Talk:Camille Paglia

Neutrality of Article

As I posted earlier today, I have added extensive criticism of Paglia to this page, including criticism of Sexual Personae, equity feminism, and her public sparrings with various academic figures. Unless someone can come up with points that justify the disputation of the neautrality, the label of diputing the neautrality is no longer warranted.

Furthermore, someone is vandalizing this talk page and reposting the dispute of neautrality banner without explanation. This is unacceptable.

"Neutrality" (note the spelling) is wholly in the eye of the reader. The word has no operational content. The "neutrality disputed" banner simply means that someone out there doesn't like some aspect of the entry, but is not willing to edit it herself. I doubt that it is possible to write an entry re Paglia that everyone would see as "neutral." Sorry if I sound like a postmodern nihilist.202.36.179.65 19:41, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Biographical Information

Notable figures in history born on April 2: Charlemagne, Casanova, Hans Christian Andersen, Emile Zola, Max Ernst, Buddy Ebsen, Alec Guinness, Marvin Gaye, Leon Russell, Linda Hunt, and Emmylou Harris. (etc., etc.)

(Duplicate material removed)

I don't understand why this information was removed. Is having lots of information really such a bad thing for an encyclopedia?

Well, in this case...yes. The point is that when people come to an article on Paglia, they want to know the major points about her life and her influence on society in a way that makes these points stand out and be clear. While the above is interesting to Paglia-philes, it makes it very difficult for someone to "sort through" all of it to find the major points concerning Paglia. Perhaps a separate article, "Paglia timeline" or "Events in Paglia's life".

Looking at the article now, there could be more in the sections, stuff from the above even. The problem is, it's not very helpful to say things like "On this date, Patti Smith's album is released" without saying why this relates to Paglia at all, or who Patti Smith is. There are a lot of comments in the above that was deleted that could be very useful, if they were incorporated into an expository section that put all the ideas together, instead of an exhaustive list of dates and details. Not everything in the above is not helpful; it's just the context and presentation. Hope this explains, maybe someone can piece these good points from the above into a few paragraphs (or more).

It's amazing how long this article is for such an unimportant person. She seems bitter about everyone she's encountered. (Anonymous User) May 25, 2006

Seriously, quibbling aside, it's unnecessarily verbose, with too many inessential details. With relation to how much is written relative to the persons historical importance i.e. reference to Hume, I think it would better to look at examples of A class entries, for example Chomsky's is succinct, not too much detail, a good overview, and it includes criticism.

feminism?

Could do with more about her feminism and clashes over rape, etc?

Could do with less of the extended biography! Tiles 05:27, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Maybe it could be moved to a seperate article, like Camille Paglia (biography). --Goethean 16:16, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No. It's already too much. Paglia, a public intellectual of minor importance, has a more extensive and detailed biography than David Hume.

Ha! Get a sense of Hume-or a greater appreciation of Paglia. She is much smarter and more valuable. Add to the Hume article if you really love the guy so much.

Moreover, her biography contains all sorts of precious and private details only she or a close friend could know, which makes this article something more of an appreciation than an encyclopedia article. What is wanted is some editing, and I'm about to provide it. 68.110.199.122 14:06, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

I can confirm that every detail of the entry was found in publically available sources or through research that anyone could do. As for Hume -- perhaps he'd have a bigger entry if he had been on Oprah too.

As for the feminism info, I put in sourced information, including Paglia's own quotes (you can't dispute her own quotes!) It was removed. This is not okay on Wikipedia! I'm putting it back and I'm gonna keep putting it back unless someone gives a good reason for not including it. LTC 03:58, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

There's no need to shout. Wikipedia articles don't generally attack the good faith of the subject of the article in the first paragraph, which is precisely what your text does. This subject is already treated in the first part of the description of Paglia's significance. — goethean ॐ 15:48, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

How can anyone be so beautiful and so bright at the same time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.109.164.55 (talk • contribs)

What is the source for the quotes in this line? She has been called the "feminist that other feminists love to hate", one of the world's top 100 intellectuals, and by her own description "a feminist bisexual egomaniac". Can someone footnote the reference?--24.4.230.204 07:48, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Typography

Shouldn't all the book titles be in italics (however you'd like to encode them in the Wikipedia system)?

