Camille Paglia on Women and Magic in Hitchcock 

This woman could fascinate me by just giving a lecture on after dinner mints.

This little woman fascinates me. I could listen to her day and night quite contentedly, never feeling the need or even the remotest inclination to utter one syllable. I mean, what would be the point?

The late '80's. I was tragically resigned to the ultimate victory of the neo-Victorian, politically correct, Feminist's Movt,, and then I channel surfed upon Camille on the Dick Cavett Show, I think. How refreshing it was to hear a super articulate lady speak about the freedom so hard fought for by women and men before the prudes gained dominance in feminist movt. The idea is to flourish as an individual, not conform to a formula. We have a lot to thank Camille for.

She has a brilliant heart.

Welcome back, Camille! Reading Paglia steeled me for grad school (English) and helped me to hold on to the priority of art in the "arts," over and against sneering, reductive theory. Her passion is evident here. So many academics fancy themselves removed from humanity. Paglia's always been about the muck and the mire. I especially like her unpacking of Hitchcock's ambivalence towards women. So much more to explore than *hand-slap* "Bad patriarch! Bad!"

"Feminism has to start listening to Frank Sinatra and stop listening to Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault!" Hahaha! This is why I love Paglia.

My favorite was Rear Window. Loved Paglia's study of The Birds.

I could listen to her and Zizek talk about film all day, every day. And I could listen to her talk about anything.

i’m obsessed with this woman ❤ What a genius

I compare Paglia's intelligence to Deneuve's beauty. A gift.

I disagree strongly with Paglia on certain subjects but, my god, I can't deny that she is absolutely brilliant and persuasive.

Is there anyone better on Hitchcock than Camille Paglia? She's feisty, smart, passionate and talks up a storm. A feminist who refuses glib labels, cant and fashionable orthodoxies.

Doris Day wrote an autobiography back in the Seventies. She did a couple of movies with Hitchcock. The first time she worked with him, she said he never said a word to her. They'd film a scene and he'd yell, "Cut!" Finally she asked him, "Don't you have any direction to give her." His famous rejoinder, "It's only a movie." She said he was the best director she ever worked with.

Moar moar moar!!! post the rest PLEAAASEEE!!

I read an essay on Pasolini's Salò that noted that the extraordinary voyeuristic torture sequence through binoculars at the conclusion is clearly indebted to Hitchcock's Rear Window (the author is Gian Maria Annovi, in a volume called Pasolini, Petrolio, Salò, ed. Davide Messina, p. 174).

what a mind

Paglia is a genius.

She is brilliant.

very good

Inspiration and perspiration...

Millions of years from now future archaeologists will be digging in the dirt and find Camille Paglia's bones. Elated, they tenderly disinter and cautiously carry back her bones to their laboratory. After setting them on a table they huddle around the bones in discussion and slowly assemble the bones to where they are supposed to go. Once finished they will marvel how big and dangerous she must have been (people in the future are very little) and then come up with a name. They throw out many ideas but settle on "Philosoraptor".

She rocks!

She could make reading a telephone directory fascinating.

She’s so awesome!!! YASSS

I'm a woman and I found being in the womb pretty stifling too.

excellent words .. but re: @5:00 .. wasn't Alma his closest longtime conspirator ?

Adore her

I fucking adore this woman. (Pardon my French.)

If you listen her older interviews , she speaks so slow and different. I guess she was trying to look calm in the past.

So interesting!

I love this woman! Almost as much as my wife, and a strong contender with Vladmir Putin.

Hi DeLight, I replied to your questions as best I could, but I forgot to hit your direct "reply" button .

When you refer to Tippi Hedren you must say ALLEGED. There is ZERO evidence that anything ever happened to her and others who were there CONTRADICT her.

That is a really idiotic observation. Paglia's philosophy celebrates pop culture, including such pedestrian traditions as the "10 Best" poll. She rejects the old idea that ivy league intellectuals occupy a special place in society. They don't. If you're going to criticize her, criticize the actual merits of her ideas.

