Camille Paglia

CP/JB problem — they enjoy their confidence and deep down fear that facts (and thus admissions of error or uncertainity) wd violate it. They wouldn't. I no longer read Burchill because I know I will *never* learn anything new from her.

Facts are the beautiful fuzzy-buzzy bees on the splintered sodomising stick of life- experience.

I think i learn about things by confrantation br tell me i am wrong.

She has a good way w/ words too, but I agree w/DQ that JuiLeEEEeEEE kix0red her ass in that fax war (snaps fingers) link, someone?

x0x0

Requited Powerlust Makes U Stupid: discuss

A reason I quite like her: she talks FASTER than anyone else evah inc. martin scorsese. (This wd be rubbish of course if you were taking notes, which oddly enuff i never have been...)

As for the personal opinion...I'm all for personal opinions in the classroom...but I think it has to cut both ways. Paglias lectures were models of fascist note taking...student questions (let alone their opinions) were actively disdained.

I know some upperclassmen (I was but a wee, timid freshman at the time with only a vague understanding of who Ms. Paglia was) signed up with the express intention of being able to challenge her on her assumptions...

She made it ver' clear from the first off that it was not to be...any challenges were answered with supremely manicured rhetorical rejoinders, crafted from years of having the same students ask the same things, designed to cow those who had obviously yet to develop their own argumentative skillz, rather than someone on her "own level"...a cheap and tawdry attitude, innit?

Of course what finally made me drop the course was her ossified opines on pop cultcha...blah.

Hi, Im not a big fan of Camille Paglia, and I don't paticularly agree with most of her views... The one's Ive heard about at any rate... I only have a superficial knoledge of her ideas... The reason Im asking about her is that she seems to me to be a very interesting, entertaining "Character"... Stimulating and controversial and provocative even when you disagree with her... Which of her books would you recommend? Thanks...

came across an old issue of Motorbooty the other day, the one with this in it. Probably my favoritest ever piece about Camille.
http://images.tcj.com/2011/12/Mbooty6-a-650x866.jpg

Why women hate her: They misunderstood her views on rape.
Why men hate her: They misunderstood her views on rape.

LOL

"misunderSTAND" - man, I need a new RX.

There was a time (specifically the time when I was 18) when I loved CP. I think maybe I'd fell differently if I read her again today.

Once she even sabotaged a colleague's article, replacing the word "epistomology" with the word "buttmeat" wherever it appeared.

sabotaged/improved

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/taylor-swift-katy-perry-hollywood-398095

kee-rist

Some good stuff there I reckon.

Although now 28, Katy Perry is still stuck in wide-eyed teen-queen mode. Especially after the train wreck of her brief marriage to epicene roué Russell Brand, her dazzling smiles are starting to look as artificial as those of the aging, hard-bitten Joan Crawford. Perry’s prolific hit songs, saturating mainstream radio, hammer and yammer mercilessly. She’s like a manic cyborg cheerleader, obliviously whooping it up while her team gets pounded into the mud.

epicene roué Russell Brand, her dazzling smiles
epicene roué Russell Brand, her dazzling smiles

Actually, I really appreciate the "image" of Perry and Swift, to an extent. They're pretty, but not model-pretty, and yet they've essentially been upgraded to the level of model-pretty. Which in turn sends the message that you don't have to be exotic, or tall, or massively skinny or whatever, to be considered model-pretty. The downside, of course, is that even more kids will now likely aspire to be model-pretty, when they lack the massive, moneyed stylist teams of Swift and Perry.

I think Paglia is more concerned with commenting on their public personas than quibbling about how pretty they are.

Probably. I didn't realize Taylor Swift had a public persona, I guess. That's when she clutches her face like Culkin in "Home Alone," right?

this woman remains the worst teacher i ever had in my life.

on the other hand, she was incredibly easy to scam into thinking i actually dropped her class rather than just stopped showing up.

she is so god damn dumb

all strongo had to do to get an A was wear a cone bra, sing "Erotica," and speak knowledgeably about Emily Dickinson's erotic daydreams.

