Madonna in Totalitaria

Aside from being the most famous person to voluntarily travel to the Bathurst and Sheppard area during a July 2004 visit – her beloved Kabbalah Centre hadn’t opened its red string store in Yorkville yet – Madonna’s relationship with this city was forever defined amidst the excruciating narcissism of Truth or Dare, where she rebuked "the totalitarian state of Toronto". Fifteen years later, a piece in yesterday’s New York Times alluded to that May 1990 warning from police backstage at SkyDome, in response to parents aghast at the Blond Ambition tour’s display of onstage onanism, although any such warnings were ignored without consequence. Now she finds the entire display regrettable, an essential part of peddling Confessions on a Dance Floor to breeding women, although it’s been over a dozen years since every Madonna single was guaranteed airplay. Locally, those first hits were hardly even heard on the FM dial, although her visual impact was sufficient for dressalike fans to fill Maple Leaf Gardens on May 23, 1985. Now, a Madonna album release is accompanied by promotional spinning classes and memorabilia auctions – although the tunes have circulated enough online for anyone to have heard them while licking custard on the couch. Scarcer are copies of 1994’s Toronto-filmed biopic Madonna: Innocence Lost, telecast when she was furthest from public favour, where the NYC club at which she honed her rock chops was conveniently re-christened Lee’s Palace. The actress who won the lead role, Terumi Matthews, has evidently left acting to shield her kids from seeing that old lady in a leotard.