THR: “Is there anything of lasting value in Hugh Hefner’s legacy?” CP: “We can see that what has completely vanished is what Hefner espoused and represented—the art of seduction, where a man, behaving in a courtly, polite, and respectful manner, pursues a woman and gives her the time and the grace and the space to make a decision of consent or not. Hefner’s passing makes one remember an era when a man would ask a woman out on a real date—inviting her to his apartment for some great music on a cutting-edge stereo system (Playboy was always talking about the best new electronics!)—and treating her to fine cocktails and a wonderful, relaxing time. Sex would emerge out of conversation and flirtation as a pleasurable mutual experience.
“So now when we look back at Hefner, we see a moment when there was a fleeting vision of a sophisticated sexuality that was integrated with all of our other aesthetic and sensory responses. Instead, what we have today, after Playboy declined and finally disappeared off the cultural map, is the coarse, juvenile anarchy of college binge-drinking, fraternity keg parties where undeveloped adolescent boys clumsily lunge toward naïve girls who are barely dressed in tiny miniskirts and don’t know what the hell they want from life. What possible romance or intrigue or sexual mystique could survive such a vulgar and debased environment as today’s residential campus social life?
“Women’s sexual responses are notoriously slower than men’s. Truly sophisticated seducers knew that women have to be courted and that women love an ambiance, setting a stage. Today, alas, too many young women feel that they have to provide quick sex or they’ll lose social status. If a guy can’t get sex from them, he’ll get it from someone else. There’s a general bleak atmosphere of grudging compliance.”
* * *
Paglia, “A ‘Strange Joke’: The pro-sex feminist on the meaning behind the ‘childlike’ Playboy Bunny costume,” sidebar to “Hef’s Hollywood,” The Hollywood Reporter, October 4, 2017. “When it came to that infamous Playboy Bunny costume, the one that Gloria Steinem wore undercover at the Playboy Club for a Show magazine exposé in 1963, second-wave feminists were irate. They felt that it reduced women to animals. Yes, it’s animal imagery, but a bunny is charmingly harmless. Hugh Hefner’s iconic creation could certainly be criticized as infantilizing to women, but it’s the type of animal here that is key to his unique sensibility.
“ ‘Multiplying like bunnies,’ we say: Hefner was making a strange joke about the procreative process. It seems like a defense formation—Hefner turning his Puritan guilt into humor. It suggests that, despite his bland smile, he may always have suffered from a deep anxiety about sex. There was nothing dark or threatening in Hefner’s opulent sexual universe. It was a childlike vision, sanitizing all the conflicts and turbulence of the sex impulse. Everybody knows that Hefner’s sexual type was the girl next door: the corn-fed, bubbly American girl who stays at the borderline of womanhood but never crosses it. She was like an ingénue in a postwar musical comedy like Oklahoma!—uncomplex as a personality but always warm and genuine.
“Hefner’s bunnies were a major departure from historical female mythology, where women were often portrayed as animals of prey—tigresses and leopards. Hefner was good-natured but abashed, diffident and shy. So he re-created women’s image in a palatable and manageable form. I don’t see anything misogynist in that. Woman as cozy, cuddly bunny is a perfectly legitimate modality of eroticism. I think feminism goes wildly wrong when it portrays men as oppressors. What I see is Hefner’s frank acknowledgment of his fear of women’s enormous power.”
* * *
Tim Hains, “Camille Paglia vs. Identity Politics: Return to Authentic 1960s Vision Where Consciousness Transcends Divisions of Gender, Race, Ethnicity,” RealClearPolitics.com, October 5, 2017. “An Earth-shaking meeting of the minds takes place between Dr. Jordan Peterson and feminist icon Camille Paglia. Peterson interviews Paglia, only to find that they agree on just about everything. They riff on their concerns about modern feminism, the myth of the Patriarchy, and the future of Western civilization.” The one hour and 43 minute dialogue (“Modern Times: Camille Paglia and Jordan B. Peterson”) was videotaped by a Toronto film crew at the University of the Arts on September 21, 2017, and posted on YouTube on October 2. Paglia was astounded and delighted to learn that Jordan Peterson and she had both been deeply influenced by Jungian analyst Erich Neumann, above all his major work, The Origins and History of Consciousness. (See Chapter 56 in Provocations, “Erich Neumann: Theorist of the Great Mother.”)
