Consider this: The critic and scholar Camille Paglia, in an ode to the Housewives, dubs Cohen the Soap Messiah and heaps praise upon his artistry: Cohen has so altered and redeemed the pop culture landscape—which had been suffering for years from snide snark and pseudo-hip cynicism—that he should be acknowledged as a genuine auteur, like maverick film directors. His tastes, instincts, and sensibility now suffuse a staggering number of highly successful TV projects. Not since the radical gay German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder revived and recast Douglas Sirks womens pictures during the 1970s has a single individual so boldly rescued a waning genre and given it such splendid new life. When I speak with Paglia, she goes even farther, comparing Cohen to showbiz gods like David O. Selznick and Florenz Ziegfeld. As time passes, my admiration for him just increases more and more, she says. His mind is so nimble. I look at him and I think, The variety of his talents is just staggering. Does this man ever sleep? If Hollywood movies have lost their sense of mise-en-scène—the skill at showing the actual human space in which we dwell, she says—the Housewives tableaux, imprinted with Andy Cohens sensibility, bring it gloriously back. In Paglias eyes, Watch What Happens Live takes America back to the zing of vaudeville. Andy is coming out of this tradition, she says. He also represents a turn away from the debilitating, corrosive irony of the Letterman/Colbert/Stewart era. Showmanship—thats what hes got. This is a major figure. Camille is interviewed in DETAILSs major profile of Andy Cohen.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 21:32:22 +0000
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