S A L O N +|+ A S K_C A M I L L E +|+ C A M I L L E+P A G L I A

c o n t i n u e d

Dear Camille: Lately I've noticed a creepy new trend: the eroticization of videogame characters. Between games, the latest arcade combat machines display their female combatants in lingering shots that dwell upon their computer-generated cleavage. And the barely-dressed, Uzi-wielding Lara Croft character from "Tomb Raider 2" appears in lascivious poses on the covers of several game magazines containing letters from readers desperate to know where they can get posters of her. Now, fantasizing about real people in cheesecake photos I can understand, but a fetish for pixels? Is this the latest riff on the Pygmalion myth? Or is a nerd just a man who knows 60 ways to make love, but no women? Lloyd Dear Lloyd: I'm delighted to hear that the pornographic imagination is continuing to do Dionysus' work by seeping into every cranny of Apollo's polished techno-grid. As I confessed in "Sexual Personae," I experienced a pagan conversion experience and general erotic wipe-out over the elegant, imperious, cartoon Witch Queen in Walt Disney's "Snow White" (1937), which I saw in re-release when I was 3. I adore pornographic cartoons, from the lewd, crude Tijuana Bibles to the stupendous, Rubensian, all-male orgies of the brilliant Tom of Finland. The Romantics -- particularly decadent late Romantics like Baudelaire, Huysmans and Oscar Wilde -- would say that art is always greater than reality. The boundary line between cartoon and cinema sex has been blurring since Jane Fonda became Barbarella and Pamela Anderson Lee became Barb Wire (whose on-screen attack dog, incidentally, was apparently named after me). Since the porn industry became overprofessionalized in the 1970s, there has been a great renaissance of erotic cartoon books, in which the naughty, protean id runs free. O Wise One: I've been up nights trying to figure it all out -- Why? What is it about Martha Stewart and the whole industry that she has developed? What need is she fulfilling? Why is she here? Why are millions drawn to her to learn how to make lamps out of used Coke bottles? What is the point? Answer me, PLEASE. Potted Plant Dear Potted: Martha Stewart is Julia Child's heir in what has been a 35-year process of expanding and transforming white-bread, Main Street American taste. Child imported the sophistication of continental cuisine (begun by Italian cooks brought to the French court), while Stewart has transplanted the sensibility of the gracious English country house to her East Hampton fiefdom. No one who saw the Oprah show of several years ago when Martha Stewart sat like a queen, adored by her married women fans (and reviled by their jealous husbands), could doubt that Stewart is a major figure in modern American cultural history. She exuded a strange, androgynous, charismatic charm. After the women's movement reawoke in the late 1960s, it veered, despite the valiant efforts of Betty Friedan (who was driven out of her own organization, NOW), toward a harsh careerist perspective that deified the professional woman while ignoring and demeaning the stay-at-home mom. Martha Stewart recovered, revised, updated and celebrated the arts of homemaking, which not only justified the life's work of masses of ordinary women but spoke to the midlife fatigue of baby boomers, who were turning away from the fast-buck, junk-bond '80s and refocusing their energies on home turf. Like Ralph Lauren (born Ralph Lifshitz in the Bronx), Stewart emerged from an immigrant family (in this case Polish) to identify strongly with a dreamy, high WASP vision of relaxed town-and-country life. The irony is that the Stewart regime is one of ceaseless labor, made possible by squadrons of anonymous off-stage aides. Nevertheless, Stewart is visibly a gung-ho, hands-on, get-down-in-the-dirt dynamo, whose demonstrations of technical ingenuity help keep the ancient crafts alive in this era of mass production. A recent tell-tale biography tried to debunk Stewart by passing along catty details about her troubles with family and staff -- most of which faithful tabloid readers have known about for years. Who cares anyway? As I've repeatedly said, Picasso's imbroglios with his girlfriends don't affect my admiration of his work. All great stars are monsters. I think of Martha Stewart as an important working artist who has invaded and taken command of one medium after another, from magazines to television. She's a wonderful role model for independent thinkers and entrepreneurs of both sexes. Like another major tastemaker and take-charge businesswoman, Madonna, Stewart's revolution has been so successful and her innovations so culturally absorbed that many shallow people think she can now be dismissed. Forget it. She's everywhere! Postscript: For an attack on the PC-ridden National Endowment for the Arts, see my op-ed piece, "More Mush from the NEA," in the Oct. 24 Wall Street Journal. For a superb critique of the scandalously overpoliticized scientific research on AIDS, see Christine Johnson's long interview with Australian biophysicist Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos in the new issue of the British AIDS magazine Continuum. The American major media have effectively suppressed long-standing questions about whether the AIDS test is reliable or whether an HIV virus in fact exists at all. Continuum is located at 172 Foundling Court, Brunswick Centre, London WC1N 1QE. Telephone: 011-44-171-713-7071. Christine Johnson's mailing address is P.O. Box 2424, Venice, CA 90294. Fax: (310) 273-2972. SALON | Oct. 28, 1997 Has your access been denied? Ask Camille

L  A  S  T    5    C  O  L  U  M  N  S

A  L  S  O