Tag: 07.17.05

Where Have You Gone, Arthur Miller?

Julia Keller looks around at an increasingly frightening world full of violence and political grandstanding, and misses the old familiar outrage of playwright Arthur Miller. “We need a writer whose ferocity won’t be diminished by concerns for balance or propriety, who won’t get sidetracked by niceties. We need someone who will write with unapologetic rage. Yet moral certainty is in bad odor these days. Many see it as the cause of most of the world’s problems, from terrorism to less lethal forms of intolerance — and it’s true that a powerful cadre of holier-than-thou politicians is a special menace in America just now. Moral certainty indeed makes for bad public policy. But it makes for great art.”

Manufactured Radio – Hold The Local Sound

By now, nearly every major market in the U.S. has a radio station sporting the newfangled “Jack” format, in which blocks of hit music selected for its familiarity to an “average” national audience is interspersed with prerecorded voice tracks. “When a new Jack or Bob or Mike station enters a market, there tends to be a spike in ratings. But according to a new study… Jack and Bob face two problematic trends. At many such stations the audience size has diminished as the novelty of the format wears off, and the time each person spends listening to the station – an important statistic for advertisers – is fairly low, suggesting that people tune in for the fun of the songs but tune out in a short time for what other stations offer: on-air personalities and local news, perhaps.”

Selling Out

It has now become the norm for museums to sell their art, rent their space for blockbuster exhibitions, and otherwise exercise judgment more indicative of a for-profit corporation than a non-profit keeper of culture and art, says Michael Kimmelman. “A steady corrosion of faith in the integrity of institutions will be the long-term price for short-term wheeling and dealing. With faith goes the delicate ecosystem of charitable contributions and tax-free privileges. Why, the public will ask, do institutions like these reap the benefits of nonprofit status if they service private interests who shape the content of what’s on view and/or reap cash rewards?”

The Watchers & The Watched

The streets of Los Angeles have become a battleground for paparazzi and the Hollywood stars they hunt. “Emboldened by the sudden willingness of law-enforcement officials to take their complaints seriously, celebrities and their lawyers have painted a picture of paparazzi as criminals, stalkers and provocateurs-at-the-wheel, using their vehicles as weapons if necessary to catch a celebrity looking ugly, angry or upset. To the paparazzi, however, this portrayal is utter nonsense, at best the result of stars seeing something happening in their rear-view mirrors but failing to understand it.” Moreover, the real battle may be not between stars and photogs, but between the paparazzi themselves.

Nothing Better Than A Whole Bunch Of Naked Brits

Spencer Tunick has taken his passion for photographing mobs of naked people across the pond, and mounted his first large-scale UK event in the Tyneside district. “Volunteers from around the world – including Australia, Belgium and Peru – signed up, among them a vicar. They had to dodge chips and kebab remnants dropped by the previous night’s revellers as they made their way around a cordoned-off section of the Newcastle and Gateshead quaysides.”

The Musicians You Never See

Pop quiz: what member of a symphony orchestra typically knows the most about every piece of music on every program, and knows it before most of the orchestra is even aware of what they’ll be playing? Answer: the librarian. “Each year the symphony music librarians prepare approximately 80 different programs for the orchestra to perform — about 600 compositions totaling 35,000 parts for as many as 250 artists in a given performance. Those parts are rarely only a single page and often run to dozens of pages — all of which must be checked… The sheer volume of work in the library can be daunting.”

Gangsta Rap-As-Cockroach

Gangsta rap is back and the violence has escalated along with record sales. “Gangsta rap is like a cockroach infestation: Shining a light on it can cause some scurrying, but curbing it is a Sisyphean task. Targeting the corporate powers-that-be boldly ignores the practical here-and-now of the situation: Like it or not, children do listen to 50 Cent’s verbal gunplay and gossip about his real-life gunplay. While adults are busy battling companies, youths are soaking up the good, the bad and the ugly of hip-hop culture.”

Classically Speaking, Why Are We So Stuck In The Past?

“Overall, there are more quality composers working today than in any given year of the 18th or 19th centuries. Those eras overflowed with rote. Half the reason Beethoven remains so revered is because of how ho-hum many of his contemporaries were. But we don’t see it that way. We still mostly like the oldies. Why then, did classical music, especially in this country, take such a different course from the other arts, with audiences generally disconnected from contemporary creations?”