Vamps and Tramps. - book reviews

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 21, 1994 | by Suzanne Fields

Camille Paglia calls herself an "intellectual pugilist." She's more than that: Paglia could be described as a scholarly exhibitionist, a lesbian provocateur, a cruel cultural critic and an original essayist who writes with erudition, energy and wit. She projects the bravado of Norman Mailer, the outrageousness of Allen Ginsberg and the scandalous appeal (and perversity) of Lenny Bruce. Unfortunately, she's often mired in her own vulgarity, too silly for words (literally), mixing the diamonds from a dazzling intellect with crass ornamental argument that's merely schlock to shock. She's breathlessly bizarre.

Her new book, Vamps & Tramps (Vintage, 506 pp), a hodgepodge of just about everything she has written, filmed and said in magazines, newspapers, movies and television during the last two years, is paradoxically dazzling and dull, sensuous and senseless, reactive and repetitious. I recommend it to anyone who wants to ponder the themes and excesses of current popular culture, feminism and pornography. It's a gold mine of theory and intelligent criticism, but be warned. Reading it requires sifting and sorting amid water, dirt and gravel to get to the shining mettle. Vamps Hamps is not a book for the squeamish or smug, but it's fun to read and watch the author scorch her enemies with the concentrated power of a white-hot mind.

Her most powerful and profound criticism slices up the victim-mongering feminists. She renders Gloria Steinem a dull-witted child of a weaker sex, intellectually disabled, theoretically challenged. The of Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin become a comic Mutt and Jeff. Date-rape fanatics on college campuses, who see more passes coming their way than all the safety men in the National Football League, are "simpering white girls with their princess fantasies."

It took her 20 years to get Sexual Personae, her first book, published in 1990 by Yale University Press, but in her mind, she's the right person at the right time to turn things around. "As an ornery outsider of prickly eccentricity and raw populist humor, I was a parallel phenomenon to businessman turned-politician Ross Perot and radio personalities Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern, with their gigantic nationwide following," she writes. "We have widely different political views, but all four of us, with our raging egomania and volatile comic personae tending toward the loopy, helped restore free speech to America."

This is exactly what's good and bad about her book. Rather than offering a coherent view, she settles for startling one-and two-liner insights, barbs that amuse but do not sustain. At her worst she glamorizes the sexuality of children, overstates the virtues of vice and the dark side of paganism, porn prostitution. She reprints inane conversations with dialogue degraded by inferior minds. She romps through Manhattan, trading conversational inanities with a drag queen, in search of gay male pornography. She trivializes the differences between men and women in an insipid conversation with model Lauren Hutton, discussing fantasies of male lust.

But when she strides the high road, she rises above all that cheap sensationalism with wisdom and wit:

On abortion: "The vicious stereotyping of abortion opponents as `anti-woman' or `far right fanatics' has been one of the most deplorable habits of the feminist establishment.... We career women are arguing from experience; it is personally and professionally inconvenient or onerous to bear an unwanted child. The pro-life movement, in contrast, is arguing that every conception is sacred and that society has a responsibility to protect the defenseless."

On gays in the military: "The problem with the gay-activist position is that, for philosophic consistency, it should have argued for integration of male and female military quarters, like college dormitories. Continued segregation by gender makes no sense, if the cohabitation of gays with straights is really so benign."

On political correctness: "In the summer-camp mentality of American universities, the ferocity of genuine intellectual debate would just seem like spoiling everyone's fun.... Drab, uncultivated Philistines, without broad knowledge of the arts, have seized the top jobs in the Ivy League, simply because they have the right opinions and know the right people."

If she were less a lawless egomaniac, Paglia could have worked this into a coherent thesis and set off intellectual debate on issues she cares about, especially the inadequacies, small-mindedness, petty prudishness and uninspired rhetoric of the anemic academic feminists. Instead, she defines her intellect down, choosing the exaggerated spontaneity of a quick and agile mind, where information and understanding can be vast, but sacrificed to the facile wordplay of a celebrity outlaw. She rages against those who don't take her seriously, but she doesn't take herself seriously enough to stay out of the spotlight until she has performed disciplined hard work offstage.

"My libertarian position is that, in a democracy, words must not be policed," she writes. Fair enough. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be reworked and edited for clarity and persuasion. If Vamps & Tramps were half its size, it would be twice as effective. Instead, it's more entertaining than engaging.