Articles by: Tom Verso

 Art and Reality

From the beginning of the 19th thru the early 20th century, German scholarship in quantitative and qualitative terms was analogous to the prodigious output of art in the Italian “Quattrocento”.  It was a truly remarkable era of historical writing by the likes of Ranke, Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Niebuhr, Meyer, Zeller, Jaeger, etc.  It’s hardly possible to list all the brilliant scholars and a bibliography of the works they produced in that century and a half.  This extraordinary scholarship was the result of a highly efficient education system that integrated the pre-university gymnasium schools with the universities. 

Interestingly, to my mind, throughout this golden era of teaching and scholarship, a reoccurring theme in German literature, music and film was the Faustian tragedy.  Repeatedly, in many different plots and scenarios, German artist presented us with teachers and scholars frustrated with the academic life, diabolically lured out of academia into the world at large, resulting in intellectual and/or physical demise.  For example, at the very onset of this golden era of German scholarship, in 1808, Goethe wrote “Faust”.  At the end of the era, in 1947, Thomas Mann published his novel “Doctor Faustus".  In between, Heine (“Der Doktor Faust”), Heinrich Mann (“Professor Unrat), Mahler (Symphony No. 8) and Hesse (“Magister Ludi”) developed the Faustian theme in literature and symphony.  The theme also entered the world of German pop culture with Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s 1926 film “Faust”, and immortalized in the 1930 Jonas Sternberg film “The Blue Angel”, staring the incomparable Marline Dietrich.

At least since Plato the perennial question in Western aesthetics has to do with reality and art. Some, like Plato, think artists distort reality, while others argue that artists, responding to their muse, present subliminal realities.  In the context of this aesthetic dichotomy, one wonders what the German artists are telling us about the world of academia and the life of teachers and scholars – if anything.  Were the artist distorting reality just to entertain us, or were they describing a veiled reality of academia and academicians?

To my mind, the Faustian metaphor is one way to understand the reality of Camille Puglia’s career.  Like Faust she is a brilliant scholar who has been lured away from research into the world of pop culture and entertainment.  Faust traveled to the royal courts of Europe entertaining the nobility with his magic.  Paglia travels to the universities entertaining the literati with her wit.  Two thousand came to her talk (show) at world renowned M.I.T.

Born to be a scholar

Early in life, Camelli Paglia showed a passion for research and academic inclinations.  She wrote:

“In high school, I was notorious for my Amelia Earhart obsession.  The newspaper actually reported this.  For three years I did this Amelia Earhart research.  The biographer of Amelia Earhart told me I had done more research in the primary sources than he had!  I spent every Saturday in the bowels of the public library going through all these materials, old magazines and newspapers…”

Think about it…a high school teenager spending Saturdays in the library by her own volition.  If one takes a random sample of high school teenagers, what is the probability of finding one who spends weekends in the library doing original research with source documents?  I should think that the probability is close to zero.  In short, she was a very unique child with a passion for research.

After high school, she went to Harper College graduating Valedictorian with A’s in all her course except for one B.  She went on to Yale Graduate School and for her last graduate seminar, before receiving a Master Degree, she wrote a 160-page paper entitled "Male and Female in Virginia Woolf”.  The renown scholar Harold Bloom became her mentor guiding her doctorial dissertation.  Indeed, she did not ask him to be her mentor; he solicited her for the privilege. The respected academic publishing house Yale University Press published her dissertation as the now famous, though I suspect seldom read, Sexual Persona.

Sexual Persona is a masterful work of scholarship (673 pages; 810 footnotes; 18 page index) which seeks, in Paglia’s words: “…to demonstrate the unity and continuity of Western Culture from antiquity to the end of the nineteenth century.” To that end, the factual base is enormous and the conceptual constructs such as ‘androgyny’ and ‘paganism’ effectively bring diverse works of art to a classification system and a unified theory of Western culture.  In the introduction, Paglia projected a second volume of Sexual Persona that would bring  “modern popular culture – cinema, television, sports, rock music” under the aegis of her unifying theory of Western cultural.

With the publication of Sexual Persona Camilla Paglia was in the process of transcending historic scholarship and art criticism.  She was on the cusp of philosophy.  One hundred percent Italian by nature and nurture, she was to my mind following and near entering into dialogue with great Italian philosophers of culture like Croce and Eco.  Sadly, she did not rise to philosophy.  Rather, she dropped into pop culture.