Also, isn't the line 'This is a quite fresh reading of old favorites -Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," Colderidge's "Kubla Khan," and more' poorly punctuated, too redolent of point of view, and rather subjective? (Also badly written?)

corrected --goethean ॐ 01:57, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Paglia and Mailer

Paglia is a self-declared feminist, yet her brand of feminism is contrary to the image of it. It would be interesting to explore the differences between her ideas and those of other feminists, and to inspect the similarities she shares with a supposed anti-feminist Norman Mailer. There is a quite a bit of civil-libertarianism in Paglia's political thought, and Mailer himself calls himself a "left-convervative". It would be worth someone's effort to explore the strand of neo-Emersonion individualism both writers share.

Bio Material Removed

I have begun removing some of the biographical material and am putting it here. These are passages I felt were hilariously inappropriate to an encyclopedia article. 68.110.199.122 14:16, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

(The name "Paglia" specifically describes the color of the straw that is produced in Italy, the same color that George Eliot had in mind in Daniel Deronda when she wrote of "the pale-golden straw scattered or in heaps.") this might be interesting for an article on straw but contributes nothing to our understanding of Paglia

That's funny. It's been put into a footnote.

At the age of nine she tried to produce the play Hamlet (based on the Classics Comic Books) in school but became frustrated because some of her classmates hadn't learned their lines. The experience taught her that she couldn't depend on other people, and she soon became a rather aggressive child. This kind of dime-store psychoanalysis (even if it is self-analysis) doesn't belong here

The year 1959 was an especially important year in Paglia's development, as it was the year her family got both a telephone and a TV set. Television exposed her to the movies of the 1930s for the first time, especially those of Katharine Hepburn, who made a big impression on her. She also fell in love with Elizabeth Taylor, and obsessively collected every photograph of her that she could lay her hands on. In 1961 when Taylor won for Best Actress at the 1960 Academy Awards for Butterfield 8, Paglia's reaction was "feverish excitement the whole next day at school." At about this time, she received a lecture from her father regarding Voltaire's poor opinion of actors.

While in high school, she began research on Amelia Earhart. The research lasted three years, ending when she was 17. She said, "I spent every Saturday in the bowels of the public library going through all these materials, old magazines and newspapers, before microfilm. Everything was falling to pieces. I probably destroyed the whole collection! I was covered with grime." She planned to write a book on Earhart, and while the project never came to fruition, she wrote about Earhart for a popular magazine in the 1990s.

Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls was released that year. Paglia saw it and was particularly taken with actress Mary Woronov. She later remarked: "She was one of the most original, stylish, and articulate sexual personae of the royal House of Warhol. I never forgot her, and I followed her subsequent movie career with great fascination." Many of Paglia's memories of the 1960s are linked to movies. For instance, in 1968 she and her friend Stephen Jarratt saw Joseph Losey's Secret Ceremony, and Mark Robson's Valley of the Dolls, and continued to write about the experience years later. I don't think a wikipedia article should be speculating about her memories

Paglia conducted an extensive tour in support, lecturing and signing books at many universities and bookstores across the US. why is it interesting or unusual that she went on a book tour?

I think now these should go back in since there is no appreciable difference in quality or relevance between the crap here and what remains in the article. I will begin with the delightful business about the straw. Bds yahoo 17:30, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

It was rightfully removed, so I've taken it out again after you reinserted it. --67.180.200.145 03:02, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Typography

I have long felt that the introductory material about her significance to the 1990s as "Two-fold" was poorly phrased and not quite correct. First, why would the entry only focus on her influence on the '90s intellectual world? Secondly, her influence was not relegated to just the topics of feminism and the humanities curriculum.

