Tripod Interview: Camille Paglia

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LIVING & TRAVEL

Camille Paglia
interviewed by Emma Taylor on January 23, 1996

"What kind of sexuality are you going to have if Meg Ryan is a big image in your world?"

Camille Paglia has been called "genius", "iconoclast" and "Howard Stern for the multisyllabic." Read the Tripod interview and decide for yourself.

Tripod: You call yourself an equity feminist, as opposed to a gender feminist, right?
CP: Correct, that is the principle I stand on. The mission of feminism is for us to seek the full political and legal equality of women in society, equality with men. But I oppose special protections for woman, I oppose them as infantalizing. So that's where I have gotten into a lot of controversies with the feminist establishment, who want to give greater rights to women. Let's say there's a date rape complaint, where it's like a he-said, she-said situation, where there's no physical evidence -- they want to give the priority to the woman's testimony. And I oppose that, as taking us back to the nineteenth century, that kind of thing.
Tripod: You're able to be a very aggressive equity feminist, but is it possible that encouraging equity feminism in the average girl may dilute some of her anger and aggression?
CP: Well, I think I'm a great role model. That is, all role models are on the extremes, okay, and no one can really be like them. The thing is, I'm just out there, like in my third book, last year, "Vamps and Tramps," I'm posing on the cover, in a marine corps jacket, that I got from the Army and Navy Store, with a knife strapped to my hip, with my boots on, and I'm doing this stance, I'm imitating Diana Rigg of the Avengers, in the mid sixties, who was a great role model for me. Also, it's like the young Katherine Hepburn, as well, it's like a posture of personal responsibility, taking control of your own life. Taking responsibility for your own defense. This is what I stand for, which I think is an authentic late sixties kind of feminism, that's been lost here.
I don't want a new kind of feminism that depends on grievance committees, on authority figures intruding into our lives again, in the sexual arena. I want a situation on a date, where a woman can take care of herself, defend herself by word and by deed. I don't want a situation where she's depending on being able to run to big daddy authority figures later, to slap the boy on the wrist.
So I think what I represent is a working class kind of feminism. I'm coming out of an Italian-American family ... my one grandfather worked in a shoe factory, my other grandfather was a barber. So I think that with my take-charge attitude toward life, I have noticed, I have a lot of working class fans. I oppose the kind of white, upper middle-class genteel feminism, of Susan Faludi and Naomi Wolf, they want all the privileges in the world, and then they want the authority figures to back them up afterwards. I don't like that.
Tripod: It seems that the biggest problem feminism faces today has nothing to do with men, it's the bickering amongst feminists that's the biggest issue.
CP: You mean the arguments within feminism?
Tripod: Yeah.
CP: Well, every political movement in history, not just the feminist one, always has factionalism, and different wings, and different parties fighting among themselves. We saw it writing the Declaration of Independence, right here in Philadelphia, they were locked in for months, fighting with each other ...
So the arguments within feminism actually go all the way back to when it revived in the late sixties. It had been quiescent since women had finally won the right to vote ... and even up to that point, there had been arguments. There had been people who had favored more extreme tactics, chaining themselves to the White House fence, calling the President a fascist. Then there were people who stepped back from that, and said that they should be more conciliatory. And there was also a movement within the feminism of the nineteenth century, that was for temperance -- the Carry Nation faction -- that felt that feminism should be in league with abolishing liquor in this country. They felt that that was a woman's issue, because drunken men wasted the family's assets, and beat up the wives and the children. And that was a disaster. It pushed feminism in the wrong direction, so there was prohibition in this country for 14 years.
The same thing happened again, when feminism woke up again, in the late sixties. There was one part of it that was for prohibition -- in this case, not about liquor, but about pornography. I belong to the wing within feminism that is coming directly out of the sixties sexual revolution, that is pro-pornography, and that embraces Playboy, that is not opposed to Playboy. I've opposed the rape rhetoric, I've opposed the sexual harassment rhetoric -- what I represent is an argument that was never dealt with in the late sixties and early seventies. In other words, when Gloria Steinem founded Ms Magazine, my wing could not get heard. We were driven underground. So my sudden appearance on the scene, which is only like six years ago -- it seems like, "Where's she coming from? She's anti-feminist. She's backlash." No she isn't. I am the Ur-feminist of them all, I go all the way back. I was a feminist before Gloria Steinem was even in the movement, for heavens sakes. What we represent is finally the erupting into broad daylight of the arguments that had to be made.

