Donna mills: she got what she wanted on '80s TV with power, shoulder pads and makeup. Here, Camille Paglia revisits an unlikely feminist icon

Interview, Nov, 2002 by Camille Paglia

CP: I just knew there had to be some collaboration with the technical crew. You were replicating the Hollywood studio, when Marlene Dietrich and loan Crawford had that rapport with the crew. Again this is neglected in a lot of contemporary filmmaking, where the actors bond in an ensemble but then forget that their medium of communication to the audience is the technical apparatus.

DM: Oh, I feel that very strongly. The lighting is so important. I'm still like that. I go to an interview on some show and sit down and say, "No, that won't do. Uh, could you take that light over here and put it there?" And most of the time they're nice about it--though probably in the back room they're going, "Oh, she's such a bitch."

CP: But that was exactly what loan Crawford paid attention to. She knew, just by the heat on one cheek, where the light should be. And the result was gorgeous images that have lasted over 60 years.

DM: One thing that makes me nuts about the lighting now is that they spend an enormous amount of time lighting the set, the background. But the most important thing in the scene is the actor.

CP: Exactly. Lighting helps to create the body in space--like a work of sculpture. I always point this out in class when we look at 1930s photos or films: There's a complexity of lighting from so many different angles. It's even on the back of the shoulder, so the body exists in three dimensions.

DM: Rita Hayworth in Gilda [1946] is probably the best example of that ever. There's not a shot of her in that movie that isn't gorgeous. Fortunately, we had some great DPs on Knots that were concerned about making the show look good. Dallas and Dynasty would be finished at 4:30 in the afternoon. On Knots, we never shot less than a 12-hour day. Everybody tried to make it special. And I think it showed.

CP: Oh, I think so. To me, glamour is a great art form--going back to ancient Egypt. But you were not understood by the politically correct cultural elite in the '80s. Post Madonna, it's now absolutely crystal clear what you were doing before Madonna. When I came on the scene with my first book [Sexual Personae, Vintage Books] in 1990, the fashion industry was under a cloud. Academic theory condemned it as oppressive to women--a sadistic, capitalist, heterosexist conspiracy. In the U.S. and U.K., I was out there arguing that fashion and fashion photography belong to the history of the fine arts-a point now obvious to the generation of young feminists influenced by Madonna. What you did is such an important part of the historical record.

DM: It was really fun to do, too.

CP: Well, you put fun into the role. You made Abby funny and witty.

DM: There was a lot of comedy in Knots, which most people never recognized. Different writers were really funny. One reason I left when I did was because the writers at that time weren't particularly witty and didn't know what to do with Abby.

CP: Was there any resistance to your development of the role toward high fashion?

DM: Yeah, there was resistance. They didn't know that world; they didn't get it. I had to keep badgering them, and once they moved that way, the show became more and more popular. Left to their own devices, it would not have gone that way.