Culture

Culture

Friday

Georgia Heneage

Why we dramatize history — and why we should stop

A few weeks ago, a friend asked if I had watched the Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew. That interview, yes — the one with all the sweating and the pizza in Woking, in which he definitely didn’t meet Virginia Roberts Giuffre but he did single-handedly crash his reputation, and Emily Maitlis, like the Medusa of journalism she has since become, just let him tie his own noose. Of course I’ve watched it. I’m a journalist. And a twenty-first-century citizen. Who hasn’t? My friend, for one, though she pointed out that she can just watch the three-part Amazon dramatization of the whole affair, A Very Royal Scandal, which is even juicier than the interview. (“I’m the son of the sovereign,” bellows the Duke of York, played by a soapy Michael Sheen.

history
Doomers
Matthew Gasda

Doomers looks at what AI means for the future

I wrote my play Doomers partly because, the night Sam Altman was fired, I was performing in a play called Zoomers. Someone — I forget who — suggested the idea of Doomers as a joke, and I thought it was a good one. My method for some, if not all, of my plays over the past few years has been to take some kind of mimetic material — downtown, Gen Z, polyamory — and to find what is surprising or human inside the meme. I try to locate a universal story in what might otherwise seem like a surface-level idea that feels niche, obnoxious or both. Sam Altman and the autistic tech world, in particular, represent opaque surfaces that I believe conceal something deeper.

Thursday

William Newton

Guiding young minds through the National Gallery of Art

"Are there any more questions?” I asked loudly. I was struggling to make myself heard above about thirty seventh-graders, whom I was leading on a tour of the National Gallery of Art. There had already been many questions that morning, even before we began looking at objects in the museum’s permanent collection. We had just finished an analysis and discussion of techniques and symbolism in a seventeenth-century sculpture from Seville, so I took advantage of the momentary lull in the hand-raising and was walking toward the next work on our itinerary when I heard an unexpected sound. Thud. Turning, I saw that one of the students had fainted, practically at my feet. Teacher and chaperones rushed in, and after a few moments the student was fine.

tour

Wednesday

Amber Duke

Caitlin Clark kneels to ‘woke’ WNBA

WNBA star Caitlin Clark has thrown out practically all of the goodwill she earned among new women’s basketball fans and conservatives who otherwise defended her as she was subjected to blatant racism after joining the league. Clark became a lightning rod in her rookie season as her black opponents flagrantly fouled her on multiple occasions and refused to give her flowers for growing the game after a stellar college career at the University of Iowa. Clark was chosen as TIME’s Athlete of the Year last week, a well-deserved recognition of her impact on her sport and the massive celebrity she gained in such a short amount of time.

caitlin clark

Wednesday

Amber Duke

Supreme Court hears arguments against puberty blocker ban

The Supreme Court today is hearing arguments against Tennessee’s statewide ban on prescribing puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy for minors with gender dysphoria. The challenge to the state law is being led by the Biden administration and the American Civil Liberties Union and is brought on behalf of three teens with gender dysphoria, their parents and a doctor. Their lawyer is also transgender. The Tennessee law came about during a period of very fraught debate over how to treat children who suffer from gender dysphoria.

Wednesday

Amber Duke

Was Martha Stewart the OG trad wife?

Homemaker extraordinaire Martha Stewart has a fascinating new documentary about her life out on Netflix. The nearly two-hour film features narration from Martha herself about her childhood, her rise to fame, her marriage and the insider trading case that nearly destroyed her career. It’s worth a watch if you’re trying to get inspired ahead of your Thanksgiving celebrations tomorrow or if you just want to better understand the mindset of the perfection-driven television, magazine and homeware mogul. As I watched the documentary, though, I was mostly surprised at the parallels between the societal perception of Martha’s homemaking skills at the height or her popularity and the modern discourse about “tradwives.

Thursday

Saffron Swire

Why Alice Neel remains a vital presence

There is no portrait by Alice Neel quite as radical as her own. The artist was one of the first octogenarian women to exhibit a nude of herself with 1980’s “Self-Portrait.” In the painting, Neel grasps her paintbrush and sits exposed at the edge of a blue-and-white striped armchair. There’s no doubt about it; this is a woman of conviction who demands, “Look at me, in all my senescent glory: my silver hair, wrinkled face, sagging breasts, this is a life lived and here are its marks.” It’s only in the last decade or so that Neel has risen from relative obscurity to be acknowledged as one of the twentieth century’s greatest portraitists.