Well, my ability to read and process language comes from my mind.

I like listening to her but she doesn't completely explain her ideas. You know where she is going but she might leave you hanging and she doesn't take you there logically. This is not to say that she doesn't come up with lots of interesting soundbites that are thought provoking but sometimes unexplained in total. Maybe her books give her ideas more life and logic. Again i have no strong disagreement with her ideas, just not sure if a more complete explanation will hammer down her answers more convincingly.

I’m glad she brought up the nonsense of hating on Hitchcock by the woke because he said hurty things to some of the actors

Okay

Did he ever meet people like Jimmy savile in East Germany

They said of Mozart, that writing a score was just scribbling...like dictation...becuase all the work was already finished in his head.

She is so awesome; even when stuck having a shvitz. Someone give the lady a towel.

So, what, you're implicating some hidden essence which precedes Being through identification? The Hegelian Spirit? It seems so when you imply that her observations are not HERS as such, unless I'm reading your emphasis wrong and you're merely fixated on the fact that she identifies herself with academic activity. Furthermore, if you're claiming that Deneuve does not identify through her beauty but Paglia does via her intellect how is one's beauty equivalent to the other's intellect?

Can you imagine being her child

Camille's good clean fan, but this is just rambling fanboy shtick, which leaves one with nothing we didn't all know already.

rhino79 - maybe it's because you're trying to make sense of my words with your mind and not your being.

I think I admire Camille Paglia, but I do not agree on this one. I do not think Hitchence was denying the cultural value religion has had in history. He was against the participation -political if you will- in secular modern society. He favored the separation of the state from organized religion and values. On the other hand, what is this thing with an atheist role model? He did not present himself as that or expected to offer an array of secular monks in exchange of saints and popes. Atheism is not an alternative set of dogmatic values: he, or any atheist, does not have to offer a system of belief as an alternative to religious values. And what is this whole insistence with the 60s? It is as they were the ultimate reference of cultural and intellectual pursuits. Sure there were interesting endeavors and writings done at the time, but there have been other (even more interesting) periods last century and many others back in history. Hitchens came from the 60s as well and as part of that generation embraced the great alternative of secular dogmatism: Radical Marxism. An ideology that have only brought serfdom and misery in the countries where it has been implemented . Hitchens moved away in his las years from that.

I liked Vertigo but I still feel Jimmy Stewart was too old to play opposite Kim Novak.

Being could be described as a way of non-thinking, but it's impossible to describe because thinking uses words. I couldn't explain in words how chocolate tastes, it's something you experience in yourself, words are useless. ---- Deneuve is brillian beauty. Paglia is beautiful brilliance Both are pleasant and interesting to drink in. And neither really matter in the dire need for the evolution of human consciousness

Vertigo is not above Citizen Jane love you though

Her Beckett comment is pure idiocy. Beckett had many women in his work (has she not read or seen “Happy Days”?)

That's true Rhino79. Your mind is very limited. Language is very limited. Try going deeper.

Johnnyforjohnny - " . . . criticize her for the actual merits of her ideas"? It's not possible to criticize an idea one regards as having merit. It's a little like having respect for an intellectual who stoops to tallying via a ten-best list.

OctoberOhio, are you stoned? On pills? Your comments make no sense whatsoever.

And that being said (Paglia's intelligence = Deneuve's beauty), I think that Catherine understands that her "beauty" is not who she is. But Camille, still unenlightened, thinks she IS her intelligence. She seems fried here, holding on, unaware that her thoughts are not who she is. Especially at about 11 minutes in....when you feel her respond to the crowd's twitter at HER brilliant observation about Sinatra....unlike the other crowd pleasers that are nothing more than quotes. More later..

Strange for someone of Paglia's alleged intelligence to participate in what is essentially a "10 Best" poll.

It's so frustrating when people worth listening to are so unlistenable.

She is very difficult to listen to. Very undisciplined speaker. Hyper in a very distracting way.

a poorman's Susan Sontag