Tag: 10.05.16

In Praise Of Shorter Performances – And Even Abridging The Text

“Terence Rattigan, England’s master of the well-made play, predicted back in the ’50s that younger playgoers conditioned by movies and TV would eventually start to chafe at the three-hour-two-intermission running time that was then the theatrical norm.” Terry Teachout praises the trend toward shorter, no-intermission plays, and suggests that we should feel free to make cuts in longer works by the likes of Eugene O’Neill and Richard Wagner.

‘The Sidekick In His Own Movie’: Anger Over ‘Whitewashing’ In New Bruce Lee Biopic

“Audiences of Bruce Lee biopic Birth of the Dragon have criticised the film’s portrayal of the martial arts star, as well as the extent to which it relegates his story below that of a white co-star. … IMDb users who have seen the film protest that it actually focuses on a fictional white friend, Steve McKee, who learns kung fu and romances a Chinese woman.”

In 2016, Why Is Hollywood Still ‘Whiting Up’ Asian Characters And Stories?

“There are huge differences between whitewashing and the ‘white saviour’ trope, but both exist due to a sense in Hollywood that audiences won’t turn out to see a movie unless there are Caucasian faces involved somewhere. This is especially strange given research shows that people of colour, Hispanics in particular, make up a sizable portion of the US cinemagoing public.”

Pittsburgh Symphony Management Makes, Then Disavows, Threat To Hire Replacements For Striking Musicians

“The management of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra has told its musicians that it ‘has an obligation to keep Heinz Hall open’ and may ‘hire replacement workers, either on a temporary or permanent basis, as will be determined by the business necessity we face.’ But COO Christian Schörnich, who sent the letter to the orchestra players on strike, said that statement is simply a legal formality … and that the organization has ‘no intention’ of hiring replacement musicians to play orchestra concerts.”

The Cost Of Becoming A “Prestigious” University

“It seems to me that prestige only accrues to those at the very top—not top 20, more like top five—and when we’re talking prestige, we’re almost exclusively talking about private institutions. Unfortunately, the only way to survive in a culture that continues to turn away from education as a public good is to “compete,” and the only way we know how to compete is for “prestige.” But what is the cost on public institutions of chasing prestige?”

Can We Separate What We Know About The Celebrity From Their Work Onscreen?

“It’s only natural that we struggle to separate the performer or the artist from the art, because the way we consume entertainment is designed to conflate our concept of a person’s identity with the fictional one they project onscreen. We sometimes know too much about an actor, certainly our most elite A-listers, to fully forget who they are while we’re watching them work.”

Joyce Carol Oates, Twitter Troll

“Prolific across all mediums, it is not difficult to imagine Oates delighting in the act of tweeting, of tossing thoughts into the world, both for the enjoyment of the craft and to see what happens, like tiny crystalline bombs. … Joyce Carol Oates has poked 28,000 140-character holes in the notion that anyone can or should serve as a universally competent public intellectual.”

Want To Fight Racism? Teach The Humanities

“In particular, it is the humanities that teach us how not to be racists, by showing us how to open ourselves up to what is different. Whether a given humanist is a modernist, postmodernist, New Critic, Marxist, or an adherent of any of dozens of other approaches, what she does in the classroom is always the same: She takes some cultural product that seems at first strange and off-putting — a poem by some ancient Greek or Persian poet, a novel by some African or Chinese author, a statue from an indigenous culture whose true name we don’t even know — and, if she is a good teacher, makes it familiar enough to be interesting.”