“When German break-dancer Vartan Bassil came up with the idea for Red Bull Flying Bach, he hoped to bring together those who sneer at pop culture and those who snore at high culture. And he hoped to impress the other parents in the room.”
Tag: 01.05.17
A History Of The Tomboy (She Goes Back About 450 Years)
The term first appeared in the mid-16th century, and it acquired its current meaning (a young girl interested in what are seen as “boyish” pursuits) by the 1590s. Elizabeth King follows the (stereo-) type through the age of slavery and emancipation and the Victorian era to late 20th-century feminism – and she considers whether the tomboy figure has outlived its usefulness.
Should Simon And Schuster Be Publishing Alt-Right Hatemonger Milo Yiannopoulos’s Book? (A Debate)
Ben Mathis-Lilley: “His project of mainstreaming white nationalism is one that Simon & Schuster should be embarrassed to lend its reputation to.”
Amanda Katz: “The book was acquired by S&S’s conservative imprint Threshold Editions, which has published plenty of other authors and books that lefty readers might find offensive to their values. Yiannopoulos has a big audience. Why shouldn’t they put out his book?”
Buffalo’s Abandoned Train Station Is An Art Deco Treasure
“Opened in 1929 for the New York Central Railroad, the Buffalo Central Terminal was every bit as grand and opulent as Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal, Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station and Washington DC’s Union Station.” (In fact, its architect is the same one who designed Grand Central.) One group is trying not only to restore it, but to get Amtrak to move in again.
Frank Loesser’s Do-It-Yourself Musicals For World War II GIs
“For PFC Frank Loesser and PFC José Limón, their contributions to the war effort took the form of a series of musicals, created for the soldiers to produce and perform themselves. The aim was to boost morale among troops stationed in places where the USO couldn’t go.” Now some of those plays are being revived. (audio)
You May Take Rumi Out Of Islam, But You Can’t Take Islam Out Of Rumi. Yet Westerners Keep Trying
“Rumi is often described as the best-selling poet in the United States. He is typically referred to as a mystic, a saint, a Sufi, an enlightened man. Curiously, however, although he was a lifelong scholar of the Koran and Islam, he is less frequently described as a Muslim.” Why is this, and when did it start? Rozina Ali has some answers.
The State Of Queer Cinema – And What It Can And Can’t Depict
Moonlight is the first gay-themed film since Brokeback Mountain to have a real shot at a Best Picture Oscar – even Carol, with Todd Haynes behind the camera and Cate Blanchett in front of it, didn’t get a Best Picture nomination. And those films are all notably reticent about sex. Yet there are other places – other film industries – that aren’t so reticent.
Classical Ballet And The Aesthetics Of Discrimination
Kat Richter, responding to Pennsylvania Ballet’s firing of principal Sara Michelle Murawski because she’s too tall, reminds us that “ballet is, in fact, an ethnic dance form. As such, it embodies the social, cultural and aesthetic values of the time and place in which it developed (16th-century France)” – so height and skin color are far from the only factors in which it discriminates.
A National History Museum For The Kurds
They’ve been called the world’s largest nation without a state: roughly 30 million or more souls in the mountains where modern-day Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran meet. And of course there’s not yet any official museum to document the Kurds’ long history. Architect Daniel Libeskind and journalist Gwynne Roberts are working with the regional government of Iraqi Kurdistan to develop just such an institution – an even more challenging task than you’d think. (audio)
The Filmmaker Whose Entire Career Was An Act Of Resistance Against Pinochet (And Hollywood)
Raúl Ruiz “is the exile director: a Latin American who made most of his movies in English, French, or Portuguese – and whose aesthetic inhabits an absolute alien territory. His films are drifting, fantastical, introspective, melancholy, erudite, raucous – sometimes telling no story at all, sometimes telling too many. He made so many films, and they so consistently refuse to obey whatever formal rules we’ve come to expect from cinema, that they tend to develop into a blurry whole in your mind.”