* * *
Sarah Lyall and Dave Itzkoff, “Charlie Rose, Louis C.K., Kevin Spacey: Rebuked. Now what do we do with their work?,” The New York Times, November 24, 2017. “Some people, like the feminist scholar Camille Paglia, argue that art—no matter who created it—should be beyond the scope of punishment. ‘The artist as a person should certainly be subject to rebuke, censure, or penalty for unacceptable actions in the social realm,’ Ms. Paglia said via email. ‘But art, even when it addresses political issues, occupies an abstract realm beyond society.’ ”
* * *
Ed Pilkington, “How the Drudge Report Ushered in the Age of Trump: Twenty years ago, Matt Drudge’s reports on the Lewinsky affair nearly brought down Bill Clinton,” The Guardian, January 24, 2018. Numbers Paglia as among Matt Drudge’s “devoted fans”: “She was one of the first established voices to break ranks and endorse the site at a time when it was still being almost universally derided. ‘I saw in Matt Drudge the triumph of the populist tabloids,’ says Paglia. ‘It’s amazing how no one, in all these decades, has been able to imitate, displace, or supplant Drudge—because he is a true American original.’ Paglia is right: it is amazing that the Drudge Report continues to enjoy the influence it does.”
* * *
Executive Editor Mish Barber-Way, interview, “Camille Paglia, Agent Provocateur: Going deep with America’s most electric mind,” Penthouse, January/February 2018. Reprinted: the fox-in-a-henhouse color photo of a very happy Paglia ringed by strippers at Stringfellow’s Pure Platinum club in Manhattan in the October 1994 issue of Penthouse. CP: Demanding equal rights for women is crucial, but mischaracterizing men as oppressors and brutalizers throughout history is such a distortion! Of course, there have been brutes, but it’s a minority of men who have behaved in a dishonorable way. Overwhelmingly, when you look at world history, it’s men courageously giving their lives and their energy—sacrificing themselves for women and children!…
MBW: My husband is a metal fabricator and a craftsman. He was raised in a working-class family from Arkansas and since meeting him, I have developed a different appreciation for this kind of work that I once took for granted. I think that’s why your writing has resonated with me. Why do you think culture has become so blind to these essential male contributions? CP: I’ve been calling for decades for vocational training to be reinstituted. I want a restoration and revalorization of the trades. For all of my career, I’ve been teaching in art schools, so a lot of my students work with their hands….In rural Italian culture, it’s assumed that you show true character by your willingness to do physical work. However, now we’re in a period where manufacturing has fled overseas. Over the past 50 years, we’ve moved into a service-sector economy, which has been a disaster for working-class men who used to be able to walk into a factory off the street and earn a very good living working with their hands. Look, in Italian culture we pay attention to infrastructure. That’s just the way I was raised. Workmanship is important….The Romans developed concrete. In my family—oh my God—they could talk about concrete forever! The right way to pour it, the wrong way to pour it. My whole life I would hear the men in my family evaluating craftsmanship. My mother sewed—all the women did. Among my earliest memories is women fingering my sleeve or lapel and complimenting my mother on the stitching!…
MBW: You see us going down in the same rubble Rome did? CP: Rome became impossible to sustain. The lesson of history is that all bureaucracies eventua
lly expand to the point where they collapse of their own weight. All bureaucracies become inefficient, convoluted, and self-involved, whether you’re talking about ancient Rome or Soviet Russia. The whole Russian experiment began as a revolution in 1917 to liberate the people, and all of a sudden it became state-run farms and collectives—a horrendously inefficient mode of operation. The only way to run it was an authoritarian surveillance state. That’s the lesson in all this. The bigger and wealthier a culture gets, the more you get an expensive, overgrown bureaucracy. We can see it now in Washington and on college campuses. This is a decadent phenomenon—a parallel to ancient Rome….