"I am the Ur-feminist of them all, I go all the way back."

These arguments are legitimate ones, and I think it's pretty obvious that the wing that I belong to, I regard myself as one of the spokesmen for the reform movement within feminism. Every institution needs reform. One of my great heroines is Teresa of Avila. She wasn't trying to get rid of Catholicism, she was trying to reform the Spanish convents, and she succeeded. Martin Luther wasn't trying to get rid of Christianity, he reformed.
I feel that people who cannot tolerate this debate within feminism, who try to declare -- as Susan Faludi did on the cover of Ms Magazine a few months ago -- that I am not a feminist. I mean, what is this? What gives little miss whipper-snapper Susan Faludi, who's much younger than me, what is she -- the Pope? Is she going to decide who's a feminist and who's not? And what is her feminism? She never states what hers is. She learned, chapter and verse, that male-bashing feminism of the seventies and early eighties, she learned it by heart, by rote. And then she sees me, and people like me, Christina Sommers and so on -- oh, she might have to think. She might have to, like, be criticized. She wants to be a little child on someone's knee. Excuse me, but I believe in critical, independent thinking.
It's obvious that my feminism, which is very controversial -- I had to be protected by security guards five years ago, when I went on campuses -- it's so obvious that those principles that I set out there, are now everywhere accepted. For heavens sakes, you hear my language and my frame of analysis everywhere now. It's young Katie Roiphe, it's everywhere.
Tripod: I noticed this weekend in the New York Times Magazine that they have decided to discontinue their "His" and "Hers" columns, and replace them with a gender-neutral "Lives" column --
CP: Oh, really? That's very interesting. Well, it's about time, it's about time.
Tripod: You think it's a good move?
CP: Oh, wonderful. In fact, I think that one of the things I'd like to do -- this is the first time I've said this to a reporter -- is I think that the women's centers on the campuses have to be abolished. There was a reason for that in the beginning, when the male colleges went co-ed. There was a place for women to go, because they were outnumbered. That no longer serves any purpose, unless there's also a men's center. How about a men's center? But that is outrageous, that any kind of money should be devoted to a segregated thing like that. I also oppose all-black dormitories, and things like that, too. I think that every kind of racial and sexual separatism and segregation have to end on campus. It is madness.
Tripod: I agree, I think Women's Centers encourage fear and weakness. In fact, an article I noticed this weekend, also in the New York Times Magazine, touches this idea of fear. Meghan Daum writes that the AIDS scare has taught women to be afraid of men, has taught them not to trust a word that men say. I know you've complained a lot about the hype surrounding AIDS. What do you think about this?
CP: Well, I think it's really true. Well, I think a couple of things. Number one, I think there is a hysteria about heterosexual AIDS, that was fermented by the media, and by the gay activists, for their own purposes. Because they were desperate to say that AIDS is not a gay disease ... Every single huge statement of doom that we heard for ten years there, about how AIDS was going to spread rapidly through the population -- it has not happened. I have said, controversially, that in the western world, AIDS is a gay disease, overwhelmingly white ...
Right now, on my favorite soap opera, the Young and the Restless, it's running just this theme. I wasn't thrilled that they chose to do it among the black characters on the soap, I didn't think that was right. But there's this one black guy who's been two-timing his wife, and the woman that he's been sleeping with suddenly gets a call from a lover of the past, who's now bisexual, and has AIDS. She gets tested, and she has it, and now everyone's hysterical, testing themselves.
I think that, in certain ways, AIDS has had one effect on young girls, that has been empowering. My generation went through -- I was in college 64 to 68 -- we were the ones who created the sexual revolution. When I was in grade school and high school, in the late fifties and sixties, nice girls didn't. You didn't, you were expected to be a virgin. So it was very easy for us. The guys were trying to get what they could, and we made out with them -- I was dating men too, then, as well as women -- but we didn't lose any status if we said no. Once my generation went through, we destroyed everything. The codes that used to protect young women, girls who are just 12, 13, 14, who aren't ready yet to be strong enough to say no to a guy, suddenly it's been anarchy for the generations after me. The AIDS crisis, in a certain way, allows girls to say no for a reason, and to withstand all the pressure.

"They're all white, middle class clones of each other, even the black girls, the Indian girls."

So, AIDS gives a legitimate reason to be self-withholding. But I do agree, that it's a terrible specter. It's also the sexual harassment hysteria, the date rape hysteria, the eating disorders and then combined with AIDS, and so the young women today, going through those schools -- when I'm invited today -- which is rarely, normally by students -- to speak at the Ivy League schools, it's the worst, I mean, you can feel it, the girls are so timid. What kind of creative work is going to come out of these girls? I don't know what. The best schools, where the kids are the most achieving and aspiring, are the ones where the girls are all clones. They're all white, middle class clones of each other. Even the black girls go there, the Indian girls, they all turn into white, middle class clones. There is a uniformity, and a depressing kind of intimidated feeling about them.
When I was teaching at Bennington College in the seventies -- I was eventually fired from there, for my bad behavior -- the young people were so vibrant. They were not particularly good students -- they were doing cocaine, they were very advanced in that way -- but they all had a kind of personality. They had the power of self-expression. I see the kids today in these good schools getting more and more timid and insecure. I don't know whether it's because they're latch-key kids, coming out of professional homes, they never saw their parents, or what it is ...
Tripod: That's why I loved Katie Roiphe's book ["The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism on Campus"]. I was at Princeton, too, and I think the whole blue-light culture encourages you to be afraid, to be timid.
CP: Absolutely. Katie Roiphe's book was a wonderful book ... I have told foreign reporters, if you want to know exactly what the inner mental life is like, on college campuses today, the best schools, you must read that book. Because that book is a wonderful analysis of the white middle class mind. She has a wonderful critical eye on it; it's a beautifully written book.
My first piece on date rape was January 91, in Newsday. It went out across the country, on the wire services, and got me abused. People were calling, trying to get me fired from the university, it was so great. Katie Roiphe was able to do a piece later in the year in the New York Times. There's no way they would have published anything like that, if I hadn't gone before, and taken all the abuse. And she knows that, she realizes the extent to which I've taken a lot of the abuse. When I read her book, I know exactly how advanced that book is, and I wrote her a fan letter about it, when it came out. I can see how she has advanced the argument -- I started a certain train of thought, and she took it on.
I have condemned, and continue to condemn, the way she was treated by the established feminists. She was trashed, that book was trashed. There is no excuse for the way she was treated. Here's a 25 year old girl coming along, who is a talented young writer, appearing on the scene, and these pseudo-feminists, these fakes, instead of encouraging the writer, and saying, "This is an individual point of view that I don't agree with," these people -- how dare they -- these women said, "No, that wasn't true." They're sitting in New York, with no experience whatsoever, trying to tell Katie Roiphe, talking about her experience at Harvard and Princeton. What the hell do they know what's happening on campus?
Tripod: But for every one woman like Katie Roiphe, there will be a hundred telling girls to be afraid of words like "chick" and comments like "nice legs." What will it take for women not to be afraid of words?
CP: Well, I'm trying to make everyone aware of the middle class assumptions in all of this. In other words, working class culture, street culture, you see all the time that people call out, "hey, babe." Working class women, whether they're black, or Hispanic or Italian, whatever, can dish it back. You've got to learn to dish it back, and you can dish it back with humor. That's the whole point. These girls are so terrorized, "Oh my god, someone said something to me."
It's like Anita Hill, we finally found a black woman who behaves like a white woman. This is classic, of the typical genteel attitude toward life ... They say to her, in the open hearing, "And so, when you were at lunch with Clarence Thomas, and he brought up pornography, what did you do." [Puts on soft, pained voice] "I tried to change the subject." I thought, oh, give me a -- you're in the open, in the cafeteria? Oh, she'd be afraid to lose her job if she were more forceful.

