_______________ THE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION OF GWYNETH PALTROW BY CAMILLE PAGLIA (06/09/98)
	I'm starting to wonder if anyone else is coming to the conclusion that Camille Paglia is to feminism what Ross Perot was to the Republican Party. Think about it: Both sort of sailed in out of nowhere with some interesting and controversial ideas that promised to shake the dust off of a once-useful but now disastrously out of touch institution. Both got a lot of people mobilized. Both also committed the same fatal error -- they kept talking. And gradually, both revealed themselves as sort of, well ... nut cases. Paglia continues to do so in your magazine, unfortunately. I tend not to read her, but sometimes, like driving past a train wreck, you have to stop and take a look. But, as in her latest salvo, where she goes after, God knows why, Gwyneth Paltrow, it just leaves me annoyed and vaguely depressed that this woman who held such promise in getting feminism in touch with the next generation has just wound up raving, and attacking the most innocuous and unimportant targets our society can dish up. Gwyneth Paltrow? Leonardo DiCaprio? The New Age? Come on, that's like shooting fish in a barrel. There's nothing courageous in getting pissy over admittedly addle-brained but harmless nonsense like that. If doing the cultural-crit equivalent of stomping baby ducks is what she's reduced herself to, not only is it pointless, but it's depressing for women like me, who still don't feel in touch with the women's movement at all, but who have seen the supposed spokesperson for reform start to blather about the most meaningless nonsense she can find. We turn to mainstream feminism and hear that lipstick oppresses us (huh?), and then turn to the reformer only to get a burst of bile tossed in our laps over a couple of too-cute actors. For God's sake, Camille, have you got nothing better to bitch about? I thought you were going to revolutionize feminism and here you are just playing Luella Parsons. -- Janis Cortese I find I agree with Camille Paglia more often than not, but her attack on Gwyneth Paltrow is hard to forgive. If any male heterosexual critic were to evaluate actresses, openly and shamelessly, as potential totty he would probably be lynched. As it happens, I too don't particularly crave sex with Paltrow. I didn't particularly want sex with Vanessa Redgrave (who couldn't help her famous parents any more than Paltrow can help hers), but I recognized that, quite objectively, Redgrave was the best actress of her generation. Quite objectively, Paltrow has quite a bit of talent: A striking proof is her effortless mastery of the varieties of middle-class English speech -- the confident county vowels she used in "Emma" and her yuppified off-cockney in "Sliding Doors." And this is a girl who had hardly visited England before starring in "Emma"! If you Yanks don't appreciate your luck in having her we'll be overjoyed to give her a permanent home here. As for Paglia, I recommend brisk walks and cold showers. When I was 20 I accepted, sadly, that I was never going to climb into bed with Sylvana Mangano. Paglia should learn to accept that she will never climb into bed with Kate Winslet. -- David Watkins
_______________ THE BOY IN THE CELLULOID BUBBLE BY CHARLES TAYLOR(06/05/98)
	Charles Taylor's review of "The Truman Show" is brilliant and appreciated. But why he did not mention "Bulworth" as being in the same eye-opening category is a mystery to me. I surely hope that movies such as these educational and inspirational and realistic observations of our culture will multiply until the greedy corporate world gags on its own media garbage! -- A. C. Germann Mount Shasta, Calif. I was disappointed to see that Salon Magazine's Charles Taylor went wildly overboard in his review of "The Truman Show," as have so many other critics across the country. It's hard to believe that Mr. Taylor and I saw the same movie. What struck me as a pleasant, moderately interesting film with solid (albeit relatively facile) performances and a hardly original premise has been described by Taylor as "the key movie of its era." I walked out of the film with a bemused smile, thinking, "Jim Carrey was rather good." Taylor, on the other hand, waxed eloquent for pages about the film's mind-boggling originality and the "astonishing ... miracle" of Carrey's performance. Perhaps Taylor doesn't get out much, but I'm a little cheesed off that he and others of his ilk have hyped this movie to such a ludicrous extent that even if "The Truman Show" had been an extraordinary film, it could never have lived up to its advance press. Poor Peter Weir; poor Jim Carrey. Their perfectly decent film was assassinated by overly caffeinated hacks. For me, what could have been a happy cinematic experience instead left me feeling about as flat and claustrophobic as Seahaven under its ponderous gray dome. -- Patrick Youngblood Washington Yes, there's a spectacle out there guaranteed to set off paranoid, are-they-all-crazy-or-am-I vibes, but it definitely isn't "The Truman Show." Rather, it's the sight of this trite, lazy, thoroughly mediocre production monopolizing the covers of Time, Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, New York and now Salon, which hails it as the movie of the era. Charles Taylor, like his peers, claims that "The Truman Show" has something significant and disturbing to say about our times. True, the movie appears to echo some aspects of the contemporary world: people who take a voyeuristic interest in the details of strangers' lives, who broadcast themselves over the Internet or who flee to Disneyfied communities to escape real life. However, the movie isn't actually about any of these phenomena. It's not in the least bit critical of Truman's salt-of-the-earth viewers, who guiltlessly acquiesce in Truman's deception yet are instantly ready to cheer his escape. It's not about the wish to be watched or to be famous, because Truman has no idea he's a star. And it's not about the choice between manufactured reality and truth, which isn't even an issue for Truman; when he at last realizes what's been going on, he struggles mightily to get out of Seahaven, without a glimmer of doubt or regret. Moreover, on a more fundamental level, the question Truman faces -- whether to leave a placid but fake existence in favor of an unknown "freedom" -- just doesn't resonate with anything in the real world. People seek artificial serenity in order to flee the world's unruliness, not the other way around. But that's just the start of this movie's problems. The plot is insultingly sloppy, on matters small (what possible accident on the set would result in rain falling only over Truman?) and large (upon learning that everything he's known is a lie, why doesn't Truman experience a more profound dislocation?). Rather than being savvy about ad-driven culture, the film is embarrassingly out of touch: If advertising were really as blatant as "The Truman Show's" ham-handed "product placements," it wouldn't be so insidious. Finally, Andrew Niccol's screenplay betrays the same nutty hang-ups that afflicted his inane "Gattaca": a hokey, gee-whiz awe of "exploration" and a weird obsession with water as the means to attaining manliness. I can barely speculate about what combination of studio pressure, boredom and affection for the admittedly appealing Jim Carrey led to what will surely be remembered as a truly silly triumph of hype over reason. I can only feel disappointed that Charles Taylor, often a critic of taste, and Salon, usually a maverick voice, chose to go along with this madness. -- Katherine J, Florey SALON | June 12, 1998