With her multicultural roots (a Bahamian father and a Louisiana Creole mother), Beyonce draws on the emotional depths of black gospel as well as the brazen street sass of hip-hop, which produced her formidable persona of Sasha Fierce. Urban rappers’ notorious sexism seems to have made black female performers stronger and more defiant. But middle-class white girls, told that every career is open to them and encouraged to excel at athletics, are faced with slacker white boys nagged by the PC thought police into suppressing their masculinity -- which gets diverted instead into video games and the flourishing genre of online pornography.

i mean, i just, i can't

Beyonce draws on the emotional depths of black gospel as well as the brazen street sass of hip-hop, which produced her formidable persona of Sasha Fierce. Urban rappers’ notorious sexism seems to have made black female performers stronger and more defiant

I don't have a doctorate or even tenure but this is the kind of intellectual train wreck that isn't even worth parsing

Taylor Swift and Katy Perry are totally both "model-pretty."

would kind of love to watch her carrying out her research on the popular urban milieu, need to study her methods

would love to watch her vogue wearing cone bras in a lecture hall

sadly it's not nearly so horrifyingly entertaining, alfred

"Dyke Godess or Paid by the Minute Provactuer ?" = classic anthony easton

(sp?)

remember when she had that thing about how Sarah Palin was really smart and we're just all too sexist to see it

"Dyke Godess or Green Godess ?"

from the valley of the giant green godess

classic mark s:

Facts are the beautiful fuzzy-buzzy bees on the splintered sodomising stick of life- experience.

http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/11/16/camille-paglia-on-rob-ford-rihanna-and-rape-culture/

still worth saying: what a terrible thinker and person

The problem here is the inability of women to project themselves into the minds of men. Feminists say [proper, mocking tone] “women have the right to do whatever they want.” Of course we have the right to do whatever we want–to be jogging with earphones on with our breasts going like this [simulates breasts bouncing]. Yes you have the right to but it’s also stupid! I see with the eyes of the criminal. I must have a criminal mind.

interview w/ the Jesuits

After the great victory won by my insurgent, pro-sex, pro-fashion wing of feminism in the 1990s, American and British feminism has amazingly collapsed backward again into whining, narcissistic victimology. As in the hoary old days of Gloria Steinem and her Stalinist cohorts, we are endlessly subjected to the hackneyed scenario of history as a toxic wasteland of vicious male oppression and gruesome female suffering. College campuses are hysterically portrayed as rape extravaganzas where women are helpless fluffs with no control over their own choices and behavior. I am an equal opportunity feminist: that is, I call for the removal of all barriers to women's advance in the professional and political realms. However, I oppose special protections for women, which I reject as demeaning and infantilizing. My principal demand (as I have been repeating for nearly 25 years) is for colleges to confine themselves to education and to cease their tyrannical surveillance of students' social lives. If a real crime is committed, it must be reported to the police. College officials and committees have neither the expertise nor the legal right to be conducting investigations into he said/she said campus dating fiascos. Too many of today's young feminists seem to want hovering, paternalistic authority figures to protect and soothe them, an attitude I regard as servile, reactionary and glaringly bourgeois. The world can never be made totally safe for anyone, male or female: there will always be sociopaths and psychotics impervious to social controls. I call my system "street-smart feminism": there is no substitute for wary vigilance and personal responsibility....

Francis seems like an affable gust of fresh energy after the near-sepulchral persona of the prior pope, who seemed strangely stiff and reserved for a Bavarian. So that's a big positive, in terms of captivating young people around the world and inspiring them toward charitable social action. However, I am somewhat baffled by the cat-and-mouse game that Francis seems to be playing with the media. Is he or is he not signaling his support of revolutionary reforms in Catholic doctrine?—particularly as it applies to sexuality. As a veteran of the 1960s, I of course strongly support the sexual revolution. But as a student of comparative religion, I have to say that when the Catholic Church trims its doctrine for politically correct convenience, it will no longer be Catholic.

http://americamagazine.org/content/all-things/catholic-pagan-10-questions-camille-paglia

terrific comments

strangely stiff and reserved for a Bavarian

with the oompah and the sausages and the dancing in the springtime

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdfuykK0Te1qdktn7o1_500.png

If the church changes, it wouldn't be because of "political correctness". One reason it might change is that the church's positions have put it too close to the political right, esp. in the U.S., and most of those folks don't give a damn about the Catholic Church, they have exploited certain positions of the church for their own political gain, getting Catholics to support political agendas that are anti-Catholic, esp. wrt militarism, economics and labor unions.

