Author: Douglas McLennan

What, Exactly, Defines A Movie As “Canadian”?

“The issue of what, exactly, makes a film or TV show genuinely Canadian is suddenly gripping the industry, after a series of government moves to shake up long-standing regulations. Creators are worried the moves, which would allow even more American talent into our movies and shows in the name of making the content more likely to sell internationally, will water down the distinct Canadian perspective just when it is finally starting to gain real traction around the world.”

Lonni Sue Johnson Has Amnesia And She’s Teaching Neuroscientists About What She Knows About Art

“The neuroscientists at Johns Hopkins started at the most basic level they could think of – the ‘Who painted this?’ test, which she pretty much failed. Her semantic memory about art and artists, her primary area of expertise, was significantly impaired. Remarkably, though, when the scientists included some of her own artworks in the testing, she correctly flagged every one as hers. Even more surprising, when the researchers added drawings done in a style somewhat similar to Johnson’s, she picked them out as artworks she might have produced. To do so, she had to be drawing on some sort of memory.”

Are There Plays That Should No Longer Be Produced? (And How To Decide?)

“Just as we need to produce more women, LGBTQIA artists, and people of color (that is to say, more people who aren’t straight white men), we need to consider what plays should no longer be produced. This is not about political correctness. This is not about censorship. This is drawing a moral line that defines what is in and out of bounds in our culture.”

Why Aphorisms Seem So Powerful To Us

“The voices of Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker and Benjamin Franklin still feel electrically alive to us because they managed to bake their personas into their brief observations. While proverbs and adages (cousins of the aphorism, to be sure) often lose their authorship and become orphaned—think about how many times someone has mentioned “an old Irish saying” without knowing anything about its actual provenance—aphorisms stay tethered to their creators, dragging their voices along through history.”

Weekly Standard: Artists Have “Weaponized” Art

“Today’s leading artists focus almost singlemindedly on issues of race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and religion. Beauty and truth are not merely subservient to the “identitarian” agenda, they are excised from the conversation altogether. It’s not just that the New Philistines have weaponized art in the service of an aggressive social-engineering campaign; they’ve pulverized it.”

Gender Breakdown Of Top 40 Music – An Odd Correlation

In 2005, Billboard changed its methodology to include digital downloads, and in 2007, it included digital streaming. In 2013, they added video streaming from sites like YouTube. There’s certainly a correlation between the music industry’s digitization, and women’s drop in representation. In 2016, only 22 percent of popular songs were performed by only women. That’s a huge drop from the 41.4 percent that women performed in the decade 1997-2007.