Somehow stimulus going to the arts is a waste of money?

From an e-mail I received yesterday from my fave group, Pig Iron:

This Wednesday, we awoke to find an unexpectedly early lump of coal in our stocking. Senators John McCain and Tom Coburn issued a report (available here) on 100 purportedly "silly" grants issued by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. A grant to Pig Iron administered by the National Endowment for the Arts, earmarked to retain one of our staff positions and to help fund our seven actors' salaries for Welcome to Yuba City, somehow made the cut (it's at #26, for easy scrolling.) Pretty amazing.

I have nothing to say, besides that apparently McCain and Coburn don't understand "job retention".

Hilary is Mad Awesome

With a possible emphasis on mad.  This makes me exhilarated, but also kinda confused....are her words gonna get a good result or a bad result?  I have no clue, but her commentary is pure feminist - "back off and respect my authority, misogynistic asshole" is what I imagine her internal monologue going :D

The Playgoer: Ginsburg & Scalia: Live on Stage!

The Playgoer: Ginsburg & Scalia: Live on Stage!

If only I could have seen this - it sounds like the perfect confluence of my interests :D

if you read the comments, in casting I would definitely put Scalia as Baron Scarpia from Tosca, but Ginsburg....maybe the head nun in Dead Man Walking?

I <3 the Phillies

If you had given me 3 more months in Philadelphia, God, I would be a rabid Phillies fan right now. As it is, I would marry Cliff Lee in a split second.

What would be awesome...

So, some of you may know that I work as a theater manager at my high school. Well, I saw this about a community theater, and it sounds so wonderful and cute I wanted to hug it and replace the building I manage with this one. anyways, read about it here. I've been super busy, sorry for not posting.

"Its Africa"

Sometimes you read a review of a piece of theater and you wish beyond wishing that you were there, in that moment, watching it happen. This looks like the coolest show ever, and I wished I could be there so badly. Imagine! A baboon Lady Macbeth!

Because I don't want to be a Blogroll

Be warned: this is a written conversation with myself. So if my arguments are spotty, please be understanding.

My brother told me, when I was writing a previous entry, that references to Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia are the easy way out when speaking about propaganda art. But there is nothing in the past century that can ever ever compare to the brutal slaughter of artists under those regimes. And nothing really to compare to the utter heartbreak that I know artists felt when they had to decide whether to leave the country that they loved, because they feared for their lives, or to stay, and hope beyond hope that their work - their plays, novels, and movies - wouldn't be censored, mutilated, or silenced by oppressive governments.

Don't get me wrong: Russian and German artists experienced two different situations; one had their political compatriots go rogue on them, and the others realized that their government had changed and left them high and dry. But both sides had friends flee or become soulless mouths for the machine.

Weimar Theater in post WWI Germany was a beautiful, sensual, completely immoral world that would have given the Christianists absolute conniption fits. You don't often learn that 1920's Weimar movies included work like "Madchen in Uniform" - the first ever lesbian movie. If you do the research, you get the feeling it was Explicit. Then you learn that the movie's ending was changed in order to pander to the Nazis. Then the Nazis banned the movie, and it wasn't seen until the mid 70's.If you went to Swarthmore with me, then maybe you saw Spring Awakening (the original play - it was popular with Weimar artists). Explicit.

Gorky was a communist playwright and author whose plays are, quite honestly, pure Communist propaganda, and not particularly well written, though they do get better as he writes more (practice = perfect). But they were HIS writing before Stalin came to power. He desperately wanted to show people why they should support the Communist agenda, and he believed in his work. By all accounts, he was tremendously successful. He leaves Russia, visits the US, criticizes Lenin's restrictions on freedom of Speech, and pretty much decides not to come back to Russia. But he returns and gets locked up - house arrest in Moscow. After that, he writes mostly propaganda intended to prop up the Stalinist regime. He may have been assassinated by the NKVD.

So, Democratic and Republican Bloggers alike, BE CAREFUL with your words and your opinions, and your oh-so-doomful or scornful remarks. For the Democrats, there is a reason why Rocco Landesman forcefully said (4 days ago):

Fact 5:		This call was completely unrelated to NEA's grantmaking, which is highly regarded for its independence and integrity. Artistic quality, excellence and merit are the guidelines for decision-making; favoritism or political affiliation plays no role in NEA grantmaking.
Fact 6:		The NEA is a successful, independent federal agency that has supported the best of the arts and arts education for nearly 45 years. We take our responsibility to the American public very seriously and are committed to upholding this public trust.

That reason is because Art, no matter the purpose towards which it is aimed, is powerful. Even if it's the simple artistry of a well-framed photograph that seemingly catches the President ogling a teenager's butt. Or if it's the Hope poster. Or if it's a frighteningly explicit solo performance work about AIDS where infected blood is spilled onstage.