Lew Rockwell

"She is a contributor to the libertarian news and opinion blog LewRockwell.com. " This does not appear to be true. There are no articles by her on this site, although the site does link to her articles at Salon.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.4.230.204 (talk • contribs)

Objectivism Scholars

The Objectivism Scholars category is accurate. It is for people who have written about Objectivism in an academic context; they need not be Objectivists themselves. LaszloWalrus 23:21, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

The Objectivism Scholars category most certainly is not accurate. Where has Paglia written about, or in the tradition of Objectivism? — goethean ॐ 23:24, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

POV check

Paglia is world reknown for her intellectual assaults on the ideologies and methods of contemporary feminists. Vamps and Tramps has a hilarious section of mass media cartoons full of feminist reactions to Paglia. The whole book is loaded with penetrating criticisms of contemporary feminist ideology, politics and attitudes, establishment academia, etc.

News articles from all over the world note these arguments and show a very colorful, controversial, and sometimes shocking Paglia. This article shows little of that Paglia's intellect, seems to discount or ignore her 'problematic' positions and is awash instead with titillating gossip about her history. To me, a top intellectual's key ideas deserve far more coverage than her history. For that reason, I am going to POV check this entire article.

I will be glad to supply NPOV news sources should the content in Paglia's own material be insufficient to represent her well here. However, knowing how she is loathed, feared, and no doubt misrepresented by establishment feminists and academics I suspect that some slanderous and unbalanced and incomplete POV might be intended here. I ask that those editors who can write this article in complete, balanced and fair NPOV that shows all sides of Paglia do so.

As I am no such editor, I will leave that to those who know Paglia's positions/personality much better than I do. I will be glad to dig for news sources and offer any other assistance I can as Paglia has been a refreshing breath of fresh air for me in an era of very stale, shameless and false 'victim'-feminist sloganeering. Please comment and/or suggest what I can do to assist in this effort. Anacapa 05:19, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

To claim there is a POV problem with this entry is ridiculous. You ave not shown a single instance where there's bias, you have only said you'd like for there to be more information about her intellectual ideas. That's a content issue, not a point of view issue.

To the anonymous editor above, this is a POV by omission issue to me which is how lack of complete content becomes used to serve POV. I say again this article fails to reflect the many NPOV news articles (usually written by women) about Paglia, her highly critical ideas and the shunning, loathing and fear she inspires in Women's Studies departments, among second-wave victim-feminists and in PC academia. To ignore such content here is quite POV... I will link a few interviews, news articles to show the omissions here and to compare news media POV's with the POV's in this article which makes no real mention of Paglia's sustained assault of second-wave feminism.Anacapa 22:37, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I think there's definitely a problem with this article in terms of POV and omissions: while most similar biographies will have a general section on controversy or criticism there is nothing of that kind here. On a basic note, her main media exposure has been through embarrassing public rows with, amongst others, The Modern Review and her infamous exit from an ITV News interview, yet there is no mention of these very public incidents. I'm by no means qualified to do this justice, but I'll try if no-one else is willing to. Driller thriller 01:09, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Book tour

Shoot-from-the-hip comments Paglia made on her 2006 book tour may be colorful, but are certainly not worthy of inclusion here. Let's follow one of Paglia's lessons and not become prisoners of contemporaneity. Unless it's something like "There is no female Mozart...," leave it out. 161.253.46.102 05:24, 23 March 2006 (UTC)K. Duve

These articles look as though they were either written by Camille Paglia herself or by her official biographer. The continuous positive spin on her life and work, and the (apparently) highly detailed knowledge of the subject would be more appropriate if the subject were a saint or national hero.201.1.53.116 03:14, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

She is a national hero IMHO, one of the world's top 100 intellectuals (from the US) in an increasingly witless world...but that said POV is POV and I applaud all efforts to attain NPOV here.Anacapa 22:28, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

The entry for Foucault is very detailed. It may even be longer than this one. I don't see a problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.4.230.204 (talk • contribs)

Biography

The biography section is still far too long. It includes such information as when the Romans invaded the town where her mother was born, and which level of the house she once lived in as a child! This sort of information just makes the entry unreadable for people who just want an encyclopediac overview of her life.