Neel
William Boyd

The ups and downs of making Chaplin

The commission Thirty-four years ago, in the summer of 1990, I had a call from my Hollywood agent, Geoffrey Sanford. Lord Richard Attenborough, the film director, would like to meet me to discuss a project. I said “Yes, please,” instantly. The timing was good — I had delivered my fifth novel Brazzaville Beach to my publishers and was awaiting its autumn publication. I met Dickie, as everyone called him, with his co-producer and right-hand woman, Diana Carter, in Blake’s Hotel in west London. The subject of the meeting was a proposed film of the life of Charlie Chaplin, a passion project of Dickie’s. But there was a complication. A script had already been written by Dickie’s old friend, the actor-director-producer Bryan Forbes.

Chaplin
Algy Cluff

Memories of David Niven

In 1967 I visited, as I often did, my uncle, who lived for twenty years in the Hotel Richemond in Geneva. From there I was flying back to London; in those far-off days the tendency among educated people was to dress up rather than down. I immediately realized that my trim, military-looking neighbor was none other than David Niven, wearing, I observed, a Rifle Brigade tie, from the regiment he patriotically joined from Hollywood at the outbreak of war in 1939. Niven, like myself, had been educated at Stowe in its early days under the founding headmaster J.F. Roxburgh.

Niven
Peter Tonguette

Barcelona turns thirty

Released thirty years ago this year, Barcelona is the movie with which Whit Stillman came of age. The New York-born cinematic portraitist of the well-mannered and well-heeled launched his career in 1990 with Metropolitan, which charted a course deep into J.D. Salingerdom with its cast of demure debutantes and their callow escorts. For all its wit and winsomeness, the movie has a certain undeniable post-adolescent soppiness: a girl is driven to tears by a cruel remark by her brother; a young man clings to the toys of his youth; there is a paean to Babar and a lament for absentee fathers. The film’s much-loved Christmastime setting actively contributes to this tone of teenage melancholia.

Barcelona

Wednesday

Amber Duke

Pro athletes are loving the ‘Trump dance’

There’s a trend on the sports field: famous athletes are hitting the “Trump dance” in celebration of their in-competition achievements. If you’ve watched one of his rallies this cycle, you’ll know the exact dance move I’m talking about. Trump moves his hips back and forth while punching his arms forward. Sometimes he finishes with a golf swing. It’s very middle- to late-aged white man at a family wedding, which feels totally authentic, is easy to emulate and is a lot fun. In just the past few days, we’ve seen it done by members of the San Francisco 49ers, including confirmed Trump supporter Nick Bosa, the Detroit Lions, the Las Vegas Raiders, the Tennessee Titans, UFC fighter Jon Jones, US Men’s Soccer forward Christian Pulisic and British golfer Charley Hull.

Friday

Amber Duke

Which campaign is more insulting to women?

Much has been made of the “gender gap” this election season as Vice President Kamala Harris outperforms former president Donald Trump with women, while Trump outperforms Kamala with men. Until now, both have leaned into their respective advantages, with Kamala doubling down on abortion messaging and Trump doing the so-called “bro podcast” tour. However, in recent weeks, both candidates have sought to diminish the gender gap on the other side. Harris started a “Hunters and Anglers for Harris-Walz” coalition, which ended with Walz awkwardly failing to load a shotgun, and made appeals to gamers, with Walz tying a game of Madden 0-0 and praising Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ability to “run a pick 6.

Wednesday

Amber Duke

Podcasts dominate the 2024 election

Former president Donald Trump is recording an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience with host Joe Rogan on Friday, just over a week out from Election Day on November 5. There was speculation for weeks that Trump might appear on the wildly popular podcast, with Rogan polling viewers as to whether he should interview the president for the first time in the show’s history. Rogan consistently has the most viewed podcast in America with millions of views per episode and is known for his long and wide-ranging discussions with his guests. His audience is also known to skew male-heavy and is made up of many independent and apolitical voters.

Monday

Laura Allsop

How controversial is The Apprentice?

Ali Abbasi’s new film, The Apprentice, may be named after the TV show that fatefully beamed Donald Trump into millions of homes for fourteen seasons before its star’s even more fateful run for the US presidency. But after watching Abbasi’s twisted and wildly entertaining bildungsroman, featuring Sebastian Stan as a young Donald and Jeremy Strong as his dark-arts mentor Roy Cohn, you recognize an echo of the sorcerer’s apprentice too. Abbasi starts the film with footage of Richard Nixon telling the world he is not a crook, before segueing to a punk-soundtracked montage of broke-down Seventies New York.

Trump
Amelia Butler-Gallie

Twenty-five years of Fight Club and American Beauty

Sound the alarm: hypermasc beefcakes all over the world have an anniversary to celebrate! Beware women, children and the effete, this year marks the twenty-fifth birthday of both David Fincher’s notorious psychodrama Fight Club, adapted from the debut novel by Chuck Palahniuk, and Sam Mendes’s equally notorious American Beauty, which has gone from Oscar-winning acclaim to being a punchline on chat shows and animated comedies alike. If you haven’t seen Fight Club, shame on you. Go to Hulu and binge away. Revel in its anarchic ludicrousness and head-to-head carnage; inhale the feculent atmospheres of Lou’s Tavern and Tyler’s dilapidated mansion house, all tied together through Fincher’s iconic desaturated color palette. It is all too easy to taste the blood, sweat and tears.

