Tyler/Camille Paglia, “Conversations with Tyler” (Full episode list + notes)
Marshall McLuhan = her patron saint of working on the web; prophetic views of what was coming; the last tech guru she liked
*****Book: Glittering images*****
There’s an avalanche of fragmented visual impressions; disconnected, glaring, tacky, badly designed, that young people are growing up in
Children’s brains are being reshaped***
Standard forms for logic/sequential information/reasoning are disappearing (!!!!)
It’s getting worse and worse
Web design is in the pits; the miniaturization of image is terrible
Hollywood used to depict giant visual images (ex: Egypt; Lawrence of Arabia); no longer
Young ppl have no sense of the expansive, the large; the gesture
Cultures always move in cycles
Some periods esteem the Colossal; others highlight the small (Baroque vs. Rococo)
“I have an epic imagination because I was raised watching “The Ten Commandments” and Ben Hur
Not just the images; the music too
We’re moving inexorably into the future; there’s no “returning”
A true intellectual should always be beyond partisanship; always critiquing the premises of your friends/allies
Brazil = polygon of cultures/ethnicities; Brazilians understood her work best; understood artifice/art; baroque exuberance; beauty as an incredibly important human principle; grandeur or nature
Anyone who claims climate chain is brining about the end of the world doesn’t understand the grandeur/power of nature; to think we can make a change to it is “absolutely absurd”
Brazil is in its own world; no history of world wars; no messianic view of itself politically; “Brazil is like another planet”
George Lucas = greatest artist of our time
Rolling stone were inspired by the Blues; darker than the Beatles
Arena concerts aren’t musical experiences; they’re social experiences
Musicians with talent nowadays aren’t being developed; they have nothing to draw on
There are certain magic moments of fertility of creativity in many arts; certain key moments with confluence of influences; a certain richness
In that very moment it’s a great time to be alive; to be young
Ex: Shakespeare wouldn’t be Shakespeare if he were alive today; happened to live during a few decades of theater flourishing
There’s a certain type of luck; right person, right time
[I believe we’re in one of those times today!]
Education
Minerva education - four years, each year in a different country
Right now - primary school education is appalling in world history/world geography
“It is unbelievable how little they know; it’s a recipe for disaster”
“I don’t believe this online education thing at all; you need a live person who can respond to the moment extemporaneously
Teaching in Ivy League is too much “practicing to be pretentious”; “A- seminars”; making people feel good about themselves; they’re so proud of themselves as they produce these “polished, witless, bourgeois clones” (!)
Faulkner used to be everywhere; feminists in the ‘70s —> great sweeping away of Faulkner, Hemingway, D.H. Lawrence; young people aren’t reading them or many of the great authors
Yoko Ohno = “one of my least favorite people in the universe (!)”; blame her for Beatles breakup
Innovative in 60s art but a “dreary, humorless person”
T: Paglia focuses on metaphysics
C: “I have absolutely zero interest in contemporary fiction”; they’re off in their own world; their English is stale; “anything pre-contemporary I’m an admirer of”
All these whiny, supersensitive people on campus who shriek at the slightest offenses is b/c the parents have not prepared them for real life; raised in “bourgeois, pampered cocoon”
“Assimilation is almost always a loss” (ex: Italian Americans) (!)
Problem right now = the masculine has no honor in our culture; academics say gender is a “construct”
If you have weak men, you can have weak women; anything remotely masculine is identified as toxic
“Working class culture retains an idea of the masculine”; must have strong women to deal with masculine men
T: What’s the healthiest segment of American society?
