Abolish Arts Council and its ‘Left-wing, woke agenda’ say critics
Leading art commentators argue funding body’s priorities are ‘political, not artistic’ and ‘hostile’ to majority ‘taste and values’
Only the first three words matter. The why is irrelevant, it’s this that matters:
Abolish Arts Council
So, that industrial rubble out there:
Perched high over the Vale of Scarsdale, dominated by a magnificent 17th-century castle, the Derbyshire town of Bolsover is proudly kept; so too are the former mining villages that surround it. But the neatness and prettiness on a bright late-August day occlude the fact that the area has suffered since the pits closed. Opportunities are few, unemployment high. Buses are infrequent and expensive. A worrying amount of violent and sexual crime is reported to the local police. Much of what once gave these places their identity has drifted away. In the nearby village of Pinxton, a mural has just been unveiled on the gable end of the village hall. “It is,” says Paul Steele, who worked with the parish council to commission it, “about everything Pinxton has lost” – its railway station, its mine, its porcelain factory. This is classic “red wall” territory: Dennis Skinner lost his seat here to the Conservatives at the 2019 general election.
Steele is the managing director of Junction Arts, the local community arts organisation. “Bolsover has essentially no cultural infrastructure,” he tells me. No theatre, no music venue, no further education. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t creativity. Of course there is.
Those rich southerners should pay for a drag queen reading here. Bitches love drag queen readings.
Ballet has been dropped from auditions at a leading dance school as staff say it is rooted in “white European ideas”.
As other forms of dance are rooted in other cultural traditions. And we’ve not want white folk to be doing those other dances because that would be cultural appropriation, wouldn’t it?
Some UK cinemas have banned groups of young people wearing suits during screenings of Minions: The Rise of Gru.
The decision came after some young moviegoers were criticised for rowdy behaviour after a viral trend erupted on the social media app TikTok.
The trend involves large groups of teenage boys, who call themselves The Gentleminions, filming themselves going to watch the latest instalment in the Despicable Me franchise dressed in suits.
The movie is panned in the reviews. So, how do you get folk to go watch it? Create something viral which works off the standard human crowd behaviour lark.
Somewhere out there there’s a PR bod awaiting a very large bonus this year.
Garg is now playing 15 shows a week. She will do three in the evening, after we have spoken, working up material for an hour-long comedy special she will film in September.
“Now I don’t want to slow down,” she says. “I have a lot of years to make up . . . I was home for 16 years, and I’m back at work, and my kids know that and my husband knows that. Most importantly, my mother-in-law needs to know that. Can you write that in your article?”
Acting is not being. Acting is — how can I put this? — acting.
Of course, being an actor, it’s then dressed up a lot but it is, in fact, playing dress up.
Therefore the person right for the part is the person good at dress up, not the person who already is the whatever being portrayed.
Tom Hanks: Audiences no longer accept straight actors in gay roles
Hollywood star, who won an Academy Award for his performance in Philadelphia, says ‘inauthenticity’ makes such casting impossible today
Is it also true that gay actors should not take straight roles?
If not, why not?
Actors including Juliet Stevenson, Meera Syal, David Tennant and Zawe Ashton have called for better onscreen representation of women older than 45 to fight against the “entrenched” ageism of the entertainment industry.
In an open letter signed by more than 100 actors and public figures, the Acting Your Age Campaign (AYAC) called for equal representation in the UK between men and women over 45 and urged immediate action on a “parity pledge”.
“Today’s in-demand young actress is tomorrow’s unemployed middle-aged actress,” it said, adding: “We are fighting to ensure that our generation of excluded women is the last generation of excluded women.”
As long as pretty little things don’t get onscreen just because they’re pretty little things.
Which isn’t going to happen, is it?
Last week, a forensic psychologist named Shannon Curry testified at the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial, stating that she believes Amber Heard has borderline personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder.
whereas histrionic personality disorder is characterized “by individuals who are flamboyant, seek attention, and demonstrate an excessive emotionality.”
Oh, an actress who takes her work home, is it?
Theatres need more plus-sized black actors, says Broadway and West End star
Marisha Wallace wants to inspire young girls and call out lack of diversity as she takes on role in Oklahoma!
Solid black bird who is actress says there should be more work for actresses who are solid black birds.
Never saw that one coming, did we? Despite her being difficult to miss……
A new West End production of To Kill a Mockingbird will use the N-word as removing it would be “wrong and unnecessary”, its scriptwriter has said.
