What Ever Happened to Camille Paglia?
It’s been twenty years since Camille Paglia became a worldwide celebrity with her erudite doorstop of a book Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. Hardly a sentence of that ambitious work — in which she argued that civilization is essentially the product of male creativity, which in turn is the product of a fear of women — wasn’t provocative; and certainly nobody on earth agreed with every word of it. But that wasn’t the point. Paglia’s book was sui generis, staggering in its originality. Some of it might make you angry, but, at its best, it also made you think. Though Paglia was (and still is) a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, she’d managed to produce a work that broke all the academic rules. It was sweeping in its scope, taking in the whole of Western art and literature from ancient Greece to modern times, and encompassing both the highest of high culture and the lowest of the low. And it was flagrant in its political incorrectness, celebrating Shakespeare, Dante, and other canonical “Dead White Males” while dismissing those obscurantist Frenchmen — Derrida, Lacan, and company — who had become deities in the humanities departments of American universities. Though Paglia celebrated — and identified herself with — the rebellious spirit of the 1960s, she openly deplored the PC dogmas that had grown out of that era, infecting not only the academy but Western society generally.
Paglia outraged plenty of people, but few were more hostile to her than the leaders of the feminist establishment. For not only did she dismiss women’s contribution to Western civilization (“There are no female Mozarts”); she also took aim at the women’s movement under Gloria Steinem, which she accused of puritanism, philistinism, anti-male bias, and intellectual vacuity. In Paglia’s view, people like Steinem and NOW chairwoman Patricia Ireland were ridiculous yet dangerous figures who consistently represented women as victims, reinforcing Victorian notions of them as the weaker sex. For Paglia, the truth was precisely the opposite: women, she argued, were gifted with an innate power over men — the power of sex — and she idolized celebrities, Madonna above all, whose pagan eroticism, as she saw it, embodied that power. It was Madonna, not Steinem, Paglia insisted, who was the real feminist.
Almost overnight, Paglia became both a leading cultural critic and a prominent pop-culture figure. She made good copy and even better TV. She was so full of energy that she came off like a veritable force of nature, a living illustration of her own thesis that it was, indeed, women who were the powerful sex. (A 1991 profile of her in New York magazine was entitled “Woman Warrior.”) On two 1992 installments of Later with Bob Costas, a fervent, fast-talking, and proudly egomaniacal Paglia — who managed at once to be deadly serious and hilariously funny — said that she despised the “weepy, whiny, white-middle-class ideology” of the “Stalinist” women’s movement under Steinem and that she sought nothing less than its “complete destruction.” Unlike Steinem, who, she argued, spoke only for privileged white women, Paglia claimed to “speak for the ordinary woman out there.”
In those first years after Sexual Personae, Paglia seemed to turn up everyplace. By 1992 she had churned out enough irreverent, entertaining essays for a sizable collection, Sex, Art, and American Culture. Two years later along came another grab-bag, Vamps and Tramps. For a while, the pieces just seemed to pour out of her.
But Paglia was too hot not to cool down. As the years went by, her output declined. And what she did turn out seemed increasingly familiar. She was repeating herself. What had once been provocative was now stale. And her determination to inject herself and her personal history into everything she wrote grew tiresome. One became increasingly aware of her recycling of the same old self-referential phrases:
As an Italian-American, my premises are usually Mediterranean.
The Color Purple helped to displace complex, major world texts like Dante’s The Divine Comedy from introductory courses — a process that I, as an Italian-American, am ethnically entitled to protest.
I think the word minority is an insult. I’m speaking as an Italian-American.
As an Italian-American, as a very hot personality born under the sign of Aries, I’ve tried to drift things towards emotional extremes.
I feel Italian Catholic and will be Catholic until the day I die because it is inextricable from my cultural identity as an Italian American.
Hmph. Thanks for the entertaining essay about someone I knew nothing about, and obviously for good reason. I see no discernable difference between Madonna and Lady Ga Ga, and it sounds as though this Camille Paglia person just grew up to realize it. I’ve never understood the fascination with Madonna, and I certainly don’t understand it with Lady Ga Ga. Both are or were manufactured. Anyway, not the point. Why does this person not speak out against Islam? Probably because for all her sneering, the liberal establishment has beaten her down over the years, like it does to anyone who steps off the reservation. She’s unwilling to risk whatever career she has left to criticize the uncriticizable; to join with the fanatical (sarcasm) right-wing in denouncing the religion of peace. As you said, her shtick is old, as most shock journalism becomes.
Or she could just take the gutless Seth McFarlane position of fear. Criticising Islam often gets you death threats, or in the case of certain Dutchmen… death.
Good thing she did not speak against Islam
good thing that you were forced to notice that she did not speak against Islam 
Paglia not speaking against Islam is not differnt from Paglia speaking in favour of Islam. Paglia’s greatness lies in the fact that she can make people uneasy with things she ‘says’ and things that she does ‘not’ say. Cheers 
Good thing she did not speak against Islam
good thing that you were forced to notice that she did not speak against Islam 
Paglia not speaking against Islam is not differnt from Paglia speaking in favour of Islam. Paglia’s greatness lies in the fact that she can make people uneasy with things she ‘says’ and things that she does ‘not’ say. Cheers 
Another fine piece, Bruce. I hope that your own legal problems with the PC trash are going away.
About the time Obama’s approval ratings started to rapidly head to the basement, Obama-supporter Paglia (who had been repeatedly saying that he was being hurt by his advisers and staff) announced that she was not going to be writing for a while, as she was working on a book under deadline. Then she disappeared.
When I saw a new column had appeared in the overseas press, I thought perhaps it would have something to do with the situation here in the US. Instead, it was a very long analysis about Lady Gaga.
I now think she is avoiding writing in order to avoid saying anything critical about Obama, and to avoid admitting she misread him completely.
Is feminism deaf to the women in Islam?
Feminism was never about helping women to live better lives. It was always about promoting the leftist agenda, even at the expense of the women on whose behalf it pretended to be working. Camille Paglia, as an Obama supporter, was and is a leftist. Until she comes to her senses, she is not to be taken seriously.
Camille would say, if she had the courage of her own convictions: “That’s because as a product of the 60s OK we didn’t like respect OK enough the institutions OK and so now we see a Marxist Alinsky revolutionary OK picking up were the OK tenured New Historicist PC trash in the Ivy League OK left off OK but we need to get back to appreciating the hard work the white male OK who is always like be bashed by the cowardly feminists OK have put into institution building OK because soon at the rate we’re going there will be nothing left OK.” Whew…
Duh duh duh me conservative me think big thoughts and think me know what best for uhmerica like tax breaks and deregulation and jesus duh duh duh yeehaw heeyuck. What profound insights you offer. Sound like a typical conservative to me.
Lady Who??
Lady Gaga.
Cartman performs “Poker Face” better than Lady Gaga
I’ve never even heard the Lady Gaga version, but, unreservedly second that opinion.
“Is there still hope that Paglia will step up to the plate and produce anything remotely resembling a major work about the religion that represents the greatest threat to women’s equality in the world today? Or is it time to write her off as a trivial-minded sniper at vapid celebrities, a has-been who, quite simply, has nothing useful whatsoever to say about the most serious issues of our time?”
