Well, that’s a fraught subject. Phoebe Waller-Bridges, who wrote the show and plays the character, says, “Actually, she wishes she were more perfect, and that feels like it was an attack on feminism itself.” (The writer says she does, sometimes, share her character’s views.) – BBC
Blog
The People Who Decide What Books Are Allowed In Prisons Censor Thousands
Of course, the officials say, books and article about how to strangle someone or how to escape handcuffs must be censored. But what about Angie Thomas’ young adult book The Hate U Give? What about The Bluest Eye or The Color Purple? (All have been banned in some prisons – some while Mein Kampf was allowed.) – NPR
Holocaust Educators Want Amazon To Stop Selling Nazi Propaganda
Yes, in recent months, Amazon has removed sellers who are peddling Nazi imagery on ornaments and a beer opener. But these are books, and “Amazon takes a different approach with books than it does with home goods. ‘Amazon’s Offensive Products policies apply to all products except books, music, video and DVD,’ the retailer’s guidelines state.” – The New York Times
How Autumn De Wilde Came To Direct A New ‘Emma’
Take one cane, add whiskey, then gather a “mood” pitch for movie financiers, decades of photography, years of moving pitching, and presto! A new Emma. Miranda July on the director: “If there were more female directors, Autumn’s story wouldn’t be such a rare and precious thing to us. … Basically a single mom who worked so hard and at this age is coming into her own. I think we all feel really tender because it’s a very powerful example.” – Los Angeles Times
Sure, Years Elapsed Between Book Two And Book Three, But Hilary Mantel Did *Not* Have Writer’s Block
Mantel says there are so many stories in the Cromwell trilogy that the books are like a pamphlet. But of course: “At a combined total of more than 2,000 pages – with [forthcoming book three] The Mirror & the Light accounting for nearly half of them – you couldn’t get much further from a pamphlet. ‘I’ve got quite amused at people suggesting I have writer’s block, you know. I’ve been like a factory!’ She also chafes at the suggestion that her latest book was delayed because she was reluctant to kill off Cromwell. ‘It’s not something I’ve ever said; it’s what people think I should have said. It’s this version in which the woman writer is sentimentally attached to her creation.'” – The Guardian (UK)
Technology Recreates The Sound Of 500-Year-Old Singing In The Hagia Sophia
This is a rather unbelievable story. “When [the two researchers] met, Pentcheva started telling Abel about the Hagia Sophia – how we couldn’t really understand the experience of worshipers there unless we could hear the music the way they did. And as she talked, Abel started to feel a prickling of excitement. They could recreate what that music would sound like. If only they could get in the Hagia Sophia and pop a balloon.” (Note: They did.) – NPR
Turns Out To Reach Our Goals, We Shouldn’t Keep Our Eyes On The Actual Prize
The problem is that thinking about the prize bypasses the hard work – the mountains, in some cases, of hard work – that it takes to reach those goals. So: “The key to bypassing this mental glitch is to simply think about the efforts required. Imagine yourself typing away late at night on your book after a long work day, or studying for the GRE on a sunny Saturday, or waking up at 5 a.m. on a cold morning to train for that marathon.” – Fast Company
As ‘Fresh Off The Boat’ Ends, What Did It All Mean?
Asian Americans remember how excited – and worried – they were when the show was announced five years ago, after a two-decade drought for Asian American representation on network TV. Did the series live up to its hype? One writer says, “It felt like a dream.” (And it changed the media landscape demonstrably as well.) – Shondaland
The Subtitles Vs. Dubs Debate, Reignited By ‘Parasite’
How did we get here, with most U.S. audiences only seeing subtitles on non-English-language films and many other countries using excellent voice actors and technology for dubbing, and where are we going? (In other words, are the one-inch subtitle barricades about to fall?) – BBC
Dance Critic Tobi Tobias, A Finalist For The Pulitzer Prize, Has Died At 81
“As a critic Ms. Tobias did not pull punches. In the early 1980s, for instance, when other critics were tiptoeing around the decline in the dance skills of Rudolf Nureyev, who was then in his 40s, she declared, ‘His groupies refuse to believe it, but Nureyev really can’t dance anymore.'” (You can see two pieces about Tobias, who wrote for ArtsJournal, on ArtsJournal.com here and here as well.) – The New York Times