Faustian temptation

Dr. Paglia writes: “It all began in March 1990, one month after the uneventful release of Sexual Personae by Yale University Press”  - “ALL” denoting a major change in life style and work.  The devil (metaphorically speaking – of course) entered Paglia’s life in the form of a “stranger”; scholastically she has not been the same since.  She writes: “I received a letter from a stranger, a professor of classics and editor of a scholarly journal Arion.  He asked if I would review two new classics books in gay studies by authors I had never heard of…”

Paglia’s mentor Harold Bloom, acting the role of the ‘good angel’ or Greek chorus, tried to dissuade the protagonist from the project.  She writes: “…to the disapproval of my great mentor, Harold Bloom, who felt I should be concentrating on my own career and getting Volume Two (Sexual Persona) ready for publication.”  But, the temptation was too strong.  She began work on the Arion essay.

The difference between the scholarly character of Sexual Persona and the Arion article “Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders…”(see “Sex, Art, and American Culture”) is stunning. There is no semblance of the mature critical scholarship in the Arion article of which Paglia is obviously capable.  Instead, it is filled with ad hominem arguments, insults, sweeping generalizations, etc.  It is emotional to point of hysterical.

Critical scholarship (i.e. the critique of a scholarly work) is sedate (i.e. deliberate, composed, and dignified).  It is done one proposition at a time.  ‘Empirical propositions’ judged to be false, ‘inferential propositions’ judged to be fallacious and ‘theoretical (causal) propositions’ judged unverifiable are demonstrated to be so each in its turn.  Facts and logic are the only criteria for evaluation. There is no place for references to personalities (i.e. qualities, traits, character or behavior peculiar to a specific writer) or ideologies.

For example, when Fr. Joseph Owens (parish priest turned scholar) effectively challenged the great German philologist Werner Jaeger’s interpretation of Aristotle, in the whole of Owen’s book (“Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics”) there is not one reference to Jaeger per se, only the words that Jaeger wrote.  Fr. Owens characterized his approach to critical scholarship as “… a ‘listening’ attitude [which] may at times involve tedious reading…but seems to be the only method that offers any acceptable promise…”

Sexual Persona Vol 2 was never written.  Instead of describing, explaining and incorporating 20th century pop culture with the rest of Western culture, as she had planned and Bloom was encouraging, Paglia polished her act and became a pop culture persona.

The Devil’s Ploy

Pop culture stars come and go.  Paglia’s appeal was her outrageousness.  She built her pop culture act on outrageous attacks on the feminist movement, opinions about date rape, the ad hominem denigration of scholars, etc.   But, that type of thing “gets old”.  It becomes clichéd.

Madonna’s longevity in pop culture is predicated on her ability to keep reinventing herself; to keep bringing forth new “personas”.  Paglia’s persona is fixed.  When she appeared for six minutes on the Bill Maher show, she was introduced as “one of the most provocative intellectuals”. 

In show business, for an act to be successful, it must live up to its billing.  It must give the audience what they expect.  Accordingly, Paglia once introduced as “provocative” must in fact be “provocative.”  And, she was!  But, the best she could come up with was saying she liked the TV program “The Bachelorettes” which she thinks “is edited wonderfully” and “is a great escapist fantasy.”  True to her billing as provocative, the host, other panelist and audience went wild about a “scholar” and “feminist” finding value in a show that a male panelist characterized as “objectifying women.”

When Maher asked her about Michael Jackson, who at the time was involved with a child sex scandal, her response was as much about her as Jackson.  She said: “He is a victim of fame...” Jackson and Paglia, like all Faustian characters, are victims of fame.  Fame is the devil’s ploy and they succumb.

Faust’s Redemption – “Break, Blow, Burn”

In Goethe’s version of the Faust legend, Faust realizes the errors of his misbegotten ways and finds redemption.  Dr. Paglia’s most recent book suggests that she is tiring of ‘the Devil’s road show.' “Break, Blow, Burn” is not a scholarly work, but it is a pedagogical gem.  In her words: “This book is intended for a general audience…I have tried to write concise commentaries on poetry that illuminate the text but also give pleasure in themselves as pieces of writing.”

