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Essays
All essays this page copyright Cher Cunningham, 2004
Media Whores There seems to be a new catchall phrase used these days to describe musicians who have sold out. Recently, I saw both Madonna and Britney Spears referred to as media whores and decided it is a phrase interesting enough to write about. Just what is a media whore and what makes Madonna, Britney or anyone else for that matter one? Is it the fact that they are perceived to be selling the hot commodity of sex? Why are they considered media whores anymore than a politician like Arnold Schwarzeneggar, a shock jock like Howard Stern, or an airwave evangelist such as Benny Hinn? And what of those who buy into these media whores? While pondering these questions, let’s look at the history of the phrase itself which is composed of the two separate words defined as follows: Media. MASS MEDIA b plural: members of the mass media. Usage: the singular media and its plural medias seem to have originated in the field of advertising over 50 years ago; they are apparently still so used without stigma in that specialized field. In most other applications media is used as a plural of medium. The great popularity of the word in references to the agencies of mass communication is leading to the formation of a mass noun, construed as a singular. Whore. 1. a woman who engages in sexual acts for money: PROSTITUTE; also: a promiscuous or immoral woman, 2. a male who engages in sexual acts for money, or 3. a venal or unscrupulous person. (1) With the definitions in place, let’s refer back to the questions. Both Madonna and Britney are pop music/film stars, which defines them as part of the mass media. They are ENTERTAINERS. Their careers are based on entertaining. Their public lives are built on perceptions. The paparazzi are obsessed with them, and we in turn love the paparazzi. Let’s see, that would make the paparazzi media whores as well. We are a nation obsessed with sex, and in way, unhealthily so. Prostitution is one of the oldest recorded businesses and with a few exceptions, illegal in America. Bare breasts are publicly banned and nudity taboo. The majority of society’s perceptions on sex are based upon a religion that teaches sex for the purpose of procreation only. God forbid it be a healthy, fun compartment of life. So, it seems that in some peoples’ minds, Madonna is a media whore, and it's her persona that is the basis for this opinion. Keep in mind that she’s an entertainer, and her carefully constructed persona is what allowed her to become successful while many others failed. It’s simply a perception nothing more. In her early career, she chose to personify herself sexually through her medium. She chose to record the album ‘Erotica’ and publish, in 1992, a book entitled Sex. Ten years later, it’s hard to remember the controversy surrounding them. Madonna recently had this to say about her sex book: “Following a recent guest appearance on Will and Grace, the show's star Megan Mullally interviewed Madonna for VH1. Madonna said that 10 years ago when she produced the sex book and Erotica albums she was showing her anger at the way she was perceived. She felt that people could not equate intelligence alongside sexuality and produced these pieces of work to redress the balance.“ (2) In his new book, Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto, Chuck Klostermann says this: “Madonna is an unsuccessful sexual icon because she wants so desperately to be a sexual icon. Pamela Sue Anderson is the perfect sexual icon because she wants to have sex.” (3) While I have not read Klostermann’s book, the inclusion of the above statement, whether he realizes it or not, reinforces the point of ‘media whores’, and thus, those who also share this view. According to Chuck, a woman is a successful sexual icon only if she wants to have sex not if she merely wants to be one. As a successful businesswoman, it is obvious that Madonna has captured the perfect blend of sexuality and intelligence. Ten years after the Sex controversy finds Madonna moving into a new direction. She is now married and mother of two. She also has begun a new career as a children’s book author. Her first book, The English Roses, was the fastest selling illustrated children’s book of all time, selling more than 10,000 copies in the first week of release. It has been produced in over 100 different countries and in 30 different languages. The English Roses which deals with the subject of envy and jealousy was number 1 on the New York Times children’s bookseller list. It will be followed by, Mr. Peabody’s Apples, a story of the consequences of gossip and false rumors. And what of the Video Music Awards (VMA) ‘kiss’ which may also have prompted the media whores label of Madonna and Britney? Pink was supposed to have been on stage with Madonna at the VMA but backed out due to a scheduling problem. When asked, this is what Pink had to say: Had scheduling not been a problem, would she have been willing to make out with Madonna? She says yes and insists she's amused that the same-sex liplock generated so many headlines. "I'm very surprised that kisses, or girl-on-girl, or guy-on-guy, is that interesting still, to this day," she laughed. (4) Sadly, her view on the kiss probably carries little weight with those who share this perception. After all, she’s just another media whore. In the Sixties, Bob Dylan understood what it was about when he wrote: “Come mothers and fathers
throughout the land
and don’t criticize
what you can’t understand.
