Dick pic? Groping? Racist rant? It’ll be fine. There are now “plans to sell ‘disgrace insurance’ to entertainment companies and commercial brands, making the risk of celebrity downfall as quantifiable and reimbursable as that of floods and car crashes.” – Vulture
Author: ArtsJournal2
Renée Fleming To Redesign And Co-Lead Aspen
Fleming and conductor Patrick Summers of the Houston Grand Opera will be co-artistic directors of the Aspen Music Festival and School’s opera program, redesigning it. “Fleming, who will continue to perform, said she was drawn to the opportunity to reimagine the program to better prepare young singers for today’s intensely competitive, rapidly changing opera environment.” – The New York Times
Television Critics Love, And Award, ‘Fleabag’
Everyone loved the first season of Fleabag just fine, but then the second season went and added a hot priest to the mixture. The TCA Awards responded. (The entire list of other winners – yes, there were some – is at the link as well.) – Vulture
The Farewell May Be Culturally Specific, But The Issue Of Lying To Dying Relatives Is Cross-Cultural
A man who gained work in the movie business as an undocumented immigrant says that “it’s the element of migration and the severed intergenerational connections it creates that modify the family dynamics in Billi’s story, my story and those of millions of others whose relatives are scattered far from their common source.” – Los Angeles Times
A Broadway Musical Gets A Very Broadway Post-Curtain Call Event
Though no one gets married in The Prom, the musical celebrates same-sex prom-going even as it lampoons celebrity culture, with a glitzy finale set (obviously) at the prom. “But all that glittered was rivaled after Saturday evening’s performance when two brides, gleaming in rose-gold sequins, exchanged marriage vows onstage.” – The New York Times
Tarantino And Women
He doesn’t exactly have the best reputation when it comes to the women in his movies. And then there’s his exchange with a reporter at Cannes this year. “His curtness in dismissing the concerns of a woman journalist (dredging up memories of his painfully testy exchange with critic Jan Wahl in 2003) made the exchange explode across the internet. And it reignited a conversation that’s dogged the director for years and that has, post-#MeToo, risen in volume: As a filmmaker, is Tarantino bad to — or for — women?” – BuzzFeed
Walter Benjamin Believed WWI Changed Human Nature, But Culture Gave A Little Hope
It seemed like a good time to republish this, LitHub decided. “In their buildings, paintings, and stories, humanity is preparing to survive culture, if it comes to that. And the main thing is, they laugh as they do it. Their laughter may sound barbaric now and again. Let it. It may be that the individual will surrender a bit of humanity to the masses who will return it to him one day with compound interest.” – LitHub
Listen To Cate Blanchett, And Don’t Let Your Creativity Lapse After Having Kids
Well, not Cate, actually, but her character in Where’d You Go, Bernadette? That character hasn’t been able to create anything for years. The movie’s director, Richard Linklater: “Creativity thwarted is probably the most toxic thing in the world. You know, the artist thwarted is lethal.” – NPR
Some Ideology Can Kill, But How To Alter, Or Preferably Squelch, Those Ideas?
It’s a mess. “In political violence, as in so many other parts of modern life, inspiration comes from an ever more bizarre range of origins. Portions of the [alleged El Paso shooter’s] manifesto read like an eco-terrorist rant from the 1980s. Others read like Timothy McVeigh.” – The Atlantic
Paul Robeson’s American ‘Othello’
A new play about the play, and the man, and his affair with the woman playing Desdemona (who happened to be Ute Hagen), and also her husband (who happened to be José Ferrer) … well, there’s a lot to discuss about American theatre history. – BBC