Everything's Awesome and Camille Paglia is Unhappy!

Growing up as "a gender nonconforming entity" during Eisenhower's America wasn't easy for cultural critic and best-selling author Camille Paglia. Her adolescence in small-town, upstate New York was marked by rejection, rebellion, and cross-dressing—all in reaction to the stultifying social norms of the 1950s and early '60s.

So what does Paglia think of contemporary culture, with its openness to a wide variety of ever-proliferating gender, racial, and sexual identities?

Not much.

"I do not feel that gender is sufficient to explain all of human life," Paglia tells Reason TV's Nick Gillespie. "This gender myopia, this gender monomania, has become a disease. It's become a substitute for religion. It is impossible that the feminist agenda can ever be the total explanation of human life."

Whether the subject is feminism or the fate of Western civilization, Paglia is no Pollyanna. In this wide-ranging discussion, she says higher education is going to hell, the Fourth Estate is an epic FAIL, millennials are myopic, contemporary criticism has croaked, and Hillary Clinton might singlehandedly destroy the universe. Even Madonna, once Paglia's ideal of sex-positive feminism, seems to have lost her way.

Does the celebrated author of Sexual Personae and Break Blow Burn have any reason to get out of bed in the morning? Does she have any hope for the universe at all? Watch the video to find out.

CONTENTS

2:55 - Growing up as a "gender nonconforming entity" in Eisenhower's America.

7:50 - What is feminism? The limits of identity politics.

14:35 - Rape, paternalism, and Madonna on the university campus.

19:30 - How the country club model of university life has debased contemporary cultural criticism.

24:38 - The decadent obsession with cultural identity in the modern world.

29:13 - Authentic multiculturalism and critical theory.

32:42 - Is there any hope for the humanities?

37:25 - Contemporary journalism is bad and it makes politics even worse.

45:18 - What sort of image does a great president project?

47:27 - The importance of "working class people".

51:08 - Hillary Clinton is a disaster. Dianne Feinstein is presidential.

54:46 - What are you optimistic about? Students are more ignorant than ever.

58:16 - Paglia's upcoming work: religion and the paleo-Indian period.

Runs about one hour.

Produced by Todd Krainin. Hosted by Nick Gillespie. Cameras by Meredith Bragg and Krainin.

Visit http://reason.com/reasontv/2015/03/19/everythings-amazing-and-camille-paglia-i for full transcript, downloadable versions, and more.