Every Film I Watch In 2023:

183. Haunted Mansion (2023)

So,

When Paisley and I first broke up in February 2016, I spent a few weeks in rapturous relief before realizing what a dire state I’d left myself in. I was nearly homeless, with a few car-loads of possessions that I was lugging from one temporary refuge to the next. She got the dogs, I got the RAV-4. It was dark days, and suddenly the reality TV star that everybody thought would’ve dropped out of the presidential race by now was getting taken more and more seriously. I didn’t believe the rhetoric, didn’t believe the people saying Donald Trump could win. He reminded me of Cam Carpenter, a right wing bully, and I hated him from the moment he started making headlines. 

What did interest me, though, was how he was using social media to his advantage. Here was a senior citizen weaponizing Twitter in ways that astonished me. The pundits were dissecting each tweet, word for word, while press releases from other candidates sat unopened in their inboxes. He’d found a way to circumvent the media, then make them scramble to keep up to the conversation he was creating. They were treating him as a joke while playing right into his hands. It was like watching a magic trick in slow motion.

I’d been a reporter in the Yukon when Obama first began campaigning, and I remember the sensation of giddy hope that came with the idea the U.S. was finally going to elect its first black president. It felt like finally, now, things were going to be better. Fast forward eight years and this sexist bigot was proving that there was plenty of opposition to progress, plenty of people keen to give this orange-faced huckster the reins. And coming to terms with that felt like accepting that the world was a darker, shittier place that I’d once thought. I was glad to have found my Kootenay refuge, but I feared for the future.

After crashing for a week with Niles, enjoying his John Cooper artwork and sharing joints over morning coffee, I ended up moving in with a newly elected city councillor named Anna Purcell. She lived with her husband Gary and a German exchange student I didn’t like. Anna had earned more votes in the election than any other councillor, and it was easy to see why. She had the perfect amount of Nelson quirk, while being ultra-articulate and incredibly passionate about her new gig. She was the type of person who walked her talk. When I interviewed her for the Star she’d been outspoken about the affordable housing crisis, so I knew she would understand if I asked her for a place to stay. She lived just a few blocks up from Paisley’s place, meaning I would have to pass by it every morning on the way to work. 

“When my ex left me, it was like the words were bonked out of me,” Anna said, sitting in her living room one afternoon. “I just couldn’t talk for a while after that. I literally couldn’t speak.”

I told her I felt embarrassed after writing that love-drenched introductory column for the paper, and making Paisley such a big part of my public persona. Now everyone was going to know I fucked up my family, and would be watching the fall-out like a soap opera.

“I feel like this is such a huge hit to my social capital, you know? Like I used to be a guy with a partner and a place and some dogs, now I’m just a guy. With nothing.”

Anna shook her head. “That’s enough. I don’t think it will be as big a hit as you think. It’s not like single people have less value, right?”

Once a week I would swing by Paisley’s place to pick up Muppet and Buster. We would take the train tracks to Red Sands, or trek along Baker Street and down to the Prestige, but I didn’t have a dog-friendly place to take them home to. Sometimes I just walked them around the block, hanging out at the Central School playground en route, then brought them back an hour later. At first I was having no problem processing my separation from Paisley, but with the dogs it was different. They were blameless, had no idea what was going on. One afternoon I sat on a random lawn and held them to my chest, weeping. I called my parents and sobbed into the phone.

“I don’t mean to be insensitive, but you need to stop crying in front of the dogs,” Paisley said, standing in the doorway of her house. “It really upsets Muppet.”

“How did you know I was crying?”

“Last time you took them she came home and she wouldn’t sit still, she was stressed out and wagging her little body around. She knows something is wrong.”

“Well, this feels wrong.”

Paisley was having no trouble transitioning into the next stage of her life. Her dessert business was thriving, she was dating new guys and making new friends. She posted so many pictures with her new roommate that people started to wonder if they were a couple. She had shaved her head, Britney Spears-style, in the midst of our breakup, but now her hair had grown into a cute pixie cut. She looked like Winona Ryder in Alien Resurrection, and when she stood with her hands on her hips you could read her tattoo: It Could Be Worse...

“What’re you eating these days? How are you feeding yourself?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Nachos, peanut butter and jam, stuff like that.”

She shook her head. “Peanut butter and jam?”

“You know I’m just keeping it simple. I don’t have many groceries.”

“But you’re still going to CrossFit?”

“Yeah, I told Ali I couldn’t afford it and she was like ‘just keep coming, and get the money to me when you can’. I think she knows what I’m going through, you know?”

“That’s nice of her. How’s Rock of Ages?”

Having something extracurricular to focus on had been crucial for me, otherwise I would’ve spent all my time either crying, smoking pot or sleeping. For the audition I’d ripped off my shirt and belted my way through an 80s power ballad, earning a spot in the chorus. I’d been given one half-sentence solo at the beginning of a song early in the show, and for the rest of the production I swapped my time between being the bartender of the Bourbon Room and a slimy producer who creeps on the female lead. It was keeping me just busy enough to feel stable, and made me feel like I was in high school school again.  

For the Star coverage, I did a photo shoot with the cast at an abandoned building near the Selkirk College campus. It was covered in the expected graffiti and looked like it would be a perfect setting for a horror movie. At the time there was a particular cartoon that had been popping up all over town, Thug Bear, and he showed up in a few of the shots. There was a main couple, then a rockstar named Stacey Jaxx who had been played by Tom Cruise in the movie version, and a quartet of sexy nymphs. The costumes were neon and pastel, with big wigs and plenty of bare skin. Though they were squinting into a harsh afternoon sun, I got an awesome shot that ended up on the cover. 