She's an idiot in this stuff anyway.

Paglia is one of those people who, when a thread named after them is bumped, I hope it's because they're dead.

Seems a bit harsh. She's a provocative reactionary. The point of her is to force people to be reflective, figure out why she is wrong. Her views are mostly an obvious response to certain trends on the academic left; if she didn't exist all of her ideas would.

she is a good writer and an awful thinker. i don't wish ill of her because she is relatively powerless, as far as pundits go, and seems pretty miserable already. 'sexual personae' is great and everything else i've read by her has been on some armond white levels of cry for help challops.

Swift’s meandering, snippy songs make 16-year-old Lesley Gore’s 1963 hit “It’s My Party (And I’ll Cry if I Want to)” seem like a towering masterpiece of social commentary, psychological drama and shapely concision.

this is otm

Paglia is one of those people who, when a thread named after them is bumped, I hope it's because they're dead.

For me, it's our last four p****dents and their spouses

Paglia is one of those people who, when a thread named after them is bumped, I hope it's because they're dead.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Thursday, February 26, 2015 7:22 PM (2 hours ago)

thank you for being fucking disgusting

its the internet man, it's for wishing ppl death and killing time between meals

might start a thread for wishing death on ppl. gets ppl v excited. v rarely actually works yknow.

mores the fucking pity

The point of her is to force people to be reflective, figure out why she is wrong.

no, the point of her is to get paid for writing stuff that people click on. her intellectual chops have always been a joke

she def has cable-news depth at best, but is a much better pro wrestler than the Foxbots

The point of her is to get attention and to sell as space. I loathe her but find her entertaining at least, so there you go. Some people take her seriously, though.

"Ad space", I meant.

Paglia's old-ish. It's a reasonable guess that she might have died. And if that's choice A for why a thread on her might have popped up, and choice B is that someone is giving her a public platform for her empty-headed bullshit, and seemingly thoughtful adults are taking her seriously, I'll hope for A.

"I disapprove of what you say, and I hope you die before you get a chance to say it."

I can't think of anyone who takes her seriously tbh

unless we're counting Treeship I guess

Waiting for someone to publish I disapprove of what you say, and I hope you die before you get a chance to say it: Free Speech in the Age of Punditry.

xp - i dug sexual personae at the time, though i disagreed with much (most?) of it

yeah well that was what 25 years ago? do you still take her seriously?

no, but i fondly recall the frustration

honestly, i have no strong opinion. i haven't read any of her more serious writing in decades (presuming there is any). every few years, it seems, some lame piece of obvious outrage-bait she's cranked out will make the rounds, but i don't attach much significance to that.

"You stand accused of Taking Camille Paglia Seriously, a terrible offence against God and man. How do you plead?"

look we can cut a deal if you'll cop to a lesser charge like assholism

I can't think of anyone who takes her seriously tbh

unless we're counting Treeship I guess

― Οὖτις, Friday, February 27, 2015 11:37 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't "take her seriously." She is clearly a bit preposterous with her self-mythologizing and paranoid strawman argumentation. But she is a good writer and I think some of the stuff she says merits response. I can't remember ever agreeing with her, unless you count her general critique of humanities departments as enclaves of sanctimonious posturing

It's possible engage with people or ideas who are often wrong, even flamboyantly so, in a constructive way. Wishing them death or hoping they shut up, while it makes you look super cool, is also pretty pointless and uninteresting

don't worry I tend to save my deathwishes for people who actually have a negative impact on things. Paglia's too inconsequential.

phil (horse) is so annoyed by camille paglia, contenderizer is like omg you are such a jerk she does not deserve this treatment, shakey is all i so don't give a fuck, let me tell u, treeship being the democrat eagle scout. oh and morbius turning presidents into a cuss word. classic revive guys.

viewed through a mattresslessness darkly

make 16-year-old Lesley Gore’s 1963 hit “It’s My Party (And I’ll Cry if I Want to)” seem like a towering masterpiece of social commentary, psychological drama and shapely concision.