Who really cares about Camille Paglia? I doubt conservatives outside of New York and Los Angeles (if there really are any in Los Angeles) ever really heard of her. If you want to reach conservatives in Middle America, those people the mainstream media mock as “flyover country,” you need to be more like Laura Ingraham or Sarah Palin. Erudite doesn’t really cut it when you’re in a struggle for power with liberal Democrats. What was it that James Carville once said? “It’s hard for the other guy to respond when you have your fist in his face.” Erudite may work in the salons of Washington DC, but on main street, you need a fighter.
As someone who welcomed Paglia’s view of the feminist movement, particularly of Steinem and Ireland, I too have been disappointed in her silence when it comes to the abuse of women under Islam. I think the problem is that we thought that Paglia was a different kind of leftist who actually saw the world for what it was. The truth of the matter is she disappoints as all the so-called female defenders do. The only one they decry as destroying women are the Sarah Palins of the world. Is it not a wonder that most young women do not and will never identify with the feminist movement. The truth is there is no feminist movement, not sure if there truly was one beyond a few books, marches and self-titled harpy-whores anyway. It is just a shill for the left and for certain members of the democratic party. Feminists embarrass themselves and unfortunately so does Paglia, may her self-respect rest in peace.
If you read everything Paglia wrote from the moment Palin came on the scene you will see that Camille was by far the biggest Palin advocate. Her reputation at Salon was basically destroyed because of her Palin support… support of the woman, not the politics
I would have to admit that I became so disgusted with the Obama worship I stopped reading quite a number of women that I used to, Paglia included. So no I never did read her defense of Palin. I am glad that she at least had enough gumpshun left in her for that. Now how about the women who are suffering under gender apartheid in Islamic countries.When do any of them, Paglia included , say and do something about their existence?
I have to agree, she has been supportive of Palin the woman, tho not her politics…conversely it has been disappointing that, for someone who bucks the PC, she has not been outspoken about how Islam affects women…..
Steinem has never issued a fatwa. Paglia is a backyard warrior. No guts to fight in enemy territory.
What can we say… Islam will kill you… Feminism, western culture, lady gaga, sex of all kinds, none of those will kill you and your family… But islam will kill you.
When some just wants to live the life she’s earned with talent and effort, just wants to be left alone, taking on islam is not such a good idea.
The difference between real courage and just a talent for pot stirring, i suppose.
Another, not unrelated trend with Paglia, was her initial disillusionment with Obama that went dead silent last fall just before the Health Care Reactor went critical in our nation. I think that she is either a) disappointed that “her side” turned into thugs and she is depressed or b) she has been either asked or paid to shut up by progressives because she was damaging the cause.
It is funny, because she is an illustration of her own point. Just as there are no female Mozarts, there are also no female David Horowitzs.
OUCH! That’ll leave a mark!
Caroline Glick
Just because you don’t see them does not mean that they are not there.
No female David Horowitz. Now that is a pleasing thought.
It’s sad that so many prominent, intellectual women just don’t want to come to grips with this issue. I keep hoping that Sarah Palin will take it up. It would, more than anything, show people that she was out-doing the feminists at their own game.
WTH? There are women all over the place writing about Islam and what horror it is!
Pamela Geller, AtlasShrugs;
Nonie Darwish, daughter of a Palestinian terrorist;
Wafa Sultan, ex Syrian psychiatrist;
Irshad Manji, gay canadian Muslims;
Debbie Schlussel, US lawyer; Diana West, columnist;
Brigitte Gabriel, American Congress Truth, Lebanese Christian and a great friend of Israel;
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, ex Muslim and writer and prolific speaker;
Caroline Glick, as mentioned, Israeli columnist and editor of Latma satire site;
Phyllis Chesler, old school feminist and prolific author;
even in Australia, we had Pamela Bone, a columnist who unfortunately died of cancer.
A couple of women who run the Australian Islamist Monitor in Aust, prefer to remain anon;
Michelle Malkin, journalist and webwriter;
the women who run womenagainstsharia.blogspot.com
Excellent work!
Read Noam Chomsky and Karen Armstrong. They are better than all these pseduo-scholars put together.
Reading Chomsky requires some semblance of intelligence, which I can tell most people here do not have. Someone actually put down Michelle Malkin as a person with qualifications to speak out… wow. There’s your conservative version of an intellectual for ya (re: a retard who can say the same talking points over and over and over again without a single idea, fact, or truth to speak of).
I think Camille is dead on regarding Lady Gaga and Hitchens et al & she’s about the only quasi-leftist saying such things so that makes what she says very relevant.
Yep.
I still find her relevant if not quite as creative and disruptive a force as she used to be.
Bawer is spot on! Paglia was invigorating and provocative. Her politics may not have been mine but so what? She shook things up. Her take was always welcomed. Too many on the left and the right are just boring. I’d like to know her take on today’s issues, especially the Islamic threat.
It’s a shame, because she used to be one of those thinkers whose ideas were always stimulating, whether you agreed with her or not. Now the Left sneers at her for thinking independently, while conservatives have precious little interest in her gushing over Obama or telling us what a great Italian American Pelosi is
Thuhnk! (the sound of a gauntlet being thrown down)
Dr. Paglia’s response?
Dude!! I thought the same exact thing! I’m reading the article and thinking: “He is totally calling her out.”
Thank you, Bruce Bawer, for this brilliant and enjoyable essay. You’ve summarized the hyper Paglia’s books neatly. One quibble: Although it ends in “s”, “politics” is generally a singular noun.
She doesn’t like the children she and Madonna spawned. Even Madonna shielded her own daughter from the world she helped usher in, as if to say that it is the parents fault for not being able to shield their children from what has been churned out of Hollywood, an assembly line of debauchery. She used her great wealth to create a security fence around herself and her children while exposing the rest of us to her hedonism.
They should be proud of Lady Gaga, she is an interpretation of their debauchery that is more clever than they will ever hope to be. Madonna mocked the spirituality of Catholic Italian Americans and now she want us to think she has a deeper spirituality of the Kabbala, as if after mocking a branch of Judaism, she can pretend to care for the roots.
The young always hold a mirror up to their human creators, and many don’t like what they see.
Lynn, kudos for this comment. It took my breath away! Very insightful.
Great essay, also Mr. Bawer. I had the honor of speaking with Ms Paglia often when I was a student. I’m sad to watch her courageous honesty seem to pass away. Maybe it will return.
Well done
Lady Gaga appears to be very clever, possibly talented but certainly boring.
She is ripping off Madonna as sure as Marilyn Manson ripped off Alice Cooper.
Now this toxic tripe has become burlesque. YAWN…..
Flavor of the month. I hope she is saving her money.
Gaga has by now amassed a nice millionaire fortune. Shouldn’t you be worshiping her, then?
I wrote and delivered the same commentary that Bruce has delivered here spontaneously upon reading Paglia’s Gaga column.
I said “Islam, Ground Zero Mosque, Tea Party, Vacationing King Obama, Trillion Dollar Debt, Czar O’Rama, Socialized Medicine, Stoning Rape Victims, Housng Crash? And all she can think to write about is Gaga? WTF?
Ms. Paglia’s infatuation with Obama was silly and naive, although her crticism of his administration was usually incisive and funny. Like most liberals at that point in time, she treated Obama like some kind of god-child.
And I agree, Bruce. At a time when the fate of women, as well as gays and lesbians (and Paglia is a lesbian), is so very much to the fore, you’d think she would have something more relevant to chat about than Lady Gag Me.
Yes, Dog, if Paglia really were a serious writer, she would have engaged with something a little bit more meaningful than Madonna = Lady Gaga.
