Anne Midgette: “The music isn’t the problem, it’s the way we’re offering it.” Big, inflexible institutions take away the “oxygen and funds” from the smaller organizations, she argues, which typically have a stronger vision and take more risks. Audiences, she adds, prove time and again there’s no lack of interest. “I think the only reason orchestras are struggling is that not everybody wants to go and sit in a concert hall and have that experience. It’s not that people don’t want to hear Beethoven.” – NPR
Category: AUDIENCE
Why Britain’s Working Classes Are In To The Classics
“Classical materials have been present in the identity construction and psychological experience of substantial groups of working-class Britons. Dissenting academies, Nonconformist Sunday schools and Methodist preacher-training initiatives all encouraged those who attended them to read widely in ancient history, ideas and rhetorical handbooks.” – Aeon
Why I Love “Bad” Movies
“We bad-movie watchers have our own anticriteria, the sorts of badness we prefer. Some of us use the term “bad movies” to mean, simply, films that emerge from a supposedly lowbrow genre, or films that are stylized in the manner we tend to label “camp.” (Road House from 1989 is this kind of bad movie, and is very good at being one.) Some of us prefer movies that are exploitative and tacky but, in a Nietzschean way, supposedly more alive than respectable ones.” – Hedgehog Review
Pop Culture (For Good Or Bad) Unites Us Culturally. Will Streaming Wars Disrupt This?
“Pop culture is one of the things that unites us as Americans and a lot of our pop culture is bad. But the fact that a whole bunch of people watch The Masked Singer every week or that everybody watched the Game of Thrones finale, I love that aspect of our pop culture and I really worry about it going away.” – Vox
UK Publishers, Booksellers Wrestle With Selling Right Wing Books
With a divisive election looming and rising rates of hate crime, the question of how best to engage with opposing views is, says David Shelley of the publishing giant Hachette, hotly debated in acquisitions meetings. “It’s important to uphold free speech, but social justice is also a big part of our mission,” he says. He is proud that Hachette publishes authors from across the political spectrum, from Labour’s Jess Phillips to the controversial rightwing commentator Rod Liddle. “But we wouldn’t want to publish any book that played a part in oppressing minorities, or went against our inclusive ethos.” – The Guardian
French Theatre That Kids Find More Compelling Than Their Screens
In an era of limitless on-demand entertainment, the timeworn art of French marionette theater continues to capture minds and hearts in this country in ways that smartphones, video games and the most seducing technologies can’t. – The New York Times
Broadway Is Becoming A Place For Chummy Nights With Actors And Their Fanbases
Seriously, it seems to be almost a new genre. “These performances were rendered with a disarming, self-interrupting casualness, suggesting a happy ham at home among friends. And they often directly involved the audience. ‘Do you want it? Do you want it?’ [Kristin] Chenoweth shouted to the audience, before she hit a high D in concluding a song. [Ian] McKellen, in his show’s second act, asked theatergoers to yell out names of plays by Shakespeare, to cue whatever he did next.” – The New York Times
Instagram Wants To Kill ‘Like’ Counts
Why? It might actually be good for some people – the youth, as they say, or those chasing social media influence. “The hope is that the change can reduce anxiety among Instagram users, to make social media less of a competition, especially among younger people, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri explained in announcing the U.S. test.” – Variety
Zadie Smith On The Tyranny Of Algorithms That Narrow Our Taste
“The key with the unfreedom of the algorithm is that it knows everything and it feeds back everything. So, you can no longer have this bit of humanity which is absolutely necessary — privacy: the sacred space in which you do not know what the other thinks of you.” – Toronto Star
Like Your Netflix? It’s Not Going To Be Like This Much Longer
The vast majority of Netflix’s viewers (upwards of 80 percent, according to him) watch licensed content (“Friends” and the like) and in order to create a library of programming audiences will pay for, they’ve gone massively in debt: “Netflix is currently in the hole for about $20 billion in debt and obligations and still operating at a loss.” – Washington Post