“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.”
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.”
Egyptian Surrealism (Oh Yes, They Did It There, Too)
“The calls to revise the canon of art history have grown louder in the last few years, but the research, curation, and collection of art from regions that have long been overlooked or ignored is a slow process. Egyptian modern art appears to be the latest to undergo this process of rediscovery and integration into the larger history of art.” (includes audio podcast)
The New Opera Producer Who Produces Out Of Her Apartment
Beth Morrison says she follows her guts and her ears in her work. “I won’t do anything unless I’m mad crazy about the music and the composer and really feeling like they’re contributing something to the field that is different,” she says.
Why Are Universities Investing So Much Money In Their Art Museums?
Sure, students want more art, but it also comes down to this: Universities have a steady supply of cash, and they know a good investment when they see it.
The Quickly Fading Art Of The Public Library Book Doctor
Well, this is somewhat depressing: “Menderies, often called book hospitals, were once common in library systems across the nation. But the digital revolution, cost-control pressures and shifting reader tastes pushed many libraries away from paper and the maintenance of fragile old classics.”
Snowed In? How About Settling In To Watch This 1964 Communist Ballet?
“The Red Detachment of Women, which was adapted from a 1961 film of the same name, was based on the true experience of an all-female Special Company of the Red Army during the Chinese Civil War. They survived a brutal attack on Hainan Island while their male counterparts did not, and were honored by Mao himself.”
How Our Campaign For Media Literacy Might Have Eroded The Truth
“In the United States, we believe that worthy people lift themselves up by their bootstraps. This is our idea of freedom. What it means in practice is that every individual is supposed to understand finance so well that they can effectively manage their own retirement funds. And every individual is expected to understand their health risks well enough to make their own decisions about insurance. To take away the power of individuals to control their own destiny is viewed as anti-American by so much of this country. You are your own master. Children are indoctrinated into this cultural logic early, even as their parents restrict their mobility and limit their access to social situations. But when it comes to information, they are taught that they are the sole proprietors of knowledge. All they have to do is ‘do the research’ for themselves and they will know better than anyone what is real.”
Free Speech? As An Idea It Requires A Few Rules…
“The main schism in today’s free speech debates pits liberals, advocating unbridled speech as a tool of freedom, against radicals, who unmask unbridled speech as a tool of class privilege. But that rift tells only one story. In almost all democracies today (the United States being the sole and oft-criticised exception), mainline liberal doctrines overwhelmingly require limits on provocative speech.”
Recording Companies And Pandora Announce Bid For High Resolution Streaming
A new study commissioned ahead today’s announcement by UMG, entitled “Global Insight: The Appeal of High-Res Audio (Studio Quality Sound)” presents a variety of data supporting a growing market for hi-res audio. The findings claimed that 85 percent of U.S. consumers say audio quality is “very important” to them; 48 percent of U.S. consumers are willing to pay more for better audio quality; and perhaps most significantly that “71 percent of existing music streaming subscribers are interested in the option of studio quality sound.”
How Do We Make American Museums Multilingual?
“Making museums multilingual (and not just via wall text) is a gargantuan task. It’s resource-intensive, requiring the investment of capital as well as time and, in best-case scenarios, incorporation into the museum’s overall strategic, marketing, acquisitions, programming, and hiring plans.”
In An Era Of Viral Media And Fake News, What Is The Role Of Libraries
“Making sense of information is hard, maybe increasingly so in today’s world. So what role have academic libraries played in helping people make sense of world bursting at the seams with information?”
Pop Culture Gets Metaphysical
“Across popular entertainment lately, science fiction, theoretical physics, and spirituality have blended to offer not escapism but wait-there’s-more-ism, offering a tantalizing hint that our perception of reality is too narrow – and that with a little bit of effort, we can see extraordinary things.”
Louvre Attendance Down By Over 20% In Past Two Years
As recently as 2014, Paris’s flagship museum had a record 9.3 million visitors – and those numbers were projected to rise to 12 million by 2025. Then came the terrorist attacks.
Did That 1896 Film Clip Of A Moving Train Really Cause The Audience To Run From The Screen In Panic?
“According to the tale, as the silent black-and-white image of a moving locomotive filled a movie screen in Paris, the people in the cinema thought it was going to drive right into them. They panicked, and bolted for the back of the theater.” In fact, that’s probably the movie business’s first-ever urban legend. Eric Grundhauser walks us through the evidence. (includes video)
Miami Herald Eliminates All Classical Music Coverage
It’s already been nearly a decade since the paper laid off its critic, Lawrence A. Johnson; since that time, the Herald has licensed reviews and articles from Johnson’s subsequent venture, South Florida Classical Review. Now the paper has abandoned even that.
To Sing Bess In ‘Breaking The Waves’, Keira Duffy Had To Train, And Eat, Like An Athlete
“I had probably the most rigorous routine I’ve ever had in my professional life for this role. There was a lot of physical conditioning I had to do. It’s a monster role, and the emotional stakes just get higher and higher and that takes an incredible toll physically.”