As I recall, this article came out right around 9/11—which says something very sad about Camille Paglia. I don’t think anything happened to her; I think people are just starting to realize what a lightweight she really was all along. In my opinion, she got too much credit, and adulation, from Conservatives for criticizing the feminist movement, so they whooped her up, and ignored some of her sillier views, and the fact that, despite supposedly being this great student of western culture, she really doesn’t seem to know all that much about it (outside of the pop-cult stuff.)
Want a really good woman writer who speaks out against Islam? Try Orianna Fallaci.
She would not be a very effective speaker these days — she died three years ago.
Eric R., Orianna Fallaci was a writer, not a speaker, and her books are still in print. Her death didn’t change that. Check them out! Start with, “The Rage and the Pride.” You can still read her, just as you can still read authors like Shakespeare, and Jane Austen, who’ve shuffled off this mortal coil.
She is still dead. Brave voice or not, there is nothing more we will ever hear from her.
Paglia was dead-on regarding Lady Gaga. LGG imitates the form of Madonna’s schtick without the substance: the brazen, in-your-face heterosexuality. Gaga is all hair and costumes, outrageous but curiously asexual, and her fanbase reflects that: gay men and pubescent girls, like Project Runway.
The secret to Madonna is that she had no substance. She is cameleon who continuoustly morphs into something else to preserve her celebrity. A friend of mind told me that if you ever listen to the Gaga in an acoustic performance her talent really shows and it’s much more then Madonna. Apparently she looked around at the market for female singer-songwriters and found no place to go. She made a business decision to go for the Madonna pop celebrity market. Clearly she was on to something. I don’t think the world of popular culture is looking for the next Natalie Merchant, Alanis Morissette or Sarah Mclachlan right now.
You want to know why an aging Camile Paglia doesn’t like Lady Gaga? She’s too young to have a woman crush on her. (If you don’t know, Paglia is a lesbian, and a rather hot one at that.) Why is Bruce Bawer put off by Paglia? The Camilia Paglia who advance homosexuality with her Sexual Personna and her crush on Madonna is no more.
THANK YOU.
Madonna is awful; always has been, always will be. Her music is raunched-up ABBA, and responded to by the same market (middle-class white girls and gay men) for the same reasons.
For years I’ve been wondering why someone who had such interesting things to say about the role of popular music in American culture (comparing Elvis to Lord Byron and the Duke of Buchingham, for example) never sat down and wrote a damn rock-critic book. It would have been a hell of a lot more worthwhile than having to endure the cyclical sneering/praising of the hipster literati. She claimed to love Keith Richards and have dug the Velvet Underground back in the day.
But no, always Madonna, and Britney, and Rickie Martin (remember him?), and more Madonna, and now the Ga of Ga’s. I’m guessing that she actually knows less than a tinker’s fart about rock music and can only fake awareness. She completely misinterpreted the early 90′s grunge movement as somehow directed against the 60′s, when it was really a massive middle-finger to the 80′s. Her defense of disco and dance-pop have their merits, but she’s only a dabbler.
I have at least the satisfaction of watching everyone else grow as tired as I was of Madonna back in the day.
Can we get back to the part about the hot lesbians?
Oh for heaven’s sake who cares?
Madonna and lady gaga are pop stars! They’re supposed to be outrageous so they can put on good shows and perform well. They are not the touchstones of political life!!
i can’t stand writers who write about pop stars, generally with the aim of criticising them for not being ladylike or whatever. They’re singers, generally who perform with the aim of making people bop, not ideological lodestars.
oh, and I like Madonna’s music. Not familiar with the Gaga music.;)
At the end of the day, just another intellectual coward, hiding in academia. Her works were interesting for the elites. The everyday working woman has had to go it alone. The everyday working woman has had to endure the daily onslaughts of Marxist Feminism on her own. Ms Paglia offered no help and was/is too cowardly to stand on the ramparts with her “sisters”. Women like my ex wife, my daughters, all great American women have fought their battles and won on their terms with ZERO help from Camille baby. If she never published another word, the world wouldn’t miss a thing.
Maybe there is another reason the Tea Party isn’t a third party (yet).
Has Sarah Palin saved the GOP?
“Consider: If Newt Gingrich or Glenn Beck held Palin’s political clout, they might very well have used this power to encourage independent conservative challenges, figuring the resulting GOP chaos would redound to their benefit. Palin rejected this course, even though it probably would have been in her political interest.
Consider also that Palin has received no credit for being loyal to a party establishment that continues to treat her with maximum low regard. Americans have never sent to the White House an individual rejected four years earlier as a vice presidential nominee. So it is doubtful that Palin stuck with the GOP because she hoped to be rewarded with the chance to lead it in 2012. Think about it: A lesser person would have opted for payback, not party.
That the GOP establishment fails to appreciate the debt it owes her is reflective of the elitist outlook that is contributing to Tea Party activism nationwide. Leaving aside the substance of her policies, there is no denying the “populist conservative” roots of Palin’s politics. She is a “bottom-up,” not a “top-down,” leader, a rare commodity on the national scene.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/16/AR2010091606348.html
Lady Gaga projects asexuality. That is not only interesting but perhaps significant, given that the young (teens and early twentysomethings) have made her their representative figure. So Paglia may be on to something important.
those that remain silent about Islam out of fear are the true Islamaphobes today …
Say what you will about the cowardice of feminists who do not speak out against misogyny in Islam, their cowardice is based on reality. “Speak truth to power” actually means Speak truth to power that you know will not punish you.” They know the track record of the Islamofascists. They know they risk bodily harm by speaking out against misogyny in Islam.
I think you are asking too much.
I thought the Lady Gaga article was irrelevant because, hmm, the subject matter is irrelevant. Interesting pop music is still there, but it has gone underground and overseas, so commentary on “big name” pop music belongs to the Onion (not intended as an insult, just an observation).
But a good cultural critic is one thing, someone who can take the latest twists in our ever changing world is a rare bird indeed. Of course Fallaci stands out, but even Bridgette Bardot could get could get herself a couple of whopping big fines for simply reporting that when she looks at Muslim practice, she sees the 7th century.
Which brings us to perhaps the real problem; I don’t think you could hold your job in academia and write honestly about Islam. The cost to Paglia would be too great. Its one thing to blog about fathers killing their daughters here, or write about forced cousin marriages from the safety of the Weekly Standard. But in academia it would be the end of your friendships, your employment, probably where you lived, no more honory degress, no more publishing in an academic journal, the end. Your next gig would be something, but not in academia. You could ask a younger and more idealistic person to do that. I don’t know if they should accept it.
So the poor lady probably doesn’t have any hit records left in her, the world has moved on since 1990 (remember in 1990 the left still hated “conservative” Islam, boy those were the days). Its okay, leave her alone.
I assume she has tenure, which means that all she would be risking is popularity with the cool kids.
Interesting that ALL THREE women (Madonna Louise Ciccone, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanott, and Camille Anna Paglia) were born, baptized and raised Roman Catholic. And Ms Paglia is still self absorbed on that experience.
Ms Paglia is following through on a “traditional” academic trait, making a ground breaking “connection” while still in the student process (masters or doctoral candidate) and there after for the remainder of their life, making only minimal contributions in scholarship and discovery (to support) their early work.
She is no more a genius on Islam and women than Stephen Hawking is on the existence of G-d. Neither has stepped out beyond their narrow field of expertise to expand upon it.
I don’t mean to insult, but how can you criticize someone as “not an expert” for not stepping out of their expertise. Do you know more than Mr. Hawking (whom I agree is quite a weirdo on anything but physics) on G-D?
