Did you know Issa Rae, Scarlett Johansson, Aubrey Plaza, Freida Pinto, Claire Foy, Cecily Strong, Olivia Wilde, and Jena Malone are all 36? They are birthday contemporaries with “Material Girl” — the Madonna song, not the Duff sisters movie. (Actually, of all those things, I think Jena Malone being the same age as those actresses is the really weird bit, because I’ve seen her on-screen since she was pretty young, so she will always feel frozen in time to me.) “Material Girl” is one of my favorite Madonna song-video combinations, possibly because “Like a Virgin” was fairly controversial among sone parents this was so candy-coated by comparison. But once again, my memory is unreliable. Over time, my brain only retained the Gentlemen Prefer Blondes bits — which are admittedly GREAT — and none of the story around them:
I’m also not very useful pop-culture wise, because while I recognized Robert “Arliss” Wuhl in the intro, I would not have pegged the love interest as Keith Carradine without Wikipedia. I think I have mild Carradine face blindness, because the only ones I can spot are David, and then Ever (because of Once and Again). I guess the idea was that he figures out money and diamonds do NOT actually impress Madonna, despite what her video suggests, and so he presents her with a sad posy and rents an old dude’s beater of a truck so that he looks Of Modest Means. And it works, and they have lots of implied sex in it. (I guess he is hoping neither of them wants a second date?) None of that stuck with me. But the pink dress, the diamonds, the Marilyn hair, the fur, and Madonna being carried up and down some stairs? That imprinted on me forever.
ALSO: I am editing this part! I’m sorry I didn’t know Madonna is an actual trained dancer; I thought she developed it later in her career, because this kind of reminded me of the choreography they do today for people (kind of like Dua Lipa) who are not great dancers but still feel like they need to move. Sincerest apologies to Madonna, to the social contract I have hereby violated, etc. It’s a video where they just framed her natural charisma correctly without demanding anything else of her, and while I get that was the creative, I also thought it was a workaround. It was not! But what it was, was perfect.
