Ellen Willis | |
|---|---|
 Ellen Willis at the Village Voice in the late 1970s | |
| Born | Ellen Jane Willis (1941-12-14)December 14, 1941 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Died | November 9, 2006(2006-11-09) (aged 64) Queens, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Spouse | Stanley Aronowitz |
Ellen Jane Willis (December 14, 1941 – November 9, 2006) was an Americanleft-wing politicalessayist,journalist,activist,feminist, andpop musiccritic. A 2014 collection of her essays,The Essential Ellen Willis, received theNational Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
Willis was born inManhattan to a Jewish family, and grew up in the boroughs ofthe Bronx andQueens in New York City.[1] Her father was a police lieutenant in theNew York City Police Department.[1] Willis attendedBarnard College as an undergraduate and did graduate study atUniversity of California, Berkeley, where she studiedcomparative literature.[1]
In the late 1960s and 1970s, she was the first pop music critic for theNew Yorker, and later wrote for, among others, theVillage Voice,The Nation,Rolling Stone,Slate, andSalon, as well asDissent, where she was also on the editorial board. She was the author of several books of collected essays.
At the time of her death, she was a professor in the journalism department ofNew York University and the head of its Center for Cultural Reporting and Criticism.[2]
Willis was known for herfeminist politics. She was a member ofNew York Radical Women and subsequently co-founder in early 1969 withShulamith Firestone of theradical feminist groupRedstockings.[3] She was one of the few women working in music criticism during its inaugural years when the field was predominantly male. Starting in 1979, Willis wrote a number of essays that were highly critical ofanti-pornography feminism, criticizing it for what she saw as its sexualpuritanism and moralauthoritarianism, as well as its threat tofree speech. These essays were among the earliest expressions of feminist opposition to the anti-pornography movement in what became known as thefeminist sex wars. Her 1981 essay,Lust Horizons: Is the Women's Movement Pro-Sex? is the origin of the term, "pro-sex feminism".[4]
She was a strong supporter of women'sabortion rights, and in the mid-1970s was a founding member of thepro-choicestreet theater and protest groupNo More Nice Girls. A self-describedanti-authoritariandemocratic socialist, she was very critical of what she viewed associal conservatism andauthoritarianism on both the politicalright andleft. In cultural politics, she was equally opposed to the idea that cultural issues are politically unimportant, as well as to strong forms ofidentity politics and their manifestation aspolitical correctness.[citation needed]
In several essays and interviews written since theSeptember 11 attacks, she cautiously supportedhumanitarian intervention and, while opposed to the2003 invasion of Iraq,[5] she criticized certain aspects of theanti-war movement.[6][7]
Willis wrote a number of essays onanti-Semitism, and was particularly critical ofleft anti-Semitism. Occasionally she wrote aboutJudaism itself, penning a particularly notable essay, forRolling Stone, in 1977, about her brother's spiritual journey as aBaal Teshuva.[8]
She saw political authoritarianism andsexual repression as closely linked, an idea first advanced by psychologistWilhelm Reich; much of Willis' writing advances a Reichian or radicalFreudian analysis of such phenomena. In 2006 she was working on a book on the importance of radicalpsychoanalytic thought for current social and political issues.[2]
Willis was the first popular music critic for theNew Yorker, writing between 1968 and 1975. As such, she was one of the first American popular music critics to write for a national audience. She got the job after having published only one article on popular music, "Dylan" in the underground magazineCheetah, in 1967.
In addition to her "Rock, etc." column in theNew Yorker, she also published criticism on popular music inRolling Stone, theVillage Voice, and for liner notes and book anthologies, most notably her essay on theVelvet Underground for the Greil Marcus "desert island disc" anthologyStranded (1979). Her contemporary Richard Goldstein characterized her work as "liberationist" at its heart and said that "Ellen,Emma Goldman, andAbbie Hoffman are part of a lost tradition — radicals of desire."[9]
Willis had met her second husband, sociology professorStanley Aronowitz, in the late 1960s, and they entered a relationship some 10 years later. They shared domestic tasks equally.[10] Willis died oflung cancer on November 9, 2006.[1]
She was survived by her husband and by her daughter,Nona Willis-Aronowitz,[1] who edited the collectionOut of the Vinyl Deeps.
Willis was a friend of many contemporary critics, includingRobert Christgau, Georgia Christgau,Greil Marcus, andRichard Goldstein. Christgau,Joe Levy,Evelyn McDonnell,Joan Morgan, andAnn Powers have all cited her as an influence on their careers and writing styles.[11] At one point, she and Christgau were lovers.[12]
Her papers were deposited in the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, in theRadcliffe Institute atHarvard University in 2008.[13]
In 2011, the first collection of Willis's music reviews and essays,Out of the Vinyl Deeps (University of Minnesota Press), was published. Willis "celebrated the seriousness of pleasure and relished the pleasure of thinking seriously," a review inThe New York Times said.[14]
On April 30, 2011, a conference at New York University, "Sex, Hope, & Rock 'n' Roll: The Writings of Ellen Willis",[15] celebrated her anthology and pop music criticism.
The Essential Ellen Willis, edited by her daughter, won the 2014National Book Critics Circle Award in the Criticism category.[16]
Willis is featured in the 2014 feminist history documentaryShe's Beautiful When She's Angry.[17][18]
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{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link),Radical Society, April 2002, pp. 13–19; copy formerly posted on Willis's NYU faculty site was archived on theInternet Archive, December 23, 2005. Accessed online July 7, 2007.
