“Once again, those of us immersed in entertainment–as producers, as distributors, as chroniclers, or even just as devotees–are left to ask where it fits in. Cultures have been grappling for centuries with how much space to allow levity in the place of a tragedy. But the relevance, and even the defensibility, of entertainment has lately been thrust forward as never before.”
Category: issues
Facebook Tries To Explain Why Only Paris – And Not Beirut – Merited The ‘Safety Check’
“Now that Facebook has set a precedent for using Safety Check for terrorism and other violent events, it will need to figure out when and where to use the feature. From Schultz’s comments, it’s not clear if the team would have enabled it for Beirut. He includes the Lebanese city among ‘other parts of the world, where violence is more common and terrible things happen with distressing frequency.'”
Spike Lee Says Getting A Black President Has Been Easier Than Getting A Black Person In Charge Of A Film Studio
“The director told the industry audience gathered at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland, ‘We need to have some serious discussion about diversity’ and he thanked Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs, saying ‘she’s trying to do something that needs to be done’ for raising the issue and making it part of the Academy’s current consciousness.”
Yeah, I Know It’s Not So Easy: Aziz Ansari On ‘Brownface’ And Casting Minority Roles
“I had to cast an Asian actor for Master of None, and it was hard. When you cast a white person, you can get anything you want: ‘You need a white guy with red hair and one arm? Here’s six of ’em!’ But for an Asian character, there were startlingly fewer options. … But I still wonder if we are trying hard enough.”
How Do You Tell The Difference Between Philanthropy And A Tax Write-Off?
There’s Eli Broad’s new museum in Los Angeles. Paul Allen’s soon-to-open nonprofit exhibition space in Seattle. The sale by Audey Irmas – her foundation, to be precvise – of her Cy Twombly blackboard. “How can anyone from the outside tell the difference between a collector’s cultural philanthropy and his personal tax strategy?”
Can We Finally Start Taking ‘Political Correctness’ Excesses Seriously Now?
Jonathan Chait: “The upsurge of political correctness is not just greasy-kid stuff, and it’s not just a bunch of weird, unfortunate events that somehow keep happening over and over. It’s the expression of a political culture with consistent norms, and philosophical premises that happen to be incompatible with liberalism.”
We’re Starting To Learn The Real Secret Of Stonehenge: How The People Who Built It Lived
“‘The stone monument is iconic,’ said [archaeologist] Wolfgang Neubauer … ‘But it’s only a little part of the whole thing.’ Discoveries in the last decade, some via modern technologies like ground-penetrating radar, have revealed more about the people for whom the giant monuments held great meaning.”
Claim: Free Admission Doesn’t Bring In The Audiences You Think They Will
“Free admission days do not usually engage affordable access audiences. In fact, data suggest that free days often accomplish the very opposite of their intended purpose for many cultural organizations.”
Is This Yellowface? Successful Chinese Artist Reveals That He’s Actually A Frenchman
No, it’s not only poets who do it. “Tao Hongjing was the fictional creation of French artist Alexandre Ouairy, born in Nantes, who assumed the pseudonym a decade ago to sell more art as an unknown foreign name in China. … The ‘Tao Hongjing’ idea was based on a suggestion by his gallerist in Shanghai a decade ago, when the country’s contemporary art market was soaring but the Frenchman’s early exhibitions proved flops.” And it worked.
What Alejandro Iñárritu Was Saying About Immigration While Donald Trump Was On Saturday Night Live
“There is no human being who, as a result of desiring to build a better life, should be named or declared illegal, and be dispossessed or considered disposable. I would rather propose to call these people Undocumented Dreamers, as were most of the people who founded this country.”