"Oh my god, I might hear an off-color story."

Give me a break, what is this, like, Victorian kind of respectability? Oh my god, I might hear an off-color story. You know that famous story, at the Boston Globe, when one of the reporters used the term "pussy whip" to another male reporter, and he was turned in, he was reported by a woman who overheard him. The man was penalized, he was fined $1,500 and put on probation. It's just ridiculous. Or that woman at Penn State, this English instructor, she had a class assigned to an art building, because of an overflow, and Goya's "Naked Maja" was on the wall, it had been there 40 years. Oh, this was a hostile workplace now, she insisted it be taken down. If you cannot deal with a Goya on the wall, then what are we talking about? This is insane.
But it's started to quiet down now, thanks to me, and a number of other people. Things are much improved from that hysteria. The reason I was speaking out in early 91 was because all of 1990 was nothing but these stupid date rape cover stories, People Magazine cover stories. "The date rape heroine" -- I was so sick and tired of seeing them. The People cover was this girl at Colgate, and the fraternity house had this announcement, "Girls, sleepover night at our fraternity house, you are guaranteed safe!" Now first of all, what are you, born yesterday? You think that anyone can guarantee you safety in a fraternity house. Number two, she gets drunk, okay, her grandmother had died, so she had ten drinks. So she's asleep in her bed, and all these boys came in, and raped her. She claims. Of course, it's one of those situations where they don't make a big thing immediately. They're convinced a few days later that they were raped. Whatever. So she's on the cover of People Magazine. I call her a stupid girl. She's not a heroine to me.
There was another one, she was from William and Mary, she was on Larry King's show. Larry King was like, "You are so brave to come forward." We're seeing this big baby doll. A gigantic baby doll with all this long hair, and talking like this [soft and gentle]. "So what happened, I mean, oh my god." So people are calling in to Larry King, and they're saying, "Wait a minute, you're in this guy's room, you're in a dormitory, and he starts coming onto you -- did you ever say no, or stop, or help? There were people all around you." And she says, "No, I was afraid he might hurt me." I'm thinking, this is what feminism has come to? These are stupid, neurotic girls.
So I just went out and said, this is ridiculous. This is not the sixties, this is not feminism, this is not liberation. This is just coddling of white, middle class girls, who don't know anything about life. These are the girls who are out there, jogging bra-less in the streets, with walkmans on their ears. I have said repeatedly, do you ever see in a city, African-American women jogging with walkmans? Never! Because they know the reality of the street. You have got to be an idiot, in an urban setting, to shut yourself off from what's going on around you by putting walkmans on. These are little princesses. They've grown up in this era, following World War Two, where there's no dangers for them in these pacified zones of the suburbs. They have no idea about life.
That's not how I was raised. I was raised, "Watch it." Watch it, this could happen, that could happen. It was a wary sense of working class life. That's why I can't stand this, I don't regard this as progressive at all. I regard this as taking us all the way back to the Victorian era.
I mean, you're up there in Williamstown, right?
Tripod: Yeah.
CP: Oh my god!
Tripod: Yeah, Williams is pretty pc.
CP: Yeah, there's a good example, I spoke there a few years ago, it's one of the most politically correct places around. It's like Dartmouth, or Amherst, or Smith or Wellesley. Wellesley was one of the worst pc places I've ever visited, too. There are these little enclaves everywhere, they're like these zones where rich parents send their kids into these artificial zones. Do you think there's any dean at the Sorbonne who cares about the dating life of the students? Or the University of Bologna? It's ludicrous. This is why I have a piece called "The Nursery School Campus," that I wrote for the TLS. All they are is summer camps, these campuses.
Williams is a very good example -- it's a fine school, but it's like, my one visit there, I just went, "Ugh!" I used that library all the time when I was at Bennington, so I was used to that campus. But I could feel, in the time I had been gone, just over ten years, how the mood had become very over-controlled. The campuses are over-controlled by the deans of student life, by the student services. They're market places, there's a contract going on, between the parents, with their check book, and the administrators, who need the money. This unholy contract is that the campuses be absolutely sterile, and absolutely safe. That these kids who have been raised without any understanding of life, should have a continuation of that protectionism.