I think I see what Sandra’s saying. A lot of academics– probably most academics– are more interested in a safe, easy job than in advancing the knowledge that is supposedly their stock-in-trade. Camille Paglia hasn’t tried to take her ideas about art & culture anywhere, she just rehashes the same old stuff. Similarly, most professors I know study one narrow problem for the bulk of a career that lasts thirty or forty years. These people certainly are experts within those very narrow fields, but that’s hardly praiseworthy; they don’t have the guts to push the boundaries of their own knowledge.
When they do go outside their field, they go so far outside it that they know they won’t be taken too seriously. Hawking can say whatever he likes about God, space aliens, or Star Trek, and nobody back at the university will care. But will he ever again say anything radically new about black holes? It’s unlikely; people in his position usually lack the guts to risk being wrong. Tenure, emeritus status, the Nobel Prize– these symbols of intelligence are some of the worst things that can happen to an intellectual, because they make it socially awkward for the recipient to utter the three words from which all inquiry necessarily begins: “I don’t know.”
This is a brilliant and timely article which not only begs the question concerning Paglia but asks where is the liberal feminist who will step up and denounce Islam’s treatment of women. The answer is simple: most (Paglia included, probably) are Islamophobic, i.e., they are afraid of saying anything against the Religion of Perpetual Outrage because they’re afraid that it will cost them their lives.
I appreciate that you find liberals hypocritical about islam, as they may well be.
But for some of them, there’s now a real sincere reason.
They don’t want to fuel more useless islamophobia that doesn’t solve islam’s problems but only results in more US homeland support for wars on islam abroad, which they think makes for stronger islamic extremism and more dead american soldiers.
If you support wars of liberation then your disappointment with them is logical. But they don’t see these wars as liberating, just horrifically wasteful.
I am a liberal feminist, and I denounce Islam’s barbaric treatment of women.
I think the real point here is, how far does the courage of her convictions extend? Something has either silenced her or caused her to withdraw with some kind of bitterness, some loss of creativity or spirit.
Politically, I can see how she might have been silenced by the left for their own reasons, and why she may have gone along with that. She was never NOT a leftist, just someone troubled by the weakness of the people who took up that position and defended it. So she attacked her own side to strengthen it, you might say. To strip it of foolishness. An honorable effort while it lasted.
But if it’s genuine concern over the consequences of frankly discussing Islam, then we have seen the limit of her personal courage. Dismissing this or that cultural figure is “edgy” or “risky” in liberal speak, meaning of course it carries no genuine risk at all. But dismissing or speaking ill of Islam can cost you your life, or that of someone you care about. There is very good reason to presume, before speaking, that it may have an intolerable cost. The comforts of being a well-off and well-known American are no padding against the lethal viciousness of an Islam angered.
Calling church people hypocrites won’t get you killed.
I’m sorry but this is ridiculous. Liberals are often hyperbolously PC and intolerant. But no one is “silencing” a US columnist with the american free speech standard as it is.
Maybe you just don’t know what she thinks and that’s it. Conspiracy is hardly evidenced.
As for islam killing its critics. it has happened. that doesn’t make it the norm. it just doesn’t. and please, criticizing anything, the church included, can get you killed if a crazy person reacts that way.
it wasn’t the whole mosque that conspire to kill theo van gogh, okay? it was a crazy person.
and don’t accuse me of apologizing and being pro islam because all i said was , see above.
I knew little about Paglia, but a friend told me about this column and I was impressed that someone at Salon could write this. But I think it heralded her end, as we all know that leftists that don’t toe the party line completely are soon gone.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/camille_paglia/2009/09/09/healthcare/
Bruce,
First of all, it’s good to see that you are alive and well — and not in some Norwegian jail for daring to speak the truth. Frankly, I’d wish you had broken your long silence from your blog (the last posting being June 15) talking about your troubles with the Norwegian authorities for daring to have defied their Islamophilic/Anti-Semitic ideology.
However, with regards to Paglia:
a) She has not been entirely critical of Palin — sure she does not agree with her politically (for the most part) but as a potent, alternative brand of feminism, she has expressed more than a grudgin admiration.
b) Paglia is, despite some of her columns, a pretty hard lefty — she supported Nader in both 2000 and 2004 and Obama in 2008. You don’t get much more hard left than that.
Having said that, I await her response to you.
As a Slavic-American, I want to cross myself and down a shot of vodka every time Paglia says “as an Italian-American.” Other vodka triggers besides the everlasting viva Italia and Madonna worship: the obligatory Paglia odes to “heroic” drag queens, Keith Richards, de Sade, “Dionysian” and “Apollonian ” (hardly concepts which originated with Paglia) and “talkin’ about my (Greatest) G-g-generation.” (Paglia’s generation seems to consist of a small clique of people she ran with at Harpur College, not ‘80’s yuppies, or the people who foisted speech codes, the race card and Foucault on us.)
I’ve always found her an interesting mix of good sense and nonsense, someone whose writings I enjoy, but take with a bushel basket – no, make that a dump truck – full of salt. (Actually, I think her criticism of Hitchens is on the mark – it appears to be next to impossible for today’s prominent New Atheists to muster anything but contempt for the religious impulse and that hampers their understanding of not only the Islamic world, but America.) To her credit, Paglia has far shrewder insights into the Palin phenomenon then Palin’s detractors, which partially makes up for the starry-eyed b.s. she wrote about Obama, stuff which was nearly as embarrassing as the tongue-baths she’s (figuratively) given Madonna.
Not surprisingly, she has nothing to say about Muslim oppression of women. But, heck, what can you expect of someone who took her eye off the big picture after the success of “Sexual Personae” to analyze and comment on every bit of trivial cultural fluff in the air, from Amy Fisher to Sandra Bernhardt? If I remember correctly, there was supposed to be a second volume of “Sexual Personae.” That’s fallen by the wayside, hasn’t it? The bane of boomer writers and academics, and those who have followed them, is their desire to be hip and trendy. Nothing dates you quicker.
Glad someone brought up that great Italian, Oriana Fallaci. Fallaci should have been exactly the sort of lippy, strong Italiana Paglia celebrates and yet I don’t remember Camille ever mentioning her.
As an American woman of majority Italian heritage, I tip my hat to your comment.
I often love reading Camille when she is at her best, but she is no Orianna Fallaci. Perhaps academia got to her after all (she was always one foot in its grasp, but it was the foot that struggled to stay out of the self-absorbed intellectual grave that I always cheered for — sadly, it seems to have lost its toe-hold).
Paglia, you have proven yourself to be made of straw after all — and I can’t say I’m happy about that.
I’m tres conservative, but love reading Paglia’s articles. She’d be a welcome guest at my house anytime.
As for Obama, well, my toilet could use some cleaning.
Nice thought on the toilet-cleaning, but you’ve got the wrong guy. He’s never done a day’s work in his life, and would have no notion of how to perform the task. Any janitor is far better qualified than he. That includes where the presidency is concerned, come to think of it.
No, Donna V., Paglia never mentions Fallaci—even in an article that came out around 9/11!
Paglia celebrates Madonna, but not her?
(And, speaking of cultural fluff. . . rumor has it that Madonna stole a lot of her stuff from another singer, Kylie Minogue. Therefore, when Gaga steals Madonna’s act, what we’re seeing is, essentially, Gaga-recycling-Madonna-recycling-Kylie! This is something that calls for a horselaugh, not in-depth, oh-so-serious commentary! And, no, Lady Gaga didn’t kill sex.)