The rehearsals were more challenging than I was expecting. The choreography for the dance sequences was intricate, the pace that we were putting things together was faster than I was accustomed to, and I felt way out of my depth when it came to the singing. I’d been a soloist in the church choir as a kid, and I’d done a few musicals in high school, but I hadn’t sung in front of people for years. As the weeks passed I became increasingly more nervous, though I knew I was basically just background furniture for the other actors.

One day a woman named Siobhan approached me. She was part of the production, a swaggering farm girl with a sarcastic streak. Rehearsal was just about to start, and I’d just put down my bag.

“I’ve been meaning to thank you,” she said.

I smiled, expecting a joke. “Oh yeah, for what?”

“That picture that you took of Andrew Stevenson, the one where he’s handcuffed and being led into court? I wanted to thank you for taking that photo.”

I blinked for a moment, caught off guard. “Thanks, yeah. I was really happy to get that shot. It took me over a year.”

She took a deep breath. “Well, I was there in court for the proceedings, but I never got a chance to really see his face, not like you can see it in that photo. When I saw it, it honestly blew me away.”

I was confused. “So who’s this guy to you?”

“I was one of the bank tellers that day, at the credit union he robbed. He waved his fucking gun right in my face. Traumatized me. I’d been having nightmares about this guy for months, every night, and it was like he wasn’t human. With a black mask, jumping around and screaming like some sort of ghoul. That’s what I saw every night when I closed my eyes.”

“Holy shit.”

“Then I saw that photo, Will, and it changed everything. I saw he was just a human, just a normal human, just like everyone else. He wasn’t some supernatural monster who was out to get me. He couldn’t hurt me anymore. That’s what that photo did for me. So that’s what I’m saying thank you for.”

“I don’t even know what to say.”

She smiled warmly, and hugged me. “You don’t have to say anything.”

The Kootenay Goon

What I Call Home: An Exploration of Privilege

By Katherine Healy 

It’s hard to love a place and know a place. The first week of college I brought my newfound friends to the town that I learned to walk in, grew up in, and spent hours upon hours simply existing in. However, I was shocked by their reactions. “This is so beautiful,” “what a place to grow up in,” and “do you know how lucky you are to live here?” were the only sounds in a car where everyone stared out the windows. Although I was shocked, I understood their reactions. The beauty of my town is obvious: blue is smeared across the sky and the sea while green compliments it from below. 

I don’t remember moving to Marshfield, Massachusetts. I think I was able to say “Mom” and “Dad” when I did, but not much else. However, the move from Florida was motivated: my parents were dead set on my future education. I was destined to go to the best of the best. Therefore, I went to a very specific elementary school. Now referred to by many as “The Academy,” usually accompanied by a soft laugh, my school’s name was always associated with prestige in my small town. With only 60 children in my graduation class, we were told for years that we were to achieve great things; how could we not? We were given all the skills, materials, and counseling to do so. However, with small bows in my hair and wide eyes, I never asked why. Why were we the best? The brightest? The most likely to succeed?

Years later, and hopefully years wiser, the reason becomes less pixelated but more nuanced. My elementary school is not as picture-perfect as my parents once believed. While the academics were exactly what my parents always dream of, there was a reason. Marshfield is 95.9% white. And, because of our demographics, our education reflects exactly what we are. We read stories about white characters by white authors in towns that felt eerily similar to Marshfield. We learned whitewashed history and assumed that it was nothing but the truth. We are all smart—we have to be—but in the way that Marshfield wants us to be.

However, this is not my elementary school’s only fault. As one of five elementary schools in my town, imaginary borders were drawn for the district years ago. However, in 2014, these borders suddenly changed. In a shocking school committee vote, Marshfield redistricted, sending 43 students from my elementary school to the neighboring one. While never explicitly mentioned by anyone of status in my town, a rumor about the reason for redistricting has circulated for years. Marshfield wanted to send students with disabilities and IEPs to a different elementary school. Despite this disgraceful and ignorant choice, parents simply talked about the inconvenience the choice established for their families. Cognizant that this is regarded as a rumor, I reached out to my town’s current School Committee Chair. As the student representative for two years for the committee and the chair being my Youth and Government advisor for two years, we developed an honest relationship. Although quickly responding to my first text inquiring about asking about a rumor, he left the question itself unanswered. While this does not concede anything, it is evident that this is not a matter he is interested in discussing. But, in a town built upon ignorance, it's hard to believe the town was destined for anything else. 

Born and raised on stolen Wampanoag territory, my town is a clear reminder of all that is destroyed. Instead of repenting our injustice to the native people, we celebrate the conquers. In second grade we took a field trip to Edward Winslow’s house--located in the center of my town and the site of a Senior Leader of Plymouth Colony. We learn the history of a man who built his livelihood on top of other people’s, crushing them with each movement. Then, a year later in third grade, we traveled to Plimoth Plantation to learn about the peaceful relationship between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people. They leave out the genocide part. So, how does a town get to be so ignorant? So unaware of their own faults? 

Ultimately, it comes down to one word: privilege. But, for many in Marshfield, that word sits funny in their mouth. Unpacking one’s own privilege is never easy. For me, it included nights crying and reworking and reflecting on everything I had ever known. However, people in conservative Marshfield view it as a deeming and demanding word. When called out, people go on the attack: “you’re making me seem like a bad person” and “I’ve never had it easy” usually perforate the conversation about privilege. Because, to many, Marshfield is not the epitome of privilege, instead it is the definition of blue-collar life. While Marshfield is not racially diverse, it is certainly socioeconomically diverse. 

