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Why is there a Raquel? This is the Age of Lubricity—a time of topless shoeshine parlors and bottomless go-go dancers, of mouthwash ads that assure sexual triumph, of the Pill and unlimited campus overnights. Films like I Am Curious (Yellow) and Coming Apart depict explicit sexuality at your friendly neighborhood theater. Yet somehow there is still Raquel the Sex Goddess, who has bared neither entire breast nor buttock to the public eye, and whose career has never been galvanized by the iridescent zinc of scandal. Even she admits: "I think that whole sex-symbol thing is an anachronism."
. . . I exist outside the usual realm of human experience, a creature of fantasy, a daydream revealing the feminine principle's need to regain once more the primacy she lost at the time of the Bronze Age. Is there a man alive who is a match for Myra Breckinridge? . . .
The essence of Raquel's appeal lies beyond the relatively civilized pale of the Frantic Forties, or even the Salacious Sixties. Whether squaring off in well-cleaved wolfskin against a grumpy pterodactyl (One Million Years B.C.) or driving the federales from the Yaqui Indians' charneled fastness (100 Rifles), Raquel is raw, unconquerable, antediluvian woman. She dwells on the dark side of every man's Mittyesque moon; she is the nubile savage crying out to be bashed on the skull and dragged to some lair by her wild auburn mane.
At the same time, Raquel's atavism has the advantage of posing no threat to uncertain, post-Freudian man. Modern Man may indeed be no match for Wonder Woman, but his masculinity is not imperiled by such barbaric, unreal imagery. Today's male moviegoer can gambol with Raquel in fantasies and still not be discomforted by the possibility—in conscious, relatable experience—of ever having to do anything about it. This curious sense of inaccessibility distinguishes Raquel from a forerunner such as Bardot, who always seemed on the verge of sashaying off the screen and seducing the curly-haired kid in the second row. Producers have been careful to preserve and exploit this cinematic paradox; it is surely no accident that Raquel rarely plays an ordinary human being, much less an authentic romantic object.
. . . Olympus supports many gods and goddesses and they are truly eternal, since whenever one fades or falls another promptly takes his place, for the race requires that the pantheon be always filled.
Some observers feel that Vidal's anthropomorphic view of Hollywood applies directly to Raquel; that she happened along at the right time to fill the vacuum created by the death of Marilyn Monroe. Noel Marshall, a shrewd Hollywood agent who once handled Raquel's publicity, also insists that the exigencies of today's film market call for a dark heroine to fill the goddess gap. "The domestic market for films has dropped into the 40 percentile of the gross market," he points out. "The world wanted an international symbol—a brunette or an auburn-haired girl like Raquel rather than the Monroe type."