that boys needed to give them proper credit...or they'd just walk away.

We are living in a material world…and you are a podcast listener!

Note to listeners: We teased Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood for next week, but we’re actually welcoming guest Tanesha Myles to come talk about The Devil Wears Prada instead! We’ll be sharing our deep thoughts about Fred Rogers the following week.

Mentioned in this episode:

https://www.emilyguybirken.com/post/everything-i-know-about-money-i-learned-from-pop-culture

Tags

deep thoughts about stupid sh*t, women, feminism, pop culture, madonna, marilyn monroe, cultural commentary, storytelling, gen x childhood, gen x nostalgia, money, romance, nostalgia, music video, material girl, diamonds are a girls best friend, mtv, psychology, comedy, comedy podcast

This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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We are the sister podcasters Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love 80s and 90s movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, analyzing film tropes with a side of feminism, and examining the pop culture of our Gen X childhood for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, religious allegory, and whatever else we find. 

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Transcript

Cold Open And Pop Culture Thesis

SPEAKER_00 0:01

It's because women who are financially and sexually dependent can be controlled. And so Madonna showed me as a six-year-old that I don't have to accept that.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just up culture? What others might deem stupid shit, you know matters. You know it's worth talking and thinking about. And so do we. So come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

I'm Emily Guy Birkin, and you're listening to Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit. Because pop culture is still culture. And shouldn't you know what's in your head? On today's episode, I'll be sharing my deep thoughts about the 1985 music video Material Girl by Madonna from her Like a Virgin album. With my sister, Tracy Guy Decker, with our live studio audience, and with you. Let's dive in. All right, Trace, I know you've seen this music video. We were in the MTV generation, we grew up with it. But tell me what's in your head about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Yeah, I cheated a little bit because since it's such a short piece of media, I went and rewatched it. So I have the whole thing in my head. But what re-watching it yesterday validated for me was the dress with the gloves and lots and lots of diamonds and the sort of army of kind of interchangeable men behind her who were like quite literally lifting her up and carrying her around. Those are the things that were sort of in my head about the video prior to re-watching it. So having just re-watched it, because it was brief enough that I could for today, there's a bunch of other stuff, but we will get into that in our conversation. But tell me, like, why are we talking about this music video today? What's at stake for you?

SPEAKER_00 2:05

I'll link to this in the show notes. I wrote a blog post several years ago talking about the pop culture money lessons that I took in as a child. And I mentioned this music video because I remember watching this and taking in money lessons. Specifically, there's kind of a love story throughout this

Why Material Girl Still Sticks

SPEAKER_00 2:28

music video because interspersed with that Madonna wearing the pink dress, and she's got the coterie of men in tuxedos who are uh walking around, there is a love story of a producer who wants to impress her, who, the actress playing the woman in the dress, and overhears her saying, like, yeah, he thinks he can impress me by buying me expensive things. And so this rich producer throws away the expensive gift he's bought her and instead impresses her with a bouquet of handcut daisies, and then he gives a whole bunch of money to a farmer to either buy or borrow his like run-down old truck. He impresses her with his poverty, basically. And so he seems more authentic. And I remember as a kid really getting hung up on that because it's like he spent more money to look poor than he had would have spent on the diamonds. And it's successful because at the end of the video, you see them kissing and undiagnosed ADHD, six-year-old, like really fixating on that. Because what she wants is not so much that she doesn't want a rich man, it's that she wants someone who sees her as a human being and wants an authentic connection. And she still isn't getting it because this man is lying to her. And I remember that bothering me as a kid. But also thinking, well, at least he's listening to her because he's listening to what she doesn't like about these other suitors. Uh-and he's trying. Huh. Okay. All right. So that's part of why I had been thinking about it. And I just recently recorded a podcast with a friend of mine talking about how I spent an unreasonable amount of time thinking about money in this music video as a kid. And then as I've gotten older, I did not know that the pink dress portion of it was an homage to Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend musical interlude from uh Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the Marilyn Monroe movie. Because, you know, I was six, but I didn't have the background for that. As I got older and realized that it was the homage, the Diamonds are a girl's best friend song, which is very much in Material Girls in conversation with it, reminded me of the kind of financial advice that we might have gotten from our grandmother. And that also I found to be fascinating. And the complex relationship between women, beauty, and money. So that's also why I thought it was really an interesting thing to talk about. Those are all like part and parcel what's in there. It's also a banger of a song.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Okay. Well, I'm sure we have a lot to talk about from this like five-minute piece of media. But before we get there, like there is something of a plot, which you've given us a big portion of.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

