Paglia Takes Down Madonna
In a new Salon piece, the controversial, beloved, and occasionally psychotic feminist theorist and cultural critic Camille Paglia thoroughly explicates the artistic decline of one of her longtime idols—Madonna.
Paglia’s appreciation of prime-era Madonna cannot be underestimated, as Paglia herself makes clear: “The music videos [Madonna] produced from the mid-’80s to the early ’90s were true objets d’art—in my judgment superior to anything coming from the fine arts in the same period.”
But Paglia’s also a passionate believer in disco—”Disco at its best is a neurological event, a shamanistic vehicle of space-time travel,” she writes, for real—and it’s on the field of disco that Paglia knocks out Madonna, whose new, disco-inspired album Paglia bemoans as an act of unimaginative self-cannibalization that posits its creator as a trend-chasing hag en route to artistic oblivion.
If you’re one of the many who appreciate deep thinking about shallow stuff, Paglia’s piece is a must-read. Plus, it features this mildly jaw-dropping revelation by the author: “Full disclosure: Keith Richards has been my idol and role model for over 40 years.”
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