And if the Government starts meddling in the Arts - starts selectively funding art that markets one point of view, that truly is a sign that something bad is going down. So many people are right to freak the heck out. But I'm not sure the Republicans have a better record - just the opposite one, where instead of selectively funding, they try to selectively not fund. And even "moderate" Republicans don't have a particularly good record where it comes to supporting all the arts, forget about a few. As Andrew Sullivan said in 2006,

"For good measure, I'd get rid of the NEA and the Education Department."

Imagine what he'd have done with arts programs in schools. I shudder to think.

All of this said, having read and thought about the issue - the comments were pretty tame, if stupid.

Arts Policy/NEA scandal Blogroll

So, approximately one week after I wrote my post describing how Glenn Beck took up the NEA as his own personal most recent "lets see how many people we can get fired in the National Government" shtick, the Democratic Blogs finally took notice, and commented. Many of the blogs pooh-poohed any instance of artistic manipulation via Obama's NEA. A couple samples:

Ordinary Gentlemen:

Don’t bother looking for recriminations or punishment for artists who don’t produce pro-Obama artwork, or do produce anti-Obama (or anti-Democrat, or anti-government) artwork. There’s no such coercion anywhere– you know, the kind of coercion that the people pimping this pathetic story so desperately want to find. What’s there is precisely the kind of vague, empty bureaucrat speak that suffuses not only every branch of government, regardless of the party of the sitting president, but also every corporate conference call promoting “synergy” and collective effort for collective goals.

Edge of the West:

Wait wait wait—I thought conservatives were upset because the White House created an office, installed it five federal agencies, then used them to fund a clearly partisan policy agenda to the tune of $2.2 billion. You mean to tell me all those links are about an August 10th conference call that tried to wrangle up support for the current President’s National Day of Service—a call in which not one cent of the NEA’s $155million budget was dispensed or even offered?

The Playgoer:

Something to do with the NEA actually supporting Obama's community service initiative? And this is bad because...? Oh, I see, Glenn, because it's going to indoctrinate our children through all that art they see. Well you should be glad they don't see much of that anyway--thanks to the likes of you.

One of my faves, Anonymous Liberal :

In terms of optics, it was certainly not a good idea for the NEA communications director to participate in such a call (which is probably why he is not the communications director anymore). That organization is not supposed to be involved in political advocacy.

But unless Breitbart's got a lot more, this is the political equivalent of jaywalking. Neither the NEA nor the White House organized this call and the staffers on the call basically gave boilerplate cheerleading remarks. There is nothing in the call that suggests that NEA money or grants were being funneled to progressive artists or anything of the sort. And the White House is of course free to participate on calls with supporters and encourage them to be pro-active. That's what the Office of Public Engagement does....

If Breitbart can produce any actual evidence that NEA resources or money were being improperly used for political purposes, I'll join him in calling for an investigation and for accountability. But this recorded call is pretty weak tea, especially by Bush era standards.

And from the Conservative Blog side, Andy McCarthy, with some perspective:

Needless to say, if something like this happened during the Bush administration, there would already be congressional hearings and screams for the appointment of a special prosecutor. We're about to see (yet again) how serious the Pelosi/Reid Democrats are about all that "rule of law" stuff they spout.

The NEA - What I posted on actually has national relevance!

So, here we are - one week ago I posted about the NEA getting involved in politics, and said that I wasn't surprised, but that I was disappointed. And a couple days ago, my lovely friend Daniel (who tries and tries to get people to read this blog, and I love him for it), sent me a link to Ben Smith at Politico.

Some Background to the blog post that started it all: There was a blog post by a conservative artist (yes, they do exist) on the Blog site Big Hollywood. The main cheese there is a friend of Drudge's. Anyways, not only did the artist blog about how the NEA asked artists to chip in on Obama's legislative agenda, but apparently he also taped the call. And then sent the recording to Glenn Beck, who went apeshit over it. If you're interested in watching youtube clips of the interview, you can check them out at HuffPost, here. As a result, Senator Cornyn sent an e-mail to Obama, which you can read here. In his letter, Cornyn repeats the original blog post but also adds something really important, if ironic and marginally hypocritical:

"But even if no NEA funding was intended for political purposes, one cannot escape the disturbing impression that this Administration - including appointees within the White House and the NEA - believes that it is appropriate for the federal government to enlist the arts community for the purpose of furthering a specific political agenda. I agree with President John F. Kennedy, who said that '[w]e must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.'

I urge you to make clear that your Administration will never allocate taxpayer dollars to artists based on their support for Administration policy initiatives. Further, I respectfully request that you take the necessary steps to ensure that the NEA - and the American arts community it supports - remain independent from political manipulation by the White House."

And I agree. But I find it hard to trust any Republican who says that the NEA should remain independent from political manipulation - by anyone. The NEA was, sadly, one of the main targets of the Conservative Christian revival in the mid Nineties. The NEA's budget still remains below 1995 funding levels. And all of that was a solely political move. Christianists objected to the artistic viewpoints being funded. And if that isn't political manipulation, I don't know what is. But Ryan Grim, who wrote the HuffPost article I linked to above, puts my point pretty darn well - "the arts agency is constantly under fire from extremist activists who see it as propagating a liberal, libertine agenda. The day the culture war is finally declared over, there will still be skirmishes over the NEA."