But do you want to do a 30-second the music video starts with two actors? One, I he's a carradine, and I don't remember which carradine. He plays the rich producer Love Interest. And then Robert Wool, who was in Batman, that we just relatively recently talked about, are watching

Plot Recap Gifts And The Pickup

SPEAKER_00 6:06

a screener of Madonna in the Merilyn Monroe um, what we're about to see. And the rich producer is saying she's going to be a star. And Robert Wool is just like being a yes man. He just says, Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

And like he like reverses and he realizes what the yeah, he disagrees with the producer.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

He immediately agrees with, even if it's the opposite of what he just said. Right. And so the producer says, I want to meet her. And Robert Wool is like, when? And he's like, right now. Right. And so you see him going to her her dressing room door with a gift, a wrapped gift. And she is on the phone with someone saying, Yeah, you just something along the lines of he just dropped me off. He thinks he can impress me by buying me expensive things. I mean, it's nice. I think it's a diamond. Do you want it? And so you see the producer throwing away the gift they had. Then interspersed, you see the musical interlude that is an homage to the Marilyn Monroe, Diamond Zara Girl's Best Friend, where she is dancing with these about seven or eight men in tuxedos, which is just like what Marilyn Monroe did in Diamond Zoro Girl's Best Friend.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Yeah, which our studio audience, one of our members has told us in the chat, the men are in both.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Yes. And in both, the men are holding large red hearts. Both the it's not just tuxedos, but they have like a red sash. A sash, like that diplomatic sort of a sash. Yeah. And they're on the same kind of stairs with a red background, and they have these large candelabras as part of it as well. In between that, you see that interspersed with her getting out of like really expensive sports car with the rich guy who's trying to impress her, and the rich guy throwing his keys to the rich producer, assuming he's the valet. So he's clearly a dick. And so the producer keeps like observing her and trying to figure out what it is that she's going to like. And towards the end, you see him finally show up at her dressing room with the daisies that are kind of funky, like that. It's a hand cut of daisies. And then you see him in front of the studio, and it's a broken down old pickup truck, and there's an old man in overalls who looks like a very like central casting said, like, we need someone who looks like a farmer. Right. And the producer is like counting out twenties, like a whole bunch of twenties, and handing them over to the farmer. And then he like ushers Madonna into the pickup truck and they drive off. And then the very last scene is Madonna and the producer kissing. You didn't talk at all about the lyrics to the song. Not yet.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

No. Oh okay. Are we going to get to that?

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Yes. And that's part of what I want to talk about for both of them. And I have like I've the lyrics to both Diamond Zora Girl's Best Friend and Material Girl.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Okay locked and loaded. All right, great. We didn't do postcards before you gave me the synopsis, but so do you want to sort of tell me, give me the agenda of what we're going to talk about, and then we can figure out what to dive into first?

SPEAKER_00 9:30

Sure. Yeah. So some of the things I want to talk about, I want to talk about like the evolution of feminism from like 1950s, which is that's not to say that feminism didn't exist then, but it's prior to it being the kind of mainstream thing where I don't like I think Madonna was perfectly happy to be a feminist icon, whereas I don't know that Meryl Monroe would have been comfortable calling herself that or being referred to that way. But the evolution of feminism from between those 30 years. The idea of money as freedom is another thing I really want to talk about. I want to talk about authenticity and how poverty is used as a show of authenticity in the uh sort of the frame story. In the frame story. Yeah. I want to talk about the homage to Marilyn Monroe, what Madonna was trying to do with that homage. I want to talk about the irony of the lyrics of Material Girl and also how many people are just irony deficient. And I want to talk about women owning their sexuality and women owning their financial freedom are equally terrifying to the status quo. I want to talk about how women were involved in making this music video, even though the song itself was written by men. That Madonna did not pen the lyrics or write this song. Yeah. But the music video was directed by Mary Lambert, and Madonna was very much involved in the creation of this music video. And she was excited to record this song. So I want to talk about that. And then I want to talk about Baby Emily and her literalism. This was an important informative piece of media for Baby Emily. All right. Where do we start? I want to start because you mentioned I hadn't talked about the lyrics. I want to start with the lyrics. And that kind of for me is the evolution of feminism. Okay. So in the song from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend. And what Marilyn Monroe sings, she says, a kiss may be grand, but it won't pay the rental on your humble flat or help you at