Here’s my thoughts based on Paglia and Islam. If her hypothesis is right, then Islam disables women’s power by forcing them to wear burkas which cover their entire bodies. This disempowers women’s sexuality therefore they become invalid and powerless as an influence. Maybe Islam has it right? I think of Marie Curie or Amelia Earhardt. Were they powerful only because they were sexy? They meant nothing to the world? Come on. It’s much more complex then simply saying we control through our sexuality. Good bye, Paglia. More women are now going to college and graduating then men. They may be the “fairer” sex but they are also more motivated. The fact that the left is sympathizing with Islam, which promotes virtual enslavement of women, is disturbing and puzzling. It’s all about power and power breeds suppression. Scary. I cannot in good conscience support an administration that supports Islam and sharia law. No way.
And, speakinng of taking her eye off the serious stuff. . . why hasn’t she said anything in support of Molly Norrs, the cartoonist who had to go into hiding because she was behind “Everybody draw Mohammed Day”? A woman, an artist, freedom of speech—you’d think Paglia could have said something.
I concur in general with this description of Paglia’s decline. She was a much needed to corrective to the feminist thought police, even though I was less than interested in her Madonna-worship (maybe it’s because she’s Italian-American!). I’ve never been interested in Madonna’s music, and watching the film “Truth or Dare” told me all I needed to know or care to know. Oddly enough, I found myself agreeing with her take on Lady Gaga, but I would prefer not to engage in the “my generation was more real than your generation” kind of thing this implies. (I think many members of this generation also see LG as a joke).
All of this said, what has been completely ignored here is Paglia’s praise of Sarah Palin. Again, it harks back to Paglia’s Italian-American roots, but it is a working-class argument against elitist liberal snobbery.
That was a good article Bruce. It made me sad on two accounts.
1. I remember an article from the early 90s, in Harper’s, in the form of a dialogue between Paglia and educator/writer Neil Postman. It was electric — Paglia was full of sass and Postman was having a ball just trying to keep up with her. At one point she was getting to him so much he called for a time out and said he needed to light a cigarette. Well those days are gone, smokes included. Yes, Paglia has never really weighed in on the central theme of our age — Jihad Islam and it is too bad.
2. It reminded me that I live in the land of HG Wells Eloi – Seattle, USA. Recently a local cartoonist was snatched away by the Morlocks (she encouraged the world to “Draw Mohammed Day” last May 20th). Of course the Seattle Eloi can barely manage a reaction. When they do it is to blame all those nasty right wing commentators on FaceBook who stirred up the Muslims against our poor local artist. But the artist is gone now and the Seattle Eloi can go back to grazing and thining about the spotted owl and those nasty republican wives in beehive hairdoos.
I am afraid Mr. Bawer, and all his commentators, have missed a vital point: in Islam’s war on us, Paglia is on the other side. Just before 9/11 Paglia wrote a few blog posts defending the Palestinian terrorists. She wrote about their “justified” rage, compared them to a Tennessee Williams play, dismissed the horrors they inflicted. She was defending terrorism, before 9/11. Then 9/11 hit and she must have been struck by the terrible paradox, how can she defend Hamas and castigate Al Queda. So she chose silence. Thus she made herself irrelevant in the great struggle for the civilization she pretends to adore.
Paglia also castigated Al Gore for choosing Lieberman as his running mate in the face of Black Democrats increasing antipathy to Jews. She didn’t decry the bigotry of Black Democrats, no she decried Gore not caving in to that bigotry. I think like many on the left she figures if Muslims hate Jews they can’t be all that bad.
Even though it is true that Paglia has lost some of her relevance in terms of her on-going contributions and that her Italian gimmick has grown a bit stale I think this particular criticism is a bit unfair.
She’s a cultural scholar and critic with an emphasis on Western cultural history and whose knowledge is extremely rich when it comes to the Classics, she’s not a scholar of Islam or Middle East history or culture. She’s not even really a political pundit, she’s always been far too whimsical to be seen as that. She could comment on Islam just as a matter of her personal opinion but we would not get a whole lot of value from that.
Now, Gaga is of course culturally relevant, she’s been the dominant pop cultural figure over at least the last 18 months or so. She also uses a lot of imagery and symbolism tied to both sexuality as well as the Old World and Catholicism and thus is practically begging for commentary from Paglia who specializes on this, the intersection of pop culture today and Old World culture with a special focus on sexuality.
I appreciate Paglia’s views on the feminists, vapid academics, the madness of political correctness etc. and even a lot of her understanding of Western cultural history. Her work has been of enormous importance for a lot of people and conservative intellectuals doubtlessly as well. But it’s obvious that all of that came from the same source in herself and I don’t know if she has that same source for issues like Islamism and the threat posed by it. Maybe it is for the best if she doesn’t speak on those issues.
I understand Mr. Bawer’s disappointment in how Paglia has not taken on the issue of women under Islam. (To her credit, she did ridicule the global warming alarmists in a Salon.com article.) But regarding her output in general: she has been raising a son and recently broke up with her long-time partner. That might be holding her back somewhat. The last I heard, she had a book contract for a sequel of sorts to “Break, Blow, Burn,” her book about poetry. Whatever she writes, I’m eager to read it, unlike friends of mine who despise her–and, of course, have never read her.
Why are you all hitting on Paglia. I have always found her iconoclasm to be stimulating and a great antidote to political correctness.
You set up a strawman here, acting as if it is an obligation of Paglia to write on Islam and women. Maybe she just isn’t interested.
Beyond whatever content she produces, her writing provides excellent examples of a muscular prose that is very useful for anyone learning to write. Would that we could all do as well.
Has it occurred to anyone that Paglia might just be sick? As in not feeling well? And perhaps isn’t -interested- in Islam? And would rather comment on pop music because that’s what she’s interested in?
Still, from the perspective of our Islam problem her article on Gaga is well taken.
I must admit that Lady Gaga isn’t the top of my Important Things list, but as Camile says, her appearance does indeed mark the immanent meltdown of the liberal Musical Industrial Complex.
GaGa couldn’t be more plastic if she had Mattel stamped on her neck. They’ve got nothing, to the point where a manufactured, scripted, pre-programed sex robot is top of the charts. That’s a whole lot of nothing, IMHO. I don’t listen to radio so I won’t have to listen to the Nothing. MP3s all the way.
The reason that’s an important thing to notice is that the only thing keeping Islam a problem in the West is Liberalism. When the music business, one of Liberalism’s biggest guns fall silent, that’s a big deal. End Liberalism and Islam ceases to be a problem pretty much instantly.
I’d say they are running out of gas. Thanks for the heads up, Camile.
would i be interested to hear paglia expound on the treatment of women in islamic culture?…sure…but is she REQUIRED to do so ?
The criticism that Paglia simply recycles the same material is relevant.
I don’t like it when people criticize a writer for not writing something else. It’s not fair to review a work on the basis that it’s not what the reviewer wanted to read.
So, she doesn’t write about Islam. OK, most people don’t. What’s she going to say, that Muslim women are badly treated? OK… we know that. So, other than simply agreeing with everyone else, what could Paglia add? Her main value was as a critic of 60s feminism. Not a lot of 60s feminists in Arabia.
If she’s really that washed up, then how would it help?
It is easy to be critical of a few lefties of whom Camille Paglia essentially was one: but she is a fake iconoclast.
