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Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon — Femme Fatale, Enterprising Escapee From Poverty, Victim Of The Patriarchy? All Of The Above?

In the 18th-century source, a novel by the Abbé Prévost, Manon Lescaut was an archetypal siren, luring a helpless young nobleman to his doom; later operatic adaptations may have had more sympathy for her but weren’t so different. Yet MacMillan found in her one of his most powerful, and controversial, heroines, one that great ballerinas love to play. Alastair Macaulay looks at how their portrayals of the character have shifted over the years. – The New York Times

My Right To Speak On Campus

“Debates over free speech on campus are not about formal rights but rather about what we might call real freedom. We have the formal right to speak freely on a given topic whenever there is no law preventing our doing so. But those who claim to have been silenced by political correctness typically have the legal right to say whatever it is they claim they cannot say. What they are really objecting to is the social pressure not to make use of that formal freedom — a pressure that, they argue, reduces their real freedom to express themselves.” – Chronicle of Higher Education

How Disney Has Been Redirecting The Fairy-Tale Notions Of Love It Did So Much To Spread

“The happy ending of our most-watched childhood stories is no longer a kiss. Today, Disney films end with two siblings reconciled despite their differences, as in Frozen (2013); or a mother and a daughter making amends, as in Brave (2012) and Inside Out (2015); or a child reunited with long-lost parents, as in Tangled (2010), Finding Dory (2016) and Coco (2011). Love remains the all-important linchpin of these stories … but over the past 10 years, we have been told to love a new kind of love.” – Aeon

Where Did The Story Of Aladdin And The Magic Lamp Come From? Not ‘The 1,001 Nights’, It Turns Out

In fact, writes Michael Dirda, the tale came from one Antoine Galland, an early-18th-century Orientalist who was the first Westerner to translate the actual Thousand and One Nights from the Arabic. He was working from a manuscript that had only 35 stories in it — and, when his translations became hits, he (not unlike Sheherazad herself) had to come up with more material to meet reader demand. – The Washington Post

Remember ‘Dr. Strangelove’ And ‘The Day After’? Why Don’t They Make Movies Or TV About Nuclear War Anymore?

After all, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock is still set at two minutes to midnight, most of the Cold War-era nukes (or their replacements) are still here, and the world isn’t exactly seeming stable these days. Stephen Phelan looks at Hollywood’s portrayals of nuclear apocalypse, both older and more recent. – Boston Review

The Tony Awards’ Most Important Speech, And Most Important Fashion Statement, Were Barely Even Noticed On The Telecast

That fashion statement, writes Chris Jones, was the breathing tube and oxygen device that Terrence McNally wore onstage as he accepted his lifetime achievement Tony, and his speech — as both a major American playwright and a survivor of the worst days of the AIDS epidemic — “was the most beautiful recounting of one of this nation’s most distinguished artistic careers.” – Chicago Tribune

SFMOMA Will Be Sending Art To The Golden State Warriors’ New Arena

When the Chase Center opens in San Francisco in the fall, it will feature a 700-pound mobile by Alexander Calder and Isamu Noguchi’s 1975 Play Sculpture. “[They’re] part of a unique ongoing partnership to install four major works of art either borrowed from or commissioned by SFMOMA specifically for the Warriors’ new home court.” – San Francisco Chronicle