We also need to consider WP:Notability This is an encyclopedia biography, so events which might have had a significant impact on her as a person, but aren't notable for the public at large should be excised. The article is currently 51kb, 19kb over the suggested article maximum. Ashmoo 02:53, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Camille's criticism of male gay rights activists

Excerpt from the "Ask Camille" column published in the June 23, 1998 issue of Salon magazine.

"Gay artists are certainly not helping things either. They are producing a whole lot more and mattering a whole lot less. As I said to Rod Dreher of the New York Post (Page Six, June 12) about the controversy over Terrence McNally's scheduled play, "Corpus Christi" (whose Christ figure in the current script has offstage sex with an apostle), it does not help the gay movement for Christian ideas to be routinely "defamed by so many childish, nihilist gay writers." Playwright Tony Kushner, for example, who led the McNally defense and whom I called a writer of "self-canonizing propaganda," falls pathetically short of the artistic stature of Tennessee Williams, an openly gay man who wrote masterpieces that are admired around the world.

As for Sen. Lott's classifying homosexuality with psychiatric disorders like kleptomania and alcoholism (I don't accept the current party line about alcoholism being a somatic disease, even if certain people have genetic difficulty in metabolizing alcohol), it is perfectly consistent with his beliefs as a conservative Christian. I view homosexuality not as a disease but as a social adaptation, productive or destructive as the case may be, to private and public pressures.

Gayness is certainly not innate, and those who trumpet that science has proved otherwise should be condemned. That gayness may be intricately related in childhood development to other personality traits, like shyness, aggression or artistic talent, is a more likely hypothesis.

I have been struck, in my brief encounters over the years with a half-dozen prominent gay male activists, by the frightening coldness and deadness of their eyes. Behind their smooth, bland faces I saw the seething hatreds of Dostoevskian anarchists. Gay crusading, I concluded, was their way of handling their own bitter misanthropy, which came from other sources. I found these men more spiritually twisted than anyone I have encountered in my life. The gay movement should not be left in their hands.

You call yourself "secular," as do I. Secular humanism is strong only when it can offer science and art as vibrant substitutes to conventional religion in the search for meaning. But militant gay academics and their jargon-spouting post-structuralist minions have trashed science and art. As a teacher, I am concerned about young people's cultural milieu. Until gay activism can expand the imagination and feed the soul as well as religion does, give me religion."

For full article click here: http://www.salon.com/col/pagl/1998/06/nc_23pagl.html

Donna Mills Interview

I have removed this section because it was placed under the category which should be about works that Paglia authored. It is merely a magazine interview, it is not a book or production: ===Donna Mills Interview (2002)=== In November of 2002 Donna Mills revealed to Camille Paglia in an interview that the character of Sandy in Grease was based on her exeriences as a Chicago-area teen.--67.180.200.145 04:41, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Critique

Can someone throw something critical in here? it reads like it was written by the Camille Pagila fan club. A little section called "Criticism of Pagilas Politics" perhaps? There are other notable intellectuals covered in wiki that have not escaped the inclusion of a critical review section. A bit more balance here please.

Well, actually, here's a start.

• The challenge in reading so melodramatic a writer is figuring out which ideas are genuinely new (and not just unexpected departures from an otherwise predictable ideological platform), which are genuinely original (and not simply designed to shock), and which are sufficiently valuable as to make all the other stuff worth wading through. [from critic Elizabeth Kristol]

• This is megalomania on a lunatic scale. [Mary Beard on Paglia's Vamps & Tramps: New Essays]

• There is one area in which I think Paglia and I would agree that politically correct feminism has produced a noticeable inequity. Nowadays, when a woman behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, "Poor dear, it's probably PMS."' Whereas, if a man behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, "What an asshole." Let me leap to correct this unfairness by saying of Paglia, Sheesh, what an asshole. [from Molly Ivins]

• As Camille Paglia's success has demonstrated, what is most marketable is absolutism and attitude undiluted by thought. [from Wendy Kaminer]

---

Thank you for your excellent observations and quotations. And may I add that Paglia's being called an "intellectual" and a "feminist" shows just how easily some people are fooled. Nancymc 22:19, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

uhh, contradiction of faiths?