It is not that she has been “beaten down”, she revelled in that notoriety. No, she is too scared of islamists, she hasn’t the guts to stand up against them and possibly – if she says she will be a Roman Catholic till she dies, finds Catholicism and islam have too much in common!
puhh-lease. She doesn’t have guts? Go get some guts yourself. Islam bites, but you;re terrified. She ain’t.
Paglia lost steam a long time ago. Some here have forgotten that “Sexual Personae” as we have it is the first volume of the work, covering Western cultural history of ancient Egypt to the approach of the twentieth century. Volume Two was to cover the 20th century, especially its music and it’s new art, motion pictures.
She has yet to publish the book. More than ten years ago, she said it was complete, adding something to the effect that she had lost faith in popular culture, leaving me with the impression that she wanted to revise the volume or junk it. I’m sorry I cannot remember where I read that.
As an occasional reader of CP’s columns, I have noted a certain sameness, one of a degree that made me suspect that I was reading the same column over and over. Specifically, that “Italian-American” stuff, and the odd idea that Madonna is of some profound cultural importance.
Thanks to this item, I now realize that it wasn’t my imagination playing tricks on me; others have noticed that CP has for years been playing a song with a strictly limited number of notes.
Now, why are we surprised, or even disappointed? In my case, it is that I would like to find some sort of rational and coherent exponent of modern liberalism. To me, modern liberalism is incoherent, self-centered, self-indulgent, simple-minded, one-dimensional, unrealistic, and profoundly anti-intellectual, much like the era out of which it grew. I don’t discount the possibility that there is something sensible to be said for modern liberalism; but there doesn’t seem to be anyone who can say it. Now CP has made some sensible noises (along with some not-so-sensible ones) in the past; there was perhaps the possibilty that she could be such a general spokesman. However, that possibility hasn’t happened.
In other words, some of us perhaps expected greater things; we didn’t get them, but it’s not CP’s fault for failing to live up to our expectations.
Camille is the female Daniel Patrick Moynihan when it comes to words and action. DPM was great at turning phrases and coming up with memorable quips or lines that went against the grain of who and what you’d think would be his normal alliances, but by the time he was elected U.S. Senator from New York, when push came to shove he was more likely than not to avoid any major ideological challenges and go with the flow, retreat into a cove of his own pet projects, like rebuilding Penn Station.
Madonna is Paglia’s Penn Station, or the sports team that some longtime fan will go to the mat to defend as the greatest team of all time 20-25 years after the fact, when most people really don’t care any more. Substitute Madonna for Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls and Lady Ga Ga for Kobe Bryant’s Los Angeles Lakers and whether or not Kobe is the soon-to-be-equal of Jordan if he wins two more titles and you can see the same sort of passion from irate Bulls fans that Camille shows towards any comparison of Lady G to Madonna. It’s a side trip down a pop culture culvert that stimulates her own passion, but really doesn’t address the issues 95 percent of the people out there care about hearing from a chronicler of American politics and society.
The enemy of my enemy isn’t my friend. While I appreciate a good Gloria Steinem bashing as much as the next rational thinker, just because Camille Paglia is bashing Gloria Steinem for some of the right reasons doesn’t mean that Mrs. Paglia is in fact a rational thinker or that she is any less trivial than Mrs. Steinem.
There are some truly grand things being accomplished by women – as for that matter there always has been despite cultural supression of female accomplishment – but they aren’t being accomplished by the singer called Madonna or the one called Lady Gaga. Both are obviously artifical personalities in the mold of ‘Marilyn Monroe’, and they are really no more than one extreme of traditional female subjegation – the approved of prostitute. They seem to have power, but there power depends on male approval and can be just as quickly taken away. Nor do they make a lasting contribution to the human race. They are really less even than the temple priestesses of Greece or Roman, who serve as approved of virgins or approved of prostitutes at the whims of the real power holders, because at least those women had a cloak of sacredness to defend themselves with.
We are a society that is terrible at picking it’s heroes. Let’s focus on the brave, the diligent, the visionary, the compassionate, and the inventive as our heroes, whether male or female. There are female entreprenuers, scientists, mathimaticians, and engineers out there doing good work. While the number of men even who make great contributions as individuals is small, it’s easy to look at what is going on out there and see that in the future there will be as many women with that oppurtunity as men. There is no need for celebrating trivialities, trendy hipsterism, and vapidness (but I repeat myself) like Camilia Paglia’s or Madonna’s of the world.
Brilliant! Better feminist analysis than Paglia (ugh). Just check your grammar.
I agree–Madonna/Gaga are the personification of a very well accepted (if vilified) female archetype: the hooker! Nothing visionary there!
Lover her Aeon piece “Junk Bonds….” which deserves a mention.
I saw the recent Camille Paglia interview on QTV in Canada. It is on YouTube. Although I am as conservative as Ms. Paglia is liberal, I have always admired her brilliance and her ability to articulate that brilliance.
Mr. Bawer left out some critical points that Ms. Paglia made in that interview. For one thing, she favors the teaching of religion in our schools. She stated that high school graduates, in the South, who know the Bible, have a better understanding of Western Civilization that do graduates of the elite schools. She also stated that the Bible is a great compendium of Hebrew poetry and quest sagas that is the equivalent of Shakespeare.
Ms. Paglia is a proud Liberal, Catholic, Feminist, Lesbian, Atheist, who is constantly examining her own beliefs and her own conclusions as she continues to study and learn. What more can we ask of her?
She took up the issue of Madonna because of its relevance to her scholarly work, and presumably, because she wanted to. Madonna was a phenomenon of the popular culture, as Lady Gaga is now.
Personally, I find Lady Gaga to be a brilliant performance artist who is the logical extension of Madonna, thirty years later. In her interviews with Barbara Walters and Oprah, Lady Gaga came across as polite, sweet and humble.
As to Ms. Paglia not writing about the Muslims’ treament of women, I haven’t heard a peep out of any of our Feminists on that issue. What she chooses to write or speak about is entirely her business as far as I am concerned.
Last I heard Paglia took time off from Salon.com, and is working on a book.
50 John: I like both the Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Penn Station analogies you make. I think they’re very apt.
Look, I was a huge fan of “Sexual Personae.” And Paglia, even at her most maddening, is still far more fun and interesting to read than 99% of today’s academics and journalists. Paglia at her most tiresome is still 100 times better than aging and perpetually snotty schoolgirl Maureen Dowd.
But since a great deal of Paglia’s fame rests on her critique of feminism, it is not unreasonable to ask why she manages to ignore the way millions of women are treated throughout the Islamic world. It’s the biggest “women’s issue” there is nowadays, after all. By failing to address it, Paglia reveals she’s as narrow in her concerns as the upper-class yuppie feminists she has done such a bang-up job of criticizing in the past.
Secondly, Paglia spent 20 years working on the first Volume of Sexual Personae. She will be the first to tell you it’s one of the greatest critical tomes of the 20th century. So then why not complete your great master work? Instead, she settled for slapping together these slight little books of essays and interviews, writing an advice column and so on. “Vamps and Tramps” was a fun read which capitalized on her fame, but by itself, it’s pretty minor stuff. It’s precisely because she is so talented that her failure to live up to the promise of “Sexual Personae” is so disappointing.
Oh, and BTW, while Paglia does have genuine sympathy for blue collar types (part of the reason she’s a Palin fan), her father was a professor of Romance languages at a Jesuit college. It’s not a ritzy background, but I would hardly call it blue collar.
