By the way, did anyone else catch the "hidden admiration" Camille was stating for Susan Sontag. People just key on the putdowns but there was also a warm reverence for Sontag. Calling herself the "Sontag of the 90's" for example.
Camille is absolutely right about her impact, her place in the panorama of literary figures, her reflection of the era in which she lived, etc, all that. It's all true. My main concern is who will be the ones who will replace her? I can't see anyone with the breadth of knowledge and awareness and sheer brute force to surpass her. Who is going to be strong enough to point out weaknesses and flaws in her ideas? I'm scared to death that it will be nobody.
Is it possible to like both of them, because I think i do. I enjoy Paglia's wit and Sontag's intellectualism. Granted, they are both boastful, no doubt, byt this is tantamount to an intellectual Divine feud. Paglia loses me when she says' "she is the Sontag of the 90's", which is rather arrogant, but she is likable. Sontag is and was a great intellectual, but yes she was rather bourgeois....
'I am the Sontag on the 90s, there is no doubt.' Sort of sums up all Paglia is about - Derivative, recycled and chasing little more than notoriety ('My rise to fame'). 'Everyone remembers the old Sontag - beautiful, interesting'. Things Paglia never was, and never will be.
'...suddenly everyone realized just how interesting I am'. I mean, come on? She looks like a rabid horse-breeder, and is not infrequently stulifyingly ill-informed.
Sontag eats pieces of shit like this for breakfast.
the reason why people deny paglia's influence is because her influence has been *outside* the literary establishment, the reverse of sontag who hasn't been read outside the literary elite since the 1970s. paglia altered criticism for the better and i love it when people attack her as it shows their snobbism about popular culture - just like sontag. and also, camille may be coasting on one book, but so was sontag - and camille's book was ten times as long.
Camille is always interesting and enlightening even though she pisses me off and I disagree with her often (her more recent Salon articles have been particularly disappointing). Kids of today must read her work and form their own opinions. This posturing "who the hell is Paglia" crap only reveals your own insular awareness. She knocked the feminist and cultural establishment on its ass!!!
Rhope, I am no longer concerned with Paglia. I like good arguments. I was maybe 21 when I read Sex, Art, and American culture. At that point I also believed that Ride was relevant.
Paglia is hysterical and so much fun. Always a joy to follow her works and views, even when she challenges whatever it is you feel. She has this passion for life which is absolutely inspiring.
I almost worshipped Paglia when I was in college in the early '90s. She was so refreshing. Watching her now...ugh. I still respect her ideas but the delivery makes me cringe. Watching this now is almost funny...Sontag's legacy is secure (rightly or wrongly, I don't care) and I've not heard a peep of relevance from Paglia...
@allidock11 A blurb in "SP" characterizes Paglia as a 'reckless mind'. I still admire Paglia very much. Hero-worshipped her in grad school myself. Some of her television appearances are gross self-aggrandizement. (I'm afraid she feels more influential than she really is) But in "V&T" she is right about one thing, she succeeds Sontag in that public intellectual manner. Brainy, but celebrity. I so regret that Paglia has such a measly oeuvre. We need more of her scholarly writings...
@allidock11 I am confident that Paglia has a place with the literary luminaries some time in the future. With the amount of her published work though, her persona, her publicity, might very well overwhelm her highly original theses in "Sexual Personae". I don't know. But remember, these days, in the universities, with the students today, they say the same of Sontag! You know, the glamorous, beautiful wraith– but no one actually reads her these days either.
@Rhopoe Almost every one of your posts on Youtube has some sort of sexual reference. You cast judgement on a lot of people, maybe you should look in the mirror.
You can tell she's lying about never having heard of Paglia because of her answer to the follow-up question, "Does pop culture interest you?" Answer: "I don't think in those terms." She doesn't want to talk about pop culture because she knows that it is Paglia's forte.
I think Paglia hit the nail right on the head about Sontag. I liked Camille back in the early 90s when she wore skirts and lipstick and was more feminine and attractive. Those northern Italian cheekbones didn't hurt either! Mmmm, kinda sexy.
However, these days Paglia is looking quite haggard, much like Sontag does here.
What an odd bird Paglia is. Her reaction's silly & petty: Sontag's not beautiful anymore, or young, the young have passed her and she's jealous. Contrast ideas, don't launch an ad hominem attack. Sontag looked like she was pulling the interviewer's leg and trying to get a rise out of Paglia. Both seem to have worked.