Like many other coastal Massachusetts towns, people settle in: they build homes for generations to live in and they create careers for their children to work in. Their way of life is specific, and, more often than not, predescribed. They labor day in and day out to provide for their family. Even to my own extremely liberal family, privilege is a gritty topic. My mother grew up surrounded by poverty. With a paralyzed father, eight siblings, and sporadic foster children, money was tight. My mom recounts molasses sandwiches for dinner and years where Christmas was postponed because they couldn’t even afford their typical Charlie Brown tree. When you are questioning your next meal it’s hard to believe you are privileged. However, on the opposite side of the same spectrum, exists my father. Born and bred in a high-class white tower, my father’s biggest problem was that his real-estate developer father did not attend his high school hockey games. Although I am not minimizing the effect that had on him, he has never even heard of this discussion--nevermind participated in it. So, when socioeconomic status gets filtered into the intersectional conversation surrounding privilege—how do you navigate? My parents chose to meet in the middle. Now living a life of middle class blissfulness, they never have to have this conversation. The problem isn’t that they’re unaware, it’s that they never have to be.   

Upon reflection, I often wonder, was my education worth it? Was an “astonishing” reading level even worth it? How could I have truly learned if I was in a tower of privilege? The walls of this tower were covered in mirrors; everywhere I looked there were just reflections of myself. 

But, despite all these unanswered questions, it’s still home. I still wake up in the middle of the night longing for what used to be. I still get homesick for the sea. My best, most treasured memories exist between Marshfied’s sea walls. When I turned eight my grandmother painted a picture of me. On the canvas it was me with hair as bouncy and red as ever, but slowly growing. Three versions of me exist in the painting: each older than the last, but all in Marshfield. When I drive down the picturesque streets of Marshfield, I see each version on the streets. I see little me: happy as a clam on my elementary school playground. I see the next me: curious and bright in my town library. Finally, I see the last me: head down and ashamed, seeing Marshfield for all it will ever be. Not pictured is the fourth me: aware of what Marshfield is but still loving it, nevertheless. 

Youthful ignorance is exactly that. It is head tilted back from laughing and a hazy glow from the moon. It is nights where there is no destination but joy in every right and left turn. It is the ability to fall and scrape your knees with no consequences. It is reading until odd hours of the morning with your bedroom window open and crickets chirping. The feeling never goes away. I will always, infinitely be young and in Marshfield. I will always be wonderstruck by my own youth--and the consequent ignorance.

When people talk about home, they don’t talk about the piece of you that’s left there. In my case, that piece is nurtured and ignorant, blind to the world around her. However, it’s still me. It’s still a phantom limb I feel every day. But, I was only able to reflect by leaving. At Emerson, with its discussions and unpacking, I am able to witness, and sometimes participate, in conversations that weren’t even ideas in Marshfield. I am able to learn from stories and perspectives that are diverse, creating an education that is authentic rather than binary and whitewashed. I am able to grow as a person. I still can’t answer all the questions. Because of the foundation I was given, I have more to learn than my peers. But, I am learning nevertheless. So, I will always love Marshfield. I will always long for it's comforting embrace. Yet, I see it clearer now. I see it for everything it will ever be. 

Works Cited

“Parents React to Marshfield Redistricting Plan.” The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, MA: Local News, Politics, Entertainment & Sports in Quincy, MA. Accessed November 5, 2019. https://www.patriotledger.com/article/20140304/news/140308650?template=ampart.

“U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Marshfield Town, Plymouth County, Massachusetts.” Census Bureau QuickFacts. Accessed November 5, 2019. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/marshfieldtownplymouthcountymassachusetts/AGE295218.

Acknowledgements

With such a personal essay, it is hard not to get personal with my thanks. First, to the people that read my essay: Sophia and Noah. Both of your writing inspires me as both a writer and editor. You remind me, constantly and consistently, why I am pursuing this and why it is what I have always wanted. Sometimes, when you are an editor, no one really cares about your work. But, both of you continue to show an unprecedented amount of care towards my work. In regards to the essay itself, I have to thank its inspiration. Thank you to my parents for always being transparent with your faults. You have taught me to grow from your mistakes and my own. And, most of all, thank you to my muse: Marshfield. Thank you for letting me love you and leave you. Thank you for all the love and all the bruises. I will be forever a part of you. 

Christie’s, the famed auction house, recently sold an AI-generated painting for $432,500. The piece, titled “Portrait of Edmond Belamy,” was made by Obvious, a French art collective, and sold for roughly 45 times its estimated worth.

The sale was controversial, though not entirely because of the painting’s steep price tag. Paying $450,000 for a buzzy work of art — especially one that may sell well later on — isn’t unheard of in the art world. The most coveted works sell for many times that. Sotheby’s Hong Kong sold a Picasso for $7.79 million in September; a pair of paintings by the late Chinese-French painter Zao Wou-Ki sold for $65.1 million and $11.5 million, respectively, at that same sale. Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” sold at Christie’s last year for $450 million, making it the most expensive work of art ever sold.

According to a joint report by UBS and Art Basel released in March, the global art market saw $63.7 billion in total sales last year. But that doesn’t mean that most artists see even a small fraction of that money, since the highest-value sales usually involve one wealthy collector putting a highly sought-after work up for auction.

The money generated from that sale, then, goes to the work’s previous owner, not to the artist who made it. (Artists profit off their own work when it’s sold on what’s known as the “primary market,” i.e., directly from a gallery or from the artist herself. When art is sold on the “secondary market,” however — meaning that it’s sold by a collector to another collector, either privately or at an auction — only the seller and, if applicable, the auction house profits.)