For all her ‘antics’, Dr. Paglia never lost sight of teaching.  Whenever she speaks, whatever she writes, she always comments about education.  She pays homage to her the great teacher in her life Milton Kessler (see “Sex, Art…”).  The course that she co-developed and taught with Lily Yeh “East and West” is brilliant (ibid).  What I wouldn’t have given to have this course and “Break, Blow, Burn” offered to me when I was in school!

Perhaps the publication of “Break, Blow, Burn” is the step back into scholarship.  In an interview about the book she said:

“My agent wanted me to do a big splashy book on politics…I have done all those attacks on post-structuralism in Arion and junk-bond corporations and corporate raiders in the early ‘90s, now I want to go directly to the general readers and also to young people…”

The problem is, as stated, her “attacks on post-structuralism”, etc. were verbal ad hominens.  Still, to my mind, are needed more rigorously scholarly (a la Owens) critiques of those theories, which she is uniquely capable of writing.

Clive James in  New York Times summed it up nicely:

“Paglia by now should be famous enough to start throttling back on some of the stuff she is famous for. She might make a start with bitchery…The media want snide remarks from her …But writers capable of developing a nuanced position over the length of an essay should not be tempted into believing that they can sum it up in a sound bite.”

Dr. Paglia is brilliant.  Her encyclopedic knowledge of art, literature and history is nothing less than amazing to me.  She has proved that she is capable of epistemologically rigorous research and writing.  Hopefully, she will return.  She has much to offer academia, and pop culture has more than enough Vaudeville acts.

Italian Americana

Finally, let me say as an Italian American; census department statistics demonstrate beyond a doubt that we have precious few PhDs in the humanities.  Dr. Paglia’s four grandparents and mother are ‘off the boat.’  She is proud of her Italian heritage, she brags about her Italian heritage, she explains her behavior in terms of her Italian heritage. In turn, I agree with Clive James who wrote: “…the Italians, should be proud of her parentage…”

We should be proud of her. She is one of the brightest lights in that small constellation of Italian American humanist.  My only criticism (disappointment) is that, to my mind, she has not remotely reach the degree of luminosity of which she is capable.

 Introduction

Virtually everyone knows that the US Census Bureau conducts a census every ten years and is currently preparing for the 2010 census.  Few people know the Census Bureau gathers scientific survey data about the US population annually called the American Community Survey (ACS).

The American Community Survey (ACS) is a nationwide scientific survey designed to provide a fresh look at how the population is changing between the decade censuses. The ACS collects and produces population and housing information every year instead of every ten years. This data is published online as “The American Community Survey (ACS)” at the Bureau’s website www.census.gov/acs/www/.

Recently, ACS published data summarizing the years 2005-2007, based on data collected between January 2005 and December 2007.

Part of the data collected is about “Ancestry [ethnic] Groups”.  The individuals selected in the survey’s random sample are asked: “What is your ancestry or ethnic origin (For example Italian, Polish, Korean, etc)?” Aggregating the answers to these questions provides descriptive statistical characteristics for each ethnic group. 

I have downloaded the data on “Americans of Italian Descent”.  Needless to say there is an enormous about of data (hundreds of spreadsheet lines) for each ethnic group.  Accordingly, I will make it available here in my blog on a ‘ piecemeal’ basis, in a series of articles under the general title “Italian Americans by the Numbers.” 

In turn, each blog article under that general title will have a sub-title indicating the specific characteristic(s) being described in that particular article.  Thus, for example, a blog title “Italian Americans by the Numbers – Education Attainment and Enrollment” will provide the ACS data on Italian American education.

In addition to ‘descriptive statistics’ of Italian Americans, I will provide ‘comparative statistics’ comparing Italian Americans to the total national population and, when of some interest, other ethnic groups.  For example, the number of Italian Americans as a percentage of the whole population are compare the numbers and percentages of other ethnic groups such as German Americans, Irish…etc.

The data will be presented in a tabular/quantitative format complemented at times with charts and graphic representations of the data.  I will also write narrative summary/discussion paragraphs.  The numbers are interesting in themselves.  But, for those with a social scientific bent, they are just a beginning.  The numbers constitute the ‘observations’ that are the beginning of scientific enquires.  More importantly, they are the basis for 'theory' development/verification.  For example, what do the education numbers (observations) imply (theory) about Italian American attitudes about education, the future of Italian Americans in the professions, etc.

