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Monday, April 12




Ideas

When Fans Become Organized Fans (Is That Bad?) "Most people are fans of some cultural product or another: a football team, a soap opera, a rock band, a political party. But organized fandom is widely derided for its allegedly excessive devotion to trivial entertainments. Similar stereotypes used to dominate the academy, particularly among critics of capitalism and/or modernity, for whom the fan was the slack-jawed, brainwashed embodiment of consumer culture—the viewer who didn't merely swallow passively the pulp fictions produced by the culture industry, but centered a large part of her life around those same products..." Reason 04/12/04
Posted: 04/12/2004 9:17 am

Diversity In Education? Not Even Close "In the end, we like policies like affirmative action not so much because they solve the problem of racism but because they tell us that racism is the problem we need to solve. And the reason we like the problem of racism is that solving it just requires us to give up our prejudices, whereas solving the problem of economic inequality might require something more -- it might require us to give up our money. It's not surprising that universities of the upper middle class should want their students to feel comfortable. What is surprising is that diversity should have become the hallmark of liberalism." New York Times Magazine 04/11/04
Posted: 04/11/2004 7:20 pm

Visual Arts

Building A Case For War Historically, wars have influenced the architecture of their times. And is the current war finding its way into our buildings? "It is fascinating to see these concerns translated into architectural styles: unselfconsciously, as in the Cambridge Crown Court; and flamboyantly, like the mock castles built at the time of the Napoleonic wars, or the concrete bunkers built during the cold war." The Guardian (UK) 04/12/04
Posted: 04/12/2004 8:41 am

Brooklyn Museum's New Building, New Focus The Brooklyn Museum unveils a $63 million renovation this week. But it's also unveiling a new focus. "It has all but abandoned efforts to lure visitors from Manhattan and is now, with the help of an image consultant, concentrating almost exclusively on its own backyard — the 2.5 million residents of Brooklyn." The New York Times 04/12/04
Posted: 04/12/2004 7:46 am

Prado Gets New Autonomy Madrid's Prado Museum is getting more independence and flexibility in the management of its affairs. "These Spanish moves follow similar initatives in France designed to give greater autonomy to State museums: since January the Louvre has kept all revenues from ticket sales—previously 45% went to the State—and it is now entirely responsible for its exhibition policies and budgets. Previously, both of these had been managed by the government." The Art Newspaper 04/11/04
Posted: 04/11/2004 7:42 pm

Music

Of Orchestra Managers And Musicians - A Wage Chart Why is there such a huge discrepancy between the salary of orchestra executives and musicians? AJ blogger Drew McManus correlates the pay compensation of players and the people who manage orchestras. Executives earn, on average, between 3 and 6 times as much as the musician earning a base salary... Adaptistration (AJBlogs) 04/11/04
Posted: 04/12/2004 9:39 am

Fleisher: Music In Words Leon Fleisher is king of the musical metaphors. "Listening to Fleisher talk about music is delightfully dizzying. The metaphors come in an endless flow. Play like a cat, he might say, but with sheathed claws. Play it like a Bavarian milkmaid, not like Britney Spears. Fingers shouldn’t be hammers, they should be dolphin flippers. This chord change could be from a Marlene Dietrich song; croak over it." The New Yorker 04/12/04
Posted: 04/12/2004 9:09 am

Doing The Homework To Listen Should the music critic look at a score or listen to a recording before attending a performance of a new work? Tim Mangan says yes: "Virtually any piece of serious classical music that a listener is not familiar with is 'just an overwhelming event' the first time he hears it. There's so much going on that our ears can't comprehend it in one gulp. And who knows whether, that first time we hear a piece, be it Brahms' Third Symphony or Adams' 'Transmigration,' it's a good performance or bad?" Orange County Register 04/11/04
Posted: 04/11/2004 7:35 pm