Anyways, back to my point. The Ben Smith article I wrote about says that the now named NEA organizer who pushed artists re. Obama's legislative agenda has been demoted! Not sacked, but definitely scolded. His name is Yosi Sergant, and he "has a long history with the Obama campaign, having led the media effort for Shepard Fairey, the artist behind the iconic "Hope" portrait that Obama has credited with helping him win."

So, presumably, his record helped him. Here, via Grim at HuffPost, is the official NEA statement, along with some additional commentary: "The NEA has updated their statement to emphasize that Yosi Sargent remains with the agency, but in a different position: 'As regards Yosi Sergant, he has not left the National Endowment for the Arts. He remains with the agency, although not as director of communications.'

Sources familiar with the situation say that the move represents a significant step down and was the result of the controversy. Discussion about his new duties is still ongoing."

Oh, Berlusconi....

What Berlusconi gets away with in Italy would get a US President drawn, quartered, and the pieces burned. I love reading these articles because they're so funny and, in a way, alien. Also, seriously? Call girl bribes?

Google is charging people lots of money to advertise on my Blog to....no one.

I have made, via ad revenue, over the course of the 4-ish months I have been blogging, $0.06. That, my dear friends, is six cents. count them. *rolls eyes*. I don't even know why I bothered putting in the Monetize app.

But you know what's really awesome? That those links introduce me to new and cool things. Yeah, I clicked to go to a website of a foundation that interested me. Whee!

Reasons why I wish I was in Philadelphia this weekend

The Fringe!!

Not only is there the new Pig Iron show, but my friends are doing two shows: one comedy and one avant-garde theater, and then there's a Gonzales Concert Opera!!!!

omg omg omg.

And then I saw a picture of the Philly skyline and got a little homesick. Dammit.

My Post on the NEA got Hijacked by a More Important Issue

So, my "post rate" will probably be much more occasional, a factor of being a new employee in a very time intensive job that requires a humongously steep learning curve. I hope to regularly post once a week, with extra posts as time and enthusiasm allow.

So, now onto the big issue of the day. This story is the first post on Arts Journal, and it makes me 1) very sad and 2) very nervous and 3) not surprised at all.

Some background: The Obama administration invited a large number of prominent arts officials and rising artists to a conference call on how the Government and artists could "work together" on prominent issues of the day, and encouraging them to use their talents - essentially, "steering the art community toward creating art on the very issues that are currently under contentious national debate."

Anyone who either knows me or has read this blog knows that I am a huge fan of government subsidy for the arts. If you tell me that art (theater, painting, dance, etc.) is a form of personal expression, intended to express the inner soul of the artist, I will show you 500 examples of artists, both male and female (but mostly male) who relied extensively on Government patronage, or business patronage, or, heaven help me, religious patronage, and managed perfectly well to make beautiful, well-respected work that nevertheless endlessly pushed a strong, active agenda. And that is the way that art always has been and probably always will be.

In an ideal world, and with a perfect government, this is the way that government subsidy of the arts would work: the government would evaluate the potential of an artist applying for a grant, and decide if their work was worth subsidizing regardless of the message it espoused or the politics the artist held. Thus, the money that the government offered would be based solely on talent and promise, not on the message the artist believed most important. Thus, the US would be helping beautiful, powerful or emotionally devastating art come into being without placing artificial standards on it.

And given my hopes for the first administration that actively acknowledged the arts in its platform, I truly desired that this administration would act in a way that held to my utopian vision. But, all things being the way they are, Obama's actions are not surprising, even if they are disappointing.

Which man in power, knowing that a huge number of artists of all types and genres had energized themselves on his behalf would not hope that the same energy would be devoted to his agenda?

The fact that Obama is utilizing the NEA to try to invigorate the artist communities is not surprising. Given the immense reluctance of the US government (puritanical at its core - have I talked about this? let me know if you haven't heard my rant) to acknowledge the power of art of all kinds, the NEA is the only tool Obama possesses. The NEA is the largest artist grant-giving organization in the nation. It spurs other organizations to give as well - imagine! It's so much cooler to give money to an artist that has already been granted money by the NEA! You don't have to do research on their work yourself!

And mostly, the government has viewed artists as opponents rather than as tools. But now it finds itself in a unique position - possibly the only time since the 1930's that the greater proportion of artists have been in agreement with the president's agenda rather than opponents to his agenda. As the Honda TV ads say, Mr. Opportunity is knocking. So, to Mr. Courrielche, who asks:

"But the art community must... ask itself about the proper role of government agencies created to promote the arts. And if put in the wrong hands, could a message machine built by the NEA be used in a nefarious manner not currently foreseeable?"