Aaron Sorkin has written a 21st-century adaptation of the Harper Lee classic, but he has refused to remove lead character Bob Ewell’s racist slur from the script.
Speaking to The Observer, he said: “We’re trying to dramatise the cruelty and severity of racism in the Thirties. To change that word so it would be more palatable to an audience today would be both wrong and unnecessary. People can handle it.”
It’s part of the very shock, that the word is used. As with in Huck Finn.
The Falling Soldier, one of the most famous war photographs ever published, was staged and might not even have been taken by its official author Robert Capa, a Spanish researcher has claimed after spending two decades investigating the image.
I’ve always thought it obvious that it was staged. Opinions differ, obviously…..
Still no idea what the frocks are about but these bits make sense:
Where would you say the value of art comes from? Marx argued that value comes from labour. How does that relate to art, especially your art and forms like ceramics and tapestry? (Ella, Birmingham)
When I walk into one of my exhibitions, I certainly think, “Wow, there’s a lot of man hours.” Consciously or otherwise, I subscribe partly to Marx’s statement, though I wouldn’t call myself a Marxist. It’s fascinating, the idea of value in the art world, because at a certain point, it goes stratospheric and it’s ridiculous. It’s pure market economics, and value is what somebody will pay for it.
A ritual nod to the Marxist idiocy and then that statement of the blindingly obvious truth. This also:
Are all motives governed by self-interest? (Chris, Newcastle)
I think there is probably a bit of truth in that. The phrase that is around a lot is “virtue signalling”, but we’ve evolved to virtue signal because we want to be seen as a good member of the group. If your group approves of altruistic acts, then you do altruistic acts in order to get status.
An awful lot of poor folk have been fed over the years as a result of Lady Bountiful gaining social stature by doing so.
INTERVIEW
Minnie Driver: ‘I got sick of being super‑famous’
The actress, 51,
Which bit do you like the most? The interview being given to celebrate not being famous? Or the 51 year old actress rationalising not being so famous?
Still, the Guinness joke was good.
Yes, sure, connections will take you a long way. So will fashion, being able to ride it, good PR and all the rest. But real talent, that actual rare thing, will still out:
His career owed its lift-off to Life’s chief photographer David Douglas Duncan (obituary July 16, 2018). A veteran who had made his name with combat photography from the Korean and Vietnam wars, Duncan was in his mid-sixties when he discovered Forss on the pavement near Grand Central Station, peddling black-and-white prints of his photographs of the Empire State Building and Times Square to tourists for $5 apiece.
Duncan was astonished by the quality of the images and arranged for their publication in the 1984 book New York/New York: Masterworks of a Street Peddler. “Astonishment, disbelief, excitement, confusion and admiration held me captive while my eyes swept the vendor’s display of prints on a sidewalk,” Duncan wrote in the introduction. Further endorsements on the book’s dust jacket came from Henri Cartier-Bresson, Norman Mailer and Ansel Adams, who wrote, “I have seen no photographs of recent years as strong and as perceptive.”
There is a corollary to this of course. Which is that if you’ve got those connections, are in fashion, know how to ride it, employ that good PR and all the rest but still aren’t being lauded as the new Cartier Bresson – or George Forss – then you ain’t got the talent.
Nothing wrong with being a journeyman of course, quite resigned to it myself. But it helps to be self-aware.
Somewhere along the line, playing gay has gone from making you flavour of the month to leaving a strange taste.
That might need a little rephrasing there, Guardian.
As to the larger point they’re trying to make well, if straight should no longer play gay then presumably gay should no longer play straight. Which is, given the tastes of the personnel in the industry, going to be more than a little restrictive, no?
Of course, we could always decide that it’s all about playing dress up and we can evaluate individuals on that basis – how well do they play dress up? But then that last is sensible and therefore has no chance today.
Leading drama school starts misconduct inquiry into ‘sexualised’ dance classes
Sadly for all the delight of being able to use the quote as a headline it appears a little more serious than that.
The intimacy coordinator for Bridgerton and other major productions has accused drama schools of ignoring her offer to ease student anxieties over nudity because they were concerned students may have blown the whistle.
Lizzy Talbot said she was largely rebuffed or ignored by drama schools despite offering to ensure students felt comfortable acting out sex scenes or other intimate moments.
What do you mean they don’t want to hire me? Don’t they know who I am?