Lyrics Show Feminism Shifting

SPEAKER_00 11:43

the automat. Men grow cold as girls grow old, and we all lose our charms in the end. But square cut or pear-shaped, these rocks don't lose their shape. Diamonds are a girl's best friend. There's a quite a few things where it's then that those louses go back to their spouses. Diamonds are a girl's best friend. Well time rolls on and youth is gone, and you can't straighten up when you bend. But stiff back or stiff knees, you stand straight at Tiffany's diamonds, and I don't mean rhinestones, but diamonds are a girl's best friend. She actually says I don't mean rhinestones. Oh yes.

unknown 12:17

Huh.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

And there is something about this that reminds me of our grandma Ruthie. Now, I mean, she used to say a little powder or a little paint makes a woman what she ain't. And there's something about the like stiff back or stiff knees. You stand straight at Tiffany's. Just it sounds like the kind of thing that our grandmother would have said. And in 1953, which is when this song came out, our grandmother was 42 or thereabout, somewhere around there. She was of that era. I know as a young woman, as a teenager, the lyrics of this song would have made me cringe. Because the idea that Marilyn Monroe, who was so unbelievably gorgeous, had such sex appeal that she would trade that for material goods, seemed anti-feminist. Except looking at those lyrics, it is extremely practical.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

I feel like maybe Ruthie said to me, I'm I'm having a hard time coming up with a very specific time. But as you say, like, I do feel like she said, like, always have a little of your own money. Oh, yes, she did. She did. And that's what that means. That's what Diamonds are girls fresh friends means. Like, is like make sure you have your own money.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

And this is specifically saying, get it from the men that you are seeing. And like she louses go back to their spouses by saying, like, you're having affairs with men. I know that's the part that maybe you can crawl. Yeah. But there, and this is something that we've talked about about like the price of being a woman and like the cost of being female in public. This is the world we live in. Men are going to pay attention to me because this is how I look. If that's going to be the case, I'm getting paid for it. And I don't remember which of our grandmothers it was, if it was Ruthie or Beta, but one of them was always like, always have a $20 bill with you so you can get a cab where you need to go.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Oh yeah. I think that was better. Like the emergency 20 we were supposed to keep in the glove box. Or in our wallet or whatever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Or in our bra.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Uh that yeah. Yeah. I would not have described that kind of advice as feminist when I was 17 or even 25. But I can recognize it as such now, where it's like this is women taking care of women with practical advice. I think that I can look back on Diamond Zara's girl's best friend and recognize the strength and the feminism within it within a misogynistic world. And so that's something that hadn't occurred to me. Now, obviously hadn't occurred to me when I first saw the video because I didn't know Diamond's Orgirl's best friend. But once I knew of it.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. A member of the studio audience is saying that she remembers her grandmother showing her how she hid money in her bra. Grandma did.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

The other thing our grandmother did was she always told us, and she always used this terminology. She says, if you're going on vacation or if you need to hide money somewhere, put it in your co-text box under the first or second pad because the people who are going to be stealing from you are men and they don't want to touch your co-text box.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

And again, very practical diamonds are a girl's best friend kind of advice.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Which leads me to something that you said that, like, let's maybe with this could we could segue. You talked about money as freedom. And I think that's what all of these grandmotherly advice things that we're talking about that resonate is the freedom. It's not just freedom like from our grandmother's advice, but safety. So you want to get into that and what how that shows up in this video?

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Yes. So those are the lyrics from Diamonds or Girl's Best Friend. Now, for the lyrics from Material Girl, what the lyrics start off with some boys kiss me, some boys hug me, I think they're okay. If they don't give me proper credit, I just walk away. There's a nice little pun in there with proper credit. Right. But she's making it clear like, I don't need these boys. In 30 years, we've gone from I'm going to use these men for the money they can give me, to if they're not going to give me proper credit, I'm walking away from them. I don't need them because I have my own money. And then the second stanza or second lines are they can beg and they can plead, but they can't see the light. Because the boy with a cold hard cash is always Mr. Wright. So that kind of gets back into Diamonds or a Girl's Best Friend, where like, look, if these boys aren't going to appreciate me for me, then I'm going to go for the one who's going to shower me with gifts. Because if I'm not going to be appreciated anyway, I might as well get as much as I can out of this because I can get my own money. And she also has, you know, some boys romance, some boys slow dance. That's all right with me. If they can't raise my interest, then I have to let them be. Again, another nice financial fun. And so the material girl has the freedom that the girl who for whom Timens were the best friend didn't. Because she can walk away from these boys. She doesn't have to squirrel this away for when she's too old. Yeah. That's something that I think is I'm really glad I had that, even if I didn't really necessarily take it in as a kid. But Madonna didn't care about any of these men. Right. Marilyn Monroe doesn't either. She's doing the same thing. Like the choreography is very similar. Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

