“Kitsch encourages us to dwell on our own satisfactions and anxieties; it tells us to be pleased with what we have always felt and known. It reaches us at the level where we are easiest to please … Beauty, on the other hand, demands we consider its meaning. It implies a larger world than the one we deal with every day. […] Still, if nearly everyone likes [kitsch], how bad can it be?”
Tag: 04.28.09
Jazz At Lincoln Center Settles Suit Against Delinquent Donor
“Jazz at Lincoln Center, the world’s largest performing-arts center for jazz, said it’s discussing a settlement with Pennsylvania insurance executive Andre V. Duggin over $327,500 in promised donations. On April 15, Jazz at Lincoln Center sued Duggin, … claiming he reneged midway through a five-year commitment to donate $500,000.”
Big Holes In The E-Book Catalogues
E-books may be the wave of the future, but some important books and authors are not riding that wave. Some writers or their estates object to e-books on principle (J.K. Rowling, Tennessee Williams); some think the royalty rate is too low; some doubt the market for older titles is sufficiently large; sometimes the contractual issues are just too complicated. But such big-name holdouts as Tom Clancy, Danielle Steel, and the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien are starting to come around.
Clear Channel Slashes 590 Jobs, Some On-Air
“Clear Channel Communications Inc. cut 590 jobs in its radio division and suspended its 401(k) employee-matching program as part of a restructuring. Including today’s reduction, the largest U.S. radio broadcaster has cut its workforce by 12 percent this year…. The latest round will take place in engineering, information technology, and programming.”
Network TV An Irrelevant Battleground For Indecency Fight
“In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court half-heartedly prolonged the futile game of ‘whack-a-mole’ that the federal government continues to play in policing indecency…. Yet with six justices separately weighing in with opinions and the media landscape evolving, it’s hard to escape a sense that this whole debate — especially as it pertains to regulating a lonely island of broadcasters within a media free-fire zone — is operating on borrowed time.”
Judge Rules Collector Has No Standing To Sue MOCA
“A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has tossed out one of Clint Arthur’s two class action lawsuits alleging that L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art and Louis Vuitton North America violated the Fine Prints Act, a California law that requires dealers in limited-edition art reproductions to certify their authenticity and provide information about how rare they are and how they were created.” The rejected suit stemmed from Arthur’s purchase of a trio of Takashi Murakami prints.
How Sacha Baron Cohen Gets Away With It
How does the creator of Ali G, Borat and Bruno manage to get so many real people to appear on film in such embarrassing situations? And how does the actor himself (out of character) manage to remain so publicity-shy? There are quite deliberate methods to his madness.
Hulu Roars Ahead With More Than 41.6M Unique Viewers
“Hulu’s growth is impressive, considering that it launched just over a year ago amid a lot of doubt about whether it would succeed against YouTube and other video content sites. Now Disney is close to a deal to join and the site has become so popular that it is becoming a source of tension among those in the industry worried about Hulu siphoning away viewers from television.”
No, Our Current University System Is Not Like Detroit
“Despite an academic job market that has been anemic at best and disastrous at worst for more than 35 years, top Ph.D. programs still receive far more qualified applicants than they can hope to admit, includ[ing] a rising proportion from overseas. America’s position in basic research, as measured in such things as Nobel Prizes, seems unchallenged. European academics generally regard the American academic system with untrammeled envy … [T]his is the sort of ‘obsolescence’ that Chrysler and The New York Times can only dream of.”
Vancouver Cultural Olympiad Announces Programming
Among the more than 600 cultural events accompanying the 2010 Winter Olympics are new theatre works by Laurie Anderson and Robert Lepage, dance premieres by choreographers Marie Chouinard and Crystal Pite, Alberta Ballet’s dance to Joni Mitchell songs, Mahler’s mammoth 8th Symphony, a new staging of Nixon in China, and a stage work by Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland.