Madonna – “Burning Up”

  Wow, this one goes quite a ways back, to a time in the early 80’s when I had the energy to dance all night but the only place I could afford to do that dancing was at Wal-Mart. Anyway, here we go…

  We start out with a close-up of one of Madonna’s eyeballs, which can be quite alarming if you’re not prepared for it, then we zip through what appear to be a string of random images. Flowers, lips, modified pickup trucks, a marble bust, and the first of many scenes where Madonna is wallering around in a random parking lot at night. This was made during a time when people who worked on music videos first discovered something called “the editing button”, and these people are whacking at that button like woodpeckers.

  Then we head back to that bust, the non-Madonna one, and we learn that it lights up, so that the eyes glow and it looks like something that menaced  William Shatner on an old Star Trek episode. I’m not sure how we’ll use this information in our lives, but we’ll see. Then we suddenly have Madonna, decked out in the leather and chains that she was so fond of as a freshman, lunging at the camera and then doing a few mad twirls, probably because the peroxide in her hair is still burning her scalp. Then she does something with her arm that makes a laser beam shoot at an otherwise innocent goldfish bowl. I guess she doesn’t care for seafood.

  Next up is a nice Risky Business tribute with sunglasses, followed by another visit to the parking lot, where Madonna is sitting on the ground and holding her legs to keep them from flying open. We get another shot of the sunglasses, which have now become radioactive because Madonna’s lust is so burning, and several more shots of the Parking Lot Madonna, who has finally stopped flopping around enough that she can model her dress for us, which appears to be something inspired by Roman togas, a cute little number that she can easily slip out of later in her career when she decides to pose naked as often as possible.

  Cut to some black-and-white footage where Madonna is supposed to be all sweaty with desire, but some makeup person must have done something she shouldn’t have, because Madonna just looks like she has malaria. The camera pulls back and we learn that Madonna is standing behind a heavy-duty X-ray machine that has enough lights flashing that somebody somewhere must have just hit a jackpot. That’s a little too busy, so we zoom back in to Madonna’s drenched head, and I guess she’s shaking off the malaria because now she has some color in her cheeks. Still a lot of wetness, though.

  Zip to somewhere else, where Sunglass Madonna goes into a dance that requires her to throw some of her many accessories around the room. (Based on the number of rubber bracelets she has on that one arm, this routine could go on for quite some time.) The main motif of the choreography has something to do with Madonna jumping around in a circle and clutching at her trendy half-jacket. Eventually she gets a little tired, so we cut to a dramatic sequence where Madonna is trying to open a door that has far too many knobs. Failing to get the damn thing open, she turns and just sings to us for a while, occasionally yanking on the chain at her throat to let us know that bondage apparently has a very special place in her heart.

  Brief bit where different eyeballs fill the screen. You can user your own judgment on that image.

  Then Bouncing Madonna is standing right in front of the complicated door, and just as it hits us that it appears to be shaped like a rowboat, it turns into one, which is really something that doors shouldn’t do, and suddenly we’re floating on a green sea with Toga-Dress Madonna resting comfortably inside it while she sings. This is followed by several shots of some guy driving an older model car, one of those barge-like things that can seat 12, as he races toward some destination. (Did he get word that Madonna has malaria?) He looks sort of like someone who might have gotten kicked out of Duran Duran for not wearing enough makeup, but that’s probably not important to our story.

  Time to check in with Parking Lot Madonna again, and she’s heavily involved in doing poses as if she’s a swimsuit model, despite the fact that she’s not wearing bathing attire and her ass is rolling around on asphalt instead of sand. (Could these people not afford to fly somewhere with a beach?) But at least she appears to be having a good time, and that’s all that really matters.

  Next up is an image of Madonna in the rowboat on the green sea, lying on her back and floating along peacefully, not bothering anyone. Suddenly, the Duran Duran guy drives by in his whale of a car, somehow managing to not sink as he plods along. (Maybe he used some of those rubber bracelets as floaties?) This is probably a political statement of some kind, but I don’t have enough dance training to fully understand it.

  Now we have a montage of Duran driving along less-watery highways, Madonna becoming super-heated in her Parking Lot of Lust, and Madonna suddenly disappearing from that rowboat (maybe she went to take out more insurance after nearly being killed at sea by a Buick?). Then we focus in on Parking Lot Madonna, who apparently still has a lot of naughty poses that she simply must get out of her system or she will implode. It appears that certain key moves help relieve the sexual pressure, like flipping her multi-hued hair around, crawling around on all fours, tugging in frustration at her clothing, and snarling at the camera whilst in the midst of presumable orgasm with an intensity that no one on the planet has ever experienced before.

  Meanwhile, Duran is still driving around, so I’m starting to think this is not someone you should call if you need him to get somewhere in a reasonable amount of time. His tardiness doesn’t really matter, though, since Madonna is still on fire in the parking lot and is happy to share with us even more ways one can express uncontrolled passion. (I’m surprised she isn’t physically riding the camera by now. I’m sure it crossed her mind.) This part of the her repertoire includes more hair-flipping, posing in a manner that reminds everyone she does indeed have breasts that have certain needs, and undulating in such a startling way that no one will ever use slot 12 in that parking lot again.

  The video comes to an end with slow-ass Duran finally arriving on the scene just as Madonna is eyeing the nearby shrubbery as possible relief, and even though we don’t get to see the discussion that immediately follows, things apparently don’t work out too well for Duran. The final shot is of Madonna driving the tanker away, all alone. I guess she doesn’t like to have sex with people who are wearing more eyeliner than she is…

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