Lee Siegel is something of a legend among critics – a blunt, no-holds-barred assessor of other people’s talent and worth, working in an era when most critics restrict themselves to polite asides and gentle rebukes. So it’s not a surprise that Siegel harbors some pretty dark views of the cultural scene in general, using a new book to rail against “an art world obsessed with money; business-savvy cultural producers out for a buck and little else; and a complacent review corps backing the whole thing up by issuing bland, rubber-stamped judgments.”
Tag: 11.20.06
The Cloud Over Korean Theatre
“There is a double pain in contemporary South Korean theatre; an anguish about the absence and suffering of their compatriots in the ruined North, and a mourning for the victims, many of them leftists, of the South’s right-wing military dictatorship, which fell in 1988.”
Burstyn: Acting Needs Help
Actress Ellen Burstyn, co-president of the Actors Studio, says the craft of acting is in trouble these days. “Acting? I think it needs some help. TV has lowered the bar. With quicker schedules everything is rushed, so the quality gets lowered.”
A Rant About Diversity
“What is culture? Walter Benn Michaels argues that our respectful talk about cultures is just a way of preserving racialist thinking. He asserts that belief in cultures is based on circular logic (how do we know what practices belong to certain identities if there are no intrinsic identities for them to belong to?) but we cling to it out of an ulterior motive.”
A Case For Updating Radio 3
There has been an uproar in the UK about plans to change programming on Radio 3. But Norman Lebrecht defends the impulse to change: “It seems to me that Radio 3 is attempting honestly to refresh its look while staying true to principle. If nothing else, the upsurge of protest will give it a welcome boost in the long-running struggle with Classic FM, which will never arouse the same passions.”
Video On iPods Slow To Catch On
Video iPods don’t seem to be used much for video, reports a new study. “Owners of Apple’s ubiquitous portable media device spend far more time on it listening to music or audio podcasts than they do using it to watch TV or movies.”
Dancing Penguins Beat Up On James Bond
A movie about dancing penguins was champ at the movie box office over the weekend, beating out James Bond. “Happy Feet is just ahead by a flipper. It’s unusual to have two movies this close, battling for that No. 1 position.”
Hollywood’s Fast Food Addiction
“No one is a bigger supporter of the fast-food emporiums that have colonized the known world than Hollywood’s studios. For the last 10 years, Disney had a cozy partnership with McDonald’s, with promotions specifically aimed at introducing young fans of ‘The Incredibles’ and ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ to the pleasures of Happy Meals. The 10-year pact, valued at more than $2 billion, has just ended, but Disney has not ruled out doing individual McDonald’s tie-ins in the future.”
Reinventing The Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum director Arnold Lehman is reinventing the museum. But “Lehman crossed a line in his relations with the art world this summer when he reorganized the Brooklyn Museum’s curatorial staff –– dividing it into two teams, one for collections and the other for exhibitions. Some saw this as an effort to centralize power and thus pursue his vision for the museum more efficiently. By October, two senior curators and two board members had resigned out of frustration with the museum’s direction. It seems a good time to ask: Setting aside the question of Mr. Lehman’s popularity (or lack of it) in the arts community, will his approach work?”
Music In The Laser
“Miya Masaoka is a composer, koto player and inventor of the Laser Koto — a tripod-mounted laser array that she plays by passing her hands through the beams, triggering a variety of sampled and processed sounds from her G4 PowerBook. Each flick of the wrist and twitch of the finger is interpreted as a stroke on the instrument’s virtual strings.”