Rating: 
Summary: Knee-jerkers, stay clear..
Review: This is a great read, even if you disagree with Paglia. It is not for the reactionary, but for the mature reader who is able to read a full paragraph, consider it and digest it without an emotional outburst. For both men and women, some of the views expressed in this book can be quite provocative. While I do not agree with Ms. Paglia on some views, I've found that her scholarship and clear, incisive writing have certainly helped to broaden my perspective and make me a more critical consumer of academia and culture. Her analysis is original and not, as many claim, derivative of the anti-intellectual right wing.
Rating: 
Summary: One fine Babe with a Brain
Review: What I liked about this book is Prof Paglia makes one relalize that a woman can be esoteric. Lover of men as well as self. Lover of intellect as well as hedonistic elements of life. She actually is very "right on" with her observations of the human condition. Any self secure woman who isn't out to bash men, money and other wonderful life elements will embrace this woman. She is also one of the few True feminists who loves the working class, and those not stuck in lofty academic towers. She remembers her roots.
Rating: 
Summary: Camille can do better
Review: While she deserves her fame, there have been two negative effects from it. One is that her immense ego has gotten even bigger. The other is that she now wants us to hear her opinion on every topic under the sun. Compared to the insights of Sexual Personae, this book is fluff. Yes, there are some interesting things here, but nothing like the sustained analysis of her first book. There's a contradiction in her work. While she is always criticizing the semioticians and the post-structuralists, in a sense they made her work possible. Before them, pop culture was not a fit subject for serious intellectual study. You don't see her mentor Harold Bloom talking about the Rolling Stones. She can write intelligently about pop culture when she puts her mind to it, which is what I'm hoping Sexual Personae Volume Two will be about. Unless you're a big fan, skip this book and wait for that one
Rating:
Summary: Viper-jewel in Cleopatra's Crown
Review: ~Sex, Art, and American Culture~ strikes down from the heavens lika a thunderbolt from Olympus, disturbing our received notions of popular culture, high and low art, and particularly tertiary education with such flair, that you will never view the world in the same way. Camille Paglia is a breath of fresh air; a provocative slayer of highbrow, smug, one-dimensional academics, who, over the last twenty five years, have been waving French Critical theory around like it was a major break through in western thought. She treats these 'gurus' of French academe, i.e., Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault like purveyors of a death fog, confusing all and sunder with their 'playful language', their philosophy of destruction or 'deconstruction', and reveals the end result of this post structuralist cancer: 'Academics with the souls of accountants...' an alarming ignorance of history and true scholarship, and a specialized factory line mentality in undergraduate studies.All of the essays in this wonderful collection sparkle with erudition, honesty and guts. I was actually startled by Paglia's frankness, power and arresting prose style. A friend, who suggested I read this book, summed Paglia up quite nicely, "She has turned cultural studies into a contact sport." It's about time. Having been on the receiving end of the Derrida, Lacan, Foucault triad, as an idealistic, hungry for knowledge undergraduate, I too was swept-up in the French theory furore, anally strutting around campus like some initiated witch from a secret coven. History has shown that the attainment of alleged esoteric knowledge has always given us a false sense of power: a feeling that you are somehow a member of the elite, above the fray, someone special. After a few years, however, the illusion crumbled, and I realized that to view language as nothing more than 'meaningless play'; that, at bottom, all this so-called 'rebelliousness' was simply empty rhetoric and posing claptrap, and really has no use in the world of physical reality. I needed to do something, so switched the game plan, and began reading the canon. Suddenly, the penny dropped, and connections began to manifest. Homer's ~The Odyssey~ changed my life and true learning began in earnest. Another area of criticism that rang true in this important book is the move towards specialization in the halls of humanities departments across the globe. Paglia explains this shift as a self-promoting defence mechanism for academics without courage. I don't know about the teacher side of the story, but from a student's perspective, specialization has been devastating in some instances. For example, a friend of mine has a degree in 'cultural studies' hanging proudly on his wall, and his knowledge of Elizabethan literature is profound. Ironically, however, his knowledge of popular culture is next to nil. How can anyone claim higher knowledge in cultural studies without an appreciation of ~The Simpsons~ or the political ramifications of Mickey Mouse. Because of specialization, Paglia believes universities have been churning out cultural morons with limited knowledge of the world. It is a dangerous situation. To fix the problem, Paglia suggests an interdisciplinary approach to education, which includes the sciences, art history, comparative religion and politics as well as literature. Generally, learning of our rich past is about making connections,encompassing all the disciplines from the beginning of western knowledge to present time. Camille Paglia is an academic rabble-rouser; an astute observer of popular culture and a no holds barred bitch with a well-argued point of view. Her understanding of cinema and their gods, i.e., Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor and Alfred Hitchcock reveals deep insight into the American psyche: a pleasure to read. The one criticism I have of this book is Paglia's feeble views on rape. Her argument that "if you look for trouble you'll get it'; a young girl wearing a thong and a see-through dress at an all male fraternity party is merely asking for it, is a narrow and superficial perspective. What about the eighty year old woman, living in the same street for years, walking to the baker and the butcher, known by everybody, to be found brutally raped and beaten for no apparent reason. Was she asking for it? Hardly. However contentious Paglia's arguments on this issue may seem, they smell of eastern wealth, a target market for her publisher to shake-up an intellectually frustarated clientele. The issue of rape goes far beyond the privleged schoolgirl scenario. That said, ~Sex, Art, and American Culture is the viper-jewel in Cleopatra's crown, instructing the fat - comfort zone - Mark Anthony's of American academe to get a grip, pull their fingers out and follow their instincts. This book is highly recommended.
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