But Madonna is definitely freer. Well, the lyrics in particular, like the louses who go back to their spouses, like one gets the impression that like Madonna's not spending time with louses, right? Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Yes. Yeah. She walks away from Louses. Like she does not want to be the other woman.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

She's not, she's like, she's not gonna try and get diamonds from the married man that she's sleeping with because she's not gonna bother with him. Yeah. Which the Monroe character, like, we get the impression, like she takes what she can get.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

I'm like Because she knows that this is a cruel world and she needs to set things aside for her future.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

And there's an expiration date on her beauty, which is her primary asset. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Where do you want to go next? I feel like there's a couple different directions we could go from here.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

So I want to talk about like irony and how people are irony deficient.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Okay. This mini-film, right? Like she's saying the guy with the cold whore cache is always Mr. Wright in the lyrics of the song. But the music video, the opposite is true. So let's talk about irony in this piece.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

Yeah. So remember when this came out? This was 1985, middle of the 1980s, Reaganomics, Greed is good. Greed is good. 1980s. Yuppies were ostentatiously showing off their wealth. Yep. And so

Irony Deficiency And Baby Literalism

SPEAKER_00 19:58

what Madonna has said was she loved the song because she is not material. She's not someone who cares about material things. She does care about ambition and her career. And so what she took from the song was like, we are living in a material world. So she's surrounded by people who care about material things, but she doesn't want a man who is only interested in material things, but she does want to connect with someone who cares about his career or is respectful of how much she cares about her career. And so the fact that she's singing that I am a material girl is ironic and is like lightly skewering the world that they're living in, that this is a material world. And people just missed it. No, you finish, especially. Well, especially considering how she set up the story of the video. The video, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

Yeah. I think it's interesting. I never thought of it this way. Cause I always heard it's a material world and I'm a material girl, meaning like the world cares about material things and so do I. But some of the conversations that we've been having about women as commodities that we were talking about before the audience got here, it's a material world and I'm a piece of material. That's yeah. Wow. I never read it that way. Okay. Interesting. All right. Did people, I don't remember we were children. Did people give Madonna a hard time about this?

SPEAKER_00 21:34

So it's not so much that they gave her a hard time, but she has been referred to as the material girl ever since then. Uh-huh. And that bothers her. Like she has talked about I will be 90 years old and people will still call me the material girl. And that's not who I am. Now, this was one of her like first big hits. Yeah. But this song and Like a Virgin off her Like a Virgin album, and that that She wrote. And both of them are supposed to be ironic. Mm-hmm. And like just over people's heads. And she's like, how can you be like a virgin? It's a yes-no binary. Even though it is a construct, but it's a construct we made to be a yes-no binary. And that lack of irony, I didn't come up with irony deficient. Friend of the show, Scott Kennamore, who you remember was on, his first book was The Zen of a Zombie, which is a comedy self-help book where how you're supposed to achieve self-actualization by being more like a zombie. More like a zombie. And it says right on the cover that it's humor. But he has gotten letters from readers saying, like, this hasn't helped. People who think it's actual self-help. And he's, I think he's the one who's like, people really are irony deficient. That's funny. So there are people who just are not capable of recognizing something as being ironic or skewing or sarcastic.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

I mean, let's talk about baby Emily then, because maybe it is actually a neurodivergent thing that makes it difficult to not take things literally.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

So baby Emily taking things literally. I thought the character in the pink dress did care about diamonds and things and money. And I knew that she was a character that the actress playing her, like Madonna playing the character in the pink dress, was a different person. And then I spent way too much time thinking about the fact that the producer, the rich producer, was trying to win her and doing exactly what everyone else was doing, just in a much more like a more manipulative way. Yeah. And that bothered me. Yeah. Cause it's bothersome. Yeah. And like thinking, like, well, at least he's listening to her. Like that was how I could kind of make it okay in my head was like, okay, he's listening to what she wants, but he's still not talking to her.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

But my thinking was like, she's saying, like, these men are trying to impress me by buying me things. And I'm like, well, he's spending all this money. He's still trying to impress her by buying her things. He's just trying to impress her by buying her things to make him look poor.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

And that doesn't sound like you were too literal. Sounds like you got it. Unless I'm being too literal right now. No, no.

SPEAKER_00 24:28

I it's to me, it sounds like you got the video. I couldn't tell, and I still don't know if that's what Madonna and Mary Lambert, the director, were going for, or if they actually wanted it to be a happy ending. Oh God, I hope not. I have no idea. He's rewarded. They're kissing at the end.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

Yeah. But we saw from the beginning when he was like, I need to meet her now. That was gross. But it was in 1985.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

That's normal. Ew.