YES. Because it's happened before. In Soviet Russia and in Fascist Germany art was suborned to the political agenda. Those are the obvious examples. My favorite example of art being squashed because of politics is actually Moliere's Tartuffe. Louis XIV actually prevented the play at first because it criticized the church, but then later allowed it because at that point he wanted to shame the church where he hadn't before. And read the ending of the play. A more blatant piece of propaganda I have never seen.

Artists should be cautious about accepting Government funds. Artists should be cautious about accepting any funds. Because along with Patronage comes obligation. If you agree with the message, great. Fine. Make art about the greed of the Health industry. Mock the system that awards money gaming more than teaching arithmetic to young children. That's what the government wants now. But don't get complacent. If you can make great art within the limits of what the government wants, fine. But if you can't, don't accept the money. Because you'll be at the mercy of the one giving it. Because that's what accepting any money does to you.

So, I'm back

So, I'm back almost a full month after going off the air - it's been a tumultuous few weeks.  I moved back home after thinking that I was going to be in Philadelphia for nearly a year.  So, unfortunately, I don't get to talk about the Philadelphia Fringe, because I'm Not There.  Which is a huge sadness.

BUT - making up for it are some lovely perks, like my rent has decreased by 200 dollars, and I am now the proud owner of a baby blue vespa named Simone (de Bouvoir, if you want to act like my mother and make everything more literary and fancy-schmancy).

So, in honor of my return, I provide the lovely links of wonder (i.e. I don't want to write 30 posts, but still think that all these things I missed are cool).  Just so you know, Arts Journal on my blogroll is the primary source of many of these articles - they do a really amazing job of filtering out valuable arts content, so check them out.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2009/aug/26/theatre-critics-artists - This link takes you to a British article on how blogging, artists and critics are all getting really up close in each others' business right now and changing the way criticism is viewed and told.  So it's pretty important, at least as far as this blog is concerned :).

A recession hits everyone differently - especially non-industry cities.  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thearts/2009752523_actors30.html?cmpid=2628

Maybe this would be a great movie, or maybe I assumed the movies would get to the topic first.  In that case, I think I'm happy that live theater is doing it instead.  http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090826/ennew_afp/entertainmentfrancetheatrebankingcrime_20090826190728

Oh wonderful wonderful (and then past all hooping) would this make an interesting avant-garde theater project...http://playgoer.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-if-woodstock-had-tweeted.html

And, to top it off, an article on my favorite Philadelphia Group, Pig Iron - http://www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/20090827_Pig_Iron__unalloyed.html

I Can't Believe I Missed This

Rocco Landesman's interview in the New York Times!! It's wonderful, and now there's finally more about how he views his role in the NEA. If I wasn't in the middle of trying to move cross-country, I would have a lot more to say about this, but in the meantime I'll post a few quotes:

The new chairman said he already has a new slogan for his agency: “Art Works.” It’s “something muscular that says, ‘We matter.’ ” The words are meant to highlight both art’s role as an economic driver and the fact that people who work in the arts are themselves a critical part of the economy.

“Someone who works in the arts is every bit as gainfully employed as someone who works in an auto plant or a steel mill,” Mr. Landesman said. “We’re going to make the point till people are tired of hearing it.”

Even more interesting is how Landesman got involved in the position in the first place:

Mr. Landesman wasn’t tapped for the job. “I’d love to say the president drafted me, and I had to answer the call of duty, but no,” he said. “I put my hand up for this.”

“Everybody I talked to said, ‘This is the worst idea I’ve ever heard, put it out of your head immediately,’ ” Mr. Landesman said. “The idea of running a 170-person federal bureaucracy seemed crazy.”

But it’s an unusual moment in history, he said, and he wanted to be part of it. President Obama was “the first candidate in my memory who made arts part of the campaign,” Mr. Landesman said. “He had an arts policy committee and an arts policy statement and arts advisers.”

It's true - Obama, despite how little in regards to the arts he had posted on his campaign website (and now has posted on the White House website) has been one of the few truly culturally sensitive candidates for office. The fact that Obama decided to place this man in charge (he's described as a general in the interview) is indicative that there's someone taking the arts seriously.

Please read the entire article - there's so much I would quote, but...

Illinois is in the same situation as Pennsylvania

So, a long time ago, when I began this blog, I heard really sad new - Pennsylvania was in grave danger of cutting major (read all) arts funds from their budget. And the news hasn't improved - indeed, it's just plain miserable. On the 4th, Pennsylvania cut ALL arts funding out of the budget. Yes, all. So Philadelphia, which is increasingly a truly vibrant home for impressive and imaginative theater (please check out Pig Iron Company - they're in the links on the right hand side) is really just completely demolished by this.

Well, via my friend Daniel, an article saying that half - yes, half - of Illinois' arts funding has been cut. And if anything, this is even more awful for Chicago, a larger city with more great theater. I truly approve of this article's language...

In craptastic but unsurprising news, the Illinois Arts Council (IAC) got kicked in the proverbial balls by the 2010 Illinois budget. Its $7.8 million allocation is 51% less than that in the 2008 budget, which, thanks to Blago’s veto of the General Assembly’s approved $23.1 million appropriation, was $15.2 million.

