“Some of the best known lurid ‘facts’ about Jayne Mansfield, the American film star of the ’50s and ’60s, are based on rumour. So the directors of a new documentary about her short and scandalous life faced a difficult task. Was Mansfield, one of the first actresses to be marketed as a ‘blonde bombshell’, also a violin-playing intellectual with superb comic timing who spoke five languages? Or was the star who came to be known as the ‘working man’s Marilyn Monroe’ actually a devil worshipper who was decapitated in a car crash as the result of a curse?”
Tag: 04.29.18
Read Excerpts From Zora Neale Hurston’s Interviews With The Last Slave To Survive The Middle Passage
Hurston trained as a cultural anthropologist, and Barracoon, which languished in her archives for decades and is only now being published, is the result of months of interviews with Cudjo Lewis, who was kidnapped in what is now Benin and brought to Alabama in 1860.
NEA Chairman Jane Chu To Step Down
“National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Jane Chu said in a statement that she will resign June 4, after four years at the head of the federal arts agency. The Trump administration has twice targeted the NEA for elimination, but Chu made no reference to this turbulence in her statement, saying only that it has been an ‘honor and privilege’ to serve as the agency’s chairwoman.”
What Larry Harvey Created With Burning Man
Burning Man is far, far, far from perfect. It’s still mostly hedonistic (with some awesome exceptions) and corny at times. It’s very white (The Root and The Guardian have both done great interviews with black Burners talking about why). There is always some percentage of douchebags (usually around 20-30 percent) who suck and do stupid things. And, sure, there’s plenty of sex and drugs and music, and some people can’t handle that in a mature way. But I can’t overstate how much I owe to Larry Harvey. Thanks to him, I learned what it is to be inspired by astonishingly creative people, weird people, sexy people, challenging people; to let go of the New York cynicism for a little while; to experience some of the most intense, vivid, and alive times of my life. I learned how to live.
Avengers Sets New All-Time Opening Weekend Box Office Record – $630 Million
Internationally, Infinity War dislodged Jurassic World ($316.7M) at No. 2 (that movie also had China at open). In comps that did not include China at the bow, Infinity War‘s overseas start blew past Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows – Part 2 ($314M) and Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($281M). Worldwide. Only three movies had previously topped $500M in their openings: F8, The Force Awakens and Jurassic World.
How Theatre Can Help Us See Bodies Differently
The power of theatrical visibility has the potential to create real change in society towards the acceptance of “othered” individuals, as we have seen from the power of queer characters onstage, which translated from the stage to movies and TV, and, finally, into the national vocabulary. But this progress has notably lagged when it comes to the representation of disability onstage.
Are We Really Facebook’s Product?
Behind the aphorism’s sudden ubiquity lies a long and surprising history—one that yields a fresh perspective on our present technocultural moment. It suggests that Facebook’s business model is neither as novel as it might seem, nor as deterministic of its values as critics assume. The pithiness that makes “you are the product” so quotable risks obscuring the complex pact between Facebook and its users, in ways that make social media’s problems seem inevitable and insoluble. They’re not—but if we want to fix them, the first thing we need to do is redefine our relationship.
‘Hair’ Is Fifty, And The Nude Scene Is Still A Big Deal
Parliament had to intervene so the show could be produced in London – yes, it took an act of government to allow the actors to be naked onstage. Back on Broadway, during previews in 1968, show co-writer Gerome Ragni explained that the rules about nudity were flexible in the production: “Anybody who feels like it can take his clothes off. Everybody wants to now, even the stagehands. We turned them on.”
Dear TV, YouTube Is Coming For Your Ad Revenue
Why? It’s obvious: “More than 50% of U.S. consumers aged 18-49 in U.S. are ‘light’ TV viewers (in the bottom one-third of the total TV audience based on minutes viewed), according to Nielsen. However, 90% of that group watches YouTube videos.”
In A Los Angeles Neighborhood Suffering From Longterm Lack Of Investment And Few Parks, Residents Take To The Streets To Play
In Boyle Heights, there’s a delicate balance to maintain – the city knows Boyle Heights residents are not interested in a threatening wave of gentrification. So a one-day “play street” plan might actually be a good solution. “What a play street is not is a replacement for permanent parks. … But it bridges the gap in a way that’s really needed.”