R E C E N T L Y
Linda Tripp, the White House's ghoulish bad conscience
I'll take religion over gay culture
The affirmative action of Gwyneth Paltrow
America's New Age obsessions: The good, the bad and the inner child-y
Tom Cruise is no cruiser
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A L S O
About Camille Paglia
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C O L U M N I S T S
Sexpert Opinion
Bestseller Hell
Left Hook
From Niagara to Viagra
Right On!
Lovers and Writers
Under the Covers
Second Thoughts
American Squirm
Unzipped
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A S K_C A M I L L E +|+ C A M I L L E+P A G L I A | PAGE 2 OF 2
Dear Camille:
The highly publicized breakup of Demi and Bruce is perhaps America's most
important marital meltdown of the decade. He, a picaresque character of
debatable charm, and she, the very picture of Hollywood ambition, managed
somehow to stitch together a power marriage of equals only to see it implode
when his oafish behavior resulted in her final rejection. Their squabbling
proved the supreme countervailing force to the movie "Armaggedon," the most
expensive movie ever made. It is interesting, is it not, to once again see
the world of power, money and beauty reduced to smoldering ashes in the face
of primal urges?
-- Dean Graves
Dear Dean:
The Fates must have been chuckling maliciously last week as they splashed Demi
Moore's humiliating marital crackup on the front page of the tabloids, while
Tina Brown (who had featured the nude and pregnant or body-painted Moore on
two famous Vanity Fair covers) was splashed all over the newsmagazines, where
she looked like a pensive, somewhat rumpled, defrocked nun under house arrest
in a Belgrade hotel.
Once a charming, sexy, winsome ingenue, Demi Moore has not made a successful
transition to stardom. Like Jodie Foster, she's frozen; her persona hasn't
matured or developed like that of European stars of the magnitude of Catherine
Deneuve or Sophia Loren. Moore's performances have become all grim will,
without nuance or inspiration.
My interest in that starchy potato-head, Bruce Willis, is nil, but I am taking
a new look because of his flirtation with bodacious
free spirit Liv Tyler, his costar and third party in the Trashy Travails of
Demi. (No, my pro-Liv position has nothing to do with the fact that her
supernova father, Aerosmith lead singer Steve Tyler, once sent me a big
bouquet of exotic flowers, reducing the women in my university office to
swoons.)
Show-biz marriages are notoriously combustible, as the annals of Hollywood
prove. Two actors together tend to fight for stage center, break the
crockery and dissolve in psychosis. It's multiple personality disorder à la
carte. There are some notable
exceptions -- Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward; Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft -- but
on the whole, acting and long-term domesticity don't make a good match.
Dear Camille:
At the same time that Time magazine published its cover story on feminism, which mentioned you, an essay written by Kate Millett was distributed all over the Internet. Millett wrote that she cannot get published, she has no money and has no employable skills. When a recent publisher offered her only $1,000 to reprint "Sexual Politics" (1970), she refused their offer because it was so low.
Millett commented that Jill Johnston, Ti-Grace Atkinson and other feminists of her era are in similar circumstances.
I have not read Millett's books, but I have read criticism of her work in Elizabeth Young-Bruehl's massive book on prejudice, "The Anatomy of Prejudices," and of course in your work.
I am aware that you have been critical of Millett since the '70s, when she was at her peak as a feminist writer and you were in the position where she is now, unpublished and poor. That changed, of course, with the publication of your book, with its title, "Sexual Personae," amusingly similar to that of Millett's.
You have boasted that you seek revenge and that feminists such as Millett will eat your dust. But you have also said that there should be room in feminism for voices that oppose yours. So, what is your opinion of the turn Millett's life has taken -- and are you, in some indirect way, responsible?
-- Damion Matthews
Dear Damion:
Thank you for the tip about the Millett piece, which appears to be an excerpt
published by the Guardian on June 23. While I would love to take
responsibility for Millett's unhappiness, I'm afraid she has only herself to
blame.
Kate Millett singlehandedly began the repressive, Stalinist style in feminist
criticism. Her simplistic, humorless tome, "Sexual Politics," drove away from
the women's movement every intellectual and scholar, male or female, who was
motivated by learning rather than propaganda. Her condescending, destructive,
bitterly anti-male method of approaching art was adopted as dogma by the
women's studies programs as they sprang up everywhere in the 1970s and became
insular fiefdoms intolerant of dissent. (See my long, anecdote-filled letter
about that awful period in the July 17 issue of the Chronicle of Higher
Education.) I had in fact two close encounters with Millett just after she
became famous, in New Haven, Conn., and Provincetown, Mass., but she was too morosely
self-absorbed to notice.
If Millett has "no employable skills," who exactly is responsible -- the big,
bad patriarchy? I have worked very hard as a teacher for 27 years,
thanklessly marking freshman papers for low pay at a wide range of
institutions, including community colleges where I taught adult night classes
to scrape by. Millett chose the hip life of the bohemian artist and
solipsistic lesbian separatist, shutting herself off from the larger world
whose changes now baffle her. (At least she's not demanding that the
government support her, like that whining, talentless nincompoop, Karen
Finley, with her retchingly hackneyed chocolate wallows.)
Actually, the women I prophesied would eat my dust did not include Millett:
Her place, for better or worse, is secure in feminist history, even if she
seems forgotten at the moment. And I certainly did not mean Jill Johnston,
whose colorful adventures as a feisty, funny, visionary dance critic and
pioneering militant lesbian I followed with enormous admiration in the Village
Voice, which was at its height in the late 1960s.
No, my Achillean boast was directed at the feminist establishment of the early
1990s, the leaders of the women's organizations and their lackies in the major
media and alternative press, as well as the campus autocrats of women's
studies (the dull-witted white-lady affirmative action queens), who were
taking potshots at me because I wasn't part of the club and dared to think for
myself. Now, of course, they're all trying desperately to BE me, and a
ludicrous sight it is. Oh, yes, we Italians do love a vendetta, particularly
the ones we win!
Do not go gentle into the night. Ask Camille.
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