The IAC is very blunt about the gravity of the situation - in a letter sent to recent grant applicants on July 29, IAC Chairman Shirley R. Madigan stated, “I have been privileged to be a member of the Illinois Arts Council for many years and I have never seen our situation so dire. Without additional state revenues, we may well have further cuts in the months ahead, and next year will be worse.”

Thoughts on War

I haven't posted in a while - sorry. But I saw this passage in the NYT today, and... well, I can't really describe how I feel, except that none of the feelings consist of anything related to "cheery".

The sight was not that unusual, at least not for Mosul, Iraq, on a summer morning: a car parked on the sidewalk, facing opposite traffic, its windows rolled up tight. Two young boys stared out the back window, kindergarten age maybe, their faces leaning together as if to share a whisper.

The soldier patrolling closest to the car stopped. It had to be hot in there; it was 120 degrees outside. “Permission to approach, sir, to give them some water,” the soldier said to Sgt. First Class Edward Tierney, who led the nine-man patrol that morning.

“I said no — no,” Sergeant Tierney said in a telephone interview from Afghanistan. He said he had an urge to move back before he knew why: “My body suddenly got cooler; you know, that danger feeling.”

...

That morning in Mosul, Sergeant Tierney gave the command to fall back. The soldier who had asked to approach the car had just time enough to turn before the bomb exploded. Shrapnel clawed the side of his face; the shock wave threw the others to the ground. The two young boys were gone: killed in the blast, almost certainly, he said.

The person who uses children and destroys them in the process of war is worse than a criminal. Worse than a murderer.

Movies and the Recession

Often I say that the movie industry isn't making enough movies to stay up - my parallel, of course, is from the fifties when movies exuded from every cultural orifice - at least, that's how I imagine it. So admittedly I have no factual basis for my claim that movie studios are more profitable and more imaginative when they are actually making more movies.

I mean, it makes sense - if you have a larger slate of films for any one year, you are more likely totake a risk - you'll lose less money if it's 1/10th of your potential revenue stream for the year, instead of 1/5th. Also, you'll overspend less - there have been so many awful movies with overwhelming budgets - movie studios will moderate more on their budget, and thus you'll end up with more imaginative movies, since directors and producers will have to think in unique ways to get more bang for the buck.

Well, I'm not completely crazy - a study recently proved me right! So HA.

Kings

Some of you may know that I am a HUGE fan of the NBC show Kings. I recommend you all see it. Kings, to me, is better than any show I have ever seen. It is compelling melodrama, intelligent, with great character development and political intrigue. If you watch it, tell me so that I can enthuse and discuss happenings with you.

Of course, NBC is canceling it after only one season, because they're dumb. If you get a chance to watch the show, please do. Nothing will make me sadder re. the future of TV if they cancel this series.

My ranking of my favorite (currently running) tv shows...

Kings

How I Met Your Mother

True Blood

House

Eureka

OH! And just so you know, Kings is better than Buffy. Yes, I just said that.

Goldman Sachs

From the NYT:

Financial firms, we now know, directed vast quantities of capital into the construction of unsellable houses and empty shopping malls. They increa sed risk rather than reducing it, and concentrated risk rather than spreading it. In effect, the industry was selling dangerous patent medicine to gullible consumers.

Goldman’s role in the financialization of America was similar to that of other players, except for one thing: Goldman didn’t believe its own hype. Other banks invested heavily in the same toxic waste they were selling to the public at large. Goldman, famously, made a lot of money selling securities backed by subprime mortgages — then made a lot more money by selling mortgage-backed securities short, just before their value crashed. All of this was perfectly legal, but the net effect was that Goldman made profits by playing the rest of us for suckers.

My mother, who knows what she's talking about, has said that beyond this, Goldman, through strategic placement of insiders and "respected experts," has been placed in a position to benefit from every policy regarding the health of the economy in the last 4 years. Goldman profits, the American people suffer.

How to Qualify for the WPA Theatre Project

An excerpt from Arthur Miller's autobiography, Timebends:

To join the WPA Theatre Project it was necessary to get on the welfare rolls first, in effect to be homeless and all but penniless. And to get the bureaucratic process started I had brought my father to the Welfare Department's requisitioned old warehouse near the Hudson River, where we put on a fine scene of parental indignation against filial rebellion. The welfare worker looked on as we demonstrated why I would never be allowed to sleep in my family home, and simply sighed and judged the performance adequate, without necessarily believing anything more than our economic desperation. The final step was to be an unannounced visit by an inspector to see whether I actually lived in this address with people who were unrelated. My alleged cot, on which I had never slept, stood under a window here, and my winter overcoat hung on a hanger hooked over a gas fixture on the wall. A nice touch was the pair of sneakers placed under the cot, for by this time I was down to one pair of leather shoes.

Whales are Awesome

Please read the NYT Magazine article on whales - it's available on the NYT mainpage. It is completely blowing my mind (pun intended, although it's bad).

