Vamps and Tramps. - book reviews

Reason, Feb, 1995 by David Link

A SIGN ON THE STREET IN HOLLYwood warns of construction ahead: "Vermont Ave. congested between 3rd St. and Hollywood Blvd. Seek alternate routes." That last phrase nicely sums up Camille Paglia's writing. Academics, like their poor relations in the increasingly incestuous media, are not immune from the general instinct to travel in packs. That instinct has led to some serious congestion in contemporary thought.

Paglia has sought to find a way around the herd. And like those drivers in Hollywood who are now seeking alternate routes, her new paths are not the easiest or most convenient; some are very bumpy indeed. But a girl's got to get where she's going....

Vamps & Tramps is Paglia's latest collection of essays, her second sop (after Sex, Art and American Culture) to those of us who have been waiting sleeplessly for the last half of Sexual Personae to be released. For the uninitiated, Sexual Personae is Paglia's magnum opus, the first part of which surveyed sexual imagery in art from the beginning of time up to Emily Dickinson. Its prickly contrarian energy, flashes of brilliance, and unrelenting wit made Paglia a star. The second half, still being updated, will show how movies, television, sports, and rock music continue to reveal the same recurring themes--that paganism's rich, sexual texture can't be kept down in our nominally Judeo-Christian culture. Jerusalem never conquered Babylon--Christianity and paganism are in eternal tension.

A book by Paglia is a lot like sex itself: When it's good, it's very, very good. And when it's bad, it's still pretty good. Vamps & Tramps is a step above pretty good, a medley of Paglia's writings, musings, and doings since Sex, Art and American Culture was released in 1992, consisting of essays, book reviews, transcripts of films and interviews, cartoons about Paglia, and an index of media references to her, with suitably withering editorial comments for those who unfairly malign our heroine. If these last two seem more than a trifle self-serving, well, Paglia has no problem with megalomania, hers in particular.

The book's title comes from the female personae Paglia sees missing from contemporary feminism: seductresses with "vampiric power over men," women who know how to make men helpless. It's not that these personae are missing from the culture--they can be found in such powerhouse movies as Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction, they're scattered everywhere throughout music videos and country/western songs. People can't get enough of the trial of O.J. Simpson precisely because they need to find out if Nicole had O.J. so utterly in her thrall that he murdered her and Ron Goldman in an impotent rage. An accomplished athlete, a beautiful brute of a man, helpless in the face of his feelings for his ex-wife: Now that's female power.

But feminism doesn't know how to account for men who feel they're under women's spell because of feminism's consuming focus on women as victims. Paglia sees social victimization as only part of the picture. Raw nature--sex--has to be accounted for, too. And it is women's sexual power that Paglia sees in action again and again. Female power, not female victimization, captivates our attention. Paglia's analysis of why the Amy Fisher saga warranted three TV movies is typically pithy. That story wasn't about Joey Buttafuoco at all. It was about the women: "When long-haired Amy, spoiled only child, mall chick and part-time call-girl, mounted the Buttafuoco porch with a pistol in her pocket, every power play in the history of love was on red alert. It was high noon on a Tennessee Williams veranda....Amy vs. Mary Jo Buttafuoco on the porch was a trash tango, a clash of the female titans."

The same forces of nature make pornography eternal: "What feminists denounce as woman's humiliating total accessibility in porn is actually her elevation to high priestess of a pagan paradise garden....Modern middle-class women cannot bear the thought that their hard-won professional achievements can be outweighed in an instant by a young hussy flashing a little tits and ass. But the gods have given her power."

It annoys Paglia when feminists deny women's sexual power, since any idiot can see it everywhere. The problem is that feminist academics ignore what's right in front of their eyes. Paglia pays as much attention to tabloids and TV movies as she does to Homer, Wordsworth, and (one of her special favorites) Spenser. She sees a continuity in the great themes regardless of the context. And unlike just about any other feminist academic, Paglia doesn't have a sentimental bone in her body to distract her from the truth.

ON THE WHOLE, VAMPS & TRAMPS IS A carnival. We see Paglia here in all her guises, from the highly serious to the completely loopy. She shines in her analysis of the competing personae of Bill Clinton and Hillary, suggesting that Hillary's persona is probably more suited to being commander-in-chief than Bill's. After that, Paglia is on to a film with drag queen Glennda Orgasm ("Glennda and Camille Do Downtown") in which the two of them encounter a group of dour-faced feminists, Women Against Pornography. It is a moment of sheer comic perfection that comes through even in the transcript. The comedy is matched a little later by Paglia's advice for the lovelorn columns from Spy magazine. Self-described as a "short, fast-talking comedienne with dimples, who imitates Keith Richards to avoid looking like Sally Field," Paglia dispenses her wisdom like Dear Abby on speed.