Is there anything more depressing in this world than the gradual taming of an artist once considered edgy?

Consider for a moment Leni Riefenstahl, director of the Nazi “documentary” Triumph of the Will (which could have just as easily been titled Hooray for Hitler!). The innovative (if politically repugnant) filmmaker recently celebrated her 100th birthday, and is unrepentant as ever, insisting that she was never active in the Nazi party and had never been Der Fuhrer’s fuck toy. Now foraging into her second century, certainly nobody is accusing Riefenstahl of mellowing in her old age.

Now ponder the case of one Madonna Ciccone, once an icon of cheekiness, and considered an innovator in her own right for empowering female music artists with the ability to command their own sexuality, rather than being cheesecake fodder fabricated by male Svengalis. For years, the Michigan-born Material Girl was a one-woman engine of controversy as she explored images of bisexuality, promiscuity, and pointy Gaultier bras.

These days, however, in the wake of childbearing (which, in all fairness, surely didn’t dull Chrissie Hynde’s sharp-tongued perspective), marriage (to British director and Tarantino knock-off Guy Ritchie) and relocation to England, the woman close friends refer to as “Maddy” has been sounding not at all like the provocateur of old.

Recently, Madonna was quoted in the New York Times as being “terrified” of shooting some sex scenes for Ritchie’s remake of the Italian film Swept Away – sex scenes that sounded about as “tawdry” as any fare you could typically find on American cable TV. Even Ritchie dismissed them as “a bit of rolling around in the sand.”

So what the fuck? Is this the same woman who, just a few years back, put out a book called Sex that included photos of her in suggestive poses with other women, and occasionally dogs? The same one who all but admitted publicly to having had sex with Sandra Bernhard (something of a celebrity lesbian, or celesbian, rite of passage)? The same one shoved her well-trimmed snatch in Willem Dafoe’s face in Body of Evidence, a film so bad that Shannon Tweed might have turned it down? And who simulated fellatio on a piece of produce in the infamous Truth or Dare?

I dare say not. Ever since Madonna moved to England, in fact, she’s gotten increasingly less alluring and more annoying. Save for the occasional brazen “F-word” at art awards ceremonies, Miss M’s profile has been slightly less endearing than that of, say, rival Geri Halliwell. But at least the former Ginger Spice’s accent is genuine. Mrs. Ritchie’s pretentious and affected Dover-via-Detroit dialect makes pal Gwyneth Paltrow’s seem like Dame Judi Dench by comparison.

Worse yet for the celesbian community is Madonna’s Anne Heche factor. Like a handful of high-profile ladies, Madonna “experimented” with a bit of oh-so-fashionable bisexuality, just to settle with a “macho man” who appears to have tamed the former wild thing into a proper wife.

In these trying times for the pop tart, am I the only one who yearns for the drunken, fleshy (that sinewy, full-time personal trainer look has not served the Material Girl in her later years) babe who writhed around on the floor in ’84 crooning “Like a Virgin”? Brazen tackiness may have its limitations, but it sure beats the hell out of faux-sophisticated pretension. Just ask Kylie Minogue ... .