One quote that totally made me gasp, was this:

Whales display an incredible degree of coordination and cooperation in their efforts. Aaron Thode, an associate research scientist from the Scripps Institution, who was in Baja doing acoustical studies of grays, told me of another project he is involved in, using the latest research tools to gain insights into how whales perceive the world. He showed me an extraordinary video of sperm whales pilfering catch from fishermen’s lines in Alaska, 50-foot-long, massive-jawed behemoths delicately snatching a single black cod from a longline’s dangling hook, like an hors d’oeuvre from a cocktail toothpick. Fishermen are currently losing 5 to 10 percent of their yearly haul and fear the problem could become worse because whales who have mastered the technique are busily teaching it to others. The news seems to be rapidly spreading, as reports of similar fish-snatching are coming in from fishermen all over the world.

Some funny things I found...

Or rather, just interesting. First, the finalists for the annual "bad first sentence in a fake novel" competition! My favorite is the winner in the "Detective" novel category:

She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida - the pink ones, not the white ones - except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren't.

Next up, an article to make my peacenicky side really happy: Humans aren't innately coded for war! Violence is not inevitable. My favorite quote:

The first clear-cut evidence of violence against groups as opposed to individuals appears about 14,000 years ago, he says. The evidence takes the form of mass graves of skeletons with crushed skulls, hack marks and projectile points embedded in them; rock art in Australia, Europe and elsewhere depicting battles with spears, clubs and bows and arrows; and settlements clearly fortified for protection against attacks (see "The birth of war").

War emerged when humans shifted from a nomadic existence to a settled one and was commonly tied to agriculture, Ferguson says. "With a vested interest in their lands, food stores and especially rich fishing sites, people could no longer walk away from trouble." What's more, with settlement came the production of surplus crops and the acquisition of precious and symbolic objects through trade. All of a sudden, people had far more to lose, and to fight over, than their hunter-gatherer forebears.

And finally, why on earth is the WSJ starting up an arts and culture section? The timing makes no sense to me. But, they have their reasons. Apparently business-centric papers are just as awful at making money as the NYT. So the WSJ is looking to poach some more general-interest readers. Good luck? Maybe? A quote:

“The Journal is making a very smart decision by focusing on New York,” said Pia Catton, the former culture editor of The New York Sun, which the chattering classes were known to praise for the sophisticated alternative it provided to The Times. “There is so much going on in New York, and it sets the tone for the rest of the country.”

(Ms. Catton herself has recently moved to Washington, D.C., to become an editor at Politico.)

“The Times has gone wrong by covering arts nationally and casting the net so wide that they aren’t focused on New York anymore,” she said.

Times culture editor Sam Sifton, reached for comment, would only say: “We’re extremely proud of our culture coverage and confident it can stand up to competition.”

Politico says nothing new

in this article, which is a good summary of the current status of arts policy, if nothing else. I restate my points:

Michelle is not a sufficient advocate for the arts. Neither are Landesman or Leach separately. There needs to be one person who organizes our attitudes towards culture in this country.

The Practical Guide to Help Spurned Political Wives Survive Old Problems in the Era of New Technology.

Although I know many people who (intensely) dislike Maureen Dowd, I believe that this op-ed of hers is hilarious, timely, and perfectly executed.

6. No matter how revolting your husband’s behavior is, don’t be passive-aggressive in public. Refrain from making any remarks that have a veneer of dignity but derogatory subtexts that sound like: “We’re trying to reconcile but it’s going to be tough because he has irreparably damaged my children” or “He has no integrity and I want my kids to have integrity” and “Sure, I’d like to give him a chance if he weren’t such a sleazeball.”

geniuuuusssss - I want to write a play about this. Or see one. Or act in one. Someone, please write it for me.

Hurrah Thank Goodness

Franken is seated!! Now we can go about making sure that necessary things...like arts funding...get passed!!! HURRAH

Obama Disappoints Me

One of the things I HATED most about the Bush Administration was their use of signing statements.  If you have an issue with a law, take it up with the courts - the Judicial branch is supposed to decide debates of precedent between the Executive and Legislative branches.  So when I saw this, that Obama has issued a signing statement, I was horrified.

I don't care how good your reasons are.  Signing statements are one of the foremost ways to create a corrupt executive.  Obama should be ashamed.

The Atlantic

I picked up a copy of the Atlantic Weekly - they had this "fifteen ways to fix the world" article. My favorite? You guessed it - pay stimulus money to artists!

Money Quote:

If the Obama administration is serious about stimulating the economy and creating as many new jobs as possible, one choice is clear: it should announce a massive increase in federal arts funding. Artists are among the very poorest citizens. When they get cash, they spend it both quickly and carefully. That’s not what most recipients of federal largesse do, but it happens to be exactly what economists look for in any stimulus package. Arts spending is fantastic at creating employment: for every $30,000 or so spent on the arts, one more person gets a job, compared with about $1 million if you’re building a road or hospital.

The Subtle Poison of same-gender discrimination

So, there's this fascinating article in the NYT about the problem with female-written plays being produced so much less often than plays written by men.

