A high school teacher who does surveys and knows only 15 percent of any class ever reads the entire book thinks that “if reading were less of a spectator sport maybe we’d inhabit a world better informed, more critical—and critical in a reflective rather than a reactive sense—a world shaped more collectively by thoughtfulness, by magnanimity.”
Tag: 09.19.17
The Predicament Of Arabs And Muslims In The American Theatre
Playwright Yussef El Guindi: “Americans are so averse to politics in their entertainment that the simple act of including Arab or Muslim characters in a play exposes it to the charge of being overly political or didactic. And if the play is written by an Arab or a Muslim? The writer must surely then be peddling some political agenda. Even if, for example, the play revolves around an Arab or Muslim family preparing a Thanksgiving dinner … The very act of rendering a group of people usually depicted negatively in a three-dimensional way is deemed a political act.”
The Movie ‘In & Out’ Predicted The Progress Of Gay Rights 20 Years Ago
Alyssa Rosenberg: “In & Out feels both like a slightly embarrassing artifact of its time and an ultimately correct argument for how (lots if not all of) America would change in the decades since its release.” On the other hand, “if [the movie] were released today, it would be drowned in an actual flood of think pieces.”
Inside The Head Of A Guy Really Listening To John Cage’s 4’33” For The First Time
John Haskell has a very Cagean – or Beckettian, or Joycean – experience: “I was craning my ears, or pricking up my ears, or opening the metaphorical doors of hearing, and we don’t have a word for what the mind does, the way it turns from object to object, turning from the moment in front of it to another moment, to a past or a future, and having heard the subway sounds and the voices behind the wall, I expected to hear a candy wrapper being opened, the crinkling cellophane echoing through the audience like music, or ‘music,’ but there was no cellophane wrapper. But in thinking about the cellophane wrapper I was hearing the music, which was part of the let’s-make-art-out-of-anything spirit that was in the air in 1952, when Cage composed 4’33”.”
Not Even Degenerate – The Miraculous Mondrian That’s Not A Mondrian At All
An untitled canvas that had been in the Nazis’ notorious “degenerate art” exhibition and thought lost seemingly turned up at a show in Brussels last year. No such luck. “What started out as a potentially major cultural discovery now turns out instead to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of presenting works of art owned by private collectors that have not been systematically vetted.”
When Languages Collide: How Creoles Are Born
In this “Lexicon Valley” podcast, linguist John McWhorter talks about how pidgins arise and gradually develop into new languages.
Why The New York Times Will Recommend A Play With A Dirty Word In The Title But Won’t Print That Title
When Ben Brantley reviewed a revival of Suzan-Lori Parks’s Fucking A (a take on The Scarlet Letter), he wrote, “since I am not a character in this work but an employee of The New York Times, I shall be referring to this play only as ‘A.’ (The full title places an Anglo-Saxon adjective before the ‘A,’ one commonly used on cable television but not considered fit for print here.)” Commenters were not impressed: “Given the rather grisly subject matter, I’m wondering if the people who might attend the play would get the vapors if they were to see the name in print.” So the standards editor for the Times explains why the paper won’t print “Fucking A.” (The commenters remain unimpressed.)
‘Mother!’ – What Does It Mean? Its Director And Stars Explain Hollywood’s Weirdest Movie In Years
Melena Ryzik talks to Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, and Darren Aronofsky. And no, they don’t agree on what the film means, or even necessarily what it’s about.
‘We Got Ridiculously Lucky’: Florida Theatres Clean Up After Hurricane Irma
“While some theatres could not be contacted because phone and power service still were absent Tuesday, managers at some of the most seriously affected theatres considered themselves blessed that they avoided the severity of damage suffered by Houston’s Alley Theatre. Forecasters predicted much, much worse, especially in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach area, which was hammered but escaped with minimal damage.”
‘The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever!’ Breaks Attendance Record
The show of work by Grayson Perry with that hyperbolic title was, by average daily visitors, the busiest show that London’s Serpentine Galleries have ever held, according to Serpentine management. (Reporter Gareth Harris cites a show from last summer that had higher numbers; a Serpentine spokeswoman gives reasons why that one doesn’t count.)