Aside from a handful of celebrity artists — Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, and Yayoi Kusama, to name a few — most living artists’ works will never sell in the six- or seven-figure range. The result of all of this is that a small group of collectors pay astronomical prices for works made by an even smaller group of artists, who are in turn represented by a small number of high-profile galleries. Meanwhile, lesser-known artists and smaller galleries are increasingly being left behind.

The short answer is that most art isn’t. Pieces sold for six and seven figures tend to make headlines, but most living artists’ works will never sell for that much.

To understand why a few artists are rich and famous, first you need to realize that most of them aren’t and will never be. To break into the art market, an artist first has to find a gallery to represent them, which is harder than it sounds. Henri Neuendorf, an associate editor at Artnet News, told me gallerists often visit art schools’ MFA graduate shows to find young talent to represent. “These shows are the first arena, the first entry point for a lot of young artists,” Neuendorf said.

Some gallerists also look outside the art school crowd, presumably to diversify their representation, since MFAs don’t come cheap. (In 2014, tuitions at the 10 most influential MFA programs cost an average $38,000 per year, meaning a student would have to spend around $100,000 to complete their degree.) That said, the art world remains far from diverse. A 2014 study by the artists collective BFAMFAPhD found that 77.6 percent of artists who actually make a living by selling art are white, as are 80 percent of all art school graduates.

Christie’s sold its first piece of computer generated art, “Portrait of Edmond Belamy,” for $432,500. Christie’s

Artists who stand out in a graduate show or another setting may go on to have their work displayed in group shows with other emerging artists; if their work sells well, they may get a solo exhibition at a gallery. If their solo exhibition does well, that’s when their career really begins to take off.

Emerging artists’ works are generally priced based on size and medium, Neuendorf said. A larger painting, for example, will usually be priced between $10,000 and $15,000. Works on canvas are priced higher than works on paper, which are priced higher than prints. If an artist is represented by a well-known gallery like David Zwirner or Hauser & Wirth, however, the dealer’s prestige is enough to raise the artist’s sale prices, even if the artist is relatively unknown. In most cases, galleries take a 50 percent cut of the artist’s sales.

This process is becoming increasingly difficult thanks to the shuttering of small galleries around the world. The UBS and Art Basel report found that more galleries closed than opened in 2017. Meanwhile, large galleries are opening new locations to cater to an increasingly global market.

Olav Velthuis, a professor at the University of Amsterdam who studies sociology in the arts, attributes the shuttering of small galleries to the rise of art fairs like Frieze and Art Basel. In a column for the New York Times, Velthuis wrote that these fairs, which often charge gallerists between $50,000 and $100,000 for booth space, make it incredibly difficult for smaller gallerists to come home with a profit. But since fairs are becoming the preferred way for wealthy collectors to buy art — they can browse art from hundreds of galleries in a single location, all while hobnobbing with other collectors — galleries have no choice but to participate.

Smaller galleries tend to represent emerging artists, putting both the dealer and artist at yet another disadvantage. “The issue is that demand for art is not distributed evenly among all living artists,” Velthuis told me in an email. “Instead, many people are going after a small number of artists. That’s what’s driving up prices.”

Given the subjective nature part in general and contemporary art in particular, it’s hard for collectors to discern whether an artist is truly good. “The art market functions as a big consensus marketing machine,” said Velthuis. “So what people do is look at quality signals. Those signals can for instance be what an important curator is saying about an artist; if she has exhibitions in museums; if influential collectors are buying his work. Because everybody is, to some extent at the least, looking at the same signals, at one point they start agreeing who are the most desirable artists.”

In other words, some artists’ works are expensive because there’s a consensus in the art world that their works should be expensive. And, Velthuis adds, art “is a market for unique objects,” which adds a sense of scarcity into the mix. There are only a few known da Vinci paintings in existence, some of which belong to museums and are therefore permanently off the market. (It’s a “big taboo” for museums to sell works from their collection, Velthuis told me.) It only makes sense that when a da Vinci is up for auction, someone with the means to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for it will do just that.

“The issue is that demand for art is not distributed evenly among all living artists. Instead, many people are going after a small number of artists. That’s what’s driving up prices.” —Olav Velthuis

Just 0.2 percent of artists have work that sells for more than $10 million, according to the UBS and Art Basel report. But 32 percent of the $63.7 billion in total sales made that year came from works that sold for more than $10 million. An analysis conducted by Artnet last year similarly found that just 25 artists accounted for nearly half of all contemporary auction sales in the first six months of 2017. Only three of those artists were women.

“It definitely is a good example of a winner-take-all market, where revenues and profits are distributed in a highly unequal way,” Velthuis said. “[On] principle, it is not a problem in itself. However, galleries in the middle segment of the market are having a hard time surviving, and if many of them close their doors, that is bad for the ecology of the art world. We should think of ways to let profits at the top trickle down to the middle and bottom.”

The 2017 sale of da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” reignited discussions about the role of money in the art world. Georgina Adam, an art market expert and author of Dark Side of the Boom: The Excesses of the Art Market in the 21st Century, explained how it’s possible that a single painting could cost more money than most people would ever see in their lifetimes.

“Very rich people, these days, have an astonishing amount of money,” art expert Georgina Adam told the Financial Times. A gallerist interviewed in her book, The Dark Side of the Boom: The Excesses of the Art Market in the 21st Century, explained it this way: If a couple has a net worth of $10 billion and decides to invest 10 percent of that in art, they can buy $1 billion worth of paintings and sculptures.

