Camille Paglia: An Ego to Rival the Media's
Sex, Art and American Culture By Camille Paglia Vintage
Book review by
Carl Sessions Stepp
Carl Sessions Stepp (cstepp@umd.edu) began writing for his hometown paper, the Marlboro Herald-Advocate in Bennettsville, South Carolina, in 1963, after his freshman year in high school. He studied journalism at the University of South Carolina, where he edited The Gamecock. After college, he worked for the St. Petersburg Times and the Charlotte Observer before becoming the first national editor at USA Today in 1982. In 1983, he joined the University of Maryland journalism faculty full time. In the ensuing 30 years, he also has served as senior editor and book reviewer for AJR, writing dozens of pieces. He has been a visiting writing and editing coach for news organizations in more than 30 states.
Sex, Art and American Culture
By Camille Paglia
Vintage
338 pages; $13
For the sake of argument (and Camille Paglia starts lots of arguments),
let's take the author up on her observation that she personifies the character
of American mass media.
"My manic personality, which frightens and repels academics, seems
perfectly normal to media people, who are always in a rush and on a deadline,"
Paglia writes in introducing her collection of essays, book reviews and
speeches.
This is an intriguing, and relevant, concept because Paglia is certainly
a creature of and for the media. "I like reporters and enjoy talking to
them," she observes. To say the least. Her remarkably self-absorbed book,
in fact, ends with "A Media History" that records her "personal, inflammatory
presence in the media" and lists more than 100 articles and even several
cartoons published about her during the past two years.
When she gets beyond this sort of narcissism, her writing features
a brilliant and uninhibited voice, but one always verging on stormy self-righteousness
and belligerence. At its best and worst it is much like..well, it is much
like the media, isn't it? Stimulating and high-minded, but apt to come
across as smug and irksome.
Like the media, she wallows in her own notoriety. A Philadelphia art
professor, author and lecturer, she describes herself as "abrasive, strident
and obnoxious" and her style as "out there punching and kicking and fighting
with people." And she, too, has such a strong know-it-all streak so that
even when you agree with her you frequently go away annoyed.
But you go away thinking. Along with polemics, Paglia offers thoughtful,
pungent observations on matters from Madonna (she loves her) to French
intellectual theorists (she loathes them).
Dominating this collection are her bombshell opinions on feminism,
rape and sex. Male lust is "the energizing factor in culture." Concern
about date rape is "a crock." And "hunt, pursuit and capture are biologically
programmed into male sexuality." While she specifically condemns rape,
she seems grandly indifferent to the prospect that her positions might
help perpetuate anger and violence toward women.
Though she pontificates with all the subtlety of a bulldozer, she clearly
brings informed historical perspective, multilayered logic and accomplished
style to her work.
What makes it especially interesting for journalists is Paglia's astute
appreciation for the media's role in today's culture and the adroitness
with which she exploits that insight. Following her breakthrough 1990 book
"Sexual Personae," Paglia has made herself into a kind of icon of contrarious
post-feminism, her standing authenticated by major attention from the trend-spotting
Vanity Fair, New Republic and, of course, People.
Mass media "is our culture," Paglia writes, "completely, even servilely
commercial..a mirror of the popular mind," a souped-up, high-decibel torrent
fueled by "the triumph of television and rock music" and sustained by "daily
excitement and bracing vulgarity."
Unapologetically, Paglia has harnessed her own personality and writing
to this blazing force, and the resulting synergy has generated a "strange
quick passage from obscurity to notoriety."
What may be the most unsettling parallel between Paglia and the media
is that ultimately it is form rather than content that defines her work.
In another echo of the medium-being-the-message, personality and style
overwhelm her considered commentary. By overwriting ("I'm..pro-pornography – all
the way through kiddie porn and snuff films") and name-calling (Kate Millet
is an "imploding beanbag of poisonous self-pity"), Paglia often undercuts
her own effectiveness. The same can, of course, often be said of mass media.
Like the media, Paglia must constantly choose between showing off and moving
public opinion forward. l
Stepp, a WJR senior editor, teaches at the University of Maryland College
of Journalism.
Briefly...
Writing for Your Readers, by Donald Murray (Globe Pequot Press, 244
pages, $13.95): Murray's first edition made everybody's list of the top
10 writing books, and this revision is just as delightful. The longtime
author and writing coach adds material on handling routine assignments,
finding story lines and other timely topics, and his voice remains warm
and very, very wise.
Good Advice on Writing, by William Safire and Leonard Safir (Simon &
Schuster, 288 pages, $22): This is another collection of quotations about
writing. While it contains some gems, overall the choices seem flat and
disappointing. I still prefer Jon Winokur's "Writers on Writing." ###
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