If you'd liked both Paglia and Sontag before this video, try them on for size now. Paglia's naïveté shines like a lightbulb against the sun, and Sontag comes out with the poise and intellectual-wherewithal in speaking of Gertrude Stein and few since.
@lilygalore Don't know where you've been for the last 20 years, but Paglia blew in like a hurricane, sweeping Sontag and others up and then just left them in her wake. Sontag is now dead; Paglia survives to teach a new generation with her deep knowledge of history and current events. Thank goodness she's calmed down (or has some good meds)
Sontag is reclining on the sofa, her body angled away from the interviewer, as if she really wants to take a nap and is only humoring this visit from one of the peasants, whose questions she answers with haughty scorn and derision.
Paglia, meanwhile, is warmly receptive, chuckling and dishing like a yenta, while making witty allusions to pop culture ("The Turning Point") and anti-establishment boasts about how much more interesting she is than Greer and Sontag.
@Buirgenstock In my opinion, Paglia's reputation rests on "Sexual Personae" (quite a book!) & "Break, Blow, Burn", & then there are those fantastic essays on Arion. True, she may be riding in the coattails of her magnus opus of 20 years ago, & which may have contributed to the cultural advancement from then to now. To understand Paglia is not merely to read her books, but to give a proper reading of her own public & television appearances...
@Buirgenstock She has stated in those lesser collections of essays of hers that she desires, not just for herself, to give publicity to public intellectuals, in the manner of her flamboyant predecessors & the role models of her girlhood (Norman Mailer, Dorothy Parker, &c.) What she's really trying to do here is to draw attention, all publicity is good publicity after all, to intellectual/cultural/political issues she lays out...
@Buirgenstock ...keeping in mind a constituency that may very well feel that these issues are beyond their scope– the layman. (Her favorite are construction workers) A sort of sensationalism she very much admits to, proud of even, in a most egregious way even, but very effective. And if her 'performances' turn you off, the whole point is lost, &/or misunderstood, &, well not designed for you. Or perhaps the medium (TV) was not designed for you.
@Buirgenstock Camille Paglia is very much a polymath, in the true sense of the word. She is like Sontag in this sense– she seems interested in, & a student of, EVERYTHING. What I admire about her, is even though she may say, or write, something that is dismaying in my opinion, I am happier anyway that she endeavors to continually shift the center in any given discourse. But yeah, check out "SP" & "BBB"– & those essays for Arion. She's worthwhile. (And so is Sontag!)
@Buirgenstock I can assure you, millions took her seriously and still do. Paglia is a spectacular intellect and her views and writings are worthy of study. The Sontag interview was telling, and Paglia calls her on it; her opinion was correct.
@cirosuperiore Now I'm almost certain that you've never read any of Sontag's work. To describe her as a 'feminist writer' is to demonstrate an abject ignorance of what she was all about. Around 95% of everything she ever wrote about was completely detached from feminism.
@cirosuperiore Evidence for your claim about feminist writers having never impressed anyone? Feminist writers can in fact write about issues outside of the feminist plight, you know.
You've got to be kidding. "Authentic intellectual"??? She's a nitwit - as she so winningly displays here. But yes, I can see her with her own radio show.
That quote about sontag "not watching the televised republican convention but reading the text" !!! HA! Who on earth bothers to "read" the transcript of any political convention, let along a republican one!
Maybe she mailed letters to the spin doctors asking for clarification on certain points.
I'd heard paglia step on sontag but to my great shame I'd never seen more than a couple short clips of sontag in prepared documentary lectures. She may be a pompous petty blowhard...but at least she wasn't embarrassed about it. Today you have to talk to a literature uni prof to find that kind of arrogant self isolating pretention.
sol·ip·sism
n. Philosophy
1. The theory that the self is the only thing that can be known and verified.
2. The theory or view that the self is the only reality.
NelsonClick 2 weeks ago
By the way, did anyone else catch the "hidden admiration" Camille was stating for Susan Sontag. People just key on the putdowns but there was also a warm reverence for Sontag. Calling herself the "Sontag of the 90's" for example.
NelsonClick 2 weeks ago
Camille is absolutely right about her impact, her place in the panorama of literary figures, her reflection of the era in which she lived, etc, all that. It's all true. My main concern is who will be the ones who will replace her? I can't see anyone with the breadth of knowledge and awareness and sheer brute force to surpass her. Who is going to be strong enough to point out weaknesses and flaws in her ideas? I'm scared to death that it will be nobody.
NelsonClick 2 weeks ago
OUCH!!!!
mrcharles007 2 weeks ago
Is it possible to like both of them, because I think i do. I enjoy Paglia's wit and Sontag's intellectualism. Granted, they are both boastful, no doubt, byt this is tantamount to an intellectual Divine feud. Paglia loses me when she says' "she is the Sontag of the 90's", which is rather arrogant, but she is likable. Sontag is and was a great intellectual, but yes she was rather bourgeois....
ccipollini1984 4 weeks ago
How petty.
MsStarryN 1 month ago
Go Camille.
ActaNonVerba71 1 month ago
Comment removed
ccipollini1984 1 month ago
'I am the Sontag on the 90s, there is no doubt.' Sort of sums up all Paglia is about - Derivative, recycled and chasing little more than notoriety ('My rise to fame'). 'Everyone remembers the old Sontag - beautiful, interesting'. Things Paglia never was, and never will be.
'...suddenly everyone realized just how interesting I am'. I mean, come on? She looks like a rabid horse-breeder, and is not infrequently stulifyingly ill-informed.
Sontag eats pieces of shit like this for breakfast.
matty270289 2 months ago 5
@matty270289 -- Interesting or not, Paglia was a knock out in her 20s.
greatsea 1 month ago
It's the battle of the Lebanese intellectuals.
diffnature 2 months ago
Yapping bitch. Sontag rules.
ashburnhouse 2 months ago 2
Actually, I like both women.
MyBetty111 2 months ago
"She's being passed by a younger rival?" Say what? What?
MyBetty111 2 months ago 3
What is this? The WWF??
antigen4 2 months ago 2
love when Paglia tosses her head back after she says her book had been a best seller for years, what a legend so arrogant
natkoyama 4 months ago 8
Let's not forget that Sontag hid her lesbianism until the very very end of her life; she only "came out" in the safe confines of the 21st century.
Whereas Paglia was pre-Stonewall out lesbian, just in everyone's faces about it. Sontag was a very middle-class good girl.
Paglia444 4 months ago
the reason why people deny paglia's influence is because her influence has been *outside* the literary establishment, the reverse of sontag who hasn't been read outside the literary elite since the 1970s. paglia altered criticism for the better and i love it when people attack her as it shows their snobbism about popular culture - just like sontag. and also, camille may be coasting on one book, but so was sontag - and camille's book was ten times as long.
oldtongueout 4 months ago
Camille is always interesting and enlightening even though she pisses me off and I disagree with her often (her more recent Salon articles have been particularly disappointing). Kids of today must read her work and form their own opinions. This posturing "who the hell is Paglia" crap only reveals your own insular awareness. She knocked the feminist and cultural establishment on its ass!!!
badleroybrown8 4 months ago
Rhope, I am no longer concerned with Paglia. I like good arguments. I was maybe 21 when I read Sex, Art, and American culture. At that point I also believed that Ride was relevant.
allidock11 4 months ago
Yawn.
jdawgmcdawg 4 months ago
Paglia is hysterical and so much fun. Always a joy to follow her works and views, even when she challenges whatever it is you feel. She has this passion for life which is absolutely inspiring.
AdArmand 5 months ago 2
I almost worshipped Paglia when I was in college in the early '90s. She was so refreshing. Watching her now...ugh. I still respect her ideas but the delivery makes me cringe. Watching this now is almost funny...Sontag's legacy is secure (rightly or wrongly, I don't care) and I've not heard a peep of relevance from Paglia...
allidock11 5 months ago
@allidock11 A blurb in "SP" characterizes Paglia as a 'reckless mind'. I still admire Paglia very much. Hero-worshipped her in grad school myself. Some of her television appearances are gross self-aggrandizement. (I'm afraid she feels more influential than she really is) But in "V&T" she is right about one thing, she succeeds Sontag in that public intellectual manner. Brainy, but celebrity. I so regret that Paglia has such a measly oeuvre. We need more of her scholarly writings...
Rhopoe 4 months ago
@allidock11 I am confident that Paglia has a place with the literary luminaries some time in the future. With the amount of her published work though, her persona, her publicity, might very well overwhelm her highly original theses in "Sexual Personae". I don't know. But remember, these days, in the universities, with the students today, they say the same of Sontag! You know, the glamorous, beautiful wraith– but no one actually reads her these days either.
Rhopoe 4 months ago
@Rhopoe Almost every one of your posts on Youtube has some sort of sexual reference. You cast judgement on a lot of people, maybe you should look in the mirror.
hammer55292 4 months ago
You can tell she's lying about never having heard of Paglia because of her answer to the follow-up question, "Does pop culture interest you?" Answer: "I don't think in those terms." She doesn't want to talk about pop culture because she knows that it is Paglia's forte.
iamasickman 5 months ago
I think Paglia hit the nail right on the head about Sontag. I liked Camille back in the early 90s when she wore skirts and lipstick and was more feminine and attractive. Those northern Italian cheekbones didn't hurt either! Mmmm, kinda sexy.
However, these days Paglia is looking quite haggard, much like Sontag does here.
BleakGreyHorizon 5 months ago
What an odd bird Paglia is. Her reaction's silly & petty: Sontag's not beautiful anymore, or young, the young have passed her and she's jealous. Contrast ideas, don't launch an ad hominem attack. Sontag looked like she was pulling the interviewer's leg and trying to get a rise out of Paglia. Both seem to have worked.
CAlocal100 5 months ago 2
Pagila is just a crazy Italian. Italian women are nuts. She cannot hold
a dildo to Sontag. Sontag, however, was a bitch during her interview with
this man, a real steely Yenta bitch.
MyBetty111 5 months ago
Love it, I remember reading this in Vamps & Tramps, thanks for this.
Teclo25 5 months ago
If you'd liked both Paglia and Sontag before this video, try them on for size now. Paglia's naïveté shines like a lightbulb against the sun, and Sontag comes out with the poise and intellectual-wherewithal in speaking of Gertrude Stein and few since.
westfinearts 6 months ago
@westfinearts
A defense of Sontag as coherent as sontag's own self defense.
tehgr8tstwarmonger 6 months ago
Camilia Paglia - the Dr. Laura of popular culture.
logotrix 6 months ago
who the fuck even reads Paglia anymore? she's looks like dr. laura.
"Sontag is gone" - what a fucking joke.
logotrix 6 months ago 2
Thumbs up if you are an republican conservative and you just hate sontag so you want to praise paglia for trashing an intellectual.
tehgr8tstwarmonger 6 months ago 2
Thumbs up if you are a feminazi who just hates paglia and so you want to praise sontag here, even if you never read or heard of sontag.
tehgr8tstwarmonger 6 months ago
Someone like Paglia is blatantly and patently outmatched by a thinker, writer and public figure of such high calibre like Susan Sontag!
lilygalore 6 months ago
@lilygalore Don't know where you've been for the last 20 years, but Paglia blew in like a hurricane, sweeping Sontag and others up and then just left them in her wake. Sontag is now dead; Paglia survives to teach a new generation with her deep knowledge of history and current events. Thank goodness she's calmed down (or has some good meds)
beeroosterm 4 months ago 2
Sontag is wonderful. I'm so at one with her!
lilygalore 6 months ago
Vivid contrast.
Sontag is reclining on the sofa, her body angled away from the interviewer, as if she really wants to take a nap and is only humoring this visit from one of the peasants, whose questions she answers with haughty scorn and derision.
Paglia, meanwhile, is warmly receptive, chuckling and dishing like a yenta, while making witty allusions to pop culture ("The Turning Point") and anti-establishment boasts about how much more interesting she is than Greer and Sontag.
will77jeff 6 months ago 11
HAHAHAHA. and still, i echo sontag's words: who is camile paglia?
elviatron 6 months ago
'...and suddenly people realised just how interesting I am.' - How can anybody take someone this obstrusive and narcissistic seriously?
Buirgenstock 6 months ago 3
@Buirgenstock In my opinion, Paglia's reputation rests on "Sexual Personae" (quite a book!) & "Break, Blow, Burn", & then there are those fantastic essays on Arion. True, she may be riding in the coattails of her magnus opus of 20 years ago, & which may have contributed to the cultural advancement from then to now. To understand Paglia is not merely to read her books, but to give a proper reading of her own public & television appearances...
Rhopoe 4 months ago
@Buirgenstock She has stated in those lesser collections of essays of hers that she desires, not just for herself, to give publicity to public intellectuals, in the manner of her flamboyant predecessors & the role models of her girlhood (Norman Mailer, Dorothy Parker, &c.) What she's really trying to do here is to draw attention, all publicity is good publicity after all, to intellectual/cultural/political issues she lays out...
Rhopoe 4 months ago
@Buirgenstock ...keeping in mind a constituency that may very well feel that these issues are beyond their scope– the layman. (Her favorite are construction workers) A sort of sensationalism she very much admits to, proud of even, in a most egregious way even, but very effective. And if her 'performances' turn you off, the whole point is lost, &/or misunderstood, &, well not designed for you. Or perhaps the medium (TV) was not designed for you.
Rhopoe 4 months ago
@Buirgenstock Camille Paglia is very much a polymath, in the true sense of the word. She is like Sontag in this sense– she seems interested in, & a student of, EVERYTHING. What I admire about her, is even though she may say, or write, something that is dismaying in my opinion, I am happier anyway that she endeavors to continually shift the center in any given discourse. But yeah, check out "SP" & "BBB"– & those essays for Arion. She's worthwhile. (And so is Sontag!)
Rhopoe 4 months ago
@Buirgenstock I can assure you, millions took her seriously and still do. Paglia is a spectacular intellect and her views and writings are worthy of study. The Sontag interview was telling, and Paglia calls her on it; her opinion was correct.
beeroosterm 4 months ago
of course she'd heard of her. Sontag is a pompous phoney.
marchartl 6 months ago
@marchartl sontag was so mentally slow there and stiff.
kasyapa 6 months ago
@kasyapa
I think because she was bored shitless by this twit.
logotrix 6 months ago
@marchartl
yes, clearly you've never read her. Sontag is a genius.
logotrix 6 months ago 3
fuck camille paglia. what an obnoxious cunt.
debaxer 7 months ago
Ech. I hate this lady. I love Susan Sontag. Disgraceful
EuphoniaPooch 7 months ago
Comment removed
Alexdurrant7 7 months ago
not very smart that sontag, is she???
cirosuperiore 7 months ago
@cirosuperiore You clearly have never read any of her writing. There's a very basic distinction between a good thinker and a good speaker.
Alexdurrant7 7 months ago
@Alexdurrant7 feminist writers have never impressed anyone except those who knew little from the beginning. as plato would say, mere doxa.
cirosuperiore 7 months ago
@cirosuperiore Now I'm almost certain that you've never read any of Sontag's work. To describe her as a 'feminist writer' is to demonstrate an abject ignorance of what she was all about. Around 95% of everything she ever wrote about was completely detached from feminism.
Alexdurrant7 7 months ago 2
@cirosuperiore Evidence for your claim about feminist writers having never impressed anyone? Feminist writers can in fact write about issues outside of the feminist plight, you know.
Alexdurrant7 4 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@Alexdurrant7 show me ONE
cirosuperiore 4 months ago
Camille Paglia is one of the few deep and authentic female intellectuals of our time. I have a profound respect and great admiration to her.
omariam05 7 months ago 3
@omariam05
You've got to be kidding. "Authentic intellectual"??? She's a nitwit - as she so winningly displays here. But yes, I can see her with her own radio show.
logotrix 6 months ago
That quote about sontag "not watching the televised republican convention but reading the text" !!! HA! Who on earth bothers to "read" the transcript of any political convention, let along a republican one!
Maybe she mailed letters to the spin doctors asking for clarification on certain points.
tehgr8tstwarmonger 7 months ago
I'd heard paglia step on sontag but to my great shame I'd never seen more than a couple short clips of sontag in prepared documentary lectures. She may be a pompous petty blowhard...but at least she wasn't embarrassed about it. Today you have to talk to a literature uni prof to find that kind of arrogant self isolating pretention.
Post more of it, MORE, MOOOOORE cookeez!
Me a pbs fan too!
tehgr8tstwarmonger 7 months ago
Thanks for posting this! More of this interview, please, if you have it. Any Paglia is great Paglia!
psbfan01 8 months ago