Blog

As US Becomes Less Friendly To Foreigners, China Welcomes International Students

“For decades, the U.S. has been the No. 1 destination for international students seeking a foreign college or graduate school education. The U.K. has been second. But in recent years, China has suddenly appeared in the No. 3 slot, and Allan Goodman, president of the Institute of International Education, tells Axios that it is on track to overtake the U.K. and capture No. 2 this year.”

When Becoming A Stowaway Was All The Rage

“As long as there has been transportation to faraway places, people have been sneaking on board. … The stowaway fad, however, was a different kind of social phenomenon. It was part of the attention-seeking aesthetic of the Jazz Age, a larksome activity similar to flagpole sitting, outrageous swimming challenges, and ‘buildering’ – the art of climbing skyscrapers. … And, in the new age of the mass media, each stowaway’s story of success incited more attempts.”

Did The Great Thinkers Of The Frankfurt School Predict Trump In The 1920s?

“Art is something that’s elevating and challenges the existing order, whereas culture is precisely the opposite. Culture, or the culture industry, uses art in a conservative way, which is to say it uses art to uphold the existing order. So the culture industry peddles an ideology that supports the prevailing power structure — in the case of America, that ideology was consumerism.”

‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ Is ‘A Shallow Look At Race In Rural America

“Now, no movie is one thing. … And so Three Billboards is about grief and anger, parental and police responsibility, truth and reconciliation. But it is also about class and race in rural America – and the levels to which [filmmaker Martin] McDonagh doesn’t actually investigate or interrogate his own storytelling decisions in that regard are frustrating.”

Study: Women Fill Only 18 Percent Of Hollywood Behind-The-Scenes Jobs (Here’s How It Matters)

“We have found that year after year, when a film has at least one female director, the percentage of female protagonists goes up… people tend to create what they know. When you have women working behind the scenes that frequently translates into more female characters on screens and you tend to see more powerful female characters.”

How Dancing Changes Dancers’ Brains

“Neuroscientist Agnieszka Burzynska … and her team looked at 40 female college students: half highly trained in modern dance, and half non-dancers. They had the subjects do various tasks – from watching dance videos to remembering the location of dots on a screen – and used scanners to look at their brain structure and activity. Here’s what they found.”

‘Les Mis’ Composer Claude-Michel Schönberg On What Makes A ‘Proper Song’ For A Musical

“Q: You’ve said that many new musicals don’t have proper songs. What goes into the making of a proper song?
“A: To write proper songs for a musical, there are special theatrical things you must master. Your songs must always be telling the story, which is very tricky, and you must learn how to do it. And the transitions between spoken dialogue and music are very hard; you can always tell when these transitions are awkward.”

France’s New Collection Of Camille Claudel Sculptures Are Now At Musée D’Orsay

“Eleven sculptures by the artist Camille Claudel, who was also Rodin’s muse and mistress, have gone on show at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris after six major French museums stepped in and acquired the works at auction last November. … Twelve items were acquired under French law, whereby the state is entitled to ‘pre-empt’ the sale of an object of national importance by matching the sale price (with buyer’s premium).”