How is Paliga listed in both the atheist cat and the Roman Catholic cat? Methinks this confusion could use some research to substantiate it. eszett^talk 03:57, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

No, she claims to be a Catholic atheist. In an interview with America magazine, I believe. — goethean ॐ 13:54, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Pretty tricky, but I'll buy it. eszett^talk 20:04, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Improving this entry

As is all too often the case with Wikipedia entries, the prose here did not flow well, and I've polished a goodly number of sentences in the Biography section. I hope I have not done violence to the facts, because that was not my intent. I agree that the Biography often dwells on trivia that should be removed. I invite others to do this.

It is indeed the case that Paglia is both a cultural Roman Catholic and an atheist (source: America article of a few years back). She has a very distinguished antecedent here: George Santayana. Her stance is blatantly contradictory only to those who insist that religion requires mental assent to a body of dogma. The only religions for which this is strictly true are Islam and Christianity as defined by their respective clergy. Religion also has large and powerful cultural and sociological dimensions. Also, I once read that something like 10% of French tell pollsters that they are atheists yet consider themselves Roman Catholic in some vague sense. My Hindu friends cheerfully tell me that Hinduism is, at bottom, "a way of life." Likewise, Catholicism can be "a way of looking at human nature."

The entry should definitely say more about those who disagree with Paglia, and why. I can't help here, if only because I am not a humanist. For starters, why not link the article to critical reviews of Sexual Personae? Paglia admires traditional scholarship by such as Winckelmann and Kenneth Clarke; does her own work live up to this ideal? Yet the little I have seen in print of disagreement with Paglia strikes me as predictably angry reactions by feminist intellectuals. But these are precisely the people she most loves to skewer; that they pay her back in the same coin is ho-hum. When she says, in effect, that biology will have the last word and that nature will not be deceived (and I agree), that predictably outrages academics specializing in feminism and homosexuality. Where are her shrewd critics?

I have yet to read Sexual Personae; it is her Nietzschean astuteness about certain aspects of masculinity that draws me to her. What made me a fan was her notorious MIT lecture published in Vamps and Tramps. I am rather surprised that she has not been assaulted, even assassinated.

What many seem to overlook is that she is, at heart, an American humorist, and that deflating the pieties of the day is the humorist's stock in trade. Note her passion for Oscar Wilde. Her insulting humor reminds me of the humor of a certain kind of very bright boy I knew in high school and college, a humor that was no respecter of sexual pieties, whether bourgeois or feminist. Humor is raucous, bawdy, and deep down, conservative. By conservative, I do not mean "in sympathy with George Bush and his ilk" but "unwittingly respectful of the point of view articulated by Edmund Burke." Once you go beyond Paglia's racy remarks about sex and androginy, you soon discover a lover of the classics, a respecter of many intellectual traditions, even including her Roman Catholic heritage, a thoughtful centrist in politics, a realist in international affairs, and a 1960s libertarian in many respects. Nobody seems to mention that her father taught for many years in an extraordinarily conservative Roman Catholic liberal arts college. Few see what is evident to me, namely that she is a product of the classical Mediterranean civilisation. She noisily proclaims the Dyonesian, sure, yet also admires its Appollonian antithesis.

Few also are aware that Paglia is a legal parent of the son her partner bore a few years ago--that is a profoundly existential choice. The entry claims that she now describes herself as bisexual; her writings lead me to suspect that that is true, but can anyone document it?202.36.179.65 19:01, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Her MIT lecture is reproduced in Sex, Art, & American Culture--not Vamps and Tramps--Tom Joudrey 23:29, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Good article nomination

I am inclined to pass this article, except for a few small items that I feel can be quickly corrected, and I will hence place this nomination on hold.

I am concerned with the lack of citations in the Introduction section. Several factual tidbits are not easily verifiable by a reader who might desire to see these statements defended.