"Give us the freedom to risk rape."

This is again the opposite of what we wanted when we arrived in college in 1964. Because, when I arrived at that time, I went to the State University of New York at Binghamton, before going on to Yale for graduate school, we were the first wave that went through, nationally of the sixties. No one had ever seen anything like us on the college campuses. We were just totally different, and we had totally different demands. We arrived, and the dorms were sexually segregated. All women, all men. What was horrible was that the men had no curfew, they could stay out all night, but we women had to be back at 11 at night to sign in. We are the ones who rebelled. We said, this is outrageous, this sexual discrimination. This is when there were panty raids, the men would come under the windows and you'd throw panties down, and throw water on them. The colleges were acting like parents, they said, "The world is unsafe, and we must protect you. You could get raped out there."
What we said, my generation, we're the ones who said, "Give us the freedom to risk rape. That is our prerogative. We want equality with men." So we're the ones who got all the authority figures out of our sex lives. So that's why I'm so opposed to this tendency of eighties and early nineties feminism, to want the authority figures back. I think it's absolutely reactionary, and it is counter-productive. We want strong women, and to rear strong women, you must make them defend themselves. They must take personal responsibility for their own lives. Then they'll go, "Oh, they're not ready for it, when they arrive as freshmen." Well, excuse me, who's fault is that? That's the parents' fault. It's not up to the colleges.
That's why I'm a dangerous opponent, because I am someone who has dealt extensively with freshmen, I teach a lot of freshmen. So it's not in their best interest to continue this cooing and coddling and pampering and, "Oh, your feelings are hurt? Oh, I will slap that boy on the wrist for you." That is not the way to produce creative women who are going to change the world later on. You're never going to get a woman president like that.
Tripod: What do you think of Hillary's transformation, from strong woman -- one of the top attorneys in the country -- to mother and cat lover in pink?
CP: Oh, I could go on about Hillary for hours! She and I were at Yale the same time. I did not know her, but we are exactly the same age, and we are the same year -- she was at law school when I was at graduate school right next door. We literally must have crossed each other's path a million times. So I know exactly what's happening here with her. It's simply that she has the arrogance of high IQ, which I had also. We thought we were going to change the world. I had my disaster, my wipe-out, in the late seventies, when I got fired from Bennington. I just made one stupid mistake after another. I finally played into the hands of my political enemies at Bennington.
I think that Hillary is just removed from reality in many ways. She just thinks that she is someone who doesn't have to be accountable, that she has good intentions, so whatever she does is good. She does has a difficulty being real with people. I just wish she had sat down and said, "Oh, god, yeah, well, we got to the White House, and sure, it was difficult, there were all these complex agencies, and, oh, that travel office thing -- yeah, you're right, it was stupid of me, but I learned my lesson from that." Just admit. I mean, what is this, "I had nothing to do with it"? "I expressed my concern to him." Meanwhile, everyone else is writing in their diaries, "HRC: pressure!" What a hypocrite!

"Hillary just lied through her teeth there, I saw it myself ... A-plus my ass."

