A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending a lecture and discussion by the colorful and controversial public intellectual
Camille Paglia at St. John's College in Annapolis (where I'll be going next fall to pursue a Master's Degree in Liberal Arts.) I was completely blissed out - freshly dosed with my ADD meds and buzzing on a can of diet Red Bull, I was spellbound by her two-hour slide presentation on Egyptian and Greek architecture and sculpture and the ways in which the arts expressed the changing political climates in those societies. She made a chilling point when, flashing slides of post-Athens, Hellenistic and Roman statues depicting lurid scenes of violence and sexuality, she commented that this type of art often appears when democracy is in decline. She sees the exploding body parts in today's video games and the oddly-proportioned, Photoshopped images of "perfect" faces and bodies on the covers of fashion magazines as indications of disturbing undercurrents in our own society. Democratic societies tend to produce realistic images of ordinary mortals and celebrate the wonder of the human form and human achievements. They create buildings that invite people to approach them and make use of them. By contrast, the huge, forbidding images of fabulous gods, goddesses and dictators that autocracies pump out as an intimidating form of PR remind her of the artificially elongated, hard and unapproachable looking women seen everywhere in today's media. And, according to Paglia, when a society seems to crave sensational images of eroticized violence and sexual acts, that is also a sign of chaotic tendencies. She darkly suggested more than once that we take our form of government for granted and that after one or two more terror attacks our American Democracy could well go the way of the Roman Republic.
Afterwards, a smaller group accompanied her to the "conversation room," where she took questions from a combined audience of St. John's students and members of the community. I was supposed to wake up at 5:30 am the next morning to drive to Central PA by 11:am, and I suggested to my partner Anita that we just stay for "one question." But we Could Not Leave Our Seats. It was a dizzying back-and-forth about everything from Egyptian art to the Rolling Stones to Meredith Baxter Birney's brilliant portrayal of scorned wife-turned-murderess Betty Broderick in a 1992 television docudrama. Since Paglia mentioned talk radio and how boring most left wing hosts are, I jumped on the opportunity to throw in a word for
Stephanie Miller, which immediately got her attention. "Oh yes, I know her! She's from Boston, isn't she?" In true CP form, she would not take my word for it that she was wrong and I was right and that Stephanie was in fact from L.A.! She also didn't seem to realize that it's a nationally syndicated show. But she thanked me for reminding her about it and said she was going to find out more.
The four-hour event flew by. Afterwards, Anita confessed "Okay, I'm a convert." Finally! I am really going to have to get my Paglia talking points together. So often, when I mention her name to people I can practically hear the horses whinnying like they do at the mention of the pointy-breasted
Frau Blucher in
Young Frankenstein. I am going to have to do a bit more thinking on this, but until I get my own Power Point presentation up and running, I'm going to recommend checking out this clip of a lecture and Q&A that she gave at Colorado College that was broadcast recently on C-SPAN.org
posted by Lisa Moscatiello #
7:34 AM |
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