SPEAKER_02 25:02

I I don't see another work for it. Oh God. I don't know that Madonna and Mary Lambert didn't mean for it to be a happy ending. Because Baby Emily was right. That's gross.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Okay. All right. I truly have never could I could never figure out what I was supposed to take away from that.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

That's gross. In re-watching it yesterday, I was like, come on, Madonna. Don't fall for this shit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure the baby only took it too literally. Like, I don't I think that was gross. I mean, I think the piece about like the character in the pink dress, like that maybe, because that may be like too literal, but especially now when you see it in conversation with the Marilyn Monroe. Right. But let's talk about Marilyn Monroe a little bit. Like you talked about sort of the evolution of feminism, but one of the things you named in the things you wanted to talk about was the homage. So like, let's talk about what, like they wrote and recorded this music, this song, right? That Madonna didn't write, but she was like, Yeah, this is ironic and I dig it. And they recorded a song. And then they were like, let's do Diamonds or a Girl's Best Friend. What did that do? Like, can we sort of talk about what pulling Marilyn Monroe into the room does in 1980, whatever year it was?

SPEAKER_00 26:30

And like well, that was very intentional on Madonna's part. That was her inspiration. An inspiration.

Marilyn Monroe Homage And Commodification

SPEAKER_00 26:40

And something I read talked about how Madonna wanted and welcomed being compared to Marilyn Monroe, but she also wanted to create a little bit of distance because she didn't want the same kind of sense of being a commodity that happened to Marilyn Monroe. So she wanted to control her own narrative in a way that Marilyn Monroe was not able to. I was telling Tracy before we hit record, some of the things that are famous about Marilyn Monroe. Her photos were in the very first issue of Playboy. That was not her choice. Those were photos that were taken before she became famous when she was trying to make it as an actress. And, you know, it's the sort of thing that is very common. She needed money. She needed money. And Hefner got hold of those photos and without her consent, published them. Hefner was obsessed with her. They never met. And Hefner, so she is Monroe is buried in a mausoleum, one of those kind of like walls. Column column. Yeah. And Hefner purchased the site directly above her so that he could be buried directly above Marilyn Monroe. So this poor woman, even in death, cannot escape this man.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

Yeah, that's gross.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

Who she never met and who made his fortune on her body.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

Yeah, diamonds are a girl's best friend. Because how else are you going to get away from that kind of entitlement? You know, other than financial freedom.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

That's really interesting, too. What the insight that I had earlier, and knowing sort of Madonna the distance that she wanted to sort of have more control, but sort of recognizing by putting on the sort of Marilyn costume and then singing, I'm a material girl. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. Monroe was in fact a commodity that many people besides herself made money off of. And so Madonna sort of, I don't know, naming that and channeling it in this way that was, I don't know if I can call it defiant or not, but trying to push back on it at least. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

It was defiant in that she's defining herself rather than being defined that way. She's also making it clear I have my own resources. I do not have to rely on men for these resources. Mm-hmm. You know, that's within the lyrics of this song.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

But then the thing that baby Emily saw, like, she kind of undercuts it by having her persona be deceived by this man.

SPEAKER_04 29:35

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

I don't know what to do with that.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

Yeah. Which always left a sour taste in my mouth, even which is interesting because I love love stories. And even as a six-year-old, I wanted them to get together and kiss. I always wanted them to get together and kiss, whoever they were. But that always was just like it was false, false pretenses. Yeah. And like we never see him talk to her. We never see that he likes anything about her other than that she's pretty. Yeah. And talented. Yeah. One other thing about baby Emily, though, is before I knew the term dress for the job you want, I wanted a big, uh, long pink dress with the gloves because I want seven men in tuxedos to carry me around. That is the job I want.

SPEAKER_02 30:24

Amen, sister. Amen. That's hilarious. Okay. Speaking of the evolution of feminism.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

Oh man. All right. I feel like we've talked about most of the things that you said you wanted to get into.

