"La Isla Bonita": ¿Te gusta mi vagina, senor?

Comin' at you full throttle and in horny Technicolor... my Catholic upbringing! Time to confess my unutterable sin: I've been avoiding Madonna's '80s trash trove.

I mean no offense, merry Maglodytes. It's just that... well, how shall we put it? Ah yes! These videos make fun of themselves. If Fucky Star's not knocking paws with a Venetian lion-man in a Goodwill wedding dress, then she's enraging Danny Aiello with her unladylike pregnancy. Come now, ladies, that's last week's episode of I Love Money. To keep things interesting, we'll analyze a video that offers equal sections of fun and epic discomfort. Please welcome to the program our long-admired, heavily herpe'd international trollop, "La Isla Bonita."

The fifth single off Madouchebag's 1986 blockbuster True Blue, "La Isla Bonita" is an homage to Latin America, where "the sun sets so high," "all of nature [is] wild and free," and also where Madonna and Sean Penn hide out after he bloodies the uppity paparazzi. Naturally, the video takes place in a blissful city saturated with grinning street musicians, dancing schoolchildren, and I guess no parents. Wuh-oh. Careful bouncing that elementary booty around the overzealous conga player, little Conchita. And don't buy his "chicle." Except the sad thing is you know they're MySpace friends.

The video opens with well-mimed guitar plucking by... my least favorite Los Lonely Boy? Did I even know I had a least favorite? Serious introspection occurring on this side of the blog, y'all. Stand clear.
How far is heaven, indeed. Hopefully not much farther than the unemployment office, from the looks of it.

Upstairs in a pretty-spacious-all-things-considered apartment, a conservatively attired Madonna peers out a window into her barrio below. Already we suspend our disbelief in record numbers. Still, the neighborhood's friendly, and Madonna evinces some credible, if melodramatic longing. The tear under her eye is a bit much, Director Mary Lambert.


After not spotting the amount of olive skin she hoped for in the 'hood, Madonna gives up on selecting a father for her first daughter. However, she does retreat to an altar, where she kneels, prays silently, and clutches a rosary. Ohhhh, the obvious career foreshadowing. Two years later, Madonna conjured some seriously perverse holiness, complete with crucifixes and rosaries, with the Pepsi-prickling "Like a Prayer." To be fair, though, from 1987 until 1989, she settled for dire unholiness.

Fear is the correct response, Griffin Dunne.

The video shifts to the street for more shots of our entranced Los Lonely Boy's pain-strumming. He's stirring up quite a crowd down there. Senseless Trivia Note: One of those boiz is Benicio Del Toro. Another one looks just like the late bassist Jaco Pastorius. Maybe Madonna threw in Debi Mazar somewhere too, who knows. And honestly, that Los Lonely Boy could be Sandra Bernhard. But before you start playing Where's Waldo with the prancing demi-celebrities, Madonna undergoes her newest reinvention right before your eyes!


Ow, ow! The rest of us foolishly pigeonholed the ladybug-flamenco get-up for the homos in Paris is Burning, but that's what's refreshing about Madonna. She reassures you that she's the gayest dude here. Seeeeriously though, my God, Lady M is GORGEOUS. Brunette always worked better on her, unless David Fincher or Herb Ritts helmed the lighting cues.

From here on out, Madonna transforms back and forth from pallid piety to harlot Miss Scarlet. The video weighs the conflicting, but ultimately interlocked worlds of religion and passion. And what interlocks them, you ask? Oh, Jenny, it's THE MUSIC, dammit! Of course! Yes, yes. I almost forgot to tell you: "La Isla Bonita" is a prequel to High School Musical 2.

Ultimately, flamenco Madonna heeds the encouragement of the swaying men on the street and sashays downstairs to entertain their daffy erections. She spins and flirts, even approaching Los Lonely and whsipering to him, "Te dijo te amo," which means, "He told you, 'I love you.'" Why Madonna is speaking in gay cryptograms to the hetero daddy, I will never know. But whatever, because Madonna ends the video by ditching them all and skipping down the block to her own beat and newfound joie de vive. Everyone thinks she's weird for that. Where are you going, Madonna? I'd love to hear a passerby guess your profession when you approach the street corner.

"La Isla Bonita" remains one of the most universally listenable Madonna tracks from the '80s. While Madonna produced flashier, more popular singles, "La Isla Bonita" feels so timeless, a genuine dance ballad with soul and spunk. The video's downright unassuming, but I think we can embrace carnal slow-play from "All the Way" Mae every so often. I wish the religious half of the video yielded more thoughtful results than a few lit candles (as well as an apartment that didn't feel like, hrm, a suicide), but I just-about love this video.

By the way, I guess "La Isla Bonita" is secretly about gypsies and shit too: