Camille Paglia: Why has Marie Antoinette suddenly become so ubiquitous?

[DeepModem Mom]

Chronicle Review: In Our Hall of Mirrors, a Queen Looms Large
By Camille Paglia


(Columbia Pictures)
Kirsten Dunst in Sofia Coppolla's "Marie Antoinette"

....The nagging question is why Marie Antoinette has suddenly become so ubiquitous....Has representative democracy, paralyzed by rancorous partisanship and bureaucratic incompetence, become the waning ancien régime assailed by hordes at the gates? There is an uneasy sense of siege in Europe and the United States from restive immigrant minorities who have taken to the streets or bred saboteurs. The intelligentsia seem fatigued, sapped by pointless theory, and impotent to affect events. Fervor has shifted to religious fundamentalists in both Christianity and Islam. Materialism and status anxiety (evident even in higher education, with its brand-name snobbery) have come to the fore in the glitteringly high-tech West. Yet the turbulent third world offers agonizingly stark contrasts. The Marie Antoinette story, with its premonitions of doom amid a giddy fatalism, seems to signal a pervasive guilt about near-intractable social inequities.

The court machinery created by Louis XIV at Versailles was a precursor of the star-making Hollywood studio system, with its glorification of beauty and glamour. Under the dithering, ineffectual Louis XVI, however, the artificial superstructure of the French elite had reached its decadent limit. As Weber shows, Marie Antoinette's fashion display was no longer about the nation but about unfettered self-indulgence. Similarly today, "image," as fabricated by stylists and often divorced from any discernible achievement, has become the primary focus of celebrity culture (and has overflowed into the art world). Yet stars have become smaller and smaller, interchangeable ciphers with blank doll faces. The perverse agelessness created in the late 18th century by powdering of the hair of both sexes is now paralleled by cosmetic surgery and nerve-deadening injections, which produce a strained simulacrum of youth.

In this period of bland, gender-neutral ideology in the workplace, the Marie Antoinette milieu may offer the archaic fantasy of sophisticated womanly wiles and the alluring arts of seduction. At times, the novels about Marie Antoinette seem to recall Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, with its epic panorama of the destruction of a pleasure-driven, heedlessly exploitative civilization. But Scarlett O'Hara, of course, survived through spunk and grit. The picture of an innocent Marie Antoinette as scapegoat, facing down her accusers and led to the slaughter, is reminiscent of plays and films about Joan of Arc, which used to be much more in circulation. There are also resemblances to Princess Diana, who was similarly recruited for royal procreation and found herself lost in a cunning, deceptive courtly maze. And like Marie Antoinette, Diana came to a violent end in Paris.

After 9/11 — when great towers fell, like the Bastille, in a day — coping for the professional class has required cognitive dissonance. Life's routine goes on amid a surreal bombardment of bulletins about mutilations and massacres. When since the Reign of Terror has ritual decapitation become such a constant? The fury and cruelty of the French mob were strangely mixed with laughter — as when the severed head of Marie Antoinette's friend, the Princesse de Lamballe, was spruced up by a hairdresser and waved on a pike outside the royal family's window. These are the grisly surprises that now greet us every day through our own windows — the glass monitors of TV's and PC's. The return of Marie Antoinette suggests that there are political forces at work in the world that Western humanism does not fully understand and that it may not be able to control.

(Camille Paglia is a professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts, in Philadelphia. Her latest book is "Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-Three of the World's Best Poems".)

http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=zjThKckXcmwf3vqTfzhtFXy8ZgwxpkWN

[ShortnFiery]

1. I don't know for sure, but I've got some knitting to do and will

get back with you. :P Signed, Madame LaFarge :rofl:


In other words = Concise she ain't and it's late ---> I'll bookmark for later.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. LOL! Anytime! nt

[wildhorses]

3. I dunno but, I wanna see this movie

she makes some provocative correlations...

[madrchsod]

4. she`s getting worse as she grows older

" that there are political forces at work in the world that Western humanism does not fully understand and that it may not be able to control."

"There are also resemblances to Princess Diana, who was similarly recruited for royal procreation and found herself lost in a cunning, deceptive courtly maze.

i used to think she had something to say but-"the return of Marie Antoinette suggests"? and who or what is "western humanism" and why "it may not be able to control"
i thought i was a poor writer---"in a cunning,deceptive courtly maze" and this gem---
"And like Marie Antoinette, Diana came to a violent end in Paris."

i have read several of her books and thought they were interesting but this? i don`t think so...

[madmusic]

5. She's my favorite feminist, but

too often requires http://www.webster.com/dictionary/simulacrum">this.

[pitohui]

8. she is not a feminist

self promoting fraud, as the other poster said, is more accurate

paglia's stance on women's right's abilities was summed up in her infamous quote that if women were in charge we'd still be living in grass huts

[madmusic]

12. Guess that depends on the definition of "feminist"

She isn't barefoot, pregnant, slaving over the stove and getting a beer for her man whenever he dmands it. If "feminist" means independence, then she is a feminist.

And what does "self promoting" have to do with it? Are http://www.salon.com/media/1998/01/12media.html">Gloria Allred, where "Allred would call me almost daily, trying to get her name and latest litigation on the wire", and http://hcs.harvard.edu/~cyberlaw/wiki/index.php/Responses_to_Wendy_Murphy">Wendy Murphy feminists?

[ChickMagic]

17. When Bush debated Gore

Paglia said that Bush's answers fell on her face like a cool
spring rain. It may be in Salon's archive of her columns
somewhere, but I'm too challenged to search for it. I haven't
read anything she's written since then. I figured she must
be one of Tweety's writers, what with his "radiating sunny
nobility" crap.

[madmusic]

20. Was that right after 9/11 but before Iraq?

Many felt that way when he said he was going to get bin Laden. Even justified patriotism can be blinding, but here, I mostly agree with her:


The Salon Interview: Camille Paglia

Bad omen: Why the Columbia disaster should make Bush think twice about rushing to war with Iraq.

By David Talbot
Pages 1 2 3 4

NothingFebruary 7, 2003 | Camille Paglia is a rarity in the increasingly polarized world of public intellectuals, a high-profile thinker and writer who is not readily identified with any political camp or party line. She burst onto the scene in 1990 following the publication of her book, "Sexual Personae." Paglia was a rough-trade feminist not afraid to challenge the orthodoxy of the women's movement or its reigning sisterhood; a professor from a small college with no qualms about torching the Parisian academic trends then enthralling Ivy League humanities departments; a self-proclaimed "Democratic libertarian" who voted twice for Bill Clinton and then loudly denounced him for bringing shame to his office.

Given Paglia's originality and unpredictability, we had no idea what to expect when we phoned her earlier this week for her opinions on the Bush administration's looming war with Iraq. Paglia proudly describes herself as a Dionysian child of the '60s, a generation not known for its martial spirit. And yet, during her long run as a Salon columnist, she developed an enthusiastic following among conservatives, including retired and active military personnel, for her eloquent tributes to family, tradition, country and uniformed service, as well as her stop-your-blubbering take on modern American life.

Paglia retired her Salon column last year to focus on teaching -- she is university professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia - and to finish her fifth book, a study of poetry that will be published by Pantheon Books. She returns in the Salon Interview to reveal her opinions on Iraq for the first time. "The foreign press has asked me repeatedly to comment on Iraq, and I've said I don't think it's right as an American citizen to do that. I said I should reserve my criticisms of the administration for home consumption," said Paglia. "That's why I'm talking to you now."

http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/feature/2003/02/07/paglia/index.html?pn=1

[ChickMagic]

26. No, it was in the debate with Gore

for the 2000 election. She really pissed me off then. She used to have a
semi-regular column with Salon that I would read. Sometimes I'd agree,
sometimes I wouldn't. When she said that about Bush, just after having
endured him as governor, I couldn't take it anymore.

[PassingFair]

23. I agree with you.

As my little Scottish Grannie would have said:

"I canna stick the wifie"

[Synnical]

11. Thank you for introducing me to a new word

Spot on, btw!

:)

[madmusic]

15. You're welcome.

I've often wondered if she intentionally uses a thesaurus to find the most obscure word, but think her vocabulary is probably actually that broad. She is not an easy read.

[stanwyck]

16. I'm not sure you can be considered a feminist

if you loathe women.
Do you also consider Ann Coulter a feminist?
She's not home with the kids, either.
Not sure what your definition of feminist is, but I don't consider Paglia one. Her disdain for her own sex is thick throughout her writing.

[madmusic]

25. Uh, oh, now I'm in trouble.

First, I don't think she disdains women. As the just linked article points out, she considers herself a "Democratic libertarian" feminist, and it is most likely the "libertarian" aspect of her ideas that are in the greatest dispute here. There is a good chance I misunderstand either her or the reaction to her, but it could be that since Pagila does not deny and does not resent the Shadow, and thinks it just as valuable in what makes us human as anything else, she therefore objects to the ideology of some feminists who argue for an extirpation of the passions, as Nietzsche would put it. Her objection is all the stronger because of the effort to accomplish this through the government, which is as patriarchal as anything in modernity. She, I think, sees a contradiction there that cannot succeed despite temporary victories that imply it might.

She has evidently revised her thinking some and appears to be more moralist, but in the past, if I understood her correctly, she saw life as dangerous, often dark, and saw that it was good. Denying the Shadow - and ignoring that it can be some of the beauty of life - is self-deluding, as if life can be perfected into a nice, safe, box built with ressentiment and laws. So I don't think, but could be wrong of course, that she had disdain so much for women as she had disdain of this foundation of some branches of feminism.

[mitchum]

6. Christ! Is that self-promoting fraud still around?

[UTUSN]

7. I hadn't wondered what had become of her--PAGLIA, that is n/t

[Diogenes2]

9. Camille has style...

a certain concise, well-groomed sentence structure. She links together extremely disparate realities & images in a way that sometimes startles the reader the first time around. Once you have sifted through her "arguments", separated her ideas from the literary ornamentation, you suddenly realize that you have learned nothing... the connections she makes between popular culture & politics, artistic productions & current "news" events, are based on wordplay, dramatic literary concepts, vague emotional "hunches"-- essentially pseudo-Surrealist collages of her own mental wanderings with very little relation to what anyone else is thinking or doing in the world. But I hear she is a really nice person. :)

[madmusic]

13. If read from...

Nietzsche's "will to power" and Jung's "shadow and http://pandc.ca/?cat=car_jung&page=major_archetypes_and_individuation">individuation" perspectives, she makes sense.

[Jacobin]

18. I kinda enjoyed reading that

Your description of her writing style, by the way, is exactly correct.

Must ask if you are/were a literary critic.

[Shakespeare]

22. !!

VERY well said! :rofl:

[qwertyMike]

10. Ubiquitous?

Haven't heard of her in years.
But then I'm media-challenged.

Wasn't there something about Cake?

Mis-reported (was it CNN?) and woulda saved her head?
Who cares?

BTW Sofia is a good director

[Bridget Burke]

14. Why has Camille Paglia become so dull?

I enjoyed Sexual Personae: Art & Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. She had an interesting take on myth & literature. She abandoned a follow-up volume because shorter, less difficult, works were more profitable. Too bad that she continued to repeat the same ideas in those short works.

I'll definitely see the movie.

[madmusic]

21. Agreed, none of her later books as as good as Sexual Personae

But how many of ANY kinds of books are that good? Often, a good rock 'n' roll band's first album is the best because it is the one the simmered for years. Too often the one's after are rushed and commercial, though a few mange to be great album after album.

[kiki]

19. Paglia is an imbecile

Her favourite tactic when she's losing an argument is to take off her microphone and leave. What a master of debate she is.

I once saw a TV show where her and an "outrageous" drag queen were making a spirited defence of wearing fur. Camille's logically watertight and unassailable argument was that "God put animals here for our use". The drag queen asserted that the problem with "some feminists" was analogous to people who disagree with fur - ie, that these feminists think that women are weaklings who can't defend themselves, just like anti-fur people think that animals are weak and can't defend themselves. Because, y'know, a mink or a fox is more than a match for the unstoppable machinery of human technology, ruthlessness and desire. Camille seemed to think this argument was spot-on. She is a joke.

[Neecy]

24. interesting...

The court machinery created by Louis XIV at Versailles was a precursor of the star-making Hollywood studio system, with its glorification of beauty and glamour...Similarly today, "image," as fabricated by stylists and often divorced from any discernible achievement, has become the primary focus of celebrity culture (and has overflowed into the art world).

I guess Paglia has forgotten her mortifying obsession with Madonna.

She was once a halfway decent scholar until she fell into the mold of the celebrity-cultist that she decries in this piece.