Required Reading

• Writing for Philadelphia Magazine, Victor Fiorillo says the Philadelphia Art Museum's steps shouldn’t be used for advertising:

On Tuesday, the iconic steps of the world-class Philadelphia Museum of Art were transformed into a giant advertisement for Blue Beetle, an upcoming Warner Bros. movie I had never heard of until this happened. So I guess the advertisement is effective in that sense. We have this movie that most people haven’t heard of and that we can’t use our actors to promote, because of the whole strike thing. So let’s slap a mural advertising it onto the one staircase in Philly that everybody knows: the steps the namesake character runs up triumphantly in Rocky.

• It's no secret that media people try to get exclusives and preferential treatment, but an email from "star" columnist Scott Feinberg of the Hollywood Reporter demanding priority access to unreleased movies (which also happens in the art world and hurts indie media outlets in favor of corporate behemoths) is the talk of the day in the film industry. Charlotte Klein of Vanity Fair has the story, and just a reminder that Penske Media Corporation (PMC, the company mentioned below) also owns legacy publications Art in America, Artnews, and Artforum:

Penske Media Corporation took over operations of THR in 2020, as it continued to expand its entertainment news footprint. The company also oversees Deadline, Variety, Rolling Stone, Billboard, and Indiewire. A spokesperson for PMC clarified in a statement that Feinberg “did not in any way mean to imply that he should see films before others, but just that all awards analysts should see them at the same time and not be given preferential treatment,” adding that the email was “inartfully worded” and that Feinberg plans to follow up with the studios and strategists to make that clear. “It was Scott’s understanding that there have been instances where other awards analysts have gotten early access to a film by also claiming to be a reviewer and were able to see films before others. Any suggestion of consequences for not providing early viewing access to Scott was not the intent,” the spokesperson said.

• Steven Levy of Wired has some choice quotes by Grimes about her former beau who also happens to be the richest man in the world:

Q: Their father is the richest man in the world. Do you worry about privilege?

A: A little bit. I think their life is gonna be pretty intense. Being Elon’s kid is not the same as being anyone’s kid. In my house, at least, I want it to be more of a crazy warehouse situation and a cool art space.

Q: You mentioned Twitter. Did you call out to Elon that you were disturbed by some of his tweets?

A: I don’t want to talk about this too much. But take the trans thing. After that, we had a big, long conversation. I was like, “I want to dissect why you’re so stressed about this.” Getting to the heart of what Elon says helps me get to the heart of what other people’s issues are, because it’s this über guy situation. And it came down to pretty much every way that you transition can cause fertility issues. I was like, OK, you don’t hate trans people, you hate woke culture. I get that it can be annoying, and you have concerns about the fertility thing. So let’s figure it out, because there’s a lot of fertility tech that could be innovated that would help trans people have kids, which would be great and would solve a lot of problems. He’s just on Twitter, and he’s unhappy with woke people, and the arguments happened.

• Earlier this month, Karen Attiah of the Washington Post satirized the way American media writes about other countries' credit woes by giving it a taste of its own medicine:

African analysts have in the past commented on the increasing “Africanization” of America, with its embrace of authoritarian politicians, its growing xenophobia, its rampant gun violence and its rising maternal mortality rates. Famed commentator Trevor Noah said during Donald Trump’s first election campaign that if elected, Trump would become America’s first African president. The former president has now been indicted on charges that he attempted to overthrow the U.S. government after the 2020 election.

• What is to be done about Instagram colonialism? asks Natalia Molina for Zócalo:

I’m a third-generation Mexican American who’s been traveling back to my family’s hometown of Acaponeta, Nayarit, my whole life. I’ve been to plenty of other destinations in Mexico, too, including Tulum in 1988, when it was still a small fishing village. Then, in 1999, hoping to ride the tourism prosperity wave underway in Cancun, the government rebranded the region the Riviera Maya. Entrepreneurs, developers, and immigrants from the U.S. and Europe soon followed. They set up hotels and residences, and hosted yoga festivals and dance parties. In 2004, the New York Times dubbed Tulum a “countercultural haven,” even as it pointed out the dangers of commercialization.

