“It is not simply that Emma Bovary wants things. Shopping is a key to her dreams, a way of widening the horizons of her provincial, bourgeois but boring, life… Shopping in modernity is not a simple matter of material greed. As Emma’s musings demonstrate, shopping links the localised world with the expanding horizons and dreams of the modern world.”
Tag: 12.16.08
Get Dumped? Blame You’ve Got Mail
Researchers in Edinburgh claim that watching too many romantic comedies can lead to “unrealistic expectations” in real-life relationships. Fans of the movies “often fail to communicate with their partner. Many held the view if someone is meant to be with you, then they should know what you want without you telling them.”
James Frey Decides To Enrage A Whole New Set Of People
Having infuriated book buyers, the publishing industry and Oprah Winfrey, the author of the faked memoir A Million Little Pieces is writing what he calls ” the third book of the Bible,” which will depict Jesus Christ living with a hooker and performing gay marriages.
What’s Killing Newspapers Is The Same Thing That Killed The Slide Rule
“The only reason we’re so well-informed about journalists’ suffering is they have easy access to a megaphone. The underlying cause of their grief can be traced to the same force that has destroyed other professions and industries: digital technology… Wherever digital zeros and ones can dislodge analog processes, they either have or are. Call it a digital slay-ride.”
Christmas – The Last Universal Music?
“Perhaps the strangest thing about the whole holiday music canon is how bizarrely anachronistic it is. No new tune has entered that repertoire since the novelty number Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer became an unlikely yuletide favorite three decades ago.”
Brooklyn Museum Sends Its Costume Collection To The Met
“After three years of negotiations, the financially strained Brooklyn Museum has arranged to transfer its rich collection of American and European costumes and accessories to the Metropolitan Museum of Art so that it can be properly cared for and exhibited. Although widely considered one of the best in the world, the Brooklyn costume collection has been out of public view for more than a decade.”
Iraq Recovers Looted Artifacts
“Iraqi officials have seized 228 ancient artifacts, some looted from Iraq’s National Museum, which smugglers intended to smuggle out of the country.”
Oprah’s Company Moves To HBO
“Oprah Winfrey is ending a long-term relationship with ABC by taking her production company to HBO for a three-year deal to make movies, documentaries and TV series.”
Orchestra London (Ontario) Gets C$500K Loan Guarantee From City Council
“By a 13 to 5 vote, council made city taxpayers the backstop to an organization whose financial distress is even worse than orchestra officials had revealed last week – a shortfall projected to grow to C$900,000 by the end of June.”
LACMA Formally Proposes Merger With MOCA
“Confirming weeks of rumors, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art… has presented a plan to the board of the Museum of Contemporary Art for a proposed merger with the financially troubled MOCA.” The proposal names the locations at which MOCA’s collections and programs would be housed.