SPEAKER_00 30:47

Where do you want to go next? How terrifying it is, women owning sexuality and owning financial freedom. So this is terrifying that is to the status quo. That's the sort of thing where like I don't if I try to tell my kids about how much pearl clutching there was about Madonna, even with this video and with like Virgin, I don't think they'd get it. And I don't remember it that well because I was very young when this came out. But we are still seeing echoes of that to this day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

Women couldn't have credit cards in their own name until the 70s. Like in 1983.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

It wasn't

Autonomy And Control In The 1980s

SPEAKER_00 31:34

that It wasn't until 1987 or 88 that a woman couldn't take out a business loan in her own name without a male cosigner.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

Oh my God. So after this video was made.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

After this video was made. Our mom was a business owner, but she had financing for I mean, she she from family. Grandma was her cosigner. Well, no, she had money from like she didn't need a business owner.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

She didn't need a loan because she'd she'd uh got me because she had got that inheritance from her grandmother.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:08

Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

Right. Man. So she would not have been able to start her business if she hadn't had that inheritance. Or she wouldn't imagine dad to co-sign or something. Yeah. That's obscene. Well, and that's why so our grandmother on our father's side owned a Dunkin' Donuts donut franchise with our father. With dad. He was the male key he had to co-sign. When this video came out, Mary Lambert, who uh was the director, could not have gotten a business on her own.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

Yeah. I'm trying to like wrap my mind around why it is so terrifying. And like it's those things are things that men do. Financial freedom and autonomy over sexuality are things that not just like men do, but like they're supposed to do. Like not the weird ones, like the ones we admire, that's what they do. Right? The ones we're meant to like hold as role models, that's what they do. So is the fear because women who would do those things are like men? I'm putting parentheses around, I mean quotation marks around the word like, like, is it because they're crossing the binary and doing male things? Like it's just I'm I'm dumbfounded.

SPEAKER_00 33:41

So it's because women who are financially and sexually dependent can be controlled. Yes. And so Madonna showed me as a six-year-old that I don't have to accept that.

SPEAKER_01 33:59

Yeah. I mean, Madonna was a path, she was a in the vanguard on both counts, right? Mm-hmm. In both counts, she was in the vanguard of both financial and a sexual autonomy because she was such a successful pop star, but also part of the way she did that was through her. Thank you, Trailblazer. One of our studio audiences just gave me that word in the chat. Trail, she was a trailblazer. She was a role model in terms of that. Like whatever, even when she was an actress, like whatever she was cast in, she was still doing this sort of sexual autonomy as well. And then she's making money as an actress.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

Like part of it is she's making money by owning her sexuality. Yeah. Which also was something that second wave feminism that we were raised with, which kind of was like, no, no, no, no. That's that's dirty. That's dirty. Like you don't use your beauty or your sexuality in the realm of finance.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

Well, more than that, I feel like second wave sex second wave feminism like didn't want us to acknowledge we had bodies. Except insofar, like we maybe we could talk about the fact that like medical tests and stuff always use men as normal. But like beyond that, like we weren't meant to talk about our bodies as sexual creatures in second wave feminism. Like that was dirty. Like second wave feminism still was not sex positive. It still was not sex worker positive. Like there was a lot of that that was still kind of pearl-clutchy to use your earlier word.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

Yeah. And being raised by MTV and seeing Madonna unapologetically embrace her own sexuality and her own ambition and her own financial ambition was revolutionary in ways that I didn't appreciate because I was a kid. But it makes me very glad that I was part of the MTV generation.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

Yeah, we talked about that a little bit in our Dick Tracy episode since she was in that film. We talked a bit about her influence on the culture in that sense. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

Yeah. So it's one thing I I mentioned and haven't really talked about. So talked about poverty as authenticity. That's what they use as like kind of a metaphor for here. And something specific about Madonna herself. I remember when she got to be about 32, her art reflected her fears of dying because her mother was 32 when she died. And I remember talking about that with our dad. I bring that up because I feel like there is authenticity in Madonna's music, even in Material Girl, which she didn't write, because she brought the authenticity to the music video, which she did have a part in. And there was authenticity in her fears when she got to the age

Poverty As Authenticity And Manipulation

SPEAKER_00 37:07

that her mother was when she died, which is to, I mean, so understandable and real. You hear about that with all kinds of people. Like our dad was sure he would he would never wake up on his 43rd birthday because his dad died when he was 42. Exactly. That poverty is authenticity manipulation in this video has this particular sour note because I imagine this was at the very beginning of her like ascendance into superstardom. Right. But becoming a celebrity makes it so much harder to have any kind of authentic connection with someone. Right. In the same way that wealth makes it harder to have an authentic connection with someone. Right. Which is what the video is about. It's about like the wealth making it difficult to have an authentic connection. They use poverty as a stand-in and like he's manipulating it to seem authentic. That also just for me as a person, looking at Madonna as a person makes me sad because it's like, I'm sure she's fine. You know, like I'm sure this woman is fine. Yeah, she's laughing all the way the bank, crying all the way the bank. But also just like the difficulty of finding that authenticity in this video that little baby Emily, who craves authenticity, that's part of why I found it icky. Is because, like, you know, my non-diagnosed neurodivergent ass was going like, but it's not real. Because I crave authenticity, because that's how my brain works. I can't handle it. It wasn't real.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