C: There’s been a tremendous flattening; very little of substance/interest being produced in art and culture; retro period; chopping up everything from past and putting it through the grinder again
Canada = the “idea of consensus”; same with Norway; no one’s allowed to hold a distinct opinion
Everyone’s civil in Canada but you can’t make big gestures/rise above the heard
“My early period was failure, flop, inability to get published…career = nothingness and then everything”
Trying to show politicization of ethnic/racial studies has been very limiting
Eternal; projection of genocide/disaster onto Native American studies limits view of their religious, metaphysical vision and focus on nature
We don’t know as much about Northeast Indians compared to plains, Navajo, Pac NW
2nd-wave feminism revived in 1967 with Betty Friedan; “I hated it”; they wouldn’t have me b/c I wouldn’t badmouth men
Women like Amelia Earhart didn’t bad-mouth men; 2nd wave feminists constantly criticized the patriarchy
Gloria Steinem: “She’s a fraud, that woman, fraud”
Academic conferences overlay the same ideas
“I listen to conversations in the shopping mall; people calling into sports radio; “it’s fantastic”
My writing voice is very influenced by how English is spoken today on radio; high-impact kind of a sound
I replaced LSD with lamb vindaloo
C: LSD gave vision, but deprived ppl of ability to translate that vision into material form
She never tried it “thank God”
“I feel like I took LSD because of the music”
Bathing at Baxters, 8 miles high - Jefferson Airplanes
Social History of Art by Arnold Hauser = one of my biggest influences
Marxism lacks largest vision of the universe; it doesn’t even see nature; only society
All these graduates of elite schools can’t see the big ideas
“My generation was all into cosmic consciousness; influenced by eastern religions”
To have true multiculturalism you must present world cultures
“The people who’s ideas I admire are long dead”
I’m alone. The ppl who should’ve been writing interesting quirky books as I do are dead, or their brains were destroyed on LSD
I knew so many brilliant minds in grad school; I had great hopes for what they would do, but they couldn’t get anything done; they didn’t have the resilience to continue against obstacles
I’m not to big a fan of travel; I’m a mind traveler
Foucault = a windbag; “he is nothing”
Every gender studies department is “impregnated” with Foucault; “That’s why we have grad students that know nothing”
“I try to keep to reality; the basis of my work is the closeness with which I live to ordinary life”
I hate the elites; I hate parties
Susan Sontag was a “great dirigible luminary” floating above realitY
She loved to hold court at dinner parties
Her work got less and less meaningful over time
She was detached from ordinary life
When you’re a teacher, the students don’t care what you’ve written; it keeps you tethered to ordinary life; at Harvard/Yale the grad students hold court to you b/c they need letters of rec
She’s not treated like a queen; she’s ordinary
Good for writers to have a job where you deal with constant frustrations/problems; “I think that’s really good for you”
Every time you have frustrations with your job say “this is good, this is reality”
Constantly observe and jot things down. Constantly
I never say “this is important, this is not important”
At Yale grad school I lost credibility thru my endorsement of Hollywood
Follow your own instincts/intuition; something meaningful there…keep it on back burner
Tell her students: NOTHING IS BORING
If you’re bored, you’re boring (!!!)
Always see what opportunity there is for observing something more
The library was my shrine
I’ve learned a great deal from historians/commentators of the past
Writing on art was extremely erudite and beautiful…..until 1960s…..by 1980s/1990s ppl at top schools are “pygmies”
Foundations of art classes (survey classes) have been abandoned wholesale
No teaching of narratives of art/big picture b/c all narratives are regarded as imperialistic fictions; the entire story of art isn’t possible; therefore ppl know nothing
“I belong to a dissident wing of feminism”
We won in the 90s thanks to Madonna (we won over the Steinhem politburo)
Now, Steinhem has returned
What musical heroes represent on screen is an artificial construction; I’m not that interested in meeting my musical heroes
I understand the mundane real self and the artistic self within the “Temenos” (sacred precinct) of art
Elizabeth Taylor represented pure sexuality that had been repressed in the 50s/60s
I had so many phenomenal images of women I was inundated with in high school and college
Today - “Taylor Swift? Oh my God she is such a fake. Fake fake fake”
Rihann’s instagrams are “a work of art”
Actual cases of gender pay gaps are rare
If women are earning $0.72 on the dollar, it’s not for the same job; it’s the averages of women overall (women of their own volition take jobs with more flexibility)
Ex: women tend to shy away from commissioned sales jobs where they’re on the road a lot
Steinem feminists have one answer: “men must do more!”
Respect for/interest in language is degenerating
Young people have no concern for language; the way they communicate is very truncated; web writing has degenerated horribly
Space limits of newspapers/magazines forced you to condense; gave a kind of crispness for language
“I’m an equal opportunity feminist”
Huge areas of our life are in the private sphere; government there is intrusive
Feminism has made enormous gains
Women can be self-supporting
Capitalism made women’s emancipation possible
Young women have been taught to identify own personal unhappiness with men
Part of problem = thousands of years, mating occurred early
Now - mechanical system of professional world that has emerged to replace agrarian period where women had a natural sense of solidarity together (world of women + world of men)