She stalked away from her one paid job (teaching) after only a few months, invested cannily in railway stocks, “she refused to use her rackety health as an excuse, instead throwing herself into strenuous physical domestic labour. … And if by time travel magic we could fast forward Brontë to the age of the suffragettes we would find her snorting in derision and, quite possibly, setting a large dog on the women in purple and green. In other words, Brontë is not on ‘our side’ and were we to meet her, we would not like her. And that, really, is the point.”
Tag: 07.21.18
The Big Question Behind The Massive Spending On Culture (And Starchitecture) In The Gulf
Rowan Moore: “Should well-intentioned and influential outsiders refuse to legitimise what should be challenged or might they hope that (for example) the conditions of migrant workers will be improved through the attention brought by the Louvre and the World Cup? Does the presence of Nabokov on the library shelves outweigh governmental support for extremism? Where on the scale from Faustian to Abrahamic is the bargain being struck? The truthful answer is …”
The Highest-Earning Musicians Of 2017
Of the tens of millions these big pop stars earn, note that selling records and streaming accounts for a small percentage.
At Comic-Con, Women Directors Say It’s Way Past Time To Get Some Parity In Hollywood
TV is marginally better than movies, but both are still pretty bad. “‘There’s a huge conversation around this issue, a lot of social media, press, but the statistics haven’t really changed,’ said Kirsten Schaffer, executive director of Women in Film.”
The California Guy Who Became A Superstar In China Before Returning To Find Fame At Home
Daniel Wu, now starring on Into the Badlands on AMC, is from the Bay Area and attended architecture school at the University of Oregon. Then he visited Hong Kong, and was spotted by a talent scout. He says, “As a kid growing up in the ’70s, ’80s, as a person of color, I didn’t see a future for that. In my field, there was a roadblock. And so, I basically had to go to Asia and get successful there in order to come back here to have success here.”
Baltimore’s Independent Popular Music Artists Are Rewriting The City’s Sound
It’s all about local in Baltimore, and musicians know it as well as anyone. “The city’s emerging musicians represent a collage of perspectives, aesthetics and reasons for being. Some of them are decidedly activists; others wear their political views more lightly, or express skepticism about art’s ability to effect change. Most of the artists acknowledge the influence of jazz and hip-hop in their music, even as it defies categorization. And each in their own way believes Baltimore informed their creativity.”
Reminder: Noal Cohen’s Jazz History Website
Here’s a great place to learn jazz history, including a new retrospective of Miles Davis’ Capitol Records period.
Black Women Filmmakers In South Africa Face A Long, Obstacle-Filled Road To Success
Filmmaker Zamo Makhwanazi: “We’re all stuck in the same writer’s rooms, where we’re worked to death. … How is it that we’re carrying the industry on our backs, we are the creators, we are the hardest-working people in the industry, but we have the least power?”
Stage Workers Picket Toronto Exhibition Space After They’re Locked Out By Management
The site’s board of governors locked out the union, IATSE Local 158, and then asked the stagehands and technical workers not to picket until after the Canadian National Exhibition. The union responded, “That’s not going to happen. … We are not going to surrender our rights under the law and jeopardize the safety of Torontonians and other visitors to Exhibition Place as a favour to Tory’s friends. Nor will we put visitors at risk.”
Computers Have Analyzed The ‘Most Danceable’ Number One Singles, But Not To Tell Us The Answer
Ah HAH: “It was to identify song features that could be predictive of mega-hits. Researchers found that top-ranked songs tended to have more difference from past hits than lower-ranked songs, defying the trope that popular songs are just copies of other popular songs.”