[Newspoetry] "MADONNA STILL COOL," SAYS PAGLIA

[Paul Kotheimer]

"MADONNA STILL COOL" 
CLAIMS PAGLIA

Stardom, Sex Appeal End Oppression of Women.


--Associated Poets

[Champaign-Urbana, Illinois]  Self-styled "Italo-American fin-de-Siecle 
Simone de Beauvoir," Camille Paglia, brought her highly controversial 
post-modern lecture series to the Foellinger Auditorium on the campus of 
the University of Illinois this evening, intending to convince the young 
intelligentsia of the late 1990's that it's still cool to write a 
Cultural Studies paper about Madonna; and to prove that Paglia herself 
isn't just any shamefully ill-reasoned reactionary pseudo-academic rape 
apologist/gender essentialist.--She's the one that really digs Madonna.

"The 80's, admittedly, were the heyday of Madonna Studies," said a Paglia 
aide yesterday at a pre-lecture cocktail reception.  "You saw lots of 
graduate and doctoral work being published in the field."

"In this decade, of course, we are being eclipsed by Courtney Love 
Studies, Alanis Morissette Studies, Spice Girls Studies, T. L. C. 
Studies, Brittany Spears Studies, and the like."

"However, we feel certain in our assertion that historu will bear out the 
predominance of Madonna Studies as the central discourse of academic 
feminism in the 21st Century."

While neither focusing exclusively on Madonna's continuing ability to 
wear the most talked-about designer fashions, changing her look to best 
express the Zeitgeist--frequently by means of costly cosmetic surgery--nor 
dwelling on Madonna's prowess at selling millions of CD's filled with an 
insipidly derivative yet highly profitable brand of discotheque pop, 
Paglia's presentation at Foellinger did assert, in part, that these are 
the kinds of things a person must do to become and remain unoppressed, if 
she doesn't already have a penis.

Audience reactions to Paglia's social critique were, in the end, 
decidedly mixed.  Tisha Wahlinger, sophomore in Speech Communications, 
commented: "Yeah, like, I think maybe I've heard some of that older 
Madonna Mrs. Paglia was referring to in her lecture... My mom totally 
probably has it all on vinyl."