Camille Paglia: Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Hollywood Are Ruining Women

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com ^ | 12/6/2012 | Camille Paglia

[Usagi_yo]

The influential female academic, writing for THR, calls out their "insipid, bleached-out personas."

... Snip ...

[Usagi_yo]

Two Liberals I respect (not agree with) are Camilli Paglia and Christopher Hitchens [RIP in your Godless Heaven].

[Mozilla]

Did he used to post here as Paglia444?

[MeganC]

At least TS looks like a woman.

[ViLaLuz]

So are lesbians, Camille.

[ClearCase_guy]

Camille seems to like Rihanna. What a surprise. A no talent auto-tune queen who oozes sexual availability. Yeah. Feminism. Helping women become whores for decades.

[Usagi_yo]

Me? No. I only have ever had one account and this is it.

[JT Hatter]

I love you Camille, but you leave Taylor alone.

[JT Hatter]

I love you Camille, but you leave Taylor alone.

[JT Hatter]

I love you Camille, but you leave Taylor alone.

[JT Hatter]

I love you Camille, but you leave Taylor alone.

[definitelynotaliberal]

Tell her JT!

[x]

Last year I would have said, "Katy Perry, sure, but not Taylor Swift."

Right now, I'm thinking, "Taylor Swift, sure, but not Katy Perry."

It's hard to please Camille Paglia, though, and what she objects to in Swift and Perry isn't what most of us object to.

[miss marmelstein]

Camille (yet again!) knocks the 1950s and then touts the great screen icons Elizabeth Taylor, Lesie Caron, Natalie Wood and Kim Novak...all who came to prominence in...the 1950s.

[ZirconEncrustedTweezers]

[x]

Camille (yet again!) knocks the 1950s and then touts the great screen icons Elizabeth Taylor, Lesie Caron, Natalie Wood and Kim Novak...all who came to prominence in...the 1950s.

That is a contradiction, and I don't think she thought it out.

But a case could be made that Taylor, Wood, and Novak were the last gasp of old Hollywood. When Connie Francis and Sandra Dee came on the scene that Hollywood was dead or dying.

It doesn't quite work, though, because Debbie Reynolds was about the same age as Liz Taylor or Kim Novak, and Doris Day was older, while Natalie Wood was younger.

Camille doesn't always function on a rational level, though ...

[drewh]

guilty!

[miss marmelstein]

Both Elizabeth Taylor and Wood became superstars in the 1960s - don't forget “Cleopatra” and “West Side Story.” Taylor's incredibly high salary last through the early 70s. While Taylor was a fine child actress in the 1940s, she didn't become an adult star until “A Place in the Sun.” Wood, as well was a child actress who made her bones as an adult (or teenager) in “Rebel Without a Cause.” Her career sustained itself throughout the 60s.

I agree that Camille didn't think that theory out too well. I'm amazed she cares enough to even know who Taylor Swift is.

[A_perfect_lady]

Mmmm... she's better than your average feminist, and this paragraph is particularly good:

As a glance at any suburban high school prom these days will show, there has been a vast increase in sexually revealing, super-adult clothing among middle-class girls. Yet most seem curiously unaware of the erotic charge of their racy regalia, which has become as standard issue as army fatigues. Sex is already routine in a hooking-up culture.

But when she goes on to tout Rihanna as somehow more authentic (because let's face it, white is never authentic) she loses me. The rest devolves into nostalgia for the princesses of her own youth, who don't strike me as any more worthy.

The fact is, it's rare the human race produces anything profound or admirable. We wince at desperate poverty, but if you take the blank-eyed child with the swollen belly and flies around her eyes and elevate her to middle-class comfort, you'll get a blank-eyed child playing with a cellphone and snorting a line of coke. Humans, by and large, aren't the most admirable lot.

[Mozilla]

NO there was a Paglia444 or Paglia44 who was banned about a week or two ago. I asked if Camille was really Paglia444 who was banned for being too homosexual.

[Sherman Logan]

Paradoxically, a key problem with the current youth cult, which is devouring both entertainment and fashion, is that aging women have become progressively invisible. ...Few roles are being written these days for character actresses -- parts once regularly taken by Marie Dressler, Marjorie Main, Thelma Ritter or Maureen Stapleton.

Oddly enough, British movies and TV don't seem to have this fixation. Lots of roles for older actresses.