Camille Paglia: Taylor Swift an 'obnoxious Nazi Barbie'

[Janet 1,417]

As taken from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/camille-paglia-takes-taylor-swift-845827

Do girl squads signal the blossoming of an ideal­istic new feminism, where empowering solidarity will replace mean-girl competitiveness? Hollywood has always shrewdly known that cat-fighting makes great box office. In classic films such as The Women, All About Eve, The Group and Valley of the Dolls, all-star female casts romped in claws-out bitchfests. That flamboyant, fur-flying formula remains vital today in Bravo TV's boffo Real Housewives series, with its avid global following.

A warmer model of female friendship was embodied in Aaron Spelling's blockbuster Charlie's Angels TV show, which was denounced by feminists as a "tits-and-ass" parade but was in fact an effervescent action-adventure showing smart, bold women working side by side in fruitful collaboration. A similar dynamic of affectionate intimacy animated HBO's Sex and the City, whose four feisty, mutually supportive professional women prefigured today's fun-loving but rawly ambitious girl squads.

The entertainment industry has seen feminist spurts come and go. Helen Reddy's 1972 smash hit "I Am Woman" became the worldwide anthem of second-wave feminism. In 1985, Aretha Franklin and Annie Lennox did the slamming duet "Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves." The Spice Girls encapsulated sex-positive third-wave feminism with their 1997 manifesto Girl Power! Performing at the 2014 Video Music Awards, Beyonce flashed "FEMINIST" in giant letters behind her, but questions were raised about the appropriation of that word by a superstar whose career has always been managed by others, first her parents and now her domineering husband, Jay Z.

With gender issues like pay equity for women actors and writers coming increasingly to the fore, girl squads can be seen as a positive step toward expanding female power in Hollywood, where ownership has been overwhelm­ingly male since the silent film era. For all its dictatorial overcontrol, however, the early studio system also provided paternalistic protection and nurturance for young women under contract. Marilyn Monroe was a tragic victim of the slow breakdown of that system: The studio made her, but in the end it could not save her from callous predators, including the Kennedys.

Young women performers are now at the mercy of a swarming, intrusive paparazzi culture, intensified by the hypersexualization of our flesh-baring fashions. The girl squad phenomenon has certainly been magnified by how isolated and exposed young women feel in negotiating the piranha shoals of the industry. A dramatic example of their vulnerability was the long-lens pap photo of Swift sitting painfully sad and prim on a Virgin Islands taxi boat after her tumultuous 2013 holiday breakup with pop star Harry Styles.

Given the professional stakes, girl squads must not slide into a cozy, cliquish retreat from romantic fiascoes or communication problems with men, whom feminist rhetoric too often rashly stereotypes as oafish pigs. If many women feel lonely or overwhelmed these days, it's not due to male malice. Women have lost the natural solidarity and companionship they enjoyed for thousands of years in the preindustrial agrarian world, where multiple generations chatted through the day as they shared chores, cooking and child care.

In our wide-open modern era of independent careers, girl squads can help women advance if they avoid presenting a silly, regressive public image — as in the tittering, tongues-out mugging of Swift's bear-hugging posse. Swift herself should retire that obnoxious Nazi Barbie routine of wheeling out friends and celebrities as performance props, an exhibitionistic overkill that Lara Marie Schoenhals brilliantly parodied in her scathing viral video "Please Welcome to the Stage."

Girl squads ought to be about mentoring, exchanging advice and experience and launching exciting and innovative joint projects. Women need to study the immensely productive dynamic of male bonding in history. With their results-oriented teamwork, men largely have escaped the sexual jealousy, emotionalism and spiteful turf wars that sometimes dog women.

If women in Hollywood seek a broad audience, they must aim higher and transcend a narrow gender factionalism that thrives on grievance. Girl squads are only an early learning stage of female development. For women to leave a lasting mark on culture, they need to cut down on the socializing and focus like a laser on their own creative gifts.

Camille Paglia, 68, remains one of the world’s leading cultural critics and is a frequent contributor toTHR, where she has written about the intersection of pop culture, politics and religion. "Writing about Taylor Swift is a horrific ordeal for me because her twinkly persona is such a scary flashback to the fascist blondes who ruled the social scene during my youth,” she says of analyzing the pop star and her entourage.

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Paglia seems determined to link Swift's all-girl group presentation as being detrimental to feminism as a whole - as to her it inspires images of a 'Mean Girls' dynamic, in which the women involved become catty and gossipy. I think she is really going in too deep with this. I am no 'Swifty,' but to stand Swift and Fascism on the same level seems... a bit much lol 

Discuss!

[Serendipity 7,821]

The anti Taylor thing is a bit too much

 

let the girl live

[JDi 1,495]

oh my my bladder

[Hecturr 1,935]

3 minutes ago, Clean said:

The anti Taylor thing is a bit too much

 

let the girl live

Her true ARTPOP era is beginning 

edit: I LITERALLY GOOGLED CRYING PROUDLY AND I GOT WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR

[Mobster 14,604]

She went too far...

If this is her real twitter.... the irony

 

[Nino 12]

There might be some intelligent point in there, but it's lost with how rude it all is.

[Stephen 30,432]

She makes some good points.

[Didymus 34,380]

"Camille Paglia, 68, remains one of the world’s leading cultural critics"

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[Staryu 6,162]

Rude tbh.  

[Mobster 14,604]

6 minutes ago, Didymus said:

"Camille Paglia, 68, remains one of the world’s leading cultural critics"

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/public/article1375432.ece

[Janet 1,417]

She has some kind of point addressing the 'squad' that Taylor has, as it is quite vacuous and seems to be more about Taylor saying "Look how popular I am; look how beautiful and talented my friends are," rather than actually making any real point about female solidarity or feminism. The fact that this group/association came about from the Bad Blood video, which is widely held as Swift attacking another female artist, makes the whole meaning of the 'squad' even more confusing. 

But yeah\ Taylor is no Nazi\fascist. The argument is kind of put to waste when Paglia takes it so far. 

[QueenGadonna 298]

She's attacking someone popular to get her 15 min. I'm not impressed.

[DrewStevens 5,249]

Some of her ideas were kinda reasonable but she went waaaaay too far. 

[StrawberryBlond 15,020]

She's saying what a lot of others have been saying recently. Which is that this squad doesn't really do anything. She brings them onstage, they stand together, hug and giggle, they might perform a song together if they're singers and then they leave (in the case of those who aren't VS models, never to be seen again). That's not real friendship, that's fakery. It's nothing more than wheeling out acquaintances to show how popular you are. And it doesn't help that almost all these women, with the exception of Lena Dunham, are tall and slim, with gorgeous faces. So, the message that you get from it all is: "I will never have as many friends as she does and I'll never look as pretty as her friends either." How this is supposed to make your live audience feel better about themselves, I don't know. The worst thing is, she'll probably abandon the idea with her next era. Which will look fake as we'll wonder what happened to all her "friends." But she'll also look fake and tryhard if she keeps on doing it forevermore. Whatever she does, she'll look fake and like she was relying on gimmicks. She can't win, basically. She should never have done it in the first place and her managment should be taking a good long look at themselves for letting her do it (like they always do, they bow down to her). The sad thing is, she probably thinks this has helped feminism. I genuinely think she believes she's bringing about change by simply bringing women onto stage.

[darkchylde 14,857]