“They get something from drag that they don’t get from a normal makeover – it lets them perform womanliness, to try it on like a new outfit, but with the label still attached. … A meek woman is allowed to taste strength by turning her femaleness into theater. Drag is not about sex, in other words: It’s about power.”
Tag: 08.29.10
When Books Were First Published No One Knew What To Do With Them…
“Inventing the printing press was not the same thing as inventing the publishing business. Technologically, craftsmen were ready to follow Gutenberg’s example, opening presses across Europe. But they could only guess at what to print, and the public saw no particular need to buy books.”
Maybe Humans Aren’t So “Special” After All
“Decay in the belief in self is driven not by technology, but by the culture of technologists, especially the recent designs of antihuman software like Facebook, which almost everyone is suddenly living their lives through. Such designs suggest that information is a free-standing substance, independent of human experience or perspective. As a result, the role of each human shifts from being a ‘special’ entity to being a component of an emerging global computer.”
Has Teaching Of The Humanities Lost Its Way?
Camille Paglia: “The humanities have been gutted by four decades of pretentious postmodernist theory and insular identity politics. They bear little relationship to the liberal arts of broad perspective and profound erudition that I was lucky enough to experience in college in the 1960s.”
Computer Animation, Drawn by Hand
Paul and Sandra Fierlinger’s animated adaptation of J.R. Ackerley’s book My Dog Tulip used about 60,000 drawings, but no paper or ink. “Unlike studio cartoons, which often involve computer-generated imagery, the Fierlingers’ work is hands-on, sort of. What’s eliminated is wasted motion: the shuffling of paper, the sharpening of pencils, the setting up of shots.”
Colorado Ballet Selects Non-Dance Exec as New CEO
“In the midst of a comprehensive restructuring that could determine the company’s very survival, the Colorado Ballet’s board of trustees wanted a new executive director with proven success at fund-raising and financial turnarounds. To that end, it tapped Marie Belew Wheatley, who brings 22 years of nonprofit experience in Denver” – at the American Humane Ass’n and the American Red Cross.
How Music Makes You Exercise
“The interplay of exercise and music is fascinating and not fully understood, perhaps in part because, as a science, it edges into multiple disciplines, from physiology to biomechanics to neurology. No one doubts that people respond to music during exercise. Just look at the legions of iPod-toting exercisers on running paths and in gyms.”
Britain’s Booming Music Festival Industry
“Music festivals have grown from nothing to a sizeable industry in 25 years, and the industry is one of the few sectors to have fared well in the slump. There are currently more than 670 events in Britain and the top 200 festivals contribute £450m to the economy in ticket sales, travel, accommodation and food.”
France’s Perplexing Art Theft Problem
“Who is behind the 20 or more museum art thefts that take place in France every year? How do the thieves even hope to unload easily identifiable pieces by prominent artists? In the murky global black market for stolen art, France’s many museums are prime hunting grounds.”
Chicago Dancing Festival – The Audience Is The Real Story
“While the performances at this festival are of the essence (and they were uniformly impressive Saturday), it is the audience that is the real story. As viewers arrived in strollers and on walkers, comprising an ideal cross-section of every age and ethnic variety (with many veterans of the three previous festivals back to see more), the whole event could not help but send a dance enthusiast’s heart spinning.”