R E C E N T L Y
America's New Age obsessions: The good, the bad and the inner child-y
Tom Cruise is no cruiser
Celebrities' fatal attraction to public sex
Bill's victory stogie: Just a cigar?
Behind the baffling bevy of beautiful boys
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A L S O
About Camille Paglia
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C O L U M N I S T S
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To the heiress to Hedda Hopper's throne:
Ever since Gwyneth Paltrow came to my attention about four years ago, I could not see what the fuss was about. Sure, she was dating the highly overrated Brad Pitt, but that didn't change the fact that she's a skinny popsicle stick with so little flesh on her face that her chin is as pointed as a cartoon figure's. Her face is prosaic and her hair may be the required blond, but it is lifeless and she learned to act at the Winona Ryder Academy. I may be biased because I like meaty types like Kate Winslet and Salma Hayek (who'd be perfect if she'd gain a little weight), but is society really so white-bread that Paltrow can be considered a sex goddess?
Speaking of Paltrow, what is your opinion of the "Friends"-type romantic comedies that have been inflicted on American moviegoers (often starring "Friends" actors) -- like Paltrow's "Sliding Doors." For all the vulgar language, they sound like what high school girls would discuss while squeezed into a bathroom stall passing a cigarette over the toilet bowl. Clark Gable was sexier saying "Scarlett" than they are with all their penis jokes.
-- Lillie
Dear Lillie:
The vacuous, sallow, moony, rubbernecked Gwyneth Paltrow, daughter of actress Blythe Danner and producer Bruce Paltrow, is a preening, pampered princess who's been foisted on the public by a bicoastal media cabal. It's Affirmative Action for show-biz brats. Of course, this is also how Mira Sorvino, daughter of much-beloved character actor Paul Sorvino, got the Oscar for best supporting actress for her god-awful, Harvard-snobby performance as a helium-voiced prostitute in Woody Allen's "Mighty Aphrodite" (1995) -- for which she should have been sued by the Whores' World Congress.
As Jane Austen's great heroine in "Emma" (1996), Paltrow was a hideous, stomach-churning disaster. Oh, God, if I had had to look at that gopher grin and swaybacked galumphing for one more second, I would have been ready for hara-kiri. Paltrow has no discernible talent that I am yet aware of. As a sexual persona, she's a saccharine cross between self-pretzeling stringbean Susan Faludi and Gretel, the vanilla-frosted, strawberry-sprinkled, gumdrop-studded, mumble-crumble, shortbread-cookie doll.
As for "Friends" and its sappy progeny, it's not about sex; it's about today's latchkey kids Desperately Seeking Siblings. There's not a real man in the lot of them. All those fuzzy-wuzzy, sad-eyed poodles yapping for body warmth and female approval. What a bore! Yes, Clark Gable, the product of another age, had more sexiness in his little finger than these screechy adolescents can muster in a whole passel of penises.
Dear Camille:
Even though I disagreed with him on any number of votes, I mourn the passing of former Sen. Barry Goldwater. He had aggression, courage and independence. So much different than the spineless types of both parties, who sell their souls to hold public office. Any thoughts on this flinty Arizonan?
-- Steve Dhuey
Dear Mr. Dhuey:
The archival film footage of Barry Goldwater aired after his death two weeks ago has been fascinating and revelatory. I had just started my first semester in college when the 1964 presidential campaign was raging, so I remember very clearly the frightening Democratic Party TV commercial that tarred Goldwater as a warmonger by showing a little girl in a field of flowers incinerated by a nuclear blast. It was one of the most effective examples of propaganda in media history.
Even from the perspective of conservative upstate New York, where campaigning for John F. Kennedy in 1960 (as I had done) raised eyebrows, Goldwater's Southwestern roots seemed bizarre. What serious idea or person could come from a desert state like Arizona? So implied then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, an educational activist (he was pouring public funds into the expanding State University of New York where I was enrolled) and a bitter rival of Goldwater for the Republican presidential nomination. Regional chauvinism ran high.
In retrospect, it is of course quite clear that the Northeastern patrician political establishment, to which Rockefeller and the dapper Averell Harriman and Henry Cabot Lodge belonged, was about to lose its authority and prestige to a rising generation of conservative leaders in the West. Demographically and economically, the Eastern seaboard would no longer have the hegemony it had enjoyed since the 13 colonies consolidated for the American Revolution. The era of Ronald Reagan, a Goldwater supporter who went from the California governorship to the presidency, would soon dawn.
Goldwater made a poor showing in trying to combat the vicious media assault against him. He was a man of plain words and little art. He was indifferent to and contemptuous of the effete posturings and bland locutions required for mainstream media success. Unlike Richard Nixon (a brooding California Quaker), Goldwater was securely, robustly masculine. Perusing his photos now, we can see how (though he was only half Jewish), he prefigured the glamorous Israeli machismo forged in the exhilaration of victory in the 1967 Six Day War.
Goldwater's candidacy was a debacle: He won only six states and 36 percent of the popular vote in the election. Out of political life for four years, he was reelected to the U.S. Senate in 1968. I will never forget seeing him in person on the Senate floor when my mother and I were touring Washington, D.C., in 1972. After knowing him only in the twisted, demonic form projected by the liberal Manhattan media, I was stunned at his simple, natural dignity and air of integrity. He was the most charismatic man I have ever seen off a movie screen. With his unexpected height, solid physique and flowing white hair, he had the regality of an aging lion.
If Barry Goldwater has suddenly gained in stature, it's because he makes most of today's money-mad mob of smarmy politicos -- including the seedy, sweaty, sneaky Newt Gingrich -- look like toads in contrast.
Dear Camille:
When you were in Brazil, how did you feel about Brazilians' appalling displays of sexuality?
-- An American in tropical exile
Dear Exiled American:
When my companion, Alison, and I visited Brazil for the release by Francisco Alves of the Portuguese translation of "Vamps & Tramps" in 1996, we were thrilled by the sexual freedom of Brazil. Quite frankly, I was in ecstasy as I sat at sidewalk cafes along Copacabana, quaffing the crisply delicious Brazilian draft beer, sampling spicy peasant dishes and gaping at the gorgeous, golden and mahogany men and women who promenaded past wearing little more than straining strings and protuberant pouches.
What surprised me was the powerful Italian presence in Brazilian culture. I felt totally at home there. The molten fusion of Mediterranean and native Indian sensibilities in Brazil seemed to me extraordinary. The social problems and economic inequities of the country were evident (though not as blatant as we had expected from inflammatory accounts in the North American media), but in sensory terms alone, Brazilians have produced a brilliant integration of mind and matter.
N E X T_P A G E | When a gay jogger wants to get even
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