If anyone has any questions about the ACS statistics, you may place them in the comment section and I’ll respond as best I can.  While I have a quantitative bent, I don’t have much formal education in social statistics.  If anyone wants to collaborate on improving the presentation and making the data more widely available to the Italian American community, needless to say, I would enjoy working with them.

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The Numbers

Below are the total US population, the number of Americans who identified themselves in each respective ethnic group, and the percent of the total population each group represents.  For example, the total American population is 298,757,310.  The total number of Americans who identified themselves on the ACS survey questioner as of German origin is 50, 496,077.  Thus, 16.9% of the total American population is reported to be of German origin (i.e. 50,496,007 / 298,757,310 * 100 = 16.9%)


 

Discussion

What to my mind was surprising and interesting about these numbers is that the German American population was almost three times as large as the Italian American, the Irish twice as large and the English outnumber Italians by close to ten million.  These numbers interest me because my personal experience and readings suggest that Italian Americans have a much higher sense of ethnic consciousness than the Germans and English.  For example, the “Yahoo Italian American Directory” lists 18 Italian American organizations.  Whereas the “Yahoo German American Directory” list 4 organization and there is no English Directory. 

Also, my personal experiences and reading suggest that Irish Americans, similar to Italian Americans, have a high sense of ethnic consciousness and pride in their national origin, and the “Yahoo Irish American Directory” listing of 15 organizations supports this. 

In short, the ACS population numbers/percentages are factual information.  What they imply about the aggregate ethnic consciousness and behavior of the respective groups is speculative and would entail sociological research to be conclusive. 

Nevertheless, anecdotal personal experiences and reading is not to be ignored and thought of as ‘mere speculation.’  Anecdotes are the basis of hypothesis formation in science.  The anecdotes lead me to wonder why Italian consciousness is so pervasive in the country as a whole given the relatively small number of Americans of Italian descent? 

As I see it: the first step in science is observations; the second, wonder; the third, hypothesis formation explaining the observations; the forth, research (more observations) to prove or disprove the hypothesis. 

In 1991 Camille Paglia published “Sexual Personae”, which is essentially her Yale dissertation done under the aegis of the eminent scholar Harold Bloom.  The book, in her words: “…surveys literature and art from antiquity to the end of the nineteenth century.”  “Sexual Personae”, while not written in the typical academic style, is a scholarly work combining a thesis substantiated with factually documented research.  Specifically, her thesis is “to demonstrate the unity and continuity of western culture”, for which she provides voluminous supporting data and interpretations.  For example, ‘androgyny’ is one of many features appearing throughout the history of Western art and literature, thereby giving “unity and continuity” to Western culture.


Art, Culture & Social Science


Paglia is not simply an art historian and commentator. She is a philosopher and social scientist.  In the manner of science: based on observable detailed descriptions of art, she makes logical inferences about the culture (social values) of the art producing society.


Art forms are not seen solely as aesthetic values.  Art is also seen as a manifestation of social values.  From observable aesthetic characteristics, inferences are made about the subliminal (non-observable) social values.


For example, given the androgynous representation of Athena, Paglia wants to know what those representations tell us about the culture of Athens. She writes: “We must explain why the armed Athena prevailed in Athens…What does Athena’s androgyny mean [to the Athenians]?” Essentially, one of the questions “Sexual Persona” asks and answers: What do the androgynous features of Western art mean to the people of Western Culture?

Androgyny and Art


Androgyny in its simplest definition is: “The mixing of masculine and feminine characteristics… an androgynous person does not fit cleanly into the typical masculine and feminine gender identities of their society.”  However, as Paglia demonstrates with incredible (painful) detail, the nature of the “mixing” and the types of “identities” varies profoundly throughout the history of Western art, and the values of Western societies (she argues) vary in tandem with the various androgynous representations.


For example, in Ancient Greece, androgynous Athena is represented in distinct male or female forms.   Sometimes the goddess appears as a female and sometimes a male.  “In the Iliad, Athena appears four times as a male, and six times in her own form.”  In the Odyssey, “She appears eight times as a male, twice as a human girl, six times as herself.” Also in the Odyssey, she transforms herself in front of Odysseus from a “young shepherd [into] a women, tall, beautiful, and accomplished…her sexual duality is also expressed by her masculine armour.”