Yeah. And I actually I'm having a dark sort of thought about that based on the sort of how terrifying it is. It is terrifying for our culture to have a woman to have either financial security, like financial independence, or having it not controlled, her sexuality, right? Having her sexuality be unowned or owned only by herself. Our culture finds both of those things terrifying. Terrifying this woman in this video has both. And so we see through the video, she's like the shrew. She's tamed by this producer. And now her sexuality is owned by him.

SPEAKER_04 39:17

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 39:18

And that makes it acceptable that she has freedom in those two realms because now she no longer has the freedom in the sexuality realm. Yeah. And we know he's rich. So he also like is richer than she is. Yeah. And like, oh my God. I wonder if there was, I don't know, like someone higher up in the studio going, like, no, have them end up together. No, no, no. Don't don't have her realize, like, have them like end up together.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

When she gets in the truck, she looks sort of bored. She looks sort of bored and she like puts her finger up to her face, like, huh, what is this? Right. As a kid, was always just like, oh, she she doesn't really like this. She's on to him. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:05

She knows it's not real. Yeah. If you cut that final kiss, kiss, which is like the moo the music's over. It's like the last like five seconds of the video. In fact, when you watch it on YouTube, it starts to show you the next, you know, the next video over top of it.

SPEAKER_00 40:23

On MTV, it also because you remember how MTV used to do it would show you the credits or whatever it was in the bottom left-hand corner. And then like depending on how it was, sometimes it would cut like the last little bit off to more quickly get to the next video. So you didn't always see it back in 1985 when you watched it.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

I'm gonna hope. That's the story I'm telling myself. Is that there was a dude somewhere in the studio in the bigger picture production? Robert Lake. Yeah. There was like a dude somewhere in like, I don't know, MTV or MGM or whoever the heck made it that paid for it to get made that was like, no, we need one final scene of them kissing. Because if it ended with just her getting in the truck with her finger on her face, like I'd be like, Yeah, she's on to him. She's just Marilyn Monroe.

SPEAKER_02 41:14

Yeah. Like getting what she can out of him. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:19

We're getting close to the end, but we still have a few more minutes. One of our studio audience members says the dude, whoever he was, is probably in the Epstein files. Yeah, probably. Although he might be too old. Okay. So I think we have a couple more minutes. Was there one more thing? Oh, yes, you wanted to talk about the women involved in making this music video, which is really interesting since I just was talking about the like unseen dudes whose hands I can I can see their handiwork even though I don't know their names.

SPEAKER_00 41:48

So I just wanted to talk about the fact that so we usually talk about movies on this podcast. And this is the second time we've talked about a music video. Yes. But Thriller is a much longer video than this. And the vast majority of movies are directed by men. It's a boys' club. I was delighted, because I had no idea. I never looked it up. I was delighted to see that the director was a woman, Mary Lambert. And I was delighted to see that Madonna had a great deal of influence on what the video looked like, what was going on in the video. Like the story was part of her too. So Mary Lambert did a lot of music videos. She has also directed movies as well, mostly in horror.

Women Creators Mary Lambert And Madonna

SPEAKER_00 42:33

And to me, that seems about right for a woman director from the 1980s, in that that's about what would be open to her because music videos is a lower barrier to entry in the same way that commercials would be, but music videos gives you more creative control than commercials would. And then you could work with people like Madonna who would be welcoming to a woman director. And then horror is the movie genre that is like the most reviled and like people are least interested in. It's like least likely to be Oscar Bait, that sort of thing. And so it's going to be easiest to find projects that you can direct. And so I think that that is also indicative of why this piece of media stuck with me so much. Like, even though the song itself was written by men, the influence of women from Marilyn Monroe all the way through to Madonna and Mary Lambert resonated with me as a little girl who had heard from her grandmothers, like, have some money of your own. Yeah, always have your own money and the $20.

unknown 43:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:46

$20 for cab fare, no matter what.

SPEAKER_04 43:48

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 43:49

Anything else before I reflect back to you what we talked about, which is a lot?

