“Stepping into a taishū engeki show is like being welcomed into a wild and flamboyant secret society. As performers in outlandish costumes dance on stage, delighted fans dance along in unison from their seats. Somehow, everyone knows the moves. Periodically, an excited fan will scurry up to the stage with an envelope or wrapped gift, or will jump into the aisles looking for more room to wave a glow-stick. This might sound like a crowd of teenagers at a pop concert, but many women in attendance are old enough to have teenage children of their own.” – Atlas Obscura
Tag: 10.22.20
Even Before Buñuel, Way Back In 1908, There Was Surrealist Spanish Film
“Segundo de Chomón, a pioneering Spanish director often compared to Georges Méliès, … made bizarre trick films that experimented with color and temporality, and would eventually influence the surrealist work of filmmakers Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, making him, in many ways, the father of Spanish cinema.” – JSTOR Daily
Jazz And The Pondering Of Modernism
Jazz has always been a kind of extroverted modernism, and always allowed the atonality and experimentation of introverted modernism (see Coltrane’s later works). However, it has always rejected perverse modernism. That has much to do with religion and the Christianity of the black churches. – First Things
Humanities Education Is Struggling. But Out In The Real World…
The “crisis” cannot be adequately described either by the number of openings on the academic job market, or the number of Great Books on university syllabuses. The health of the humanities should be measured instead by whether our society provides ample opportunities for its citizens to ask the fundamental questions about the good life and the just society. By that yardstick, it seems, the humanities are healthier than the doomsayers might lead us to believe. – The New York Times
Life Is Getting Better (At Least Until Recently) So Why Are We Less Happy?
“Amid these advances in quality of life across the income scale, average happiness is decreasing in the U.S. The General Social Survey, which has been measuring social trends among Americans every one or two years since 1972, shows a long-term, gradual decline in happiness—and rise in unhappiness—from 1988 to the present.” – The Atlantic
The Paris Literary And Personal Partnership That Changed Literature
Jane Heap and Margaret Caroline Anderson were, separately, forces to be reckoned with. Together? “Via their shared endeavors and the cross-pollination of their ideas—artistic, literary, and spiritual—these two remarkable women left an indelible imprint on avant-garde culture between the wars.” – The Paris Review
UCLA Study: TV Diversity Up In Front Of The Camera, Not Better Behind It
“There has been a lot of progress for women and people of colour in front of the camera,” Darnell Hunt, dean of the school’s social sciences division and the study’s co-author, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, there has not been the same level of progress behind the camera.“ – Toronto Star (AP)
Baltimore Museum Of Art Chair Defends Sale Of Warhol, Marden And Still
Clair Zamoiski Segal asserts that “there is nothing short-sighted nor nefarious about deaccessioning. It is a regular practice, undertaken by every art museum in the United States. Assertions otherwise are simply a means of inflaming controversy and serve only to maintain the status quo of museums as repositories of riches serving the elite alone.” – ARTnews
How a 25-Year-Old From Nowhere Became Podcasting’s Go-To Guy
Within a couple years of starting his newsletter, this random guy was able to quit his day job and become, for lack of a better word, a full-time expert, his pod-related opinions and observations quoted in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. His newsletter Hot Pod now has between 20,000 and 25,000 subscribers (a combination of paid and free) and earns six figures, he says — a substantial figure for what amounts to a trade journal written almost like a personal zine, mixing the latest pod news with commentary and asides. – Medium
Our Biggest Strength Is Our Common Good. So Why Have We Forgotten This?
Anthropologists have long told us that, as a species neither particularly strong nor fast, humans survived because of our unique ability to create and cooperate… What is new is the extent to which so many civic and corporate leaders – sometimes entire cultures – have lost sight of our most precious collective quality. – Aeon