Reviews for Sex, art and American culture

The average rating for Sex, art and American culture based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-06-17 00:00:00 Matt Rifley In her lecture at M.I.T. in 1991, Camille Paglia remarked at the outset that she faced a dilemma on the occasion of that appearance. She was unsure about whether she should conduct herself as a lady or just be herself, since she undoubtedly had both friends and enemies in the audience. She reckoned that nobody came to see her perform as a lady so she would just be herself, as she put it, "...which is, you know, abrasive, strident, and obnoxious. So then you all can go outside and say, 'What a bitch!'" To which I would add, "What an erudite, mordacious, sexy and wonderful bitch; I am totally smitten." There are some mystic elements to her view of life but they pale in comparison to the complete intellectual package she so effectively presents to the culture. Like all truly serious intellectuals she has a historical perspective which she applies to her particular interests in art, sex and culture. She abhors, as many of us do, the degraded system of education in the United States from public school to the ivory towers of career academia. Paglia earned her chops by spending her time in libraries rather than schmoozing in faculty lounges or "sucking up" to the already tenured radicals and administrators. Camille Paglia makes a case for reform in education which would in the long run improve the field of aesthetics, which I personally find appealing. With a call to personal responsibility and ethics she also smacks down modern feminists with several deftly applied blows. There is much more in this collection of essays. If you are a fan of Madonna or Elizabeth Taylor this book will interest you. If you like rock music or remain confused about the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill controversy during the former's confirmation hearings you will appreciate Paglia's scathing comments. Her discussions of rape and the so-called "date-rape" issue, which so infuriated the feminist establishment, are so practical and tied to the reality of a sexually charged species that you may wonder why more writers do not have the guts to say it. I recommend this book of essays for the pleasure of erudition.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-04-09 00:00:00 Jari Viitala I got up to 100 pages in this, and I couldn't go any further. Camilla Pagila claims to be a feminist, but she's an MRA in women's drag. She writes scornfully of feminism as a movement, at the same time she claims herself as one. I cannot take seriously the view of a woman who victim blames women for being raped, who says that if a woman dresses provocatively or is on a date with a man, she should "take the risk of being raped" and even more gross, excuses men for their "deepest urges" and says that that is just a man "being a man". I would throw this book in the trash, except I can't do that to a book, even one as terrible as this is. I've never left a book unfinished, but life is too short to keep reading something I hate. Fuck Camille Paglia, and fuck this book. I left the one star because her essay on Madonna was pretty good, but that's it.