http://www.inthesetimes.com/archives/tags/art/ In These Times features award-winning investigative reporting about corporate malfeasance and government wrongdoing, insightful analysis of national and international affairs, and sharp cultural criticism about events and ideas that matter. en-us Expression Engine jessica@inthesetimes.com seamus@inthesetimes.com Fri, 02 Jun 2006 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2666/pow_shazaam_it_inoriteam/ Dr. Wang is the epitome of nearly every Asian stereotype etched into American consciousness. His skin has a bright yellow cast; his eyes are set in an exaggerated slant. He owns a laundromat, speaks with a ludicrous accent, drives poorly and is incredibly good at math. But Dr. Wang is more than just your garden-variety racial caricature. On "Minoriteam," he is a crusading, wheelchair-bound superhero with a 40-pound brain, who uses profits from his laundromat to head up an equally preposterous group of ethnic superheroes devoted to overthrowing their nemesis: the omnipresent White Shadow. "We use power of racial stereotype to destroy White Shadow," he cries out during one of the episodes. It's Dr. Wang's way of saying, perhaps, that… art and culture television race Rachel Jefferson Tue, 06 Jun 2006 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2667/iraq_on_the_big_screen/ Who should define what a war is "about"? By any ethical standard, that right should fall to the besieged--those who were waged upon, the people with the most corpses and the least to gain from combat. Of course, in reality, an armed conflict's character is limned by the powerful, in whose mitts the media will, as we all know, contort, grind and dilute matters of truth to fit the message of the campaign. The cold facts about the Iraq ordeal--from lies and sword-rattling to tens of thousands of murdered civilians and an increasingly dedicated "insurgence" (a misapplied word carefully chosen by the think tanks, and reflexively used by nearly every public voice)--are visible from a modest height. But that's not… Iraq War Art and Culture Movies Rachel Jefferson Fri, 16 Jun 2006 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2701/kal_black_like_me/ A new generation of Roma are insisting on rights and dignity, and an innovative Belgrade-based musical group is more than willing to be a voice of liberation for the lengo drom ahead. In the Romani language, lengo drom refers to the "long road." In the thousand years since the ancestors of today's Roma people left India, it has been a long road--as daring and far-flung an exodus as any people have managed to achieve. Today, with their nomadic lifestyle fading, Roma live in Israel, Brazil, Finland, the United States and the Roma "motherland," India. (In India and the Middle East, they are known as the Doma.) The greatest concentration of Romani families are in Serbia, Hungary, France, Macedonia, the Czech… Race Music Art and Culture Rachel Jefferson Fri, 30 Jun 2006 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2705/perpetuating_the_yellow_peril/ At first glance, Jeff Adachi's Slanted Screen is an earnest documentary that covers familiar ground. The shameful depiction of minorities--in this case, Asian-American men--in television and film is hardly news. What makes the movie special, however, is that it offers a rare view of Hollywood from the inside. Apart from the occasional talking head, the interviewees are actors, producers, directors and screenwriters. Part of the movie's interest lies in their horror stories, which are likely to make even the most jaded viewer cringe. Producer Terence Chang--whose big-budget credits include Mission Impossible II, Face-Off and Broken Arrow--describes being told to change the race of the white villain in the script for the Chow Yun Fat vehicle, The Replacement Killers, and make… Race Gender Movies Art and Culture Rachel Jefferson Tue, 25 Jul 2006 06:00:01 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2743/jane_jacobs_reconsidered/ When Jane Jacobs died this past spring, the flood of obituaries carried with them a litany of praise. Jacobs, they said, had faced down the great, infamous builder Robert Moses, ended neighborhood-killing urban renewal policies, and transformed urban planning with her lyrical evocation of Greenwich Village's "intricate sidewalk ballet" in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. And yet, these sorts of tributes to a "legend"--while not undeserved--gloss over political and historical context, and drown questions of Jacobs' larger significance for postwar history in a readymade bath of piety and awe. So it is welcome that, after a fitting period of mourning and tribute, the first book-length treatment of Jacobs' life and work, Alice Sparberg Alexiou's Jane Jacobs: Urban… books art and culture architecture Rachel Jefferson Tue, 01 Aug 2006 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2744/cmon_get_happy/ Toward the end of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Crack-Up," an essay about his personal decline during the Great Depression, he wrote, "The natural state of the sentient adult is a qualified unhappiness." Glancing at the headlines today, it's hard not to agree. Within the past six months, a spate of books on happiness has appeared in stores as if to remind us of our right to pursue it. Positive-psychology enthusiasts Daniel Gilbert and Jonathan Haidt arrived with Stumbling on Happiness and The Happiness Hypothesis, respectively. Former cell biologist-cum-Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, with Richard Gere's seal of approval, wrote Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill. And Darrin M. McMahon, an intellectual historian, produced the exhaustively researched and edifying… books religion and spirituality art and culture Rachel Jefferson Thu, 10 Aug 2006 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2740/superheroes_invisibles_no_m/ On a pleasant June evening, I'm seated across the table from photographer Dulce Pinzón in a crowded Mexican restaurant in Brooklyn. Looking over the menu while trying to come up with a few