So you like a book that states that women have contributed nothing to civilization? You are a woman. Do you think that your only power is via your personal sex appeal? Do you think that as a woman you will contribute nothing to civilization? Remember that misogyny applies to you too.
#40 Burkean Mama
Here’s Paglia talking about the Palestinians; yeah, looks like she thinks they’re oppressed victims. http://nyc.indymedia.org/or/2002/08/16321.html
Forget Paglia. Read Oriana Fallaci.
Darn her for not hating those palestinians to the last man. Darn her, to heck!
Some pretty committed demonizers here. You’d run us all into the war flames of hell just to get your stg on.
Go ahead. censor. or don’t censor now that i wrote this. It’ll make YOU seem like the tolerant ones and I the imperious liberal. I got your death panel right here, baby.
She does finally come out against them at the very end, but you can tell she’s doing it real reluctantly—and she’s just got to bloviate about how she’s just sooooooo steeped in cultah, she sees the BIG picture! Greece and Rome and Egypt and all those other kewl places! Also, she’s been heavily influenced by Judaism, donchaknow! Why she loves it! Some of her best friends are. . . etc., etc., etc.
Aww, shwucks! But, dear betty, dontcha know that around here, real conservatives value western culture above snark. Watch out, you might get rejected!
This is a brave article written by feminist Pamela Bone in 2007.
http://tiny.cc/pu3w1
Unfortunately, she died of cancer. I think this is the truth that needs to be acknowledged by feminists. I just do not think there is a single feminist out there brave enough to say this now. American feminists are too worried about jeopardizing Planned Parenthood – they are ignoring the giant elephant in the room, pretending that they need to WORK HARD because women are still (supposedly) making .77 on the dollar. Oooooo. That’s scary! As far as I am concerned, feminists are self important wind bags full of hot, stinky air. Paglia is fun to read, but sometimes I get the feeling she could become a conservative but she knows if she does that, the jig is up.
She talked too much anyway, why would you wish to encourage her to start babbling again anyway?
Folk Islam
This article is an example of unmitigated chutzpah, laced with a frightening amount of half-truths and misinformation. I guess the editors at Pajamas Media were still in their pajamas when this was posted!
Will Bruce Bawer’s oeuvre one day rival Ms Paglia’s on ANY level ( sheer quantity, quality, scope, originality, daring, etc)? Maybe, if he devotes the rest of his life to his work with the passion and purpose that Paglia has put into hers.
Until then, give us all a break, BB. A little more humility and less hubris is in order.
The better question: What Ever Happened to Bruce Bawer? Does he ever enter the Wayback Machine of his memory to recall what he said about Camille Paglia back when she first started rushing about celebrating her own self-claimed relevance? What does it say about a man that he periodically feels compelled to reinvent himself as his polar opposite?
This is a textbook example of concern trolling. Camille Paglia has never been about anything other than Camille Paglia. That she didn’t rush to cast herself as the star of 9/11 would be vaguely to her credit if it weren’t for the fact that she can’t imagine a way to do it. Sexual Personae was a congeries of self-congratulation, a sloppy bowl of word salad, conceived and produced as a prop to her overweening narcissism and entirely unjustified self-worship. A literary critic named Bruce Bawer told me that, a couple or three incarnations ago.
I wonder what ever happened to that guy. Apparently he left his place at the table to make a pillow fort under his bed.
Paglia’s greatest achievement in life after all these years is she has a vagina that thinks for itself
Even as a critic of contemporary feminism, Paglia was never as good a writer as Caitlin Flanagan.
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2004/03/flanagan.htm
I love to read Camille’s writings and agree with her on many issues. But let’s face it. She is no fool. She knows full well what happened to Oriana and more recently how Molly Norris had to go into hiding after her “Draw Mohamed Day”. Not to mention the fatwa against the Danish cartoonists and the ongoing harassment of Geert Wilders. As we all know it’s perfectly OK for people like Bill Maher and the like to poke fun at Christians and Jews but just try that against “the prophet” and see how far it gets you.
It’s just another step towards dhimmitude.
For a while she actually annointed herself, “The new Susan Sontag.”
I think she’s said all she has to say.
Camille is a real talent, but I think her shtick is tired if not embarassing, especially her early writings about Madonna. Does any respectable art critic believe that Madonna is an important artist? Will we be deconstructing “Like a Virgin” in 20 years?
Her real problem is misplaced priorities. You shouldn’t waste talent and insight on trashy, transient figures.
If you have a gift like Camille, write about something important.
It was the same thing with Lester Bangs. The guy would write about Blondie like they were the second coming.
Her work was not “stunningly original”, it merely layered “BoBO LitCrit hipness” and post modernist feminist cant on top of 19th century, turn of the century “modernist ecstatic nihilist” criticism and philosophy, with a smattering early 20th century leftist political commentary and artistic posturing. She is the sort of aesthete all to common in England or the Continent around the turn of the last century or between the wars.
Strip way the pyrotechnics, the jargon and the psycho-babble and you have watered down Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Pound, Jarry, O’Neal and Stein, with a dash of Freud and Santayana thrown in. She is merely repeating what has come down a long line of BoBo malcontents and decadents frustrated by their place in Western civilization.
She can get away with it because, unlike other academics, she has some talent for writing, and actually has an education–at least one slightly above the middle brow pseudo-education all to common among academics and “people of letters” of the current day. Her popularity reflects rather the paucity of the education and knowledge of her fans than it does some unique vision.
Mongoose: totally right! I always thought she was a wannabe Nietzsche (a watered down, unoriginal version, of course).
I have great respect for Camille Paglia for her independence of mind, so different from most leftist women whose views on most subjects predictably toe the party line, making her seem more libertarian than progressive. If there would be any woman on the left who might be willing to honestly express her views on Islam’s institutionalized abysmal treatment of women, one might have expected it to have been her. But the fact that there are no women on the left who are willing to express any view on Islam that differs from the dissembling party line “religion of peace” narrative is troubling. It is as if Islam is the left’s third rail that absolutely no one is willing to touch in any manner that is remotely honest. Since the readership of Salon, which is apparently Paglia’s only venue, appear to despise her, judging from the slew of vicious comments most of her columns elicit, the endless attacks may have taken their toll, making her gun-shy.
Madonna a idol? How wonderful
Wouldn’t that be one of the last signs before “The End of Days”?
Thanks for this essay. Some good observations and a strong enough intro to have those unfamiliar with Paglia treat themselves to the wonder that is Sexual Personae. I always grant Paglia a lot latitude because I’m a fan. Like, say Bob Dylan — some genius intermixed with a good smattering of less than stellar efforts; but I hang in there. Every album can’t be a Blood on the Tracks. As far as contemporary output goes, Paglia’s Break, Blow, Burn — her superb close readings of poetry — is one of the finest books on the subject in the past twenty years. Like many good artists she knows how to hunker down and discipline herself when she wants to. Break, Blow… is a product of that kind of commitment. The rest I’m not so ga ga about — but so what.
I miss Paglia. I used to read her regularly, didn’t always agree with her, but her writing was so good and funny and thoughtful, and almost always ended up with a completely unnecessary paragraph about Madonna. The woman cracked me up and was always a refreshing read. Yes what indeed has happened to her? Where did she go? Nothing, nada, about Islam. The most important issue in America and will be for decades. yes the feminist women, the professional feminists that is, are completely silent about this issue. Is this because they might lose their cushy college jobs if they actually bring about a conversation about sharia law and Islam and how this will affect American women?