There are more collectors now than ever before, and those collectors are wealthier than they have ever been. According to Adam’s book, the liberalization of certain countries’ economies — including China, India, and Eastern European countries — led to an art collection boom outside of the US and Western Europe. (The art market is also booming in the Gulf states.) As a result, the market has exploded into what writer Rachel Wetzler described as “a global industry bound up with luxury, fashion, and celebrity, attracting an expanded range of ultra-wealthy buyers who aggressively compete for works by brand-name artists.”

Art isn’t just a luxury commodity; it’s an investment. If collectors invest wisely, the works they buy can be worth much more later on. Perhaps the most famous example of this is Robert Scull, a New York City taxi tycoon who auctioned off pieces from his collection in 1973. One of the works was a painting by Robert Rauschenberg that Scull had bought for just $900 in 1958. It sold for $85,000.

The Price of Everything, a documentary about the role of money in the art world released in October, delves into the Scull auction drama and its aftermath. Art historian Barbara Rose, whose report on the auction for New York magazine was titled “Profit Without Honor,” called that auction a “pivotal moment” in the art world.

“The idea that art was being put on the auction block like a piece of meat, it was extraordinary to me,” Rose said in the film. “I remember that Rauschenberg was there and he was really incensed, because the artists got nothing out of this. … Suddenly there was the realization — because of the prices — that you could make money by buying low and selling high.”

More recently, the 2008 financial crisis was a boon for a few wealthy collectors who gobbled up works that were being sold by their suddenly cash-poor art world acquaintances. For example, billionaire business executive Mitchell Rales and his wife, Emily, added “about 50 works” to their collection in 2009, many of which they purchased at low prices, according to a 2016 Bloomberg report. The Rales family’s collection is now worth more than $1 billion.

“People who were active [buyers] at the time are very happy today,” art adviser Sandy Heller told Bloomberg. “Those opportunities would not have presented themselves without the financial crisis.”

A highly valued work of art is a luxury good, an investment, and, in some cases, a vehicle through which the ultra-wealthy can avoid paying taxes. Until very recently, collectors were able to exploit a loophole in the tax code known as the “like-kind exchange,” which allowed them to defer capital gains taxes on certain sales if the profits generated from those sales were put into a similar investment.

In the case of art sales, that meant that a collector who bought a painting for a certain amount of money — let’s say $1 million — and then sold it for $5 million a few years later didn’t have to pay capital gains taxes if they transferred that $4 million gain into the purchase of another work of art. (The Republican tax bill eliminated this benefit for art collectors, though it continues to benefit real estate developers.)

A gallery assistant views a painting by Turkish artist Fahrelnissa Zeid, titled Towards a Sky, which sold for £992,750 at Sotheby’s Middle Eastern Art Week in London in April 2017. Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Collectors can also receive tax benefits by donating pieces from their collection to museums. (Here’s where buying low and donating high is really beneficial, since the charitable deduction would take the current value of the work into account, not the amount the collector originally paid for it.)

Jennifer Blei Stockman, the former president of the Guggenheim and one of the producers of The Price of Everything, told me that galleries often require collectors who purchase new work by prominent artists to eventually make that work available to the public.

“Many galleries are now insisting that they will not sell a work to a private collector unless they either buy a second work and give it to a museum, or promise that the artwork will eventually be given to a museum,” Stockman said. These agreements aren’t legally enforceable, but collectors who want to remain in good standing with galleries tend to keep their word.

Artists’ works don’t necessarily have to end up in publicly-owned museums in order to be seen by the public. Over the past decade, a growing number of ultra-wealthy art collectors have opened private museums in order to show off the works they’ve acquired. Unlike public museums, which are hindered by relatively limited acquisitions budgets — the Louvre’s 2016 budget, for example, was €7.3 million — collectors can purchase just about any work they want for their private museums, provided they have the money. And since these museums are ostensibly open to the public, they come with a slew of tax benefits.

“The rich buy art,” arts writer Julie Baumgardner declared in an Artsy editorial. “And the super-rich, well, they make museums.”

Materially speaking, artists only benefit from sales when their works are sold on the primary market, meaning a collector purchased the work from a gallery or, less frequently, from the artist himself. When a work sells at auction, the artist doesn’t benefit at all.

For decades, artists have attempted to correct this by fighting to receive royalties from works sold on the secondary market. Most writers, for example, receive royalties from book sales in perpetuity. But once an artist sells a work to a collector, the collector — and the auction house, if applicable — is the only one who benefits from selling that work at a later date.

In 2011, a coalition of artists, including Chuck Close and Laddie John Dill, filed class-action lawsuits against Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and eBay. Citing the California Resale Royalties Act — which entitled California residents who sold work anywhere in the country, as well as any visual artist selling their work in California, to 5 percent of the price of any resale of their work more than $1,000 — the artists claimed that the eBay and the auction houses had broken state law. But in July, a federal appeals court sided with the sellers, not the artists.

Even if artists don’t make any money from these sales, Stockman told me, they can occasionally benefit in other ways. “Artists do benefit when their pieces sell well at auction, because primary prices are then increased,” Stockman said. “However, when a piece sells at auction or in the secondary market, the artist does not [financially] benefit at all, and that, I know, is very scary and upsetting to many artists.”

Taken together, all of these factors paint a troubling picture: Access to art seems to be increasingly concentrated among the superrich. As the rich get richer, collectors are paying increasingly higher prices for works made by a handful of living artists, leaving emerging artists and the galleries that represent them behind. Then there’s the question of who even gets to be an artist. Art school is expensive, and an MFA doesn’t automatically translate to financial success in such a competitive industry.