reasonably articulate questions for an interview, I notice out of my right eye a broad-shouldered worker rushing by our table. He looks strangely familiar. "Is that ... Hombre Elástico?" Pinzón nods--it is Mr. Fantastic, the man of astounding intelligence and extreme malleability, leader of the Fantastic Four (and who, in Spanish-speaking countries, is known as the "Elastic Man"). Even without the three-foot-long forearms and the blue six-pack stomach, I remember his photo clearly, with his chubby cheeks and easy smile on display as he delivers a dish… art and culture immigration activism Rachel Jefferson Mon, 14 Aug 2006 06:00:01 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2729/narcissists_us/ "It seems like just yesterday I was at the White House staying in the Lincoln bedroom, and everything was wonderful." These were the words of former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland to a group of teenagers in early July. Rowland was trying to explain his downward trajectory from one of the Republican Party's favored political "stars" to standing in line for toilet paper in a federal prison. He described his "sense of entitlement" as a political persona. "Before you know it, you're doing things you never thought you'd do in the past. ... Then you send that message to others." The former governor no doubt got the message from those who influenced him in his rise to power, including the president… books art and culture politics Rachel Jefferson Wed, 16 Aug 2006 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2780/why_hemingway_is_chick_lit/ "When women stop reading, the novel will be dead," declared Ian McEwan in the Guardian last year. The British novelist reached this rather dire conclusion after venturing into a nearby park in an attempt to give away free novels. The result? Only one "sensitive male soul" took up his offer, while every woman he approached was "eager and grateful" to do the same. Unscientific as McEwan's experiment may be, its thesis is borne out by a number of surveys conducted in Britain, the United States and Canada, where men account for a paltry 20 percent of the market for fiction. Unlike the gods of the literary establishment who remain predominantly male--both as writers and critics--their humble readers are overwhelmingly female.… art and culture books gender Rachel Jefferson Thu, 24 Aug 2006 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2775/the_true_temptations_of_the_west/ The phrase "Third World poverty," conjures up CNN-inspired images of starving, fly-infested babies clutching at their emaciated parents. This is raw human desperation that even we, in the comfort of our First-World homes, can comprehend. But what's more difficult to imagine is the fate of the other hundreds of millions in these distant countries caught right in the cusp between such disaster and survival. They are truck drivers, street vendors, house-maids, unemployed college graduates, and farmers who lead precarious, desperate lives scratching and flailing against going under in a teeming mass of humanity. Theirs is a world where success is a small step up the social ladder, achieved against enormous odds and at great expense to one's soul. Except for… books art and culture s.e. Asia Rachel Jefferson Thu, 31 Aug 2006 07:27:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2804/pushing_back_against_ad_censorship/ A few months ago, MoveOn PAC decided to air a series of innovative ads against a group of vulnerable Republican members of Congress, tied to the various corruption scandals enveloping GOP-controlled Washington. They developed a striking image to serve as the ads' centerpiece: the "Caught Red-Handed" series features photos of a member of Congress in black-and-white, except for his or her hands, which are colored bright red. The visual, accompanied by a voiceover listing allegations, is memorable, and communicates the ad's central claim, making it highly unusual in a world of cookie-cutter, instantly forgettable campaign ads. The only problem came when MoveOn PAC went to buy time for their ads. As Joel Bleifuss recently reported in In These Times, though… media politics art and culture Rachel Jefferson Fri, 01 Sep 2006 06:00:01 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2782/plagiarists_catch_your_own_clue/ Plagiarism is on the rise--in journalism, by bestselling authors, on college campuses and online. But the one thing those of us victimized by it can't do is speak up. If we do, we are accused of "sour grapes." Occasionally, reporters who make things up (Jayson Blair) or copy from another newspaper (most recently New York Post reporter Andy Geller) do get fired or suspended for sheer fabrication or thievery. But increasingly, only the form of expression is protected: I can steal your ideas all I want as long as I put them in my own words. Educators are supposed to teach our students that intellectual theft is the worst crime they can commit in the academy, yet these same students… Art and Culture Books Rachel Jefferson Tue, 05 Sep 2006 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2791/bigger_than_hip_hop/ "It's bigger!" roared T.J. Crawford. "It's bigger!" the crowd shouted back, in traditional call-and-response fashion. "It's bigger than hip hop!" Crawford, chairman of the National Hip Hop Political Convention (NHHPC), deployed the hook of a song by hip hop's iconic "conscious" group, dead prez, to bring home the point: Members of what marketers have labeled the "hip-hop generation" are concerned with much more than just nodding their heads to the beat. Politics is more important--bigger!--than music for activists who have felt swept aside and demobilized by black elders whose outlook was forged in the crucible of civil rights organizing. These young crews, along with the elders who hang with them on political issues, aim to seize leadership of what's left… hip hop race activism Rachel Jefferson Fri, 29 Sep 2006 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2836/youtube_in_meworld/ Americans are hams. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? The country's motto should be "look at me, look at me!" It's too easy to dismiss such behavior as exhibitionism or acting out. Today large swaths of the populace feel nonexistent without an audience. This tendency to seek attention has accelerated with the recent explosion of social networking and video sharing Web sites. Ostensibly, these sites help us to connect with friends, families and the like-minded, but their names belie this. On MySpace and YouTube, making friends is secondary to generating a virtual fanbase, an online altar to yourself. Why has this compulsion to see and be seen overtaken so many of us? Anthropologist Thomas de Zengotita explores this question… technology television art and culture Rachel Jefferson Tue, 03 Oct 2006 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2837/jesus_is_tragic/ Kids are cute. Documentaries confirm this, from the nerdy word-whizzes of Spellbound to the agile dancers of Mad Hot Ballroom. But in the new documentary Jesus Camp, children are terrifying symbols of the Christian Right's power to indoctrinate, manipulate and control. The film's creators, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, directed another kid-centered chronicle, The Boys of Baraka, which follows a group of inner city teenage boys from Baltimore as they spend a year at a school in Kenya. In Jesus Camp they venture to the American heartland for an eye-opening journey into the lives of Evangelical Christians, specifically their Jesus-loving spawn. Conservatives may hail the film as a celebration of their supremacy; for secular humanists, Democrats and the 49 percent… movies art and culture religion and spirituality Rachel Jefferson Fri, 20 Oct 2006 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2838/history_we_can_use/ Standing in the kitchen of a rehabbed Manhattan tenement, a tour guide at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum tells visitors the story of the Baldizzis, a Sicilian-Catholic family who lived in the building from 1928 to 1935. Amid typical anecdotes of self-help in hard times, the guide discusses aspects of the immigrant family's experience that are usually glossed over in museums. Both parents came illegally to the United States. When Home Relief inspectors visited the apartment, the family would hide belongings that might make them ineligible for public aid. The father, a skilled cabinetmaker, found work through WPA programs until jobs in war industries became available. The experiences of the Baldizzis give visitors a chance to think about the… art and culture activism Rachel Jefferson Fri, 27 Oct 2006 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2872/virginity_or_death_a_conversation_with_katha_pollitt/ In September, Nation columnist Katha Pollitt stopped by the offices of In These Times for a public discussion of her latest book, Virginity or Death! And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time. While it's become commonplace to describe journalism as a "rough draft of history," this collection of Pollitt's columns rises to the level of history itself. From the start of Bush's first term through September 11 and the waxing and waning of the Iraq invasion in early '06, Pollitt offers a running chronicle of the issues of the day. She tackles each topic with humor and passion, always returning to the central role that women play in U.S. and international politics. "The solution is obvious," she writes… Art and Culture Gender Books Politics activism Rachel Jefferson Fri, 17 Nov 2006 06:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2902/beyoncs_bootyful_bay/ She screams at the top of her lungs. A look of bewilderment dances across her honey-colored face. She whips her blond-streaked mane in a ferocious rage. R&B singer Beyoncé is in the foul throes of a Quarterlife Crisis. That's the angst twenty-somethings feel about life and the future. The pressures of careers, finances and relationships give its victims whiplash as they ponder choices. In Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties, Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner write, "While at its heart the quarterlife crisis is an identity crisis, it causes twenty-somethings' conflicting emotions to show up in different ways. Sometimes they reach a state of panic sparked by a feeling of loss and uncertainty." The beautiful and… Media Gender Music Rachel Jefferson Fri, 22 Dec 2006 06:00:01 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2943/dread_beats/ When I first heard Linton Kwesi Johnson's words, they came flowing through a nearly blown-out sound system in a Los Angeles punk club in the early '80s. I could barely hear him, but something about the intensity of his delivery--urgent, streetwise and intellectual--over a pulsing reggae beat made me take notice. Pressed up against the stage, I turned my small, 15-year-old frame around to watch as a handful of older punks begin to chant the lyrics, mimicking Johnson's thick, Jamaican Creole English: it woz in april nineteen eight wan doun inna di ghetto af Brixtan dat di babylan dem cauz such a frickshan dat it bring about a great insohreckshan an it spread all owevah di naeshan it woz truly… art culture race Rachel Jefferson Wed, 27 Dec 2006 06:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2963/art_basel_miami_beach_a_whitewash/ Since 2001, Samuel Keller, the aging arts wunderkind, has inspired the art world's most seminal and explosive art exposition, Art Basel Miami Beach.  What's more, the Swiss-born arts impresario seems to have cloned himself and is replicating at an alarming rate. Miami's sunny landscape is already resplendent with lush palms, stylized Deco palaces, pastels and pelicans. Now it is host to ubiquitous arts aficionados, all sporting the Keller look--stylishly understated, bare-pated and European. Basketball phenom Michael Jordan validated baldness for black men.  Now Keller has creatively flipped that script for the white male. At Basel, bald is beautiful.  Still, much remains to be done. I have been covering the festival since it launched five years ago. Lamentably, in all that time,… art culture europe Rachel Jefferson