The Cost of Utopia

In bell hooks' interview about Madonna, she brought up a lot of interesting points.  She talked about how Madonna began her career as a huge feminist trying to change the music scene.  However, as time went on she needed to reinvent herself as a way to remain profitable.  In reinventing herself, she fell back into patriarchy and became a prime example of greed. It's pretty apparent that money is something that has a leading role in our society and culture and everyone seems to want more money.

We can think back to this idea of Utopia in which everyone is judged based on who they are as an individual.  This is really as ideal world, but as I previously discussed, I don't find it to be a realistic thing. When you put bell hooks' Madonna discussion it brings another interesting point into the mix.  Not only do people use sex and gender as a form of identity, they also use it as a way to make money.  Choose almost any media text and I'm sure that there will be some example in which a person is being paid for being a certain sex or gender.  Because we are such a money driven society, I believe this just adds to the unrealistic idea of Utopia.  We are constantly striving to make more money and this is something that is making many, many people money so I can't imagine it ending any time soon.  As ideal the concept of Utopia sounds, I don't think greed is something that will ever go away and if using one's sexuality and/or gender means making money, I can't imagine people turning away from it.  As unfortunate as it is, sexuality and gender is a business and it looks like it's here to stay.