I once hinted that this blog might possibly someday have a theme. It looks like we have an early frontrunner: pieces of paper that I rip. Or, turning a nervous habit into an excuse to take pictures.
Yesterday, Tali and I went to see "The Last Newspaper" at The New Museum. Of note: a table with lots of sections of newspaper next to a board with magnets. Visitors were invited to rip up the newspaper and create new headlines, pictures, stories, etc. The most revolutionary use of newspaper and/or viewer participation I've ever seen? No. More fun than watching videos rewrite a Kant essay for the current political climate? Oh yes.
Embarrassingly, I could not figure out whose installation it was. Anyone better at reading labels than I am?
Anyway, our product:
A work I had mixed feelings about was a documentary called A Dutiful Scrivener by Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere. They interviewed the NYT obituaries editor, "exposing" the dark underbelly of the obituary business. Did you know that the NYT's choices of whose life was "meaningful" enough to get an obituary reflects the judgement of a few individual editors, and is often biased towards white men? Shocker.
In spite of big, bold captions making sure we remember to be disturbed that obituary writers use formulas to establish the value of a human life "1 MODERATELY IMPORTANT LIFE=1,500 WORDS," A Dutiful Scrivener redeems itself by being full of kind of awesome trivia. In case you were wondering, the longest obit ever was for Pope John Paul II, and was around 13,000 words. There may have been a longer one sometime in the 1890s.
(Addendum: If, in fact, the filmmakers just have highly nuanced senses of humor and their subtle critique of heavy-handed political documentaries went way over my head, then I sincerely apologize for being a hater.)
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