But I'm voting for them, I have a poster in my office, "Clinton-Gore, 96." I don't think that any of this invalidates their issues, but I think that they certainly have played into the hands of the Republicans. They deserve to be censured and abused, not to go to jail or anything. But the people who are saying that people just don't want or like strong women -- that is bullshit. That press conference made me furious. When she finally had it, after months of stalling, she comes out, [soft, sensuous voice returns] like Nancy Reagan, in a pink suit, she sits in a chair -- I can do a whole imitation of her! -- and, like, "You wouldn't ask me any hard questions that would make me feel bad, would you?" And I thought, what a hypocrite! She just lied through her teeth there, I saw it myself and the media just rolled over on that one. They were saying, "A-plus." A-plus my ass, pardon my French. ... Last week, they finally found these documents, the billing records. So how were they found. "Oh, I really don't know how they were found." Is she out of her mind? They really are removed from reality right now, but I think they'll recover, because the Republicans have nothing, they have no one. Please.
Tripod: How many years before there's a first gentleman up there?
CP: Well, I think Christine Todd Whitman is going to be the first woman president. I think we're ready for it, we just have to find the right woman. It's a paradox that it's conservative women, like Margaret Thatcher, or Christine Todd Whitman, that are closer to the model of the leader than the liberal women. The liberal women can't seem to get the hang of it, how to be a leader. They make good senators, but Barbara Boxer is no president. She doesn't have the dignity of a president.
Tripod: Going back to what you said about a return to old values -- what do you think of the whole Jane Austen revival?
CP: Well, I'm delighted, I just can't believe it, I'm incredulous. In certain ways, I'm a little nervous about it. First of all, what I think it really has to do with, is that people are charmed by is the courtliness of the men. I think that there's a longing for courtship. In fact, about three years ago, Esquire asked me to write something about men, and I talked about the gentleman. It may be time to bring him back. My generation threw him out, we said, "We don't need this! We don't need people opening doors for us, all that. Get out of here." We threw it out, and now we see what the results are. We're in a period now where it's like, "Date rape! Date rape!" It may be that young men need to be taught what is chivalrous and gallant. Maybe women want to be courted, maybe that was not so stupid. I think that that's what the Jane Austen revival is about. It's about a period when women are pursued, but are not being raped. They didn't have to worry about that.
I think it is a symptom of conservatism. I think it's a turning backwards. She was a conservative writer herself, very conservative. She was writing at the time of Romanticism, and her values are those of the eighteenth century. I've been watching Pride and Prejudice on TV, and I thought they were superb. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, it was so smart.
Tripod: They stuck so closely to the book.
CP: Yeah, the language, and the way they didn't make any attempt to say, "Oh, no American is going to want to listen to this, all these long sentences." It was so fabulous.
Tripod: Well, it was made by the BBC. But they did give in and end on a double wedding. Jane Austen never did that.
CP: Oh all right, yeah. But I'm usually very critical of historical dramas. I'm terrible, I sit there and say, "Oh for heavens sake! Look at the way she's holding her hands! Why doesn't someone tell her not to stand with her arms like that? Oh, look at that piece of furniture, that was 1830, not 1810!" I'm terrible. But I so much enjoyed this.
But in a way it made me a little nervous, too. All these white people. As an American, I think, what is all this about? People are saying how it's a great revival, but I'm saying, how many African-American people in this country are watching this? Is there not something a tiny bit racist-elitist under the surface here? Going backwards to a time when there were no inconvenient racial problems of any kind. Everything is very homogenous. There's no ethnics either.
Tripod: It's all upper middle class, too.
CP: Yeah. There are very few ethnics in any of these novels, of any kind. Obviously, there were no ethnics. There's one example in Middlemarch, there's a character who behaves in a way that seems Italian, therefore there's something not quite right about him! I think that may be a symptom of some deep stirring to go backwards. The sexual problems and political problems and racial problems, social problems, are just out of control in certain ways. I think it may be a kind of rebound from the OJ trial. It's sort of like, "Thank god! We don't have to deal with people getting butchered anymore." Those things which are just incomprehensible.
Tripod: Those incomprehensible things are now on the Internet, perhaps. The sexual problems -- it's all cyberporn now, most of which seems pretty infantile.
CP: Well, my answer to it is this. I'm pro-porn. Every attempt made by the feminist establishment, to control porn, to control the magazines, to control the outlets -- they thought they were going to wipe porn off the face of the earth. I have constantly said, if you block up one outlet, it will come out of another one. So I think it's a healthy phenomenon. I don't feel it's bad. The sexual imagination has to find relief. I want people to realize it's comic. That's why you say it's infantile, there's a comedy to pornography, there's an absurdity to it. When you declare that something is taboo, you automatically make people interested in doing it. ...
I think it should be very difficult to get into the porn areas of the Internet, but I'm a member of the ACLU, I'm a free speech militant, and I believe that pornography is healthy, I don't think it's unhealthy. Even when there are barbaric fantasies, of rape, and mutilation, and dismemberment. If you look through history, you'll find that those things have been committed in history. They weren't caused by porn. They were atrocities of war, they are part of classical mythology, where you have the great Titans killing each other, feeding on their children's bodies. Every kind of grotesque thing is somewhere in mythology. I fail to see why all of a sudden, people are getting squeamish. Of course you don't want to tolerate the act, but the imaginative life must be allowed to go free.

