“No one ever went broke overestimating snob appeal. It’s one of the most marketable vicarious pleasures. And it colors writing well beyond Cinderella fiction. Biographers are often drawn to elite subjects. Chick-lit heroines are perennially obsessed with status. The coming-of-age memoir gets more attention if its narrator learned about life at a socially prestigious school. And a diet book has more cachet if it cautions against too many tartes aux pommes rather than too many Twinkies.”
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This Just In: Brits Love The Arts (More Than Soccer)
“In the biggest survey of its kind, conducted by the Office of National Statistics for the Arts Council of England, it has emerged that participation and appreciation of the arts are more popular than sport and are widely indulged in across the social spectrum… While the public appetite for books is not so much of a surprise – three quarters of interviewees listed this as a feature of their spare time – the keen edge of our hunger for theatre, both live and on television, is a revelation.”
Even The Italians Agree…
Britons do not enjoy a terribly high level of popularity among their European counterparts, but a new Italian survey reveals that the UK may actually be the continent’s most cultured country. Even more alarming to continentals is the relatively low cultural scores assigned to such traditional arts centers as Italy.
Uganda Bans Vagina Monologues
The African nation of Uganda has banned The Vagina Monologues following a concerted push by Christian church groups which consider the performance pornographic and derogatory towards men. “Rarely-used powers of censorship have been reinvoked to demand drastic script alterations, including the deletion of references to lesbianism and the removal of the crucial word ‘vagina’ from the title.”
Those Magical Women In Pointe Shoes
Ballet is a fairly ethereal art form, based as it is on the wonder of watching the human body do things that most human bodies cannot do, and even a cursory glance at the history of the form suggests a positive obsession with female characters who reflect that spooky, supernatural, and ultimately unattainable image. “The lure of the otherworldly heroine took strongest hold in the Romantic era, when ballet, like the rest of European culture, became enthralled by the gothic and the supernatural… [But] even when romanticism waned, the popularity of the ethereal, magical heroine persisted.”
The Crusade No One Saw Coming
As viewed from Canada, the current American brouhaha over “decency” on the public airwaves is a bit confusing, coming as it does from the country that places such a high value on free speech. But there’s no doubt that U.S. conservatives have made significant gains in political clout over the last year, and whether or not their position is entirely consistent with traditional American (or traditional conservative) values, the opposition to their crusade is comparatively disorganized and ineffective. Of course, the First Amendment has not been removed from the U.S. constitution, meaning that the last word on the debate over decency will likely come from the courts.
Milan, New York, Paris, London… Denver?
Denver’s $86 million Ellie Caulkins Opera House is in the final stages of construction, and the architects, acousticians, and civic boosters involved in its rise are not setting their sights low. In fact, some are suggesting that the venue could rank among the top ten opera houses in the world when it opens in September. “The facility will become the first permanent home for Opera Colorado, and it will be the principal venue for Ballet Colorado.”
Luring Guys To Art With The Vrrrroom Factor
Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts is not the first venue in which you would expect to find an auto show. But there in its stately galleries are 16 vintage cars in all their glory, and they are there for a very good reason. “For car guys, the MFA’s nontraditional exhibition offers a rare chance for time with some of the world’s rarest and priciest racing machines, a collection built largely over the past 30 years by the fashion designer who created Polo. For the museum, the show has another function: to reach more men. The museum, noted for its flowery Impressionist works, says women visitors outnumber men, 64 percent to 36 percent.”
France’s Film Comeback: It’s No Accident
French cinema, in decline for more than a decade, is experiencing a resurgence of popularity, thanks in large part to “various practical government initiatives: substantial subsidies for first- and second-time filmmakers; well-funded film schools; an obligation on television stations to show French films; and a complex system of subsidies funded by a levy on all box-office receipts, a measure regarded with fury by the US studios, which believe they are thereby helping to fund their direct competition.”
Sideways, Eternal Sunshine Lead Writers’ Guild Awards
The proximity of the Writers’ Guild of America Awards to the Oscars always leads to speculation that the latter could follow the lead of the former, and this year is no exception, as Sideways and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind took home the Guild’s top honors this weekend. Other major awards, all for scriptwriting, included HBO’s miniseries adaption of Angels in America, NBC’s The West Wing, and the critically adored Fox sitcom, Arrested Development.