Also, though as per the good article criteria it isn't grounds for failure, I feel as though there could be several more images added to enhance this article.

I have reviewed the concerns brought forth by the editor who evaluated this article for the Wikipedia Biography project regarding a lack of criticism in the article, and feel as though these concerns have been addressed by the editors.

As a side note, I would encourage those who edit this article to sign their comments, as the unsigned comments seem rife.

Should no other objections to this article be raised (and I welcome them, as I do not claim to be perfect and may have missed something critical), and if this article is corrected in seven days, I shall pass it. I do, however, reserve the right to fail this article should I notice something I had missed before, or should another editor bring up anything I've failed to consider. Please review this article as time allows and correct anything else that may be awry. I will reread this article entirely in seven days and my final judgment will be based on that edition alone.

Good work, regardless. I can tell that the editors have put in a great deal of work on this article and I enjoyed reading it.

Cheers! Chuchunezumi 20:20, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

What's good about it?

It still reads like the demented ramblings of a besotted Paglia devotee - though maybe they just suffer from aspergers syndrome, hence the pedanticalness. It is not typical of a good quality encyclopedia entry. It still needs some serious whittling. Also, the item "Influences on Paglia's work": where are the citations to substantiate that each and every one of these individuals "strongly" influenced her? it's simply POV. And, do we really need so much background on each of her works?

Good article nomination failed

As none of the concerns I raised above have been addressed, I am failing this article. I encourage the editors to revise and resubmit, at which time, I'll be happy to reread this article for good article status. Chuchunezumi 01:01, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I am restoring the previously deleted section entitled "Influences on Paglia's Thought." The entry on Foucault -- Paglia's biggest intellectual adversary -- has such an entry, with an introduction worded in exactly the same manner and serving exactly the same purpose, so I fail to see why it is perfectly acceptable for it to remain in Foucault and not in Paglia. May I also insist that before one deletes a chunk of accurate and verifiable information that it be put to a vote. Damion 06:17, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

If "accurate and verifiable" please substantiate with citations in every instance otherwise it assumes too much regarding a readers prior knowledge. If you have an issue with a entry that takes a similar approach go and deal with it, your reference to Foucault as "Paglia's biggest intellectual adversary" states pretty clearly that your motivations are not neutral.

Classicist?

I don't see anything in her educational background that indicates she qualifies as a classicist, as stated in this article. It says she did a Masters in philosophy and that her dissertation (still under the dept of philosophy? or literature studies or some other sort?) was on a non-Classical Studies topic. Zeusnoos 18:29, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that Paglia lacks university training in classics. She almost certainly did some serious Latin in Catholic high school. She is very warm to Mediterranean civilisation, in part out of loyalty to her Sicilian heritage. From her pen I learned the name of Winckelmann, and she probably has read Edith Hamilton, Gilbert Murray, and the like. But she should not be called a classicist.202.36.179.65 23:24, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Sources

Why is there a tag on this article stating it "does not adequately cite its references or sources"?? It has more footnotes than MOST wiki articles.

The tag is not on the article; the tag is on the Introduction section. This is because the article failed its good article nomination because of the lack of source references in this section (see above).

Having said that, citing all the informations is ridiculous; it would take forever. All her supporters would have to be cited from different articles, and much of the other stuff would require someone to go back and trace those aspects from Sexual Personae. This is a ridiculous expectation in my opinion.--Tom Joudrey 04:36, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I have now provided citations for the Introduction, therefore correcting the main problem for which the good article nomination was failed. The only issue left is to provide more pictures. Can anyone help with this?--147.9.171.130 05:42, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Whitelisting

In early March, Outrate.net was blacklisted for adding too many links to Wikipedia, which represented a COI according to Wikipedia policies. But this has meant that a number of valid Outrate.net links were automatically removed.

Our lengthy interview with Camille Paglia (Aug 06) was removed from the Interviews and External Links section of your Camille Paglia page. The deep link to the interview is here: outrate.net/camillepaglia.html

I believe you are able to replace this link, if you would like to.