The ideas and work of Camille Paglia will
be the featured subject of "In Depth,"
a three-hour-long LIVE program on C-SPAN2
(a/k/a Book TV) this coming SUNDAY, August 3, noon-3pm Eastern Time. Calls
will be taken from viewers.
The show will also be re-run at 5pm on Sunday, and again on Monday at midnight.
Details below!!!
Ms. Palgia has great pride in her Italian Heritage, and is VERY opposed to Defamation and Discrimination of Italian Americans/Italians.
This is an opportunity to CALL IN and show
Ms.Palgia and the audience that YES,
the Italian Community is concerned about
Defamation, and DOES appreciate her voicing her concern.
Oh Yes, use that as a prefacing remark, and then segue into a question or comment about her, or her book/books. After all she is appearing in order to promote her books.
A Profile of Camille Paglia fellows, as
do Reviews of her four books:
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"Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence
from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson"
I was hypnotized by the words and intelligence and clarity of a writer that I now consider among the most erudite humans in the English-speaking world!
Paglia is a magnificent writer, with an almost inexhaustible supply of references and history and personal anecdotes and a brilliant way to make the boring:interesting.
WOW! Anyone who can turn medieval English poetry into a saucy chapter is not only a skilled writer but a brilliant one! Paglia married the old with the new and shows us the true power of women - and by the way - the reason that many femNazis hate Paglia is because Camille employs her sexuality like a weapon!Want to know what sex and power really mean? - Read this book!
Amazon.com:
Books: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679735798/qid=1059449197/
sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-7884563-8776748?v=glance&s=books
============================================================
"Vamps and Tramps"
In short, "Wow!" What an intellectual roller-coaster ride through the current landscape of gender and sexual politics. Fresh and brash, she challenges entrenched views, which are strongly held on campuses and in public today with little substantive challenge. I find the connections she makes with almost the entire cultural history of the western world truly wonderful: like a James Burke of pop culture. Read this book!
Amazon.com:
Books: Vamps and Tramps: New Essays
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679751203/
ref=pd_sim_books_1/104-7884563-8776748?v=glance&s=books
=============================================================
"The Birds" (Bfi
Film Classics)
I got a bowl of popcorn, my DVD of The Birds and this book, and settled on the couch. I read her scene-by-scene interpretations, played that scene on my DVD player, paused it, read, watched, etc. It was heaven. I have watched The Birds several times, but this book brought a whole new depth to the experience. She directed my attention to details I had never seen before. She delved a bit into Hitchcock's psycholgy as a auteur, and psychoanalyzed the characters and their actions. It was so much fun!
This book is not only a great companion piece to Hitchcock's classic film, it is also a good introduction to Paglia's theories and unconventional world-view (very much in sync with Hitch's) of nature as malevolent force, culture as man's valorous but ultimately vulnerable construct against that force, and woman (in this case Hitchcock's quintessential icy blonde goddess, 'Tippi' Hedren) as the centerpiece of this dichotomy: culture's glamorous, empowered beneficiary, and nature's mysterious confidant/victim.
Amazon.com:
Books: The Birds (Bfi Film Classics)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0851706517/ref=pd_sim_books_3/
104-7884563-8776748?v=glance&s=books
=============================================================
"Sex, Art, and
American Culture: Essays"
...strikes down from the heavens lika a thunderbolt from Olympus, disturbing our received notions of popular culture, high and low art, and particularly tertiary education with such flair, that you will never view the world in the same way.
Camille Paglia is a breath of fresh air; a provocative slayer of highbrow, smug, one-dimensional academics, who, over the last twenty five years, have been waving French Critical theory around like it was a major break through in western thought.
She treats these 'gurus' of French academe, i.e., Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault like purveyors of a death fog, confusing all and sunder with their 'playful language', their philosophy of destruction or 'deconstruction', and reveals the end result of this post structuralist cancer: 'Academics with the souls of accountants...' an alarming ignorance of history and true scholarship, and a specialized factory line mentality in undergraduate studies.
All of the essays in this wonderful collection sparkle with erudition, honesty and guts.
I was actually startled by Paglia's frankness, power and arresting prose style. A friend, who suggested I read this book, summed Paglia up quite nicely, "She has turned cultural studies into a contact sport."
It's about time. Having been on the receiving end of the Derrida, Lacan, Foucault triad, as an idealistic, hungry for knowledge undergraduate, I too was swept-up in the French theory furore, anally strutting around campus like some initiated witch from a secret coven. History has shown that the attainment of alleged esoteric knowledge has always given us a false sense of power: a feeling that you are somehow a member of the elite, above the fray, someone special.
After a few years, however, the illusion crumbled, and I realized that to view language as nothing more than 'meaningless play'; that, at bottom, all this so-called 'rebelliousness' was simply empty rhetoric and posing claptrap, and really has no use in the world of physical reality. I needed to do something, so switched the game plan, and began reading the canon. Suddenly, the penny dropped, and connections began to manifest. Homer's ~The Odyssey~ changed my life and true learning began in earnest.
Another area of criticism that rang true in this important book is the move towards specialization in the halls of humanities departments across the globe. Paglia explains this shift as a self-promoting defence mechanism for academics without courage. I don't know about the teacher side of the story, but from a student's perspective, specialization has been devastating in some instances.
For example, a friend of mine has a degree in 'cultural studies' hanging proudly on his wall, and his knowledge of Elizabethan literature is profound. Ironically, however, his knowledge of popular culture is next to nil. How can anyone claim higher knowledge in cultural studies without an appreciation of ~The Simpsons~ or the political ramifications of Mickey Mouse.
Because of specialization, Paglia believes universities have been churning out cultural morons with limited knowledge of the world. It is a dangerous situation. To fix the problem, Paglia suggests an interdisciplinary approach to education, which includes the sciences, art history, comparative religion and politics as well as literature.
Generally, learning of our rich past is about making connections,encompassing all the disciplines from the beginning of western knowledge to present time.
Camille Paglia is an academic rabble-rouser; an astute observer of popular culture and a no holds barred bitch with a well-argued point of view. Her understanding of cinema and their gods,... reveals deep insight into the American psyche: a pleasure to read.
Amazon.com:
Books: Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679741011/qid=1059450615/
sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/104-7884563-8776748?v=glance&s=books
=============================================================
Featured Program
A Weekly Look
at Selected Book TV Programs
On Sunday, August
3 at 12:00 pm and at 5:00 pm
and Monday, August
4 at 12:00 am
In Depth: Camille Paglia
Description: On Sunday, August 3rd our In Depth guest will be Camille Paglia.
Ms. Paglia is a social critic, political commentator, professor, and essayist.
She is the author of four books: "Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson," "Sex, Art & American Culture," "Vamps & Tramps," and "The Birds."
Camille Paglia will take your phone calls for 3 hours beginning at noon eastern time.
You can also e-mail your question for Ms. Paglia to booktv@c-span.org.
Publisher:
VINTAGE BOOKS 1745 Broadway New York, NY 10019
====================================================
More on Camille
Paglia:
Camille
Paglia quotations
http://privat.ub.uib.no/bubsy/pagliaom.htm
Camille
Paglia -Feminist Fatale
http://privat.ub.uib.no/BUBSY/nomore.htm
Camille
Paglia on Political Correctness
http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/camille.htm
Camille
Paglia
http://gos.sbc.edu/p/paglia.html