Alternatively, during the Renaissance, androgynous art shows a “mixing of masculine and feminine characteristics” in the same form.  The beautiful boy is “repeated in a thousand forms in Italian painting and sculpture, he is the ultimate symbol of Renaissance art”; quintessentially exemplified by Donatello’s David.  “David has long feminine locks of hair, tangled with ribbons, a splendidly raffish wreathed hat...[and] exquisitely etched leather buskins.”  More generally, “Donatello’s youths are always sexually ambiguous.”

Androgynous Art and Culture


However, as noted, Paglia is not content with simply describing the evolution of androgynous images in Western art.  She seeks to demonstrate how those images are associated with social values of the times. 


For example, she writes: “I propose the answer to Athena’s androgyny…Athena appears in many disguises and crosses sexual borderlines [because] she symbolizes the resourceful, adaptive mind, the ability to invent, plan, conspire, cope and survive”; all social values that were fundamental to Greek culture.  In short, Paglia argues: the social values of ancient Greek society were expressed in Greek art in the form of androgynous Athena.


Similarly, Renaissance androgynous “beautiful boy” art correlates with social values of the time such as courtly manners.  Paglia writes: “Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier which had enormous influence all over Europe, set standards of taste for dress and deportment.  The courtier is…an androgyny: he has ‘special sweetness,’ a ‘grace’ and ‘beauty’.  By making speech and movement seem effortless, they disguise or efface masculine action. The woman is central to the Book of the Courtier.”


Androgyny and TV Crime Shows


As noted above, “Sexual Persona” does not deal with twentieth century art and culture.  However, because the work is philosophical and scientific, it has generality.  Her concepts and methods can be extrapolated and used to analyze contemporary pop and lowbrow art, in an effort to understand the values of society today.  For example, TV crime shows clearly manifest “mix-androgynous” characters; i.e. masculinized women and feminized men are prominent in such programs.


Mix-androgynous lead characters can be seen on virtually all the major TV crime shows.  The women FBI agents, CSI investigators and detectives have ‘big hair’, puffy lips, bright eyes, painted faces and fashion model bodies; they wear tank-top shirts showing cleavage, high heels and tight paints outlining their backsides.


Mixed with these quintessential famine characteristics are equally quintessential masculine traits: they have deep raspy voices, talk in ‘tough guy’ street idiom, guns ostentatiously on their hips, expert practitioners of marshal arts, lead SWAT team charges into shooting barrages, drink beer out of a bottle and ‘throw back’ shots of alcohol in predominately men’s ‘cop bars’.
                      


See for example shows and characters such as: “Numbers” Nikki Betancourt and Liz Warner; “Without a Trace” Samantha Spade and Elena Delgado; “CSI” Catherine Willows (above right); “CSI New York” Stella Bonasera; “CSI Miami” Calleigh Duquesne (above left) and Natalia Boa Vista; “Criminal Minds” Emily Prentiss; “In Plain Sight” May Shannon.


On the same programs are equally mix-androgynous male characters who are soft spoken gentlemen manifesting no powerful male characteristic such as muscles, hairy chest, (unlike the women) never wear tank top-shirts, guns are hidden by suit jackets; in short, like Castiglione’s courtiers they have ‘grace’, ‘beauty’ and a complete absence of machismo a la Clint Eastwood. 

       

See for example shows and characters: “Numbers” Charlie Eppes (above left) and Larry Fleinhardt; “Without a Trace” Martin Fitzgerald (above right) and Danny Taylor; “CSI” Gil Grissom and Greg Sanders; “CSI-New York” Don Flack and Sheldon Hawkes; “CSI-Miami” Horatio Caine and Eric Delko; “Criminal Minds” Aaron Hotchner and Spencer Reid; “In Plain Sight” Marshall Man.


What do the ubiquitous mix-androgynous characters on TV crime shows imply about our culture?  One theory is that these lowbrow art forms are a refection of prevailing feminist philosophy in our society.  Paglia has pejoratively characterized contemporary feminism as: “men must be like women and women can be whatever they like.  Androgyny is a cancellation of male concentration and projection.”  Clearly, the above list of shows can be accurately described as depicting “cancellation of male concentration and projection” and women being “whatever they like”.

The Sopranos   No androgynies here - total “male concentration and projection”


Categorically juxtaposed to the above TV crime shows is The Sopranos. There is nothing remotely androgynous about the characters on this program.  All the characters are quintessential and unequivocally male or female.  The men (like the women in crime shows) wear tank-top shits showing muscular bodies and hairy chest.  They are tough looking, acting and talking.  They are manifestations of total “male concentration and projection.”  Similarly, the ‘women are women’, totally feminine showing virtually no male characteristics.