Does no one dare mention the elephant, or the camel, in the room? It’s pretty interesting. And its interesting how no professional woman pundit has brought up the fact that the American Medical Association is investigating ways in which to mutilate the genitals of female children, but in a more medically safe way than the butchering that is now going on with the sharia law “maturation rights” of preteen Islamic girls. Islamic for now that is. Who knows what we all may have in store for us in the future! Yay! Yes indeed, where ARE the professional women thinkers in all of this? I mean what a potpourri of influence they could have! And what a dissertation for a ambitious grad student! They could be so relevant!! And yet…….silence. Well, hopefully we hear from Ms. Paglia on these most interesting issues of the day. And hopefully we hear from her soon.
Bawer once again proves why he’s one of my favourite cultural writers- gets it bang spot-on with Paglia. Disappointing as Paglia has been, perhaps the subject of Islam and its all-round oppressiveness and misogyny is so grave, so horrific that Paglia doesn’t want to go there. So she plays it safe and thus makes herself irrelevant, Lady Gaga groooan.
Ms. Paglia has invested in herself decades of feminist ideology with courage and intellect. Now it seems that all that was just highly agitated nonsense. If she truly lives by her words, then she must oppose Islam and the terror and abuse it inflicts upon women around the world. Until that day arrives, her rhetoric will be as meaningless at it is irrelevant.
Last I heard, Camille was happy and well and living in downtown Burbank with her two cats.
Paglia was always fun to read, because she could actually write.
But everything I ever read of hers ended up in a push me pull you debate about the the twin forces of Dionysus and Apollo and their effect on the character of the psyche or whatever. It wa s along time ago.
But verty very few contemporary self-defined feminists will write about Islam and the burkha.
Yes many of us miss Camille’s opinion on this or that. I don’t follow the author’s criticism for her remaining silent on Islams oppression of women. They seem content to live in the 12th century and don’t want to change the status quo…Camille probably reached the same conclusion. Besides it’s unlikely State run media would cover it anyway…phony PC sensitivities ya know.
This is a completely inaccurate article. Paglia has been publishing substantive scholarship in ARION for years. You only look for your keys where the light is good. But Paglia publishes outside the boundaries of the spotlight as well as within.
R U an ID10T? Camille Paglia – one-trick pony, luck to have her teaching job. End. What abt Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism’s treatment? The Euros used to use the chastity belt, they got over it. Ms. Paglia isn’t an expert on religion she’s an atheist. U R an ID10T
Who really knows why Paglia hasn’t seriously addressed the topic of Islamism. Though she has never been one to shy away from any contentious or difficult subject, and I highly doubt here reticence here has anything to do with intellectual shyness. This is emphatically not a diffident woman we are talking about.
I know she has been working on a companion volume to “Break, Blow, and Burn,” that deals with visual art, rather than poetry like in the aforementioned book. “Break, Blow, and Burn” was by no means a waste of reading time– no well-written work of line-by-line poetry criticsm, what with the rarity of such a thing, possibly could be– but its palpable Freudianism and sexual obsession just felt tired to me. Though I suppose excessive sexual treatment is only to be expected to a critic who got her Ph.D. under Harold Bloom.
This was an excellent article, and my discovery of it was nothing if not uncanny: I was wondering if Paglia had published any journalism lately (aside from the Gaga essay, which, I’m sorry Mr. Bawer, was in fact a brilliant take-down of the poseur culture of the millenial generation), I googled her name, and found this piece. “Great minds” indeed, Mr. Bawer!
Why?? Paglia hates women. She’s a frustrated lesbian who is angry that Gloria Steinem would not hook up with her. In various points in her columns she has spoken highly of removing consent laws (pro-rape), allowing polygamy, and she thinks women have basically contributed nothing to civilization. She’s in line with conservative Muslims, so why would she criticize them?
And the whole trope about women having so much power because men want to sleep with them…seriously? This so-called power really only exists for beautiful women under the age of 25. I’ll trade that for the Presidency any day.
The reason women have been held back is simple: men used their greater physical strength to push women around. Now that we are in a machine/information age, women are pushed around less, and…wait for it…we see a feminist movement (!), most of which is really an effort to get women’s civil liberties recognized by society.
Paglia’s poorly written book is not new, not groundbreaking (please see Simone Beauvoir), not factually robust and not theoretically interesting. She channeled her sexual frustration and daddy issues into 900 pages of blather.
Camille has a son; I think he has been her main focus for the past decade.
Camille where are you?
for all these replies, the word ‘blowback’ never came up once.
so here it is.
She had to call Alison Maddex, her ex, to ask Alison what SHE thought of Lady Ga Ga- She calls Alison to ask her for everything she writes about. How do I know? I was in the car when Camille called Alison while writing the Ga Ga article. Why? I was Alison’s partner for the last 4 years. Camille is the biggest feminist lesbian fraud out there who has zero people skills, and never interacts with anyone- she has no business being a social critic and has no basis of intelligence to ever speak about music, art, or religion. She is devoid of any type of cultural understanding about the world that is based in reality. She is out of touch and out to lunch and is why nobody likes her, including Madonna and Sandra Bernhard. The comment about Gloria above didn’t surprise me- She falls in love fictitiously with people who are completely unavailable and not even gay taking it to the extreme of traveling to other countries just to hang around the person. Camille has no understandings of the value of men in society unless they reproduce to make a son for her- I will never respect the decision she had to have a child, and deny him the chance to grow up knowing his father- DUH! denying him of his emotional needs just for sake of “convenience” and so it won’t be “messy” dealing with a man for custody? She was completely threatened by me when Alison and I started dating, forbidding Alison to mention my name in her house and in front of the son. Try dealing with this creature for 4 years and you will feel my pain! She had contempt for me because, among other reasons, I am a bisexual, and don’t bash men, or hate men. Camille made a name for herself by her nasty tactics towards Gloria. Any woman, who promotes herself as a feminist and turns around to bash other women who fight to make prostitution illegal, including sex trafficking of young girls, etc. only perpetuates the self esteem problems that plague our young women today!!!! Camille is completely clueless and is the least sexual person I ever met and had no business writing anything about a sexual persona when she herself, didn’t have one, and still doesn’t, and won’t ever. She doesn’t exude any sexuality or authentic sensuality at all, and that’s what makes her bitter inside!!! Perhaps had she been gracious to me I would have nice things to say to defend her, but I don’t. Unfortunately, she ruined Alison and turned her into a monster as well.
Those two are meant for each other. I could seriously write a book and would love the chance to pay her back for all of the nasty things she’s done and said about me.
The difference between madonna and lady gaga is that madonna did and said things that at her time were provocative and controversial. She broke the rules and created new definitions for women in terms of sexual freedom and identity.
Lady Gaga claims to be a post-modernist who works through appropriation and subversion like Andy Warhol did (i’m sure andy is rolling in his grave at her comparison) but she is just another sad imitator, plagiarizing others ideas and performing them during a time when they really aren’t that provocative or innovative.
She is just another musician from a can that the music industry sold to you because you thought you were avante gard if you listened to her, but the truth is your not, your a puppet dancing along while gaga and the music industry pull the strings and fill your empty head with more junk.
Besides she has been literally quoted saying that her music sucks unless you take ecstasy…i’m sorry but if you have to depend on someone being high to enjoy your music, it is not good music…especially a drug like ecstasy which makes you love anything and everything…
GaGa was one of the “Italian” words I learned as a child. Most kids were taught KaKa I seem to recall.