MBW: Finally, because it’s Penthouse, what value does pornography bring to sex and art? CP: My position has always been that pornography shows us the truth about sexuality, which connects us to the animal realm of primitive urges. Sexual desire and sexual fantasy are perpetually churning on the subliminal and unconscious levels, surfacing in our dream life….Pornography is vital to freedom of the imagination. It’s only in pornography that we can discern the shifting, shadowy structure of contemporary taboos. We call something “hot” when there is a subtle or not so subtle violation of taboo beneath the surface. Hence I view pornography as both art and anthropology—an alluring cultural projection that also reveals the hidden compulsions and conflicts of sexual relations in every era.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My most fervent gratitude and appreciation go to my longtime editor, LuAnn Walther, who acquired the paperback rights for my first book, Sexual Personae, shortly after its publication by Yale University Press and presciently before the media storm began. As commander-in-chief of six of my subsequent books, she has been absolutely central to my public career. The debt I owe to her support, patience, understanding, and professional expertise is incalculable.
Catherine Tung was the tireless coordinator of the vast project of Provocations, with its multiple sources and formats crossing three decades. Her contributions to the editorial organization of this book (culled from a mountain of material) were truly heroic, as were her meticulous precision and persistence, particularly during the byzantine permissions process. Altie Karper, Cat Courtade, and Rita Madrigal were the formidable triumvirate of production: I am deeply grateful for their acute attention to detail as well as their supremely high standards of quality control. Josefine Taylor Kals, my publicist at Pantheon Books, has been a master strategist and keen cultural consultant. Many thanks again to Michael Lionstar for his discerning author photos. Janet Hansen’s stylish, dynamic jacket design (based on a Lionstar photo and inspired by Andy Warhol) eloquently expresses my world-view and method in a way that I never thought possible. The Warhol Foundation was most gracious in giving its blessing to this splendid cover.
My profound thanks are owed to the bold and innovative editors who commissioned many of the pieces in this book, often at a time when my work was being attacked or censored elsewhere. Foremost among them are Herbert Golder and Nicholas Poburko, the erudite editor-in-chief and managing editor of Arion at Boston University. Nick was very generous in expediting the urgent digitization of my early Arion articles for production of this book. I was fortunate indeed to have been invited to participate in David Talbot’s cosmopolitan vision for Salon.com, for which I wrote as a co-founding contributor from its first issue in 1995. I am also very grateful to the other Salon editors who were so hospitable to me and my work: Kerry Lauerman, Gary Kamiya, and David Daley. Some day, when the pioneering visual design of early Salon is systematically documented, the brilliant satiric spirit of artist Zach Trenholm (represented in this book) will be fully recognized and celebrated.
Jeff Yarbrough was very courageous in offering me a column at The Advocate during a highly contentious period in gay activism. It was a huge pleasure to work for several years with Ingrid Sischy and Brad Goldfarb, the editor-in-chief and managing editor of Interview magazine. Sarah Baxter has kindly offered many exciting (and mischief-making) opportunities at The Sunday Times in London. Jeanie Pyun’s open door at The Hollywood Reporter has been like a dream come true for this lifelong movie fan.
Thanks to Jamie Malanowski for commissioning my “agony aunt” column in Spy magazine in 1993—the snappish ancestor of my later Salon column. I am grateful to editor Dian Hanson for commissioning my tribute to Tom of Finland for Taschen’s collected works. Lance Strate of Fordham University was instrumental in providing a forum for two major pieces in this book, “The North American Intellectual Tradition” and “Dispatches from the New Frontier: Writing for the Internet.” Anne Savarese, executive editor for literature at Princeton University Press, was extremely kind in supplying emergency assistance for digitization of my article on Western love poetry in The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics.
My literary agent, Lynn Nesbit, remains a steadfast source of wise and sympathetic counsel in any crisis. Finally, hearty thanks are due to my friends, allies, and family members (in alphabetical order) who have been so loyal and supportive over the decades: Gunter Axt, Glenn Belverio, Robert Caserio, Lisa Chedekel, Kent Christensen, Jack DeWitt, Matt Drudge, Kristoffer Jacobson, Ann Jamison, Mitchell Kunkes, Kristen Lippincott, Alison Maddex, Lucien Maddex, Lenora Paglia, Christina Hoff Sommers, and Francesca Stanfill.
No research assistants were used for this or any other of my books, articles, or lectures. Whatever errors may appear are entirely my own.
PREVIOUS PUBLICATION INFORMATION
“The Grandeur of Old Hollywood” originally appeared in The Hollywood Reporter as “Camille Paglia on Oscar Glamour Then and Now: ‘The Mythic Grandeur of Old Hollywood Is Gone’ ” on February 23, 2017.
