“Kicking against what they consider outdated censorship, a booksellers’ association has reacted to the seizure of the non-fiction book Fariña by launching a website [which] includes a digital tool that searches for and locates the 80,000 words that make up the forbidden manuscript from within the text of Don Quixote, extracting them one by one to recompose the banned book. On Friday after two days online, the website had racked up over 30,000 hits, according to the Booksellers Guild of Madrid.”
Tag: 03.17.18
Saudi Arabia Starts Building An Entertainment Industry From Scratch
“Saudi Arabia has long been known as one of the world’s most conservative places … Concerts and theater were largely banned, and even the notion of fun was often frowned upon as un-Islamic. Now the kingdom is lightening up with comic book festivals, dance performances, concerts and monster truck rallies. … [The kingdom] needs to build an ‘entire ecosystem’ for arts, tourism and entertainment, [and] has budgeted $64 billion for it over the next decade.”
Fake News And B.S. Really Can Mess With Your Brain – But Satire Can Combat The Damage
“Research that shows that the brain has to first accept a lie as true, only to analyze it, then refute it. Over time, the brain tires of that process and slowly starts to accept the lies as true. … What is most interesting is that processing falsehoods and processing certain types of satire appears to follow a very similar cognitive path.” Sophia McLennen looks at how this works, and argues that this is why the right hates political satire so much. (And satire worked so well in Weimar Germany, right?)
As London’s Rents Keep Rising, Warnings That The City Will Lose Its Artists And Its ‘Creative Crown’
Yikes: “Anna Harding, the chief executive of Space studios, which provides premises for nearly 800 artists including three Turner prize winners, blamed rising property prices and shrinking studios for dramatically squeezing the time and space available for creative activity. Artists now face a choice between working full time to pay the rent and fitting in a few hours in their studios at weekends, or giving up entirely.”
The Historical Information About Racism, Anti-Catholicism, And Much More Encoded In Old Folk Songs
Oh: “‘Southern folk music’s overwhelming dominance — for all its championing by non-Southern liberals — also subtly reinforces the ‘heritage not hate’ defenses of the Confederate flag and other antebellum and pre–civil rights nostalgia,’ Josh Garrett-Davis, the Gamble assistant curator at the Autry Museum of the American West, wrote recently. This cultural rebranding began after the North withdrew its troops, and the South, in destroying the apparatus of Northern occupation, played down slavery, and played up history and states’ rights.”
A New Opera Confronts The My Lai Massacre, And Its Long Shadow
It’s been 50 years since the massacre, and since Hugh Thompson and his helicopter crew stopped it from being far worse. Now, as the opera plays around the country, traditional Vietnamese instrument expert Van-Anh Vanessa Vo explains why it’s so important. “As a child in Hanoi, Vietnam, Vo learned about the My Lai Massacre in school and uses instruments made out of old artillery shells in the opera, which she described as a memorial to the murdered civilians as well as Thompson and his crew.”
In Pennsylvania, A High School Decides Its Stagehands Don’t Need To Have ‘Blackened Faces’ During Shows
You call it ‘blackened faces,’ the parent who pointed it out was concerned that it looks more like ‘blackface’ – perhaps it’s time, Bethel Park High School, near Pittsburgh, to call the whole thing off, or at least replace that practice with black ski masks. (Note: This article uncritically says that blackening stagehand faces is something “stage crews around the country have [been doing] for years” – but in the comments, many theatre folks step in to say that’s untrue.)
Reconstructing Van Gogh, Monet, And Other ‘Lost’ (Or Destroyed) Masterpieces
A group called Factum Arte is using high-quality 3D scanners to bring works of art that have been damaged or partially lost back to life. And it has some intense results: “It’s absolutely breathtaking. … I think Monet would believe it was his painting.” Um, time for an update to the classic Walter Benjamin essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”?
Technology Is Ruining Music
Not in the way you might expect, though. “Everyone seems so excited by the fact that music is more accessible, people can find new artists more easily and it’s cheaper, without focusing on the potential negatives, not least of which is that idiots can more easily listen to your favourite music.”
The Bay Area Kid Who Became A Superstar In China, And Returned To Hollywood For A Blockbuster Action Movie
Daniel Wu’s life is not well-known in the U.S., even though he’s a Cali native. Why? He randomly took a trip to Hong Kong after he got an architecture degree, and in Hong Kong, he was discovered – and turned into a movie star, with three movies his first year there and six the year after, and more, and more, and more … “The 43-year-old actor and producer is now a superfamous A-lister who gets swarmed by paparazzi whenever he leaves the house.”