Jeff Koons’s “Popeye” was purchased for $28 million by billionaire casino tycoon Steve Wynn in 2014. Emmanual Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

There is some pushback to this concentration of the market at the very top — or even to the idea that art is inaccessible to the average person. Emily Kaplan, the vice president of postwar and contemporary sales at Christie’s, told me that the auction house’s day sales are open to the public and often feature works that cost much less than headlines would lead you to believe.

“Christie’s can be seen as an intimidating name for a lot of people, but most of the sales that we do are much lower prices than what gets reported in the news,” said Kaplan. “We have a lot of sales that happen throughout the calendar year in multiple locations, especially postwar and contemporary art. … Works can sell for a couple hundred dollars, one, two, three thousand dollars. It’s a much lower range than people expect.”

Affordable art fairs, which usually sell art for a few thousand dollars, are another alternative for people who want to buy art but can’t spend millions on a single sculpture. Superfine, an art fair founded in 2015, describes itself as a way of bringing art to the people. Co-founders James Miille and Alex Mitow say the fair is a reaction to the inflated prices they saw on the high end of the “insular” art market.

“We saw a rift in the art market between artists and galleries with amazing work who need to sell it to survive, and people who love art and can afford it but weren’t feeling like a part of the game,” Mitow told me in an email. “Most transactions in the art market actually occur at the under $5,000 level, and that’s what we’re publicizing: the movement of real art by real living artists who build a sustainable career, not necessarily outlier superstar artists with sales records that are unattainable for the average — if equally qualified — artist.”

In addition to hosting fairs in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, and Washington, DC, Superfine sells works through its “e-fair.” In the same vein as more traditional art fairs like Art Basel, Superfine charges artists or gallerists a flat fee for exhibition space, though Superfine’s rates are much lower.

In spite of these efforts to democratize art, though, the overall market is still privileged towards, well, the very privileged. Art patronage has always been a hobby for the very rich, and that’s not going to change any time soon — but the ability to look at beautiful things shouldn’t be limited to those who can afford to buy them.

Original Source -> Why is art so expensive?

via The Conservative Brief

11 Incredible Stephen Hawking Quotes

Visit Now - https://zeroviral.com/11-incredible-stephen-hawking-quotes/

11 Incredible Stephen Hawking Quotes

The great filmmaker Albert Maysles once explained the power of nonfiction moviemaking by saying, “When you see somebody on the screen in a documentary, you’re really engaged with a person going through real life experiences, so for that period of time, as you watch the film, you are, in effect, in the shoes of another individual. What a privilege to have that experience.”

A privilege, yes, and a privilege that’s outsized for us today. We now have access to thousands of documentaries online, allowing us all kinds of shapes and sizes of shoes to step into. To extend our personal knowledge of human experience. Thousands of little empathy machines. Small windows into lives that aren’t our own.

Here are 25 of the best documentaries that you can stream right now.

1. 13TH (2016)

Following the breakout prestige of Selma, Ava DuVernay constructed an exploration of the criminalization of black individuals in the United States, crafting a throughline from slavery to the modern private prison boom. Eschewing an overdramatized style, DuVernay calmly, patiently lays out facts and figures that will drop your jaw only until you start clenching it.

Where to watch it: Netflix

2. AILEEN: LIFE AND DEATH OF A SERIAL KILLER (2003)

For those only familiar with Aileen Wuornos through Charlize Theron’s portrayal in Monster, Nick Broomfield’s documentary offers a considered portrait of the human being behind the murderer. In his first film about Wuornos, The Selling of a Serial Killer, Broomfield considered her as a victim of abuse and betrayal, with her image commodified. In this follow-up, he takes us all the way to the day of her execution, wondering how anyone would think she was of sound mind.

Where to watch it: Netflix and Amazon Prime

3. ABACUS: SMALL ENOUGH TO JAIL (2017)

“Too big to fail” entered the lexicon following 2008’s bursting housing bubble, but while the world’s largest banks skated through, Abacus Federal Savings Bank was deemed small enough to prosecute. Steve James (of Hoop Dreams fame) has crafted an intimate, Oscar-nominated look at the Chinatown bank that became the only financial institution to face criminal charges in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis, starting at the family level before zooming out to the community and country.

Where to watch it: Amazon Prime

4. BEING ELMO (2011)

Narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, puppeteer Kevin Clash shares his childhood growing up in Baltimore and the road to a career as a furry red monster on Sesame Street. It’s a delightful peek behind the curtain to see how magic is made, featuring interviews with legends like Frank Oz and Kermit Love. Pairs well with I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story (which is available to rent on Amazon).

Where to watch it: Netflix

5. BEST OF ENEMIES (2015)

Both quaint and prescient, the televised debates between William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal during the 1968 Republican National Convention show us a midpoint between idealized civic discussion and the worst instincts of modern punditry. This sly documentary explains the force of this rivalry, its ironic popularity as televised circus, and the aftermath of all the clever insults.

Where to watch it: Netflix

6. CALIFORNIA TYPEWRITER (2017)

A bright palate cleanser that shouldn’t be overlooked just because it isn’t emotionally devastating. The success of this film is its ability to transfer other people’s obsessions to the viewer. Tom Hanks, John Mayer, historians, collectors, and repairmen all share their abiding love for the click-clack of a device that defies obsolescence. You may crave a Smith Corona when it’s all over.

Where to watch it: Amazon Prime

7. CAMERAPERSON (2016)

Patience is rewarded in this thoughtful, dazzling cinematic quilt of footage collected from 25 years of Kirsten Johnson’s career as a cinematographer. Her lens takes us to Brooklyn for boxing, Bosnia for post-war life, Nigeria for midwifery, and more.