Daniel Barenboim On Why He's Leaving The Chicago Symphony: "It's impossible for me in America. It's very difficult to be a musician in America because the system has become one where people expect you to do all sorts of other things that take a tremendous amount of time. When they talked to me about renewing my contract, they said `We would like more time from you not necessarily to conduct, but to do community activities.' They basically expect you to go and spend half your time explaining to people why it is important to have culture, to have music. Here in Berlin when you fight, you fight in order to have enough for projects you want to do." Chicago Tribune 04/11/04
Posted: 04/11/2004 5:05 pm

Beethoven's Ninth In 24 Hours There are many recorded versions of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. But a radical new interpretation by the Norwegian conceptual artist Leif Inge, which he calls "9 Beet Stretch," "digitally elongates a recording of the symphony to make it last 24 hours. The piece slows symphonic time so that movement is barely perceptible. What you hear in normal time as a happy Viennese melody lasting 5 or 10 seconds becomes minutes of slowly cascading overtones; a drumroll becomes a nightmarish avalanche. Yet the symphony remains somehow recognizable in spirit if not in form, its frozen strings fraught with tense, frowning Beethoven-ness." The New York Times 04/11/04
Posted: 04/11/2004 5:02 pm

Arts Issues

US Cracking Down On Porn The US Department of Justice is cracking down on pornography. The DoJ plans to "prosecute those producing and distributing obscene material. 'Nothing will be off-limits as far as content goes. We'll do everything we can to deter this conduct.' But that may be difficult. "More than 11,000 adult films are released annually in the US and there are 800 million DVD and video rentals of adult movies each year, according to the trade association Adult Video News." The Observer (UK) 04/11/04
Posted: 04/11/2004 6:43 pm

Denver: Changing Horses In Mid-Construct Denver's major cultural institutions are in the midst of a building boom. But several of those institutions are in a hunt for new top leadership. And that means... Denver Post 04/11/04
Posted: 04/11/2004 5:07 pm

People

Margaret Atwood On Being Atwood: "Atwood's dragon persona is less fire-breathing than gently, relentlessly smouldering. She can isolate the moment she became a writer - "became", naturally, not "wanted to become" - in 1956, when she was "crossing the football field on the way home from school. I wrote a poem in my head and then I wrote it down, and after that writing was the only thing I wanted to do." The Guardian (UK) 04/12/04
Posted: 04/12/2004 8:45 am

Considering Jack Valenti Motion Picatura Association of America president Jack Valenti — the "5-foot, 7-inch titan who invented movie ratings, reigned as Washington's highest-paid lobbyist and earned the unlikely nickname Boom-Boom from Robin Williams on one Oscar telecast — has finally announced his decision to step down from the job he has held for 38 years. 'I think there won't ever be another like him because one of the reasons why he is so credible in his advocacy for the entertainment industry is because he is so personally theatrical'." The New York Times 04/11/04
Posted: 04/11/2004 7:13 pm

Theatre

Going Young At Humana Just how are plays chosen for inclusion at the Festival of New American Plays in Louisville? This year, five of the six full plays presented were by women. And they were also young. "This time the plays we liked happened to be mostly by younger writers. We just felt the writing was interesting and strong and worthy of production." Seattle Times 04/11/04
Posted: 04/12/2004 6:58 am

Humana Fest - Emphasis On Women "Five of the six new full-length works at this year's buzz-generating Humana Festival of New American Plays were written by women. Coincidence? Miami Herald 04/11/04
Posted: 04/11/2004 7:05 pm

Publishing

Psychology Critique Under Attack Psychologist Lauren Slater's new book "Opening Skinner's Box" has been hailed as "a bridge the gap between academic and popular psychology," but the experts are attacking. "Some say that she put invented quotations in her new book. Others question her methods and data in her own experiment in faking mental illness or challenge the accuracy of her description of some famous past experiments. Critics have been publicizing their accusations in book reviews on Amazon.com and other Internet sites, while professors at several schools, including Harvard, Columbia and Emory universities, have been exchanging information on their views of the book's failings." The New York Times 04/12/04
Posted: 04/12/2004 7:56 am