Your sons and your daughters
are beyond your command,
your old road is
rapidly aging
Please get out of the new one
if you can’t lend your hand
for the times they are a changin’.” (5) Works Cited: 1. Merriam-Webster Online
2. Madonna
3. SEX, DRUGS, AND COCOA PUFFS: A Low Culture Manifesto, Chuck Klosterman. Scribner, 244 pp.
4. MTV News
5. “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” Bob Dylan, Columbia Records, 1964,
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Ghost Ranch As the wind tossed my hair and the sun warmed my skin, I heard the secrets of my ancestors whispered deep within red and yellow stones. Georgia O’Keeffe discovered her duende in New Mexico at a place called Ghost Ranch. Her solace was softly faded cliffs where diamond-backed rattlers lived among bright flowers and bleached skulls. She once joked about the Pedernal mesa in the Jemez Range, “It’s my private mountain, it belongs to me. God told me if I painted it enough, I could have it” (3).In his essay, “Play and Theory of the Duende,” the Spanish poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, wrote, “The duende . . . . Where is the duende? Through the empty arch comes a wind, a mental wind blowing relentlessly over the heads of the dead, in search of new landscapes and unknown accents; a wind that smells of baby’s spittle, crushed grass, and jellyfish veil, announcing the constant baptism of newly created things” (2). More than sixty years later, I discovered my duende under those very same cliffs O’Keeffe loved to paint. New Mexico is known as the “Land of Enchantment,” and those who live there or those who have visited understand immediately why. From the affable faces of the red, brown, black and white peoples, to a hot-air-balloon-filled, crystalline sky, or the red rocks jutting from the barren ground, the enchantment envelops you. My first sight of Georgia’s beloved cliffs left me breathless as my body, mind and spirit reacted to the immensity of it all. The charged atmosphere and sunlit stones drew me in as an electric current pulsed through my body. Ghost Ranch both humbled and welcomed me; it was as if I had come home. A drive down a dusty, white, winding road opened to a green oasis, dotted with grazing cattle, nestled snugly under the auspices of Kitchen Mesa. Sandstone sentinels, as smooth and faded as the petroglyphs and pottery shards found within their cliffs, silently set the stage for magnificent sunrises and elegant sunsets. Early morning walks under a sky smudged with an oil slick of pink-tinged, purple clouds might bring the surprise of soon-to-be sun-drenched fields of sage; evenings were the time of light shows projected onto the face of the ancient stone. Though never the same, they were always the same, and for fifteen glorious minutes I was convinced that Carnegie Hall couldn’t produce anything better. It is because of these shows of light that Ghost Ranch is also known as Piedra Lumbra or “shining stone.” Whenever I feel a need to go back to Ghost Ranch, a few drops of pungent sage oil behind my ears, or the smell of a smoldering smudge stick brings back that magic and enchantment of the sun on my body and the ochres of surrounding cliffs. And yet, Ghost Ranch is a land of secrets, a place of whispers, where the wind never seems to cease. The native name of Ghost Ranch is Rancho de los Brujos, or ranch of the witches. I fee; an affinity with the witches due, in part, to both spiritual and mystical occurrences I experienced while there. It is at the ranch where I began to explore my spirituality. I entered this enchanting land with little tolerance for a god of any kind and left knowing, somehow, that I had been wrong in that intolerance. Sleep seemed unnecessary during my stay, and throughout the night, the whispers of my ancestors were a steady ringing in my ears. The strong, electrical pulse that I experienced when I first entered Ghost Ranch surged throughout my body and soul as the recharging began. The energy of the place is enduring and, Georgia's legend remians. Short bursts of sleep were dreamtimes, many which were forgotten upon awaking. It was during one of the dreamtimes that I was introduced to my totem, grandmother spider, a master weaver, filled with creativity, wisdom and divine inspiration. The dream-vision centered around a many-paned window. As I neared the window, I saw that it was really a mirror, and in one corner sat a spider in the center of her spiral web. According to Native American lore, spiders inspire creativity, and the spiral shape of a web is an indicator of both creativity and development. A spider in a web symbolizes that we are the cores of our own world. Some nights later, I observed the magic of a spider weaving her web from start to finish. I later recorded the experience with these words, “She weaves her web by moonlight. Quicksilver swirls along which she dances throughout the night. By day, they are dust.” In the years since my Ghost Ranch experience, I have learned that another aspect of my totem is one of understanding the patterns of illusion. Two museums located within the ranch showcase its ancient history. The fossil records of the southwest and the history of twelve thousand years of successive habitation are found within their displays. Walking among this collective presence of dinosaurs and primitive humans saturated me with the ranch’s many secrets and mystical whispers as did stumbling upon one of the bleached skulls Georgia loved to paint. She said, “The bones seem to cut sharply to the centre of something that is keenly alive on the desert even though it is vast and empty and untouchable – and knows no kindness with all its beauty” (1). Another secret beauty of the southwest is the night sky - a black curtain studded with the ghosts of burnt-out stars and of those newly born. The Milky Way, a river of swirling stars and stardust, is witness to shooting stars that fall from the welkin in handfuls. To delineate the deep spirituality of the place would be to explain the breadth of that very universe, spinning overhead. And always there was the steady hum of the energy of the ranch, cocooning me, singing to me. Beneath the shining stones lies the heart of the ranch, the Labyrinth, a true Chartres-style circular one-half mile path for prayer, meditation, and reflection. "Some view this ancient style, as a birthing instrument because the 272 stones, of which it is constructed, equal the average number of days in the human gestation period." A labyrinth can be a magical tool that enhances both intuition and creativity. For someone already on a journey, it may expand wisdom; for a beginner, it may bring many unexpected gifts and revelations. For me, Ghost Ranch’s Labyrinth was another place, besides my dreams, to recharge. The experience of my duende was like a new creation fusing with the old, and from it I discovered my spirituality. For me, the enchantment of Ghost Ranch has helped shape a connection between O’Keeffe and myself, and I have fallen in love with the ranch and its magic just as she did. She said this of Ghost Ranch and of the sage, “. . . this is my kind of world. The kind of things one sees in cities . . . well, you know, it’s better to look out the window at the sage” (1). On my desk rests a carved, wooden labyrinth of my own. As I trace its spiral path with my finger, my thoughts return often to the 'ranch of the witches.’ Works cited: 1. Loengard, John. Georgia O’Keeffe at Ghost Ranch, A Photo-Essay. New York, NY: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1995.
2. Lorca, Federico Garcia. In Search of Duende, New York, NY: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1998.
3. O’Keeffe, Georgia. concierge.com, Taos, NM, New Mexico: A Land Apart. New Mexico: A Land Apart Copyright 2004, Cher Cunningham
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