Where to watch it: Amazon Prime

8. CARTEL LAND (2015)

Raw and fearsome, Matthew Heineman’s documentary puts you in the boots on the ground of the Mexican Drug War. This gripping look at Arizona Border Recon and the Autodefensas of Michoacán shows what happens when governments fail citizens who are in the line of fire.

Where to watch it: Netflix and Amazon Prime

9. CASTING JONBENET (2017)

This isn’t the documentary you’d expect it to be. Kitty Green took an experimental approach that’s less about rehashing the true crime sensationalism of the headline-owning murder of a child beauty queen and more about how many stories can be contained in a single story. Green auditioned actors from JonBenét Ramsey’s hometown and, in the process of making several dramatizations, interviewed them about what it was like living in the area during the 1996 investigations (and what they think really happened).

Where to watch it: Netflix

10. CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS (2011)

There’s nothing like hanging out with Werner Herzog in an ancient cave. Herzog filmed in the Chauvet Cave in southern France to document the oldest known human-painted images, which is fortunate for us because the cave isn’t open to the public. It’s a wondrous nature documentary about us.

Where to watch it: Netflix

11. CITY OF GHOSTS (2017)

Another brutal hit from Matthew Heineman, this documentary carries the audience into the Syrian conflict through the eyes of citizen journalist collective Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, which both reports on war news and acts as a counter to propaganda efforts from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Some documentaries are interesting, but this one is also necessary. 

Where to watch it: Amazon Prime

12. DARK DAYS (2000)

Before Humans of New York there was Dark Days. This delicate, funny, mournful project is a true blend of reality and art. Marc Singer made it after befriending and living among the squatter community living in the Freedom Tunnel section of the New York City subway. Despite never making a movie before, he decided that shining a light on these homeless neighbors would be the best way to help them.

Where to watch it: Amazon Prime

13. EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP (2010)

Covered in spray paint and questionable facial hair decisions, this documentary displays the transformation of Thierry Guetta from clothing shop owner to celebrated street artist, but since Banksy directed it, it’ll never shake the question of its authenticity. Real doc? Elaborate prank? Entertaining either way.

Where to watch it: Netflix

14. GAGA: FIVE FOOT TWO (2017)

It’s incredibly honest. As much as an inside look into the life of a global pop superstar can be. Lady Gaga (real name Stefani Germanotta) spends a healthy amount of the movie standing around without makeup, waxing wise and humorously before jumping face-first into her work and fanbase. The film focuses on her time crafting her Joanne album and her Super Bowl halftime show, but they could make one of these every few years without it getting stale because Gaga is a tower of magnetism.

Where to watch it: Netflix

15. THE INTERRUPTERS (2012)

In the middle of gang violence in Chicago, CeaseFire attempts to use members’ direct experiences to ward off new brutalities. Dubbed “violence interrupters,” Ameena Matthews, Cobe Williams, and Eddie Bocanegra are at the heart of this vital film about ending community violence by employing disease-control strategies, and the Herculean task of reversing systemic criminal activity without losing sight of the humanity of the people affected.

Where to watch it: Amazon Prime

16. JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI (2012)

Let’s hope that this meditative, sumptuous documentary never leaves Netflix’s shores. The portrait of then-85-year-old Sukiyabashi Jiro’s quest for unattainable perfection is both food porn and a somber-sweet consideration of the satisfaction and disquiet of becoming the best in the world at something and, somehow, striving for better.

Where to watch it: Netflix

17. JOSHUA: TEENAGER VS SUPERPOWER (2017)

When someone tells you it can’t be done, show them this. The simple title both celebrates and belies the smallness of one person fighting a system. Joe Piscatella’s doc follows the explosive growth of the Hong Kong protest movement engaged by teen activist Joshua Wong when the Chinese government refused to act on its promise of granting autonomy to the region, and it is a dose of pure inspiration.

Where to watch it: Netflix

18. THE LOOK OF SILENCE (2014)

Joshua Oppenheimer and Anonymous’s sequel to the Oscar-nominated The Act of Killing features an Indonesian man whose brother was murdered during the 1965 purge of Communists talking to his brother’s killers while literally checking their vision. His bravery and composure are astonishing, as is the insight into the many rationalities unrepentant men use to shield their psyches from their own heinous acts. A peerless piece of investigative art.

Where to watch it: Netflix

19. MY SCIENTOLOGY MOVIE (2017)

An absurdist rabbit chase and a deliberate provocation, writer/star Louis Theroux’s punk documentary poked the bear of the infamous religion in order to get access to it. They auditioned young actors to recreate real-life events described by ex-members, got denounced by the church, and even got into a “Who’s On First”-style argument with a member (“You tell him to turn the camera off then I’ll tell him to turn the camera off!”). Serious subject matter by way of Borat.

Where to watch it: Netflix

20. THE NIGHTMARE (2015)

This documentary by Rodney Ascher should be seen by everyone and somehow be banned from being seen. Not content to profile people suffering from sleep paralysis—the condition where you can’t move or speak while falling asleep or awakening, yeah—Ascher riffs on the hallucinations that sometimes accompany the ailment. As if being frozen weren’t enough. The result is a true story that’s just as effective as a horror film.

Where to watch it: Netflix

21. PUMPING IRON (1977)

A landmark docudrama about the Mr. Olympia competition, this is the film that launched a wannabe actor from Austria into the public conscious. Arnold Schwarzenegger is brash and beautiful in this celebration of body perfection which finds a balance between joy and the teeth-gritting agony of endurance. Great back then, it’s now a fascinating artifact of the soon-to-be action star/politician.

