I finally got around to watching the documentary Strike a Pose this weekend, which follows up with the dancers from Madonna’s Blond Ambition Tour 25 years later. Jose, Luis, Kevin, Slam, Carlton, and Gabriel are some of the first gay men I can recall seeing represented in a film. I used to watch Truth or Dare over and over when I was young on a VHS that my brother had secretly taped from HBO. I didn't have the words for it then, but I remember being in awe of how unapologetic they were in their queerness. How fierce and funny and talented.
To revisit them in this new documentary, directed by Ester Gould and Reijer Zwaan, was unexpectedly moving. The film robbed me of my comfortable ignorance regarding what happened to them after Truth or Dare, and complicates that film’s narrative, which is defined by the artificial lifespan of a world tour, by introducing the messiness of life in the real world. How the struggle to survive persists on the other side of success. How the bond that forms among a group of young performers is still deeply felt after decades. How HIV/AIDS continues to affect gay men today, and the terrible absence that remains in wake of those who never got to live out their full creative potential. I felt tremendous compassion and continued admiration for these men who were, to varying degrees, blessed and cursed by their association with Madonna.
On that note, the film also made me think about the complicated position of the pop star in the gay consciousness. It's hard not to cringe in retrospect at Madonna positioning herself as "mother" to this group of mostly non-white dancers, co-opting their lives for the sake of her own myth-making, and then turning a profit on it (See: bell hooks for the best take on this). We give these women our money in exchange for the chance to experience liberation for three and half minutes. To project ourselves onto their having transcended their heartache, their oppression, the unfair expectations placed on them by an uncaring society. They deliver. The song ends. What else do they owe us?
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