I don't get it, to whom does "It's My Party" not already seem like that?

i was doing self-protection, cluelessness

anyway, off for a stiff Bavarian

http://www.spiked-online.com/spiked-review/article/feminist-trouble/17688

I don't think you're supposed to describe yourself as having "burst on the scene," that's one of those phrases other people use ABOUT you.

She's found her true (online) home at last.

(imagines Camille Paglia bursting) (smiles)

I am proud of myself for never posting in this thread before today, given what a terrible writer and lazy thinker she is and how much I dislike everything she is & stands for.

i was sure i had seen you posting about paglia before but i think that was maybe on the sexual personae thread

sexism is good not bad like u thought

i wonder what kind of crowd will turn out for her in Brooklyn?

http://www.bklynlibrary.org/calendar/camille-paglia-free-women-central-library-dweck-cen-031617

Paglia celebrates and challenges modern feminism—from motherhood to Madonna, football to Friedan, stilettos to Steinem.

glad to see she's still fighting the same old battles from 30 years ago

From Football to Friedan would make a good gay man memoir title.

sexism: actually good

I think she's criticizing the nitwit branch of modern feminism.

At least she's smarter than Rachel Maddow, not that that's saying much.

Have you read her column since 2008? You're being optimistic. `

certainly her prose is stiffer yet as garrulous as Maddow's monologues.

No, and i don't have cable, so they're evaluated through my indirect observation. Like all those awful comedy movies whose trailers i've seen.

She's posting on NextDoor now.

http://www.quartzcity.net/ilx/paglia_nextdoor.jpg

Very good.

The feud between Susan Sontag and Camille Paglia captured on camera here in 1993 (on public TV) is so painfully entertaining it's impossible to look away. pic.twitter.com/zG2Omoo8F6

— Benjamin Carlson (@bfcarlson) June 26, 2023

omg the best
the original “I don’t know her”

The full Christopher Lydon interview with Sontag is hilarious - she hates all his questions

Ha, just watched that hilarious clip, what a couple of assholes.

And yet I deeply miss this era of assholery

Wow at Paglia, if she was a bar of chocolate she’d eat herself.

She hasn't lost those peculiar vocal mannerisms.

"But doctor, I am Paglia, C"

She hasn't lost those peculiar vocal mannerisms.

interesting that despite not otherwise sharing a dialect she has the exact same "okay?" disorder as quentin tarantino

Thread of missing random Sontag or Morbius sightings at film screenings.

"But doctor, I am Paglia, C"

interesting that despite not otherwise sharing a dialect she has the exact same "okay?" disorder as quentin tarantino

I noticed that too!

Hence, "Like a Virgin."

omg the best
the original “I don’t know her”

Another great one, from 1970, when Mickey Mantle was asked about Jim Bouton's upcoming book Ball Four: "Jim who?" Mantle was a teammate of Bouton's from 1962-68. (Bouton ended up using the quote on the back cover of the paperback edition of Ball Four.)

"She's not into Rock. And she's been passed."

Sontag was giving off Martin Short vibes

https://gfycat.com/bitterenormousant

omg

not even a little defensive and hurt. all grace and poise, our Camille P

Exactly

"She's not into Rock."

Paglia stopped posting on NextDoor once the pandemic started. Too bad, her posts fit very much into the shrill "I'm not a gentrifier, you're the gentrifier - I was here first" posting style common to NextDoor.

She hasn't lost those peculiar vocal mannerisms.

― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 27 June 2023 bookmarkflaglink

A lot of ppl were saying she's ok coke but yes she always a peculiar delivery.