Since then, development—often fueled by foreign investors—has unfolded without much forethought, government oversight, or planning so fast that it has outrun the local government’s ability to provide basic services like electricity and sewage. You won’t see the squatter camps where imported workers find themselves living on Instagram. And stunning images of divers and snorkelers in the Mesoamerican Reef System, the second largest coral reef in the world, rarely feature the human waste that’s increasingly turning up in its underground rivers. The impacts of tourism will only get worse, with a train project connecting Tulum to Cancun on track to bring more people, plow through the jungle home of endangered habits, and destroy caves that may contain important Maya relics.

• What if your neighbor steals your tragedy to write their story? Rebecca Meacham writes for Electric Lit:

It’s a privilege to be the swallow, the tornado, the gossip—to hold the power of selection, and selectivity. 

But what about other people’s experiences that we repurpose—people who might show up at our yard sales? How do we respond when these actual people (and not our characters) realize that their bright strands of hope and hopelessness are, to us, really great material to weave through splendid nests? 

• Everyone talks about narcissism nowadays, but Diana Kwon of Scientific American asks if we understand what it actually is:

But chances are you've encountered a narcissist, and they looked nothing like Trump, Musk or Modi. Up to 6 percent of the U.S. population, mostly men, is estimated to have had narcissistic personality disorder during some period of their lives. And the condition manifests in confoundingly different ways. People with narcissism “may be grandiose or self-loathing, extraverted or socially isolated, captains of industry or unable to maintain steady employment, model citizens or prone to antisocial activities,” according to a review paper on diagnosing the disorder.

Clinicians note several dimensions on which narcissists vary. They may function extremely well, with successful careers and vibrant social lives, or very poorly. They may (or may not) have other disorders, ranging from depression to sociopathy. And although most people are familiar with the “grandiose” version of narcissism—as displayed by an arrogant and pompous person who craves attention—the disorder also comes in a “vulnerable” or “covert” form, where individuals suffer from internal distress and fluctuations in self-esteem. What these seeming opposites have in common is an extreme preoccupation with themselves.

• Jillian Steinhauer does a fantastic review of Katy Hessel's book The Story of Art Without Men for the New Republic. She points out some errors:

At its best, a book like Hessel’s might serve as a primer—a starting point from which to find out more about some of the women she includes. But in that case, the least I ask is accuracy, and I’m not entirely sure that it delivers. A big red flag came for me when, in the 1990s chapter, I read that Republican Senator Jesse Helms “decried Robert Mapplethorpe’s explicit homosexual photographs and in response defunded the National Endowment for the Arts.” This is wrong; Helms was a major player in the culture wars of the ’80s and ’90s in the United States, but he did not defund the NEA.

• American democracy is unraveling; Dan Balz and Clara Ence Morse of the Washington Post point out some reasons why:

The state of democracy is not uniformly negative. In moments of crisis especially, elected officials have found common ground. At times, government action does reflect the public will. Under Trump, bipartisan congressional majorities passed and the president signed multiple rounds of relief during the covid-19 pandemic. Biden and Congress came together to pass a major infrastructure package in 2021. Last year, there was bipartisan agreement on legislation to spur production of semiconductor chips in the United States.

At times, protection of minorities and their rights from the will of the majority is needed and necessary. Checks and balances afford further protections that nonetheless can seem to hamstring government’s ability to function effectively. But on balance, the situation now is dire. Americans are more dissatisfied with their government than are citizens in almost every other democracy, according to polling.

• Some people are caught gossiping about a guy's tattoo and don't realize he speaks their language:

https://www.tiktok.com/@xiaomanyc/video/7091654091318840618?_r=1&_t=8eya335sn5n

• More Discofoot, please; also, the comments!
• Are robots in Japan being fired? Uptin's Tiktok channel has some thoughts:

https://www.tiktok.com/@uptin/video/7266783331151301921

Required Reading is published every Thursday afternoon, and it is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.

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