Blog

Do Magazines Matter Anymore?

“This is, by consensus, the time to be violently shaking up magazines. The Web has arrived; the readers are leaving; the industry’s grip on the pinnacle of the words-and-pictures trade is getting sweatier and slipperier. Many Condé Nast magazines are about to skip excitedly into the Web business. All around, it’s a time for youth and change, or something like them.”

A Culture Of Plagiarism?

“We have become a culture of borrowers—musicians sample, painters appropriate, computerists worship open-source software. Cool. The problem is that at the same time we’ve forged a society in which misrepresentation is routine, encouraged, obligatory. For all her sweet Hogwarts dreams, an observant, canny, IvyWised-up kid is bound to draw certain conclusions about the way the real world works. She might have noticed, for instance, that the “announced” first printing of her novel was 100,000, about twice the number that shipped—and if she asked why, she would’ve learned that 100 percent exaggeration is simply publishing’s rule of thumb.”

Banville’s “Art” Comments Irk Critics

Irish writer John Banville caused an uproar when he won the Booker Prize. “In a low, steady voice of thanks, he said: ‘It is good to see a work of art being recognised!’ Many cheered, whether for the unapologetic arrogance of the remark or for the truth of it, or perhaps stirred by the whiff of drama in the room. But the sense of outrage among certain of the glitterati only ratcheted up a notch, to spew out the next day in newspaper column-centimetres of invective.”

Creating Billy Elliot (Again. And Again.)

“Billy Elliot made a phenomenally successful transfer from screen to stage last year. On Friday, Stephen Daldry’s production celebrates its first birthday, and the three original Billys – the cast works on a rotation system – will return for a special gala.” And this brings up an interesting question: where, exactly, do they keep finding new Billy Elliots? As it turns out, there’s a factory for that…

Is The U.S. On The Verge Of Going Bilingual?

To judge from the furor raised by conservatives last week when a group of Latin recording artists released a Spanish version of The Star-Spangled Banner, you would have thought that America was on the verge of losing its very soul. Ariel Dorfman says that we’d better get used to it. “This Spanish is not going to fade away as Norwegian or Italian or German did during previous assimilated waves… If this prophecy of mine is right, and America will sometime in the near or distant future be articulating its identity in two inevitable languages, then the question looms: how will the citizens of the United States react to this monumental challenge?”

What Is Experience Worth?

The older we get, the more we like to reflect on the importance of “life experience,” and how the passage of time can give human beings an expertise in their chosen field that raw talent never can. But how important is experience, really? After all, talented athletes now begin their professional careers as teenagers, and don’t appear to suffer from a lack of life experience. Could the same be true in politics, music, or art? Is it possible that all the talk of seasoning and maturation is nothing more than our fear of those younger than us?

Spacey & Old Vic Soldier On With New Season

Kevin Spacey, who has come under fire from the London press recently for his management of the city’s struggling Old Vic, has unveiled a new season that he hopes will get the critics (and the public) back on his side and into his theatre. “After the critical bruising the theatre’s recent output has received, the forthcoming productions include some obvious crowd-pleasers… But the programme does include some more adventurous choices.”

DaVinci Director Declines Disclaimer

Director Ron Howard has rejected calls from Catholics to place a disclaimer at the beginning of the film adaptation of The DaVinci Code informing audiences that the story is a work of fiction. The Catholic sect Opus Dei, which is fictionalized in the book and depicted as a murderous secret society, had asked for the disclaimer. Howard’s reaction: “It’s not theology. It’s not history. To start off with a disclaimer … spy thrillers don’t start off with disclaimers.”

Taking Outsider Art Worship Too Far

A new art exhibition in London purports to show striking parallels between so-called “outsider art” often created by the mentally ill and some of the 20th century’s greatest “insider” artists. A simple enough concept, but it has at least one critic furious: “A show of ‘outsider’ art… is well worth doing. Nor is it wrong to point out that, in the 20th century, mainstream artists have been fascinated by this kind of art. What is objectionable is to present the art of people with severe mental illness alongside the work of Francis Bacon, Joan Miró or Francis Picabia, and then to propose that there is no essential difference between the two, that both are simply different manifestations of modernity. This is post-modernist crap.”