Art for What’s Sake, VII: The Pornography of Violence
I brought up movies only because many of my favorites have a fair amount of violence in them, and you seem to be lumping violence with pornography.
The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
Wednesday’s Child: The Joy of Falling
Even such preternaturally astute observers of the society of the future as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Evgeny Zamyatin tended to simplify totalitarianism….
The Autodidact: Homer
In this series, I want you to do your best to forget what you have been told to believe. We are going to concentrate more on what the Greeks said about themselves, and, more than that, we are going to compare what they said with how they lived.
Art for What’s Sake, VI: The Effect of Art
“You’re getting a little carried away. Next you’ll be telling us there are wrong flavors of ice cream or saying “no meatballs with spaghetti.” Yeah, I saw the movie.”
Poem: Semonides on Women
This translation of a early Greek iambic poem has been put up as a text to accompany the podcast on canceling the classics.
Lessons from Charlottesville
“On June 17, 2015, everything changed.” So wrote Anne Wilson Smith on the first page of her new book, Charlottesville Untold: Inside Unite The Right, published by Shotwell Publishing in Columbia, South Carolina.
Art for What’s Sake, V: Aesthetic and/or Moral Judgments
How could we possibly talk about movies as art, if we don’t agree on what art is. It would be the same as talking about movies without knowing what a movie is. And, if everything depends on how we feel or on what gives us pleasure, then there is no basis for discussion.
Wednesday’s Child: Such are the Joys
With apologies to George Orwell, whose memoir my title evokes, in this post I propose to begin uncovering some hidden strings of human character which, not to put too fine a point on it, make the music of happiness