"Of course you don't want to tolerate the act, but the imaginative life must be allowed to go free."

What we're seeing bubbling up on the Internet are all the forces that the feminist establishment tried to clamp down. Because they have indeed gutted the pornographic industry. It's very difficult here to get the S and M, bondage and domination videos and comics that are everywhere in England. England has great taste for that kind of thing. It used to be called the English vice, sado-masochism. Men wanted to be whipped by women. It's very difficult to get those things here. But the women have even succeeded in getting Penthouse and Playboy out of the drugstores, out of the chains. They thought they were winning.
It's just like the anti-smoking campaign, they thought they were winning. Oh, we're going to have a smoke-free society. What happened? Cigars. Cigars big, cigars huge, women smoking cigars. If there's an expressive human desire or need, you're not going to be able to prohibit it.
I think that religious people should not have to have porn thrown at them. My working rule is that I envision a separation between a private and a public sphere. The public sphere belongs to everyone, and the private sphere, no one has any right to come into the private sphere and dictate to you how you express yourself sexually or verbally. Playboy and Penthouse should be available at the newsstand, maybe in brown paper sealed bags. But they shouldn't be hanging up so that a Christian person or feminist coming along the street shouldn't have to see a whole bevy of naked ladies, if you don't want to see it, and feel it's offensive to you. That's an intrusion into the public space. So, the great image of Kate Moss, lying on her belly,
Tripod: The one on the couch?
CP: Yeah, beautiful, beautiful image. I loved that, but I don't think it was appropriate to put on the side of a bus in New York City. It was one of the great images of contemporary advertising, but it belonged in Vogue, it belonged where an adult, sophisticated person could see it. Not on the side of a bus, where every Muslim person could see it, every Catholic to see, every child to see. That was, in its own way, authoritarian, imposing values -- my values, pagan porn! -- no one has the right to take over the public space in that way. I don't believe in banning it, I believe in free speech.
The porn on the Internet, you've got to find it. It's not bursting out at you as you're trying to do business, is it?
Tripod: It depends where you're doing business. But people who find it generally want to find it.
CP: But it's not bursting out randomly. It's not like you're doing business, and suddenly there are gigantic sex organs on your screen. Then people would have a reason to complain. But what's the big deal for a kid to see this stuff? What are you protecting them from? This is life. If a kid really knocks himself out to see this stuff, the kid has a curious mind. Maybe the kid is going to end up being an anatomist, or a physician or something. Who knows? Big deal, the kid sees something horrible. The kind of violence they see in horror movies is hair raising, what they're used to these days.
Tripod: Yeah, compared to that, Bob's Temple of Boobs on the Web is pretty tame.
CP: That's great, I love it, a temple of boobs! ... No one has any business policing it. ... I'm troubled by this new rush to try to control a new technological form like this.
Tripod: I have one final question -- who's your favorite vamp of the moment?
CP: My favorite vamp of the moment, let's see. Well, it's not very current, but I just re-saw Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour, one of my favorite movies from the late sixties. The movie has been revived and restored, it had a huge long run in New York. I'm so amazed -- I'm thinking, oh, god, this is so wonderful. This is the difference between my era and today. The poor young kids today have to see Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts.
Tripod: They're not very vampy.
CP: What kind of sexuality are you going to have if Meg Ryan is a big image in your world? She's like Sandra Dee! ... Sharon Stone remains my favorite vamp of the moment, ever since Basic Instinct, which was such a breakthrough. I wish her well, I like her a lot.
Tripod: I'm just curious, do you wear Chanel's Vamp?
CP: No, I don't. [laughs] But my girlfriend does! Actually, not the expensive one, just an imitation of it.

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