Two Magazines - A Letter Between Them There's "America" magazine and "American" magazine, and they couldn't be more different. "The two magazines nicely convey the dyads: rural and urban, mass and elite, red and blue. America's America is sleek, multiracial and wonderfully coiffed. The images on the oversize, foil-edged pages are outré; in one photo essay the actress Juliette Lewis is curled up in a refrigerator, having a moment with herself. Using hip-hop as its motif the magazine roams across fashion, film and technology. It takes the reader behind the velvet ropes and assumes anyone who is reading it belongs there: America magazine defines and covers its own species. American Magazine's America seems more like a teddy bear you can hold on your lap." The New York Times 04/12/04
Posted: 04/12/2004 7:51 am

Depicting Scotland Through Some Miserable Books The books chosen for Scotland's premiere tourist attraction are a scandal. "As a literary representation of Scotland, it is woeful, made worse by the far more imaginative range of books offered in the children's section. On the evidence of Historic Scotland's collection, Scots spend most of their time drinking and eating." Glasgow Herald 04/11/04
Posted: 04/11/2004 6:59 pm

A Body Story...One Word At A Time Shelley Jackson is writing a story by tattooing one word at a time on a person. The story is a "sequence of words tattooed on the bodies of some 2,093 volunteers, several of whom are reported to have teamed up to form whole sentences. Jackson's 'story', by the way, is called Skin. Who said the avant-garde was dead? At 2,093 words, her 'story' might possibly persuade the subeditors among us to institute a search for cuts. It certainly does invite us to ask another basic question, viz: how short can a story be, and still be considered a story?" The Observer (UK) 04/11/04
Posted: 04/11/2004 6:52 pm

Media

Stone Reshoots Fidel And Gets Spot On Schedule Last year Oliver Stone went to Cuba and produced a movie portrait of Fidel Castro. When he presented the finished product to HBO, the network refused to air it because they said it was too fawning and flattering. So Stone went back to Cuba and reshot. This time his movie has been accepted... New York Daily News 04/12/04
Posted: 04/12/2004 8:05 am

What's Happened To TV? No show gets a chance to find itself these days. Debut as a hit or you're gone off the schedule. "Forget about "finding an audience" — there just isn't time. If you're not doing Friends numbers right out of the box, you're not going to last long enough to accumulate the episodes for a decent DVD retrospective release. Used to be, 100 episodes was the magic number to shoot for, to accommodate five-night-a-week strip syndication. Now, you're lucky to get through "the front nine" of a typically 23-episode network season." Toronto Star 04/12/04
Posted: 04/12/2004 6:51 am

Zombie Power - Why They Keep Returning To The Movies There's a new wave of zombie movies. Zombie movies date back to the 1930s, and though they sometimes go away for a decade, they always seem to return. And what makes zombies such attractive horror fare? "They can be anything you want them to be. They can carry any metaphor you like. They can stand for man's environmental meddling, or of our alienation from each other. They are there to be controlled." BBC 04/09/04
Posted: 04/11/2004 5:35 pm

Bergman: My Movies Depress Me Legendary Swedish director Ingmar Bergman admits he can't watch his own movies because they're too depressing. "I don't watch my own films very often. I become so jittery and ready to cry... and miserable. I think it's awful," BBC 04/11/04
Posted: 04/11/2004 5:28 pm

NPR - Youth Kick Responsible For Edwards Ouster? National Public Radio's ouster of Bob Edwards as host of Morning Edition is still being discussed: "In public radio, no less than on the commercial dial, the search for younger listeners keeps executives at their desks deep into the night. And with overall radio listening in dramatic decline in recent years, programmers are constantly searching for something new. That led some station executives to conclude that Edwards's ouster was all about catering to young listeners." Washington Post 04/11/04
Posted: 04/11/2004 5:24 pm

Defending Canadian Movies... Last week when word a deal the Canadian Telefilm was making with Hollywood leaked out, there was an outcry. "You may get the impression from this uproar that the Canadian content of our home-made movies, so cherished by our audiences that they account for something less than 1 per cent of the box-office take in English Canada, is about to be deeply compromised." But it's not. INdeed it might be a way to improve the Canadian film industry. Toronto Star 04/11/04
Posted: 04/11/2004 5:18 pm


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