Fight Club
Alexandra Bregman

War, one artwork at a time

The chaos of the conflict in Ukraine is difficult to track, let alone to reflect on a human scale. After ten years of destruction and occupation, analyzing the situation from afar is a challenge. For many in Ukraine, art provides a way to communicate about a culture under siege, a sense of identity and a concrete way of engaging with people outside the country. While art can speak for itself, it requires human cultural ambassadors. To this end, Ukrainian nationals and their allies have been working tirelessly to promote the voices of a people under siege through museum exhibitions and events the world over.

art
William Newton

A classic monument for World War One

I was standing in front of “A Soldier’s Journey,” the centerpiece of the new National World War One Memorial in Washington, DC, chatting with its creator, sculptor Sabin Howard, when I raised a question. “So, are you the new Saint-Gaudens?” I asked. “No! No, God no!” exclaimed Howard. “That guy sucks.” Sabin Howard is nothing if not direct in expressing his opinions, which are refreshingly free of the artspeak that saturates most of the contemporary art world. It’s a frankness that is best appreciated by examining his current commission as well as trying to understand the artist himself.

Memorial

Wednesday

Dave Seminara

Weathering the storm: on the ground in hurricane-ravaged Florida

Fort Lauderdale, Florida I’ve lived in seven US states and five countries, but when I arrived in St. Petersburg, Florida in 2019 I knew it was my last stop. There is no such thing as paradise on earth, but for me, St. Pete is as close as it comes. But every year during hurricane season, we’re on pins and needles hoping the big one won’t come and wipe us off the map. Our homeowner’s and flood insurance rates are insane, but I still don’t know anyone who feels like their policies are comprehensive enough to sleep easy when the Weather Channel vans prowl our streets like hungry hyenas looking for viral footage during hurricane season.

Monday

Amber Duke

North Carolinians forced to bury dead in their yards

The official death toll from Hurricane Helene rose yesterday to 227 across six states, with about half of the victims being in North Carolina. But sources on the ground in North Carolina tell The Spectator that the true scope of the death and devastation wrought by the storm is not even close to being understood. In addition, the rescue and recovery efforts have been largely undertaken by private citizens, as the state and federal responses have been hamstrung by incompetent public officials.   “It’s so much worse than they’re saying,” said one individual who was in Asheville when Helene hit. “I think there’s a massive cover-up.

Thursday

Amber Duke

Bloomberg Radio disses flyover states

The migrant takeover of Springfield, Ohio, has become a major cultural moment, particularly thanks to former president Donald Trump declaring on the debate stage that they [the migrants] are “eating the dogs.” A musical remix of his declarations went viral — and I’ve heard completely non-political people jokingly mimic Trump’s words in public. Setting aside the debate over whether or not there is evidence Haitians are stealing and eating people’s pets, or ducks and geese from the local park, the residents of Springfield have legitimate concerns over mass migration. Serious problems arise when approximately 20,000 people from a vastly different culture move to one place and don’t make a real effort to assimilate.

Wednesday

Amber Duke

Does Trump’s platform say he would ban IVF?

The Kamala Harris campaign held a press call on Tuesday morning in which they claimed Republicans and former president Donald Trump are “attacking” access to in vitro fertilization. An email sent out advertising the call said, “Donald Trump’s own platform — linked on his campaign website — could effectively ban IVF and abortion in states nationwide.” I found this to be surprising because I read Trump’s platform — linked on his campaign website — when it became official the week of the Republican National Convention. Of course, Trump has also publicly said that he supports IVF and wants to require insurance companies to cover the treatment. I double checked Trump’s platform just in case, and confirmed my suspicions.

Friday

Amber Duke

Celebrity endorsements take over 2024 election

It’s that time of the 2024 election... the Democrats are rolling out the celebrity endorsements. Oprah Winfrey made a surprise appearance at the Democratic National Convention, and the DNC also featured four “celebrity” hosts: Kerry Washington, Tony Goldwyn, Mindy Kaling and Ana Navarro. This week after the presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump, Harris got her white whale: pop superstar Taylor Swift. Back in January, reports said the Biden campaign was hoping for her endorsement the most.  Swift released her endorsement on her Instagram account next to a picture from her TIME Person of the Year cover holding her cat.

