"To me, Elizabeth Taylor's importance as an actress was that she represented a kind of womanliness that is now completely impossible to find on the U.S. or U.K. screen. It was rooted in hormonal reality -- the vitality of nature. She was single-handedly a living rebuke to postmodernism and post-structuralism, which maintain that gender is merely a social construct. Let me give you an example. Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right is a truly wonderful film, but Julianne Moore and Annette Bening -- who is fabulous in it and should have won the Oscar for her portrayal of a prototypical contemporary American career woman -- were painfully scrawny to look at on the screen. This is the standard starvation look that is now projected by Hollywood women stars -- a skeletal, Pilates-honed, anorexic silhouette, which has nothing to do with females as most of the world understands them. There's something almost android about the depictions of women currently being projected by Hollywood." - Camille Paglia, writing for Salon.
PS Elizabeth Taylor was buried today. Fortunately the service was swift, because Ms Taylor had converted to Judaism when she married Eddie Fisher and Jews are to be buried within 48 hours whenever possible. This seems to have taken the Westboro Baptist Church, who'd threatened to picket her funeral by surprise. That's a blessing, at least. A more involved memorial service is being planned. Also, Broadway marquees will darken the lights in her honour at 8 pm tomorrow night.
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