It was Kenneth MacMillan’s desire to drag the real world, kicking and screaming, into the prettified arena of ballet that unsettled people, then and now. “An idea grabbed him and he did it. I don’t think he had any agenda and was quite surprised when people were shocked. His ideas were triggered by everything that was going on around him. He brought real life to ballet.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
David Frum: The Politics Of Cultural Appropriation Are Complicated
To the extent that the cultural-appropriation police are urging their targets to respect others who are different, they are saying something that everyone needs to hear. But beyond that, they can plunge into doomed tangles. American popular culture is a mishmash of influences: British Isles, Eastern European, West African, and who knows what else. Cole Porter committed no wrong by borrowing from Jewish music; Elvis Presley enriched the world when he fused country-and-western with rhythm-and-blues.
Should Museums Be Taking Political Stands? One Critic Argues Against It
“The new curatorial activism builds on the heritage of critical museology, but also reflects its failure. Rather than adapting museums to serve a wider audience, they argue that museums should actively shape their audiences by impressing on them the gospel of social justice. It devalues collections and condescends to visitors.”
How Once-Golden Univision Has Imploded
Once upon a time, Univision, an American broadcasting operation aimed primarily at Spanish speakers in the United States, was a tremendous golden goose laying tremendous golden eggs: It made incredible amounts of money and had to do essentially nothing for it other than run programming produced by Televisa, a Mexican broadcasting operation. The fairy tale ended long ago. Univision has been in decline for years, thanks to a disastrous private equity buyout finalized in 2007; an aging audience; a burdensome program-licensing deal with Televisa; competition from Telemundo and Netflix; layers of overpaid and useless middle management; and a general failure to position itself for a digital future.
Science Reveals: How Words Should Be Spaced
Somewrittenlanguageshavenospacesatalland o thers re quire a space be tween ev e ry syl la ble. Ob viously, thereneed to be standards. Unless you’re doing avant – garde po e try, or something , you can’tjustspacew ords ho w e v e r y o u want. That would be insanity. Or at least, obnoxious. Enter three psychology researchers from Skidmore College, who decided it’s time for modern science to sort this out once and for all.
Ian McEwan Is Pessimistic About Today’s Literary Landscape
“Literary fiction is in a curious nosedive saleswise, down about 35 per cent over the past five years. Everyone’s got a theory: TV box sets, some sort of fatigue, who knows. Maybe it’s not just good enough.”
Has Protest Art In The Trump Era Let Us Down?
While the self-proclaimed Resistance debuted with vibrant-pink mass action, the most-distinctive cultural creations that have accompanied it so far—at least in the rapid-response popular mediums of music and TV—haven’t been so fired up. Nor have they been, to use the clichéd dismissals that plenty of political art readily invites, shrill or didactic. Instead, the general drift has been in the spirit of Jeff Rosenstock’s album: self-questioning, tentative, conciliatory, emotional. It is, for better or worse, the art not of a revolution but of a failed revolution.
How New-Gen Digital Jukeboxes Are Killing Dive Bars
TouchTunes made itself a visible front-runner in a jukebox revival of sorts, in part because it allows users to choose music from their phones. In March 2016, the company—which has since merged with PlayNetwork—debuted an overhauled version of its mobile application which now “allows users to be the DJ and take control of TouchTunes’ jukeboxes” in 65,000 locations across North America. Through the app, these locations delegate musical, and therefore atmospheric, control to patrons and profit in the process. For dive imitators, these devices make it harder to maintain their neighborhood-bar veneer, while actual dives start to resemble their faux peers. TouchTunes erodes the premise of quaint regionalism as bars of all kinds transform into Top 40 danceries.
An Edgier, Warier Cannes Festival This Year?
Things start to feel edgier. Those hotels have made it more difficult to access their lobbies; La Croisette, the main boulevard, has huge new planters in place to prevent the kind of truck attack that devastated nearby Nice two years ago; and according to the Hollywood Reporter the city “recently doubled its annual anti-terrorism budget by adding a hefty $2.4 million,” including a new K-9 force. And the ongoing Netflix fight got even testier this year with the streaming service pulling its slate to protest the festival’s rules requiring that all films in competition have theatrical release in France. The festival itself is undergoing changes.
The Most Optimistic Cannes Festival In Years?
Local challenges remain, there’s no doubt. Consolidation, polarization and fragmentation are the watch words in many territories. The UK continues to be “depressing” with acquisitions few and far between. France’s tough VOD laws bring another set of challenges and Spain remains dented by piracy. Plenty for naysayers to complain. But overall, for the first time in recent memory sellers and buyers alike are enthused.