Why Italian Americans love the Sopranos


One of the most vexing questions that have been discussed on ad infinitum is why the ostensively negative portrayal of Italian Americans in The Sopranos series is popular with Italian Americans.  Once again, Paglia points to a theory.  She writes: “Androgyny [understood] as cancellation of male concentration and projection [prevails with] bourgeois academics and writers in college English departments [but] cuts no ice at the corner garage. Male concentration and projection are visible everywhere in the aggressive energy of the streets.”


To my mind, the complaining about the Sopranos has come largely from the Italian American literati.  The Italian Americans at the “corner garage” and “on the street” love the program because they see the fundamental cornerstone of their culture depicted in the ‘men are men’ and ‘women are women’ images.  These male and female role models are the historic ones going back to southern Italy and Sicily.  Contemporary American culture is redefining those role models.  But, Italian Americans (70% who are not college graduates) are not impressed with the highbrow “bourgeois academic” culture of the literati.  They still are of the ancient southern Italian/Sicilian peasant mindset, and they see and appreciate those ancient values portrayed in the Sopranos’ characters.

In sum: Anthony Tamburri in his 2003 Melus article “Beyond ‘Pizza and ‘Nonna’…” argued: “I do believe that we have come late to theoretical issues as part of our analytical arsenal [necessary] if we are to … travel beyond the confines of Italian America.”


Camille Paglia is a mighty Italian American thinker who has provided us with “theoretical issues” and  “analytical arsenal” that allows us to “travel beyond the confines of Italian America.”   She has provided us with a theoretical concepts and research methods to analyze our own art and culture and place it in the context of the broader contemporary American culture and historic Western culture.

Camille Paglia first penetrated my consciousness through a televised  panel discussion about various women’s social, work and political issues. I soon became bored with the din of politically correct clichés.  I began puttering around barely conscious of the television background noise.

Suddenly, I became aware of a hyper energetic voice speaking with such rapidity, for a second, I thought of my Army automatic weapons training.  I stopped what I was doing and turned to the television: “who is that lady?”  It wasn’t simply her fast-talking that interested me.  Rather, the ideas were coming to her with such rapidity it seemed that her mouth couldn’t keep up with her mind.  She was ranging over a 4,000 year history of Western art and culture pulling up anecdotes and analogies to illustrate her points, with a few dollops from Asia. 

Her recursive parenthetical phasing was incredible.  She would start with a subject, then a parenthetical phase to the subject, then a second parenthetical phase to the first, and so on.  I swear she had sentences four or five parentheticals deep and then she would work herself back to the subject.  What an incredibly spontaneous mind!

Then they flashed her name on the screen “Paglia”; and I started to laugh.  An Italian - wouldn’t you know?  Passion and art are as much apart of Italian culture as salt and pepper are to food…” Later that day I was in the library looking for her books. 

Camille Paglia is 100% Italian by nature and nurture.  Her mother was from Ceccanon, Italy and her father of Italian descent. She dedicated her first book (“Sexual Personae”) to her grandmothers and aunt: Vincenaz Colapietro, Alfonsina Paglia and Lenora Antonelli.  Unlike John Ciardi who took great offense when called an Italian American poet, Paglia is very conscious and proud of her Italian heritage. She often refers to her Italianess.  For example, in her 1991 M.I.T. lecture she referred to her Italianess four times.  In a 1995 Charlie Rose interview, her explanation of why she was fired from Bennington College: “I’m Italian and don’t do well in institutions

Although Paglia’s mother was an immigrant, Camille was born in 1947, which places her solidly in the demographic cohort “baby boomers” and, the subset of that cohort, 3rd generation Italian Americans, i.e. the grandchildren of the pre-WW I immigrants.  The 2nd generation did not pass on the Italian language, history and little of the culture (save nuances such as family dinners) to their children, with one very significant exception – the concept of womanhood.  The girls of the 3rd generation were raised with the ancient Catholic values of their southern Italian ancestors.  Specifically, no sex before marriage, no artificial birth control after marriage, and homosexuality? – Oh my god! Don’t even think about it! 

