“Horror movies tend to imaginatively transport consumers into fictional universes that brim with dangers,” the researchers write. “Through such imaginative absorption, people get to experience strong, predominantly negative emotions within a safe context. This experience serves as a way of preparing for real-world threat situations.” – Pacific Standard
Author: Douglas McLennan
How Verdi Took Care Of His Friends: A Retirement Home For Opera Singers
Using his own fortune, Verdi built the retirement home for opera singers and musicians, a neo-Gothic structure that opened in 1899. The composer died less than two years later, but he made sure the profits from his music copyrights kept the home running until the early 1960s, when they expired. Today guests pay a portion of their monthly pension to cover basic costs – food and lodging — while the rest comes from donations. – NPR
The Market Economy Model Has Crippled All Sorts Of Professions
We are all customers now; we are all supposed to be kings. But what if ‘being a customer’ is the wrong model for healthcare, education, and even highly specialised crafts and trades? – Aeon
The Taste-Maker Industrial Complex
It used to be that a handful of glossy magazines and fashion houses determined what’s cool. No longer. And perhaps that explains how “streetwear” has taken over and become big business. – BBC
When J Edgar Hoover’s FBI Declared Writers Enemies Of The State
Reading through dossier after dossier on 16 American writers contained in Writers Under Surveillance: The FBI Files, what strikes you immediately is the terrifying absurdity of Hoover’s obsession with anyone who didn’t follow his patriotic party line and dared to express critical concern about the national psyche in well-written words. – New Statesman
Staff At NY’s The New Museum Want To Unionize. The Museum Isn’t Happy
In recent days, staff say, the New Museum has procured the services of Kentucky-based Adams Nash Haskell & Sheridan, a firm that specializes in defeating unions, boasting on its website, “When We Take Action, You Take Control” and promising employers a “union-free future.”
It’s Increasingly Difficult To Make A Living As A Writer. Why?
There was a time when writers – of books, of magazine articles – could make a decent middle class living. That’s increasingly rare. And yet, if anything, we’re reading more. So what has happened? – The New York Times
So Now Detroit’s Cool Again, Who Gets To Call Themselves A Detroit Artist?
“I mean if you are a Cranbrook student or AIR, you are not a Detroit artist. If your studio practice is based in Pontiac, you are not a Detroit artist. If you just moved to Detroit, you are not a Detroit artist. Why is this false narrative being pumped? We all have a place of origin why aren’t you repping that? I got one real question though, Where were you when we were shooting in the gym?” – Hyperallergic
Artists Protest Dublin’s Abbey Theatre: “We’re Being Paid What We Earned 20 Years Ago”
“Actors feel they’re being shoved to the bottom of the food chain again. The Abbey’s success is at our expense. They have managed with this model to reduce our already poor remuneration to pre-millennium levels.” – Irish Times
American Cultural Mythology: Authenticity Above All Else (Hollywood-Style Of Course)
Bohemian Rhapsody, picked apart by cultural commentators for its divergences from the real story of Queen’s rise, is great for its realness? A band that campily reimagined rock and roll as opera, that played with baby talk and disco beats, whose lead singer paraded about in royal finery, is the ensurer of authenticity? – The Atlantic