“Art of Song Lyric” originally appeared in Salon (www.Salon.com) on March 31, 2016. An online version remains in the Salon archives. Reprinted with permission.
“On Rihanna” originally appeared in V magazine as part of an interview with Alex Kazemi on March 27, 2017.
“The Death of Prince” originally appeared in Salon (www.Salon.com) in response to a reader question on May 5, 2016. An online version remains in the Salon archives. Reprinted with permission.
“Theater of Gender: David Bowie at the Climax of the Sexual Revolution” originally published as a chapter in David Bowie Is, ed. Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh (V&A Publishing, 2013). Copyright © 2013 by The Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
“Punk Rock” originally appeared in Salon (www.Salon.com) in response to a reader question on January 20, 1999.
“Living with Music: A Playlist” originally appeared in The New York Times Book Review on July 16, 2008.
“Oscar Style” was originally an interactive live event hosted on AOL.com/ABC Cyberplex on March 26, 1996.
“A Love Letter to Joan Rivers” originally appeared in The Hollywood Reporter on June 12, 2013.
“Rock Around the Clock” originally appeared in Forbes ASAP magazine on November 30, 1998.
“The Guardian Questionnaire,” interview by Rosanna Greenstreet, originally appeared in The Guardian magazine in January 2008.
“The Death of Gianni Versace” originally appeared in Salon (www.Salon.com) on July 22, 1997.
“The Italian Way of Death” originally appeared in Salon (www.Salon.com) on April 18, 1996, and was subsequently published in The Italian American Reader, ed. Bill Tonelli (Harper, 2003).
“Women and Magic in Alfred Hitchcock” originally appeared as a chapter in 39 Steps to the Genius of Hitchcock, ed. James Bell (British Film Institute, 2012).
“The Waning of European Art Film” originally appeared as “Art Movies: R.I.P.” in Salon (www.Salon.com) on August 8, 2007. An online version remains in the Salon archives. Reprinted with permission.
“The Decline of Film Criticism” originally appeared in Salon (www.Salon.com) on December 9, 1997.
“Movie Music” was originally a segment on BBC Radio 3 titled “Essay: The Sound of Cinema,” broadc
ast October 2, 2013.
“Homer on Film: A Voyage through The Odyssey, Ulysses, Helen of Troy, and Contempt” originally appeared in Arion, Fall 1997.
“Sex Quest in Tom of Finland” originally published as a chapter in Tom of Finland XXL, ed. Dian Hanson, copyright © 2009 by TASCHEN GmbH, Hohenzollernring 53, D-50672, Köln, www.taschen.com.
“Women and Law” originally published as a preface to Gunter Axt’s Historias de Vida: Mulheres do Direito, Mulheres no Ministerio Publico (Florianapolis, Brazil, 2015).
“On Jewish-American Feminists” originally appeared in slightly different form as part of an interview with Adam Kirsch in Tablet (tabletmag.com) on March 9, 2017. Reprinted with permission.
“Portrayals of Middle Eastern Women in Western Culture” originally published as a foreword to Birgitte C. Huitfeldt’s Usensurert: Midtøstens kvinner/ Ti møter (Oslo, Norway, May 2017).
“On Ayn Rand” originally appeared in Salon (www.Salon.com) on October 28, 1998.
“The Death of Helen Gurley Brown” originally appeared in The Sunday Times (London) on August 19, 2012.
“Legends of Diana” originally appeared in The Sunday Times (London) on August 29, 2004.
“Deconstructing the Demise of Martha Stewart” originally appeared in Interview magazine in June 2004. Courtesy of BMP Media Holdings, LLC.
“Feminism and Transgenderism” originally appeared in The Weekly Standard (www.weeklystandard.com) on June 15, 2017.
“Movies, Art, and Sex War” originally appeared in The Hollywood Reporter as “Camille Paglia on Movies, #MeToo and Modern Sexuality: ‘Endless, Bitter Rancor Lies Ahead’ ” on February 27, 2018.
“The Unbridled Lust for Blurbs” originally appeared in Publishers Weekly on June 3, 1996, copyright © Publishers Weekly PWXYZ LLC. Reprinted by permission.
Provocations Page 73