The catch?? Female artistic directors are responsible for the lower-than-proportional representation of women's work on stage. And the research is fascinating:

Ms. Sands sent identical scripts to artistic directors and literary managers around the country. The only difference was that half named a man as the writer (for example, Michael Walker), while half named a woman (i.e., Mary Walker). It turned out that Mary’s scripts received significantly worse ratings in terms of quality, economic prospects and audience response than Michael’s. The biggest surprise? “These results are driven exclusively by the responses of female artistic directors and literary managers,” Ms. Sands said.

Amid the gasps from the audience, an incredulous voice called out, “Say that again?”

Ms. Sands put it another way: “Men rate men and women playwrights exactly the same.”

Arts Policy Tsunami

So, in the arts world you can go weeks without finding something to talk about (other than a play review) - and then suddenly be swamped with really important news.

First things first:  the NEA just released a report on a study of theater audiences.  Playgoer has an important summary of what everything means.  But the important part (to my mind) is this: 

But breaking the numbers down more specifically reveals at least one more surprising (and disturbing) trend: a real decline over the years in theatre attendance by the entire "college educated" demographic as a whole. (Including advanced degrees.) In other words: our core demographic, supposedly.

Conclusion? Well here's a radical one: maybe we shouldn't consider upper-class highly-educated our core audience anymore? Problem is, though, they're who tickets are priced for. At the current ticket values, they're the only ones who can afford theatre. And they not coming as much anymore. So...who's got a new business model?

So, my first idea: have your friends attend plays.  Plays can be really really fun to watch, and musicals even more so.  Also, look around for options.  I found some great news on the NYT for all the people who can't afford tickets to the theater - LOTS OF FREE THEATER!  If you're in NY, I heartily recommend that you attend.

Of course, free theater brings up another issue: How theater artists survive if they aren't getting money from tickets - especially in an age when film and the internet in particular are making it easy to market your work.  So, please go read this post at Createquity - it talks about the near-unlivable costs of being a theater artist, and the incredible competition that greater equity fosters.  All the hullabaloo about "free theater" is great - but it is still really important to remember that artists are people as well, people who need food and shelter.

And just for kicks, a shout-out to the city I live in for being amazing re. new plays and new theater work.  

Locating Lysistrata

Please read this blog post - I'd be interested to know what readers think of Lysistrata and its message and how to express that message to soldiers.

Anonymity goes down the drain

I'm Cara Arcuni.  I see no reason why this blog should be anonymous.  Now I can put it on my Facebook.

Why the Wall Street Journal needs to get its nose out of the Arts

So, while browsing the internet, I found this truly offensive article.  It uses language that honestly makes me furious.  I post a few quotes:

Messrs. Leach and Landesman are probably not the choices initially expected from a president who was being lobbied just a couple of months ago to do something as bold as create a cabinet-level department of arts and culture. These are the choices, rather, of a president who doesn't want this to be a political fight. With these nominations it's also clear that Mr. Obama is not making a statement that great change is needed at either agency. This is not to disparage these choices -- both of which, in addition to being rather surprising, are quite good, at least in the eyes of those who think both endowments are already following a wise course. In fact, given the constituencies that rallied most vociferously behind Mr. Obama in the campaign, his choice of these two men ought to elicit a sigh of relief from conservatives.

Privately funded art need not steer clear of controversy, but publicly funded art should. In addition to hurting the endowments' standing in Congress, controversy undermines in the public eye the idea that the arts and humanities are important to civic life and are worthy of public funds.

Both endowments have power to do good things within the broader American culture. If there's no change in direction for the agencies, it still bodes well for the arts and humanities in the country. Particularly if their budgets can increase, the endowments can continue to evangelize for the arts and humanities in a culture that sadly seems to value them less than business, science and professional education.

There are so many problems with this article's thought processes that I don't even know where to start.  The idea that funding individual artists' works is somehow not advocating for the public interest is heinous.  Of all the projects the NEA has funded over the years, individual artistic efforts are some of the most outstanding. I list:

Prairie Home Companion, created in 1974 through an NEA grant.

The American Ballet Theater, saved in the first year of the Endowment by a grant from the Federal government.

Driving Miss Daisy - that play, then movie? Created through an NEA grant in 1986-7.

And other programs have equally stimulated further funding for the arts: The Challenge Grant program, where federal dollars are matched by donation, was tremendously successful: Twenty years after it was founded, statistics came back where one dollar donated by the Federal Government for the arts stimulated roughly eight dollars.

And the idea that federal dollars should help education not the creation of the arts is absolutely inconsistent with the overall vision for the endowment: Reagan, convenient conservative poster boy, said in 1983 that “We support the work of the National Endowment for the Arts to stimulate excellence and make art more available to more of our people.” Reagan himself acknowledged that part of the work of the endowment is to stimulate excellence.  That means grants to individual artists.  