SPEAKER_00 43:55

I feel like Madonna has been a punchline. Since that period of time, like there has never been a time where she wasn't a punchline, even when she was at the height of her fame in stardom, for the very reasons why she's amazing, like because she owns her sexuality, she owns her ambition, she owns her her money. And even in things like there's a joke about Madonna and 30 Rock, which was a TV show that I loved, which I like thinking back on it and like, ew, gross. But the thing is, she's phenomenally talented. And not just in her art, not just in music, not just in dance, not just in acting, not just in uh she's also a phenomenally talented businesswoman. I would argue that's actually her greatest talent.

SPEAKER_01 44:47

I don't think she's a great singer. Like, especially like listening to this song again. I was like, she's not that I mean, it's a catchy song, but like she's not a great vocal talent. But she's a fantastic performer. Yes. Yes. And she's a fantastic entertainer. And she's a businesswoman. She's a savvy businesswoman. Yes. Let me see if I can reflect back what we talked about. You had a lot to say about this five-minute video. We were kind of all over the place. But I'm actually gonna start with young Emily, who I actually don't think took this thing too literally, but learned that she needs to dress in a pink gown with opera gloves to dress for the job that she wants because she wants seven or eight men to carry her around.

SPEAKER_02 45:42

In tuxedos. Men in tuxedos, yeah. I don't think that's too much to ask.

SPEAKER_01 45:58

You put this video, you didn't put it in conversation with Marilyn Monroe. It was in conversation with Marilyn Monroe, but you brought that conversation to our conversation. And through that, you talked about sort of the evolution of feminism, the difference between diamonds are a girl's best friend because youth and beauty have an expiration date, and I'm a material girl, I'm gonna get the money, and I don't need these men because I have my own. The 30 years between them, like where we have come as a culture, that we could have Monroe say the first, which was, I'm sure, at least a little provocative to say looses go back to their spouses. And then 30 years later, to have Madonna put on a Maryland costume and say, only boys that give me proper credit. If they don't give me proper credit, I just walk away. We spent some time there. We talked, speaking of that, the distance between those, we did spend some time talking about the homage to Marilyn Monroe and sort of recognizing in a different read of the chorus, which I had never had before, we had this conversation, like recognizing that saying I'm a material girl, I'd always interpreted that to mean like I want material things. But when we put it in conversation with Marilyn Monroe and with the ways in which Hugh Hefner commoditized Marilyn Monroe and she couldn't get away from him even in death, perhaps that line, I'm a material girl, actually is acknowledging the fact that women, if they are in the public spotlight and sometimes even not, are commodities that men feel entitled to buy and sell, which this video sort of leans into with the producer who wants to see her now and then figures out how to manipulate his way into her head, if not her heart. Yeah. There is, you talked about the irony in this video that Madonna intended and the fact that to use, we believe Scott Kenamore's phrase, so many people in this world are irony deficient and didn't get the irony that she intended, though she did not write this piece of music. Madonna is terrifying because not only is she financially independent, has financial freedom, she owns her sexuality as well. And either of those things on their own is terrifying to the status quo. So both of them together is absolutely terrifying, which we are wondering now. Maybe that's why the icky final scene of this video exists where the manipulation works and the producer ends up smooching Madonna. Let me see. We also talked a bit about poverty as authenticity in this video. It was sort of a shorthand for authenticity because the money from the lyrics of the song are inauthentic. And then in the sort of frame story, we hear Madonna on the phone saying, like, yeah, I think it's real diamonds. I mean, I guess that's nice, do you want it? Like this sort of like inauthentic to the sort of expensive gifts that she's getting, and the tension in this brief piece of media where it's shorthand for authenticity, but it's inauthentically delivered by this particular character, which is more nuanced and interesting than I think we often give credit for music videos. You also talked about being delighted that women were involved in the making of this music video, not just Madonna herself, but also Mary Lambert, who was directing music videos and horror films, maybe because that was all that was available to her as a female director in the 1980s. I speculated there were probably some dudes who were interfering in the making of this music video because of that final ick scene. Did I forget anything? Uh no, no, I don't think so. Okay. So next time, I believe I am going to bring you my deep thoughts about Mr. Rogers. Ooh, I can't wait. All right, we'll talk to you then. See you then. This show is a labor of love, but that doesn't make it free to produce. If you enjoy it even half as much as we do, please consider helping to keep us overthinking. You can support us at our Patreon. There's a link in the show notes. Or leave a positive review so others can find us. And of course, share the show with your people. Thanks for listening. Our theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin McLeod from Incompitech.com. Find full music credits in the show notes. Thank you to Resonate Recordings for editing today's episode. Until next time, remember pop culture is still culture. And shouldn't you know what's in your head?