On to pop culture: Anna Nicole Smith. I heard the first bulletins about her death on the car radio as I was driving home from campus last week. At the Popeye's drive-through (where I was ordering Cajun wings), I blurted in agitation to the window lady, "Anna Nicole Smith just dropped dead -- tell everyone!" -- which she promptly did. The staff inside (all African-American) were startled and incredulous.
Smith's sudden death in a Florida hotel, only five months after her son's death three days after she had given birth to a daughter in the Bahamas, struck me as terribly sad. ABC's "Nightline" called via my publisher for comment, but I felt far too upset to go on TV. Nevertheless, I was riveted to the tube all night and didn't mind in the least that this tabloid drama, with its mythic themes of ambiguous paternity and contested wealth, had pushed Iraq to the back burner. Through all the commentators' often pointless chatter, the plain, radiant fact of Smith's sexual charisma and comedic charm burst through in her candid video clips, played again and again.
Anna Nicole Smith, a big, strapping, good-natured Texas gal, was less Marilyn Monroe (whom she idolized) than Jayne Mansfield or Anita Ekberg -- a connection that Salon's own Cintra Wilson of course also instantly made. At times, I catch in Anna Nicole a fleeting, strong-jawed resemblance to the haunted, horsey Margaux Hemingway. (Remember the vengeful Margaux hefting that shotgun in the parking lot in "Lipstick"?)
Never mind the pills -- which put Smith into a hypnotic, seductive Candy Darling haze. The real problem was that the broad, Technicolor comedic films in which Smith might have thrived are no longer made -- except in Bollywood. The declining, glamorous studio system that created Monroe and her imitator Mansfield is long gone. Smith had genuine talent but no place to put it. Oddly, with her aimless hejira over, she has attained permanent star status in the pictorial dynasty of doomed blond sex symbols. We're sure to go mad with the dogged omnipresence of her story, but Anna Nicole is here to stay.
My partner, Alison, and I had the great pleasure of seeing Sandra Bernhard in "Everything Bad & Beautiful" at the Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia last month. What a searing, original presence Bernhard is -- and what a rebuke to the simpering micro-celebs with blank eyes who litter our entertainment mags with their banal bacchanals. Bernhard is a true role model to aspiring young performers, who need guts and gumption and cantankerous vision. She's shown how to make a mark on the world and still stay real.
There were so many wonderful moments, but the highlight for me was when Bernhard veered into a split-second improvisation inspired by the two curving stairways framing the stage -- which looked like a set for the balcony scene in "Romeo and Juliet." Primly holding the mike like a candle, she suddenly became an acolyte in a religious procession, slowly mounting the steps while humming, then singing Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," whose classic lyrics she mischievously bent. Her superb band, the Rebellious Jezebels, immediately responded and carried her along as she repeated her liturgical homage on the other side.
It was hilarious yet eerie. I was utterly transfixed, as if by an occult manifestation. As a performance artist, Sandra Bernhard has few peers today. Her lineage goes back through early Barbra Streisand to Lenny Bruce and the comic monologist Ruth Draper, whose one-woman theater was famous throughout the world. But Bernhard's raging energy is sparked by the rock idiom, which gives her propulsion and a flirtation with danger.
Radio remains central for me. (As a denizen of the Web, I've been watching less and less TV.) The looming bankruptcy of Air America proves yet again how liberals, despite their control of Hollywood, have oddly failed to master radio as an entertainment medium. So I'm stuck with sports radio (luridly operatic in Philadelphia) and conservative talk shows, with their assertive hosts and slice-of-life callers.
There are rewards aplenty -- it was Sean Hannity's lively show that tipped me off to the Code Pink video with Hillary. And Rush Limbaugh, who fathered the radio boom, features Paul Shanklin's brilliant parodies -- such as his recent, full-throated version of Lerner and Loew's song "They Call the Wind Maria" (pronounced "Mar-eye-ah"), which became John Kerry singing "They Call the U.S. Pariah." I was in stitches. My favorite Shanklin bit from Rush's show was the parody of Hillary airily claiming to the special prosecutor that she can't remember and can't recall because "My mind has turned to Jell-O ... Jell-O ... Jell-O..." (fading echoes).
But what dismays me about current conservative radio, which is intricately engaged with daily political news, is its clumsy stereotyping of Democrats, who are indiscriminately lumped with the "kooks" of "the lunatic left" and whose rational objections to the Iraq war are slandered as knee-jerk anti-Americanism. These verbal tics and clichés undermine the intellectual credibility of conservative critique.
This past Sunday night, there was a floating, mesmerizingly sensuous moment on Matt Drudge's radio show as he segued long from the midnight news with Yaz's "Winter Kills" ("Green in your love on bright days/ You grew sun blind/ You thought me unkind/ To remind you how winter kills"). No one but Drudge these days uses AM radio for artistic mood and ambience. People who know Drudge simply through his Web site are clueless about his eclectic musical sensibility.
The current February issue of Interview magazine, where I am a contributing editor, is devoted to Elizabeth Taylor. Ingrid Sischy and I converse about my teenage passion for Taylor, which bordered on a goddess cult -- at one point, I had collected 599 pictures of her. The photos Interview reprints richly document Taylor's preternatural vitality from child star to imperial vixen. One of my all-time favorites is here: a subdued, intimate shot of Taylor cradling her infant daughter Liza on her breast, as her producer husband Mike Todd (soon to be tragically killed in a plane crash) hovers close.
A final news item: Mitchell Lichtenstein, an actor ("Lords of Discipline," "Miami Vice," "Law & Order") and a student of mine from Bennington College in the 1970s, has written and directed his second film, "Teeth," which was screened at the Sundance Film Festival last month. It was immediately bought for distribution by Weinstein/Lionsgate, and the lead actress, Jess Weixler, won a Sundance award.
Mitchell's theme -- brace yourself! -- is the vagina dentata or toothed vagina, an ancient myth that he first heard about in my classes and that, he has told interviewers, he never forgot. At his request, I specially wrote some lines for the film but have yet to see it. Web reports from Sundance have raved about the film's comic mix of retro horror with satiric sociology. This week, "Teeth" is having its international premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. Bon appétit!
About the writer
Camille Paglia is the University Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Her most recent book is "Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-Three of the World's Best Poems."
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