“Manufactured commodities are an artistic medium? Branding is a form of personal expression? Indie businesses are a means of dropping out? Turning your lifestyle into a business is rebellious?” For thousands of young people, the answer is yes. “Many of them clearly see what they are doing as not only noncorporate but also somehow anticorporate: making statements against the materialistic mainstream — but doing it with different forms of materialism. In other words, they see products and brands as viable forms of creative expression.”
Month: July 2006
A New Element To Bollywood Marriages: Realism
“Increasingly realistic portrayals of marriage — happy and otherwise — are very much on the mind of Bollywood these days. … There are no national records available, but experts agree that divorce rates have risen significantly. Over the years much news-media coverage has been devoted to urban stress, the new empowered Indian woman, the phenomena known as DINK (double income no kids) and DINS (double income no sex), the emergence of marriage counseling and of course high-profile celebrity break-ups. ‘Beyond a point,’ said the director Rajat Kapoor, ‘we couldn’t look away from the reality of modern marriage.'”
Disabled Soldiers Given Voice Through Theatre
In a small town in Maine, the Wounded Warriors Writers’ Program has set out to teach disabled veterans how to tell their stories in the theatre. “The dozen men and women, age 20 to 48, served in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. From around the country they have gathered for 10 days in this coastal town to translate their life experiences into scenes and monologues for the stage.”
Kander Goes On With The Show, Minus Ebb
Since the 2004 death of lyricist Fred Ebb, composer John Kander has kept working on a musical the duo had been writing. It’s due to open Aug. 9 in Los Angeles. “A backstage musical and murder mystery combined, ‘Curtains’ is a whodunit in more than one sense of the word. It may also be the last new work to be produced on this scale from Kander and Ebb, one of Broadway’s best composer-lyricist teams. And while that fact alone won’t likely spell curtains for the American musical, it’s certainly a sign that generational change is waiting in the wings.”
Public Funding For Evangelical Rappers Draws Ire In London
“Speakers boom out a bass line that reverberates through the heart and throat and tickles the eardrums. Former gang members from New York’s hardest ghettoes rap ‘we wanna rock wit’ you, that’s all we wanna do’. But listen closely and the lyrics are far from a stereotypical rap homage to all things bling. The rappers are missionaries aiming to draw in the gangs of east London’s deprived estates.” The use of public funds to support them has attracted controversy, as have homophobic postings on the website of the group’s leader.
People Flock To Edinburgh’s Festivals. Is That Bad?
Is Edinburgh too established, perhaps even too successful, a festival city for its own good? “From Cape Town to Adelaide, from Dubai to Montreal, cities are turning to arts festivals to boost tourist numbers and civic prestige. (Indeed, Montreal boasts more ‘festival days’ each year than there are days in the year.) Edinburgh faces increased competition in the UK too. Liverpool will be the 2008 European City of Culture. The Manchester International Festival, under the directorship of innovative programmer Alex Poots, plans to concentrate on new and original work when it makes its debut next year. London, of course, will host the 2012 Olympics. Never mind the next few weeks: it’s the next 12 months that may be among the most decisive in Edinburgh’s cultural history.”
You Complete Me
Workers in France are putting the finishing touches on a massive church designed (but never completed) by architect Le Corbusier. “Completed by [Corbusier] protégé José Oubrerie, who has tinkered with many elements of the original sketches, the Church of St. Pierre has stirred debate among Parisian academics about the ethics of finishing a work left behind by a legendary architect.”
Playtone Makes Its Move
Tom Hanks, as everyone knows, is one of Hollywood’s most bankable movie stars. But what much of the public doesn’t know is that Hanks has spent the last several years quietly putting together “one of Hollywood’s most prolific filmmaking entities… On Friday the company’s animated feature ‘The Ant Bully’ was released on 3,050 regular and Imax screens by Warner Brothers. Lined up behind it are nearly three dozen projects.”
Does Religious Education Undermine Western Society?
Education is always a touchy subject, and with the world embroiled in any number of religion-based conflicts, religious schools are suddenly a controversial topic in Britain. Some are even suggesting that faith-based education should be abolished altogether. “Unless all faith schools are abolished, Britain will never be truly egalitarian, nor will our multi-ethnic society be secure enough to be worth celebrating.”
Tate’s New Ziggurat Gets Rave Reviews
The expansion plan for London’s Tate Museum unveiled this week is “a powerful, memorable project, that would have seemed inconceivable when the new Tate was first mooted. Without being showy for the sake of making a spectacle, it takes the form of a glass mountain rearing up behind Giles Gilbert Scott’s brick cliff and clearly visible from the river and St Paul’s.”