It was odd for Paglia to tell Sontag to turn on the TV. Sontag has pretty much never done that.

this one reads like self-parody

https://www.salon.com/2016/03/31/camille_paglias_history_of_music_the_politics_and_poetry_of_bob_dylan_marvin_gaye_and_hip_hop/

But Dylan’s true masterpiece, in my view, is “Desolation Row”, the more than 11-minute song that closes Highway 61 Revisited (1965). I submit that this lyric is the most important poem in English since Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (which influenced it) and that it is far greater than anything produced since then by the official poets canonized by the American or British critical establishment. The epic ambition, daring scenarios, and emotionally compelling detail of “Desolation Row” make John Ashbery’s multiple prize-winning Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) look like the verbose, affected academic exercise that it is. I have written elsewhere (in regard to the selection process for my book on poetry, Break, Blow, Burn) of my rejection of the pretentious pseudo-philosophizing of overpraised contemporary poets like Harvard’s Jorie Graham, none of whom come anywhere near the high artistic rank of Bob Dylan.

like, this shit. this is one the most-used arrows in her quiver and it's the most tiresome thing, she did it in I think Sexual Personae when she was big-upping Spenser, she had this whole "Faerie Queene is OP, Milton SUCKS!!!" thing but she takes pages & pages to say it and it's like the most adolescent level of discourse, which trolls me severely because I was exactly like this as an adolescent -- I couldn't tell you about the things I liked without telling you how much BETTER it was than x, y, or z, and waking up from that way of thinking basically opened the entire world of ideas to me but this will never happen for our La Paglia

That article is longer than “Desolation Row” and “Percy’s Song” put together, with a few more things thrown in for good, um, measure.

My immediate target was our music majors in both the classical and jazz programs. Many young guitarists and drummers were playing in bar bands and trying to develop their own material

I still think she's turned in one of the few truly memorable BFI monographs

hm

Was it for or about The Birds?

Laughing at my own joek(s) now.

Which is either pvmic, too much time on ILX or apropos for the Camille Paglia thread.

this one reads like self-parody

There is no self

#onethread

Was it for or about The Birds?

― Looking For Mr. Goodreads (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, June 28, 2023 8:34 AM (forty-two minutes ago) bookmark

lol

Here's her cutting-edge S&S '22 ballot fwiw:

https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/greatest-films-all-time/all-voters/camille-paglia

Vertigo	1958	Alfred Hitchcock
Gone with the Wind	1939	Victor Fleming
La dolce vita	1960	Federico Fellini
Lawrence of Arabia	1962	David Lean
The Godfather	1972	Francis Ford Coppola
The Godfather Part II	1974	Francis Ford Coppola
Persona	1966	Ingmar Bergman
The Ten Commandments	1956	Cecil B. DeMille
Ben-Hur	1959	William Wyler
Blowup	1966	Michelangelo Antonioni

i'm still gently entertained by Camille P but, y'know, an aesthetic is something one adopts in lieu of active personhood

More like a butter knife.

xp obv

Sontag basically gives up on the interview after the Paglia question

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Mmi03G5oV0

CP talking about SS from this vantage point has converged to the Bono “four kids from Ireland” trope.

Gonna have to read the Paglia section of the Moser Sontag bio (if it exists)

the Bono “four kids from Ireland” trope.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOzk2RYovVk

Gonna have to read the Paglia section of the Moser Sontag bio (if it exists)

A couple of sections really.

Seems like they must have met/corresponded at least once for a talk at Bennington in 1973, according to this Moser interview

LB: Sontag’s visit to Bennington on October 4, 1973 was a legendary disaster. Sontag arrived two hours late, she read a short story that bored everyone to tears instead of giving the lecture that everyone expected, she was a difficult guest. Was this typical of her public appearances at the time, or is Paglia exaggerating?

BM: I think that if you read through the lines of the piece, it sounds more like a boring lecture that disappointed people than a legendary disaster. People very often expected far more of Sontag than she was able to provide, and the clash between these expectations and the reality of the actual person was often memorable. It seems, from Paglia’s descriptions, that Sontag was simply tired, and that the story she read was boring. It also appears that Sontag was very nice to Paglia personally – and don’t forget that Bernard Malamud seems to have gone out of his way to insult her.

http://www.literarybennington.com/literary-bennington/paglia-v-sontag-the-literary-rivalry-that-began

Yes, they met and hung out afterwards, when Sontag finally let her hair down a bit became Susan, but they didn’t quite bond to Camille’s satisfaction. Sontag later pretended not to know her for that interview, which is also discussed.