I have this belief - that the arts, especially creative arts, are somewhat like entrepreneurs in business. When starting a business, it takes a lot of courage, a lot of daring, and a LOT of initial capital.  So, young entrepreneurs in the business world come up with an idea, a good business plan, then take it to the venture capital investors.  They choose the most promising, and fund it.  But there's no official organization like that for the arts.  Because the arts don't (and to large part shouldn't) find their primary motivation in money, investment capital like that is hard to come by.  In my mind, that's where the federal government should step in.  Take a look at the business plans.  Decide which ones to fund.  Then step back and see if your risk (and it is a big one) takes off.

Oh - and my little argument for when conservatives balk at funding art they don't agree with - 

"I'm a pacifist - Quaker, if you must know.  I don't believe in war, I don't agree with the wars that we're involved in.  But my tax dollars go to the war effort anyways - I don't have a choice.  You claim that your tax dollars shouldn't go to experimental art in the same way that I think my tax dollars shouldn't go to funding war.  What makes the arts different than the military in terms of justified funding?"

Hopefully that argument makes as much sense to you as it does to me :D.

NEA and NEH Budgets

It's official - at the subcommittee level - the NEH and NEA are getting $170mil each: the House Appropriations Subcommittee of the Interior voted on Wednesday.  I may be a little behind the times (sorry), but it's happening!

Just as a point of note, these funding levels are STILL below the levels in 1992, when the NEA and NEH were funded at $176mil.  Annoyingly, the little, teeny increments are because of Republicans, the people who understand the arts least - “I’ve been trying 

to take this back up but to do it in increments that were sustainable with our Republican friends,” said Representative Norm Dicks, Democrat of Washington, who is chairman of the House subcommittee.

Sometimes I wonder if the reason why reality TV took over SO overwhelmingly was because there was no new real art coming through the pipeline because of a lack of funds.  It's a theory, at least.

HIV and the Adult Performance Industry

So, I need not detail (I hope) the long and storied relationship between performers and prostitution.  Or how extensively art is correlated to an interest (intellectual or otherwise ;) ) in sexuality. 

So, now the most recent hullabaloo as regards the Adult Entertainment Industry.  For a long long while now the industry has been decrying the need to use condoms when filming.  The industry insists that condoms would harm the "fantasy" that the films hope to create.  

ABC News reported on the issue:

Jules Jordan of Jules Jordan Video has worked his way from being a porn store clerk to having his own studio and he has a strict no-condom policy.

"Testing's a must for everyone in the industry and that is how I can back up my stance on no condoms.  I don't think the fans want to see condoms on film, because the fans are coming to see fantasy and condoms are not usually part of fantasy," Jordan said.

And the modern special effects that would be able to get rid of the condoms on screen are outside the budgets that the movies usually have.   But the industry claims that it's in a good place for the prevention of a major outbreak.  After an outbreak in 2004, the industry changed its policies and briefly instituted an all-condom policy - now, the quick test that can detect HIV 2 weeks after contraction is supposedly responsible for stopping "all spread of HIV in the adult entertainment industry in the last four years."

But a new outbreak has the industry suddenly nervous:

An actress who works in Southern California's pornography industry has tested positive for HIV, renewing county and state health officials' concerns that the adult entertainment industry lacks sufficient safety measures to prevent the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases...

Los Angeles County has been receiving reports from the clinic of 60 to 80 new cases of chlamydia and gonorrhea a month among adult performers, Fielding said.

That rate of chlamydia and gonnorhea is terrifying.

That creation of fantasy is nothing new - and it is nothing new for people to put up barriers to whatever methods people wish to take to create that fantastic world.  But AIDS is more than a prudish restriction for the protection of public morals - like the restriction of women in the Elizabethan Theater.   And I wonder if the adult entertainment industry counts itself as being art.  I, at least, don't consider it art - but there could be some that do.

Modern modeling skirts very close to that sneaky barrier between sexualized art and sex.  A documentary about the modern modeling industry tries to display that secretive world for the first time - unlike the adult entertainment industry, which does have some regulation, the modeling industry has much, much less. 

A 16-year-old model is on a photo shoot in Paris. She has very little experience of modelling and is unaccompanied by her agency or parents. She leaves the studio to go to the bathroom and meets the photographer - "a very, very famous photographer, probably one of the world's top names", according to Ziff - in the hallway. He starts fiddling with her clothes. "But you're used to this," says Ziff. "People touch you all the time. Your collar, or your breasts. It's not strange to be handled like that." Then suddenly he puts his hands between her legs and sexually assaults her. "She has no experience of boys, she hasn't even been kissed," says Ziff. "She was so shocked she just stood there and didn't say anything. He just looked at her and walked away and they did the rest of the shoot. And she never told anyone."  

The documentary is unique - they did a lot of sneaking video cameras into modeling shows, and were sometimes emphatically shown the door.  The documentary, called Picture Me, exposes an industry that desperately needs some regulation - but art - Art if you prefer to make it fancy, uses the artistic privilege to create an alternate universe. Where the line is drawn is really, really important.