As Michelle Obama told the 2012 Democratic National Convention, “Being president doesn’t change who you are. It reveals who you are.” Mathew Hutson unpacks that statement.
Tag: 03.23.17
Joan Acocella: The Mercurial Trisha Brown
“At the same time as she was becoming more difficult, she was also becoming more accessible. Part of Judson Dance Theatre’s deglamourization program was a refusal, by most of the choreographers, most of the time, to use conventional music, sets, or costumes. But Brown eventually put music back in, and while she often said that she did so because she got tired of hearing the audience cough, it cannot have escaped her notice that most spectators prefer dances set to music.”
If Fiction Is The Thing That Changes The World, That Fiction Will Be YA
That might be because literary adult books need time and distance, not topicality – or at least that’s the idea. “Anecdotal evidence would suggest to me that YA novels take, on average, less time to get from idea to hardcover than literary novels, so that may be a factor in all of this. But there’s also the fact that in literary publishing, there’s a definite ick factor that comes along with being too timely.”
How Netflix Is Becoming A Global Media Company
“Netflix has morphed into an international service that streams in nearly every country around the world. This fast-paced growth has meant that the company’s dedication to improving models now extends to just about everything it does. Another reveal at Labs Day was that it has even created an online translation test, called Hermes, that helps it recruit the best foreign talent to dub its shows and movies.”
End Of History? The Much-Maligned Francis Fukuyama Was Right About Our Current Political Circumstances
Rarely read but often denigrated, it might be the most maligned, unfairly dismissed and misunderstood book of the post-war era. Which is unfortunate for at least one reason: Fukuyama might have done a better job of predicting the political turmoil that engulfed Western democracies in 2016 – from Brexit, to Trump, to the Italian Referendum – than anybody else.
This Building Would Be A Stunning Addition To Manhattan’s Slyline
Described as the ‘longest building in the world’, the project’s concept drawings reveal a skyscraper reaching an apex then curving back down. And featuring an elevator system that can travel in curves, horizontally and in loops.
Patti Smith Buys Arthur Rimbaud’s House
The dwelling, which is located near the French border with Belgium in a small town called Roche, is a reassembled version of Rimbaud’s childhood home. It was here that the late 19th-century French poet wrote his most famous piece, A Season in Hell, when he was merely 19 years old.
How English Has Created A New Caste System In India
“Fluency in English is endemic of the deep class-based divisions that continue to plague Indian society. A 2014 report from the Centre for Research and Debates in Development Policy in India found that only 20 percent of the population speaks English, and only 4 percent of the population speaks the language fluently. The report emphasizes that men in India who spoke fluent English earned 34 percent higher wages than those who had some fluency.”
‘A Renaissance Of Gore’: We’re In A Golden Age Of Onscreen Violence
Well, if “golden age” is the right term. “If you have a massive appetite for high body counts, stunning fight choreography, and general onscreen savagery, Hollywood might finally be meting out enough punishment for you to scream your safe word.” Jordan Crucchiola looks at how and why this has happened.
Carey Perloff To Retire From San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre After 25 Years
Perloff, who will leave after the end of next season, plans to write and direct on a freelance basis. One of the few women leaders in the still male-dominated American theater, the indefatigable Perloff first came to the 50-year-old ACT back in 1992 when the theater was in disarray both physically, in terms of the massive earthquake damage at the Geary, and in terms of its artistic reputation, which had stumbled in the wake of the volatile Bill Ball era.