“This sentiment has a name: declinism. And it has a history, a scholarly one that amounts to much more than the perennial grousing of adults about kids these days. The notion of studying how things go to hell is almost exactly as old as the modern practice of historiography.” Laura Miller casts a gimlet eye on declinism from Gibbon to Spengler to Vargas Llosa – and points out the one way in which “culture” may indeed be dead (for now).
Living (And Reading And Writing) In A True Surveillance State
Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran): “It transforms your perspective, your manners, your relationships with friends, colleagues, students, with every waiter and cabdriver you meet. It changes your relationship with yourself.”
The Guy Who Makes Netflix’ House Of Cards Has No Clue How Many People Have Watched It
“They have never given me any data whatsoever. All they say is, ‘Well, we’re doing well and we’d like another season.’ And that’s really all I need to know.”
Houston Ballet Cancels Performance When Crews Discover Serious Rain Damage
“Someone left open the exhaust flues at the very top of the Wortham stage, which let in all the rain. The wood stage floor buckled, the stage lamps were full of water, and the legs and some of the scenery got soaked.”
Art Basel’s Powerful Jury Controls The Market
“The jurors, who separately operate German, Swiss, Italian and American galleries, begin their work about 11 months before the fair. In a series of gatherings, they and their advisers discuss their selections, vote, consider appeals and ponder larger questions: Should they include contemporary Chinese artists? Yes. Art by artists coming of age in the digital era? Definitely.”
Something Rotten! Capitalizes On Its Loser Status
“If by ‘loser’ you’re referring to a man who is greeted eight times a week by a thousand people who stand as one, applauding until their hands are raw, cheering until their voices are spent, whispering, ‘He’s so much better looking in person!,’ and laughing until their faces are contorted in an anguished mask that can best be described as a sort of Bell’s palsy … then yes, I am a loser.”
China’s E-Commerce Giant Alibaba Will Soon Launch ‘Netflix-Like’ Streaming Service
“As an online marketplace, Alibaba is more profitable than Amazon, but the move falls in line with Amazon’s ambitions to make Amazon Prime Instant a popular destination for video streaming.”
How Hollywood Sets Up Women Superheroes To Fail
“That’s our double standard. Poorly penned scripts. Rom-com female superheroes. A lack of female writers. A lack of understanding female audiences. Unknown directors. Significantly lower budgets. Little, if any, merchandising.”
How Did Pixar’s Newest Movie Get Emotions So Right In Image And Word?
“As the filmmakers were working, they would fire off emails to Keltner and to Paul Ekman, a pioneer in the study of emotions. The process helped create a movie that’s true to the underlying science when it shows things like how emotions tend to color Riley’s perception of the world.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs For 06.14.15
Rethinking Multimovement Form
AJBlog: PostClassicPublished 2015-06-14
We’re Addicted To Creating Content, But It Doesn’t Make Us Happy
“Once we buy into a specific apparatus, it’s awfully hard to leave it. Your cultural artifact is locked within that system, constrained by its programming. Notice how another user’s Instagram photo can’t be resized, emailed, or downloaded to your hard drive. It can’t exist within any other ecosystem than Instagram’s.”
Iconic Victorian Gas Structures Are Going Down All Over The UK
“Gasometers were crucially important to the growth of London as a modern city and to Britain as an industrial and post-industrial nation. The use of gas in street lighting, for instance, is a central element in the creation of the modern city and these amazing floating structures are where the gas was eventually stored. They are important as scientific as well as architectural icons and we should preserve the best of them.”
Crowd-Sourced Piracy Gets Crowd-Sourced Chinese Novels Translated
“Vietnamese writer and translator Trang Ha condemned the conservatism of Vietnamese literature, and the paucity of good-quality fiction available to her compatriots. She was speaking in response to the increasing availability of Chinese novels in Vietnam – works which have often taken a convoluted and heavily mediated route to market.”
Can You Make ‘Othello’ Fresh With Your Casting Choices?
“Might [race] be erased, no longer an issue between the two men – or for the audience, who just get to watch two top-drawer actors? Or might it be highlighted, even encouraging us to see both as victims of prejudice, an Iago consumed with self-loathing?”
Nah, TV Doesn’t Have A ‘Rape Glut’ – It’s Just Keeping Things Real
“Numerically, the depiction of rape on television is much closer to reflecting reality than, say, death by terrorist, serial killer, rogue CIA agent or the many clever murderers that fuel our detective series.”
What It’s Like To Lead A Ballet Company In New Zealand
“I was still amazed at the high standard of dancers. Every company has its own strengths and atmosphere but the RNZB is very strong. The dancers are hungry to learn, they are looking for coaching, they want to be the best they can. I always tell dancers that to be good you have to put your heart in your legs, that you can’t dance without heart, and that’s what I’ve found here.”
If ‘Ulysses’ Were Published Today, What Would Folks Make Of It?
Charles McGrath: “By the standards of today’s dirty books, Ulysses seems pretty tame, and it’s hard to put yourself back in the mind-set of those who took such strenuous offense in the 20s.”
Rivka Galchen: “I can report that in my research I did not come across a single contemporary reviewer describing the book as obscene. Perhaps this accounts for why there aren’t really that many raves out there.”