Virtually all of Paglia’s life and professional writing stand against these ancient feminine sexual mores.  For example, the lesbian component of her bisexualism manifested itself early in life. During the summers, she went to a Catholic camp that she characterized as “ a prelesbian heaven. It was just so romantic. I had mad crushes on all the counselors." While in high school, she began in depth research on Amelia Earhart and read Simone de Beauvoir's “The Second Sex”. Thus, by the time she entered college in 1964 she was well disposed to deal with sexuality.  She had the will and extraordinary intellect to channel that disposition into tour de force scholarship.

She entered college at a time when Italian/Catholic sexual values were to become severely challenged by society. The 1960s saw the onset of major movements for social change: civil rights for Black Folks, women’s liberation, sexual freedom, academic freedom, etc. Many of those issues have been largely resolved or are in their denouement.  African Americans have attained de jure all the rights they were denied in the Jim Crow era through the 1950s; similarly women.  Although, for both groups there is de facto still significant “miles to go before we sleep”.  Nevertheless, the trajectory of change is in a positive direction and the mass protests and great polarizing debates have largely passed.

However, there is one factor of social change that began in the sixties that is still the basis of significant conflict – sexuality.  Issues having to do with abortion, various gay related issues (marriage, military), contraception, etc. are still heatedly debated and cause of public protestations.  For example, recent articles here in i-Italy.org have been very critical of Catholic theological principles and teachings having to do with sex related issues (e.g. the celebration of the virulent anti-Catholic Sabina Guzzanti).

Paglia has made major contribution to these discussions and debates.  However, she is differentiated from the protesting masses by her scholarship.  She’s not “just another pretty face” walking a picket line.  An “ubermensch” (a la Nietzsche: one who overcomes the herd perspective and creates a new world view), she is a giant intellectual with an unbounded passion for philosophy, art and history.  The combination of these passions (rights of women, philosophy, art and history) makes for prodigious intellectual output. 

Most amazing to me, is the unique combination of ‘breadth’ and ‘depth’ of her scholarship.  She covers the history of Western Art from ancient Egypt down to Madonna.  However, she doesn’t simply write in sweeping generalizations about this or that period such as one reads in many art histories.  Paglia is more than an art historian.  She is a philosopher.  She writes: “Sexual Personae seeks to demonstrate the unity and continuity of western culture…” In an effort to find that philosophic unity, she delves into the minutia of individual works.  For example in her discussion of Renaissance art she draws the reader's attention to a ‘feather’ on the boot of Donatello’s David:  “The feathery wing of Goliath’s helmet…like an escaping thought, climbs ticklishly up the inside of David’s thigh.”

Sadly, all the philosophical and aesthetic works of Camille Paglia, a very proud to be of Italian descent American, are of little value to the vast majority of the Italian Americans.  All her genius and energy can make no contribution to the development of Italian American culture because, frankly, she is too intellectual for our people.  Intellectual!  Not intelligent!  She is not too intelligent for our people.  We have the intelligence, but we chose not to apply it to higher education – especially in the humanities.  That, to my mind, is our tragedy.  Italian culture is in essence humanistic and we essentially reject our culture – indeed, our Being.

All cultures are a mix of ‘high and low brow’.  “Highbrow” understood as being intellectual, “Lowbrow” as un- or even anti-intellectual. Robust cultures, are a healthy mixture of high and lowbrow.  Early 20^th century Jews manifested genius in the sciences and in Vaudeville ‘shtick’. However, the low levels of Italian Americans going to college are reducing our culture to a disproportionate lowbrow.  We don’t, indeed can’t, read intellectually challenging Italian American writers like Camille Paglia (or Fante or Ciardi or DeLillo, etc).  Instead we anxiously await the next Scorsese movie or Sopranos season.  Ideally, we would do both: read Paglia, and enjoy the Italian Vaudeville of Scorsese and the Sopranos. 

Paglia eloquently expressed this ideal on a Charlie Rose show.  She said, “I’m Italian, I’m a working class intellectual.”  Similarly, she tells her students: “I’m a product of the Italian culture and in the Italian cultural tradition…there are great artist. If you are a product of Italian culture you respect that artistic tradition…Art is not elitist in Italian culture; a peasant in the field of Italy knows the great artist, operas, tenors, etc. in Italian history.” 

Tragically, Camille Paglia a teacher, philosopher, social reformer is an Italian American Hecuba who languishes alone in Italian America - unknown and unknowable to her people.