Thursday

Alexander Larman

Caligula’s second wind

Imagine, if you will, that you are a patron of what used to be euphemistically called “blue movies” at the beginning of 1980, during the so-called “Golden Age of Porn.” The previous few years have seen pornography enter the mainstream in the form of such hugely popular pictures as Deep Throat and Debbie Does Dallas, which saw such stars as Linda Lovelace and Marilyn Chambers briefly achieve nearly the fame (or notoriety) of their Hollywood peers, as their films came close to becoming, if not respectable, at least part of the cinematic fabric of the day. Then you hear tell of something truly remarkable: a big-budget Roman epic with an A-list cast, scripted by Gore Vidal and combining intricately recreated scenes of classical debauchery with envelope-pushing sexual content.

Caligula
Amelia Butler-Gallie

The world needs more Lars von Triers

In 2009, cinema audiences were faced with a choice between two talking-fox pictures. The first, most obviously user-friendly option was Wes Anderson’s Roald Dahl adaptation Fantastic Mr. Fox, with the eponymous reynard voiced by none other than George Clooney. If your tastes verged on the darker and more perverse, the Danish director Lars von Trier had a treat in store for you with his controversy-laden psychodrama Antichrist. In one key moment, the male protagonist played by Willem Dafoe is approached by a mangy-looking fox — voiced, uncredited, by Dafoe himself — that declares, in maniacal bass tones, “Chaos reigns!” You wouldn’t get that with George Clooney.

von trier
Harry Cluff

Bud Powell should be a household name

Late one January night in 1945, a young black man stumbled drunkenly toward Broad Street Station in Philadelphia. He was exhausted after playing a long set in a grotty club half a mile away. The naturally nervous musician often used alcohol to settle his unbearable over-excitements and debilitating despairs. On this occasion he had one too many. His awkward gait caught the attention of two policemen. They went to shoo him away, but instead of escorting him peacefully along, something about the twenty-year-old vexed the pair and they began to bash him about the head repeatedly with their truncheons. When the seriousness of his injuries became apparent, after he’d been slung into a frozen cell, he was taken to a hospital to recuperate.

Powell
William Newton

Böcklin brings out the dead

In the fall, a middle-aged man’s fancy turns to thoughts of death. As shadows lengthen, decay takes root in the raised beds, and the “spooky season” recalls the shortening of our days. It also provides an opportunity to reflect on how one artist embraced this time of year. Much of the life of the Basel-born Symbolist Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901) was haunted by the specter of death. His first fiancée died before they could marry; he himself nearly died of typhus. Of his fourteen children, five died in childhood; three others predeceased him. His daughter Maria was buried in the English Cemetery in Florence, where Böcklin spent much of his life. Scholars believe that the cemetery partly inspired Böcklin’s most famous work, 1880’s eerie “The Isle of the Dead.

Böcklin

Saturday

Cockburn

Taylor Swift turns mean girl on Trump supporter Brittany Mahomes?

Now we got bad blood? Billion-dollar pop star Taylor Swift almost had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Cockburn pulled out his binoculars at the Chiefs game Thursday and did not see Britanny Mahomes anywhere near Swift, as she usually is. Both Taylor and Mahomes appeared to be in entirely different suites. Why the distance? From what Cockburn can tell, it might have something to do with the fact that Mahomes has associated herself with the MAGA world. For the uninitiated, Taylor Swift is dating Travis Kelce, tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs. Brittany Mahomes is the wife of Patrick Mahomes, quarterback for the Chiefs. Last season, Swift and Mahomes were almost always seen together in the same suite, cheering on their significant others.

taylor swift

Wednesday

Amber Duke

RFK thinks he’s the guy who can ‘Make America Healthy Again’

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his presidential campaign in swing states on Friday and officially endorsed former president Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Electorally, this was a potentially pivotal moment: RFK was pulling about 5 percent of the total electorate, according to the RealClear average, and an even higher percentage in some swing states. If Kennedy was right when he told Dr. Phil that 57 percent of his voters would go to Trump if he left the race, then his exit and endorsement could prove a significant boost to Trump. Since RFK Jr. and another former Democrat, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, endorsed Trump, both have been added to the former president’s transition team. Culturally, RFK Jr.

RFK

Monday

William Newton

In the studio with Merche Gaspar

I was sitting cross-legged on the floor of artist Merche Gaspar Caro’s studio in Barcelona on a rainy Monday morning when I asked myself, “Why isn’t this artist better known?” We had met by chance some months earlier, when I passed by the Galeria Subex, which at the time was hosting a show of her recent work. I was initially drawn in by the exhibition poster, which displayed a stunning image of a young woman wearing a dark-blue dress and a white apron. Once inside the gallery, I was enthralled by canvases of mothers and daughters, drawings of birds and paintings of children playing or curled up in bed reading stories. Many featured a wonderfully cool, contemporary palette of mauve, gray and sapphire.