Madonna‘s immaculate ‘correction’
Friday 28 October 2011
It was reported this week that a playwright has taken the unusual step of scrapping his own work – a stage drama drawing on the events of World War II – after the body that commissioned it decided he was not allowed to mention the nazis, the Jews or the invasion of Poland.
Now it could be said that penning an opus about the 1939-45 war without at least one of those elements appearing, even fleetingly, would be rather tricky.
In fact it would be akin to attempting to write a definitive biography of Robert Maxwell without the words crook, pensions and overboard.
The Halloween play was originally approved to be performed as part of “ghost tours” at Pendennis Castle, in Falmouth, Cornwall, over four nights for an “adults-only” audience, with scenes showcasing difference periods in the Tudor castle’s history, including its second world war gun batteries.
According to the scribe himself, the reason given by English Heritage, the august organisation in question, for its frankly baffling decision was apparently that it was concerned that the mention of the Third Reich, the semitic race and/or the birthplace of a former pope might “offend people.”
Am I the only one who thinks that failure to mention the fight against fascism and the murder of six million Jews might also get a few backs up…
Someone with no such qualms regarding self-censorship and blatant revisionism however is Madonna.
Yes, the Material Girl has – in keeping with her latest incarnation as a member of the landed gentry – entered into that noble British tradition of completely airbrushing out of history the fact that our royals were about as pally with Hitler as you could get without actually being Eva Braun.
Her new hagiographical biopic of Wallis Simpson, W.E, it has been noted, not so much skirts around but veers violently away from any suggestion that La Simpson and her other half Edward VIII were – how shall we put it? – somewhat rose-tinted in their view of the Fuhrer and his project.
About all she didn’t do was turn up with pom-poms and shout “give me an ‘A’…”
What’s a holocaust or two between friends, eh?
The ex-Mrs Ritchie, showing that she shared her erstwhile spouse’s eye for period detail, said she found no “empirical evidence” that Simpson was a nazi sympathiser.
Well thank you, pop’s answer to Simon Schama.
No doubt she employed the same forensic level of research she did when cobbling together Evita, which now I come to think of it also involved reinventing a dodgy old fascist.
At this juncture it’s important to note that there is absolutely no truth in the rumour doing the rounds that David Cameron is to appoint Madonna as his new PR guru.
Although this column understands there is a script in the pipeline for a bold reimagining of the life of a certain grocer’s daughter from Grantham which tells the hitherto undocumented story of how she discovered the Falklands and saved Arthur Scargill from a pit disaster by digging him out with her bare hands.
When it comes to rewriting the traditional version of events however, Madge is a mere amateur. There is only one true contender to the crown this week – the Anglicans.
Yes the CofE – with the honorable exception of Canon Giles Fraser – in cahoots with the London Corporation, has this week decided on a radical reinterpretation of the parable of Jesus casting the money lenders out of the temple.
At the same time as it was revealed that grasping company directors trousered average pay rises of 49 per cent last year the church showed in no uncertain terms where its sympathies lie.
The new version appears to be, “It’s true Jesus said: ‘My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves,’ but … if you mess with our cash flow and stop those wealthy tourists coming you’ll get your head stoved in.”
Royals told: open archives on family ties to Nazi regime. Historian urges that secret correspondence be made public to reveal the truth after Queen’s Nazi salute footage released: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 