Re: Camile Paglia on ROTS: "most significant work of art in any genre...[in 30 years]
Whose? JD's? Not at all. I mean, I disagree with him, but I'm not trying to attack him.
Paglia's? Absofreakinlutely. Mostly because she's presenting herself as an authority on the subject, and then is saying, well, what she's saying. You put yourself out there in so vehement a fashion, and make such a bold (and I'd say foolish) claim, you better have your flame retardant underwear on.
What I object to is not simply that she's wrong. I mean, whatever. People make incorrect statements all the time. Doesn't really matter to me. No, what I object to is that she makes these statements, and then uses the cover of her education and accolades to convince people that her statements aren't, in fact, wrong. As I said, if the bit I linked to is her argument.....it's not actually an argument. It's just a series of flowery assertions mixed in with a biography of Lucas.
She's offering more than "just an opinion," too. She's offering an AUTHORITATIVE opinion. We should be convinced by her because she speaks with authority. She's falling back on the old "baffle 'em with bulls**t" technique, and TRUST ME, I should know. I do this for a living.
I guess what really pisses me off about what she's doing is twofold. First, she's just making loud assertions without actually bothering to craft an argument in support of those assertions. If you're gonna put some work of art on a pedestal, it would at least make sense to say why it is THE best work in the last 30 years, and to support that by, say, comparing its merits to other works across media and generes, and then explaining why it's better than them. Might also help if you lay out what your criteria are on the front end, so we can see how the argument itself proceeds without having to wonder "Wait. What exactly does she think 'art' is?"
Second, it's the assertion of authority alone as the grounds to be convinced. I mean, yeah, the irony is I did that two paragraphs above, but I'm also not trying to sell anyone books based on it (although maybe I should...). She's trading on the perception of her expertise and then making statements which any other expert should take as a red-flag-to-a-bull to challenge that very expertise she claims. Which, I expect, she'd relish.
But think of it this way. When Kanye West interrupts Taylor Swift to make the bold claim that Beyonce had one of the GREATEST VIDEOS OF ALL TIME! OF ALL TIME!!! nobody takes his statement seriously. They just think he's a buffoon and a *******, and rightly so. Even if he hadn't made it while interrupting someone else and behaving like a jerk, even if he'd just said it in some interview, still, nobody would say "Hmm...you know, that Kanye West is on to something..." But people are far more likely to do that with Paglia. In essence, she is abusing her authority, her credentials, to gull people into accepting that she's made a coherent argument to support her position, when, really, all she's done is say EXACTLY the type of thing that Kanye did, but with prettier words. Again, at least as evidenced by the piece I linked to. If she goes more in-depth with her book, then I have a lot LESS trouble with it, but I still don't like the trolling aspect.
