Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
A Culture War Pop Song’s Success Signals A Shift In Pop Culture
"The stunning success testifies to potency of confrontational works that cater to an audience that believes it is underserved, but also: the increasing savvy...
Tough Love For Shakespeare Through A Racial Lens
In a sweeping yet forensic 336 pages, “The Great White Bard” argues that “Shakespeare’s texts are a reservoir of what is known as race-making” —...
Is Interest In AI Waning?
For the first time since its release last year, traffic to the ChatGPT website fell by almost 10 percent in June. Downloads of its...
Will Cable TV Survive When ESPN Becomes A Streaming Service?
While the move could fill Disney’s coffers, it would take away one of the key reasons people still stick with cable – access to...
San Francisco Is Trying To Give Away The 40-Ton Organ Sitting Under City Hall
"Despite being in very close to playable condition, the organ has sat in pieces in underground storage near San Francisco City Hall for most...
Is It Strange San Francisco Hasn’t Had A Piano Festival Until Now?
“It seemed strange to me that there wouldn’t be a piano festival in such a major arts city, where there are in places that...
Data Analysis: Where America’s Writers And Artists Come From
If we focus on independent artists — writers and artists who say they’re either in publishing or outside of any defined industry — D.C....
What That Bradley Cooper “Bernstein” Nose Controversy Is Really About
"I am not in sympathy with a view of acting that centers an actor’s identity rather than a character, or with the blanket disqualification...
Alex Ross: Misguided Notions Of Culture At Lincoln Center?
"When people make the trip to Broadway and Sixty-fifth, they surely aren’t looking for an awkward transplantation of cultures that exist in more authentic...
Ted Gioia: Here’s How I Would Fix The Recording Business
"For too long, the record industry has treated artists as adversaries. They have tricked musicians with unfair publishing deals, dubious accounting tricks, and many...
Poll: 67 Percent Of Americans Support Actors, Writers In Hollywood Strike
The poll also found that 48% have an unfavorable view of the major studios, and just 31% support the studios. The survey also found...
NYT Might Sue OpenAI Over Use Of Its Stories
If, when someone searches online, they are served a paragraph-long answer from an AI tool that refashions reporting from the Times, the need to visit...
Ruling On AI-Copyright Has Enormous Implications
The essential question: "Maintaining copyright’s focus on human authorship makes sense only if we can redefine human authorship. - Shelly Palmer
The Leonard Bernstein Biopic’s Nose Controversy
Bernstein's "family released a statement in response to the criticism, saying that they worked closely with Cooper throughout the film's development and were unbothered by...
What Defines Gen-Xers? Music? Movies? Books? What?
The aristocratic regime of my generation, who would not sell out until “selling out” was gutted of any meaning, has collapsed, yet it is...
Lorne Michaels, Cultural Phenomenon
The promise of SNL under Michaels’ leadership is simple: If you are loyal to the family, you will reap handsome rewards. Over almost 50 years, that...
Too Much: The “-Ification” Of Everything
The suffix “-ification” (also “-ization”), usually attached to words that end in “-ify,” describes change, the process of something becoming different from what it...
Blowing Up Cultural Icons – Why Is Our Pop Culture So Obsessed With This...
"It has struck me lately that the recurrent frenzy of destruction of prized objects in popular culture may tell us less about our current...
Try It Out: The National Mall Is Filled With Monuments. Now Six New Temporary...
The curators Paul Farber and Salamishah Tillet have asked six artists — three women and three men; three of them Black, one Asian, one...
Study On Creativity: A Creative Dance Between Our Brain Networks
The key finding was that, for the eminent creators, there was a higher connectivity, both within each hemisphere, the right and left, but particularly...
Closed Landmark LA Theatre Unsettles Hollywood
The ArcLight has become a Los Angeles mystery, the subject of speculation that befits a movie theater that was always more than just another...
Tod Machover On How AI Will Change Music
“I think the other time when things moved really quickly was 1984,” he says—the year when the personal computer came out. Yet he sees...
World’s Top Chess Federation Makes Peculiar Ruling About Participation Of Transgender Players
Holders of women’s titles who change their genders to male would see those titles “abolished,” the federation said, while holding out the possibility of...
Just How Well Does AI Score In Creativity Tests?
Recent findings from the University of Montana and partners indicate that artificial intelligence can rival the creative abilities of the top 1% of human participants based...
Why Streaming Subscriptions Are Getting So Expensive
After years of burning through mountains of cash to fill their catalogs with original programming, the big SVOD services are now charging their subscribers more than...