Where to watch it: Netflix

22. STOLEN SEAS (2013)

Constructed using real audio and found footage of the 2008 hostage negotiation aboard a Danish shipping vessel, filmmaker Thymaya Payne’s film isn’t content to simply shine a light on the horrific reality of a Somali pirate attack; it strikes to build a contextual understanding of what these attacks mean for the rest of the world. For all of us.

Where to watch it: Amazon Prime

23. STORIES WE TELL (2013)

An absolute personal stunner, actress Sarah Polley directed this docudrama about the scariest thing you can reveal to the world: your family. It’s an emotional, gamut-spanning search for identity that requires reconciling conflicting views about your parents and digging through buried secrets. Polley bringing them into full view, for all of us to see, is a selfless act that resulted in an outstanding piece of art.

Where to watch it: Amazon Prime

24. THE THIN BLUE LINE (1988)

A modern classic of nonfiction storytelling. Through archival footage, interviews, and reenactments, documentary royalty Errol Morris used this film to argue the innocence of a man destined for lethal injection. It tells the story of Randall Dale Adams, who was sentenced to death for killing a police officer in 1976, despite evidence that the real killer—a minor at the time—had committed the crime. A must-see for fans of Making a Murderer.

Where to watch it: Netflix

25. TIG (2015)

When you get diagnosed with cancer, the natural thing is to perform a stand-up act about it the same day, right? Comedian Tig Notaro became famous overnight when her set confronting her same-day diagnosis went viral, and this documentary from Kristina Goolsby and Ashley York focuses on the year that followed. A rocky year that deals with death, a new career chapter, a new relationship, and possibly a new child. It’s okay to laugh through the tears.

Where to watch it: Netflix

Disney is about to go to war with Netflix and Fox could be a big weapon

Disney is preparing for a full-scale rivalry with Netflix.

That means Disney needs all the programming it can get as it plans for a direct-to-consumer, digitally-dominated media future.

Disney's first shot in this war was to buy a collection of assets from 21st Century Fox.

More deals are sure to follow.

It's official: Disney has announced a media-industry-rocking deal to acquire a collection of assets from 21st Century Fox.

The deal comes as media companies look for ways to survive as consumers shift their attention to ad-free streaming services from Netflix and Amazon, cut the cord in increasing numbers and spend an inordinate amount of time glued to mobile screens and social media. 

Disney's already declared that it is going to war with Netflix by launching its own streaming service. Already Disney has some big assets to offer subscribers to this potential service, including movies made by its own studios and the rights to mega-hits like Star Wars. But it's going to need as many big guns as it can get in that fight.  If the future is less about cable bundles and classic TV advertising, and more about bringing content directly to paying subscribers, giants like Disney can't stand pat. That's where Fox comes in.

In a statement announcing the deal, the fourth bullet point read:

Expands Disney’s direct-to-consumer offerings with addition of 21st Century Fox’s entertainment content, capabilities in the Americas, Europe and Asia; Hulu stake becomes a controlling interest

As one industry observer put it, "nobody knows what the business model of the future is. But if you have a lot of content, you're either going to get people to pay for it, run ads in it, or license it to somebody. So this is a pretty good hedge for Disney."

So, here's what we're thinking about in terms of breaking down the potential deal:

Building out a super-powered library

Disney's content library seems as good as it gets: Mickey, Pixar, Marvel. Given the company's plans to pull back on Netflix distribution to build out its own streaming service, it's arguably in great shape to launch its own streaming subscription business.

But as consumer media consumption fragments more every year, Disney will need as extensive a menu as possible to make sure they have something for everybody's plate, said Mike Kelly, CEO of Kelly Newman Ventures, a media industry consulting firm.

"Media has always been a distribution business, but digital is about one-to-one," he said. "So the only way to remain central to consumers is to continue to have scale by owning as much of a library as possible."

Netflix's approach to this has been to spend heavily to develop new shows, and compete with the likes of HBO and major TV networks for potential hits. With Fox, Disney would grab the rights to a trusted library including  X-Men, Deadpool, Planet of the Apes, Avatar, and Captain Underpants, and of course the added capability of finding and nurturing future blockbusters.

Defending against FANG

Beside fighting Netflix, everyone in media is making sure they don't get taken out by the rest of Silicon Valley – namely Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple. These companies have huge scale, deep pockets and are getting aggressive in content while dominating digital advertising.

"People talk about Facebook and Google taking 85 cents of every dollar in digital ads, but the way those companies look at it is that they are only taking like 20% of advertising overall," said Kelly. "They want it all."

Indeed, overall the so-called FANG companies "are trying to eat [media's] lunch," he said. For big media players, "this is about being around five years from now."

What about sports?

This is where it gets really interesting, as Fox's regional sports networks are included in this deal. That will give it control of local sports networks like Fox Sports Detroit, which broadcasts Detroit Tigers and Detroit Pistons games, and part of the Yes Network in New York, which streams the Yankees and Brooklyn Nets.

Meanwhile, FS1, Fox's fledgling ESPN wannabe, and FS2 and Big Ten Network are being spun off as part of a newly listed company that will also own Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network.

There's a massive amount of money in local sports rights and advertising. And remember, like parent company Disney, ESPN is planning to launch its own direct-to-consumer sports streaming service, which could suddenly become a lot more enticing to fans of certain local teams. Is this why Disney purchased the streaming technology firm BAMTech?

In other words, even if companies like Amazon and Facebook continued to dabble in live sports rights, the Fox deal is a total game changer for Disney.

Disney/Fox deal would be a massive boost for ESPN if they can use those local RSNs to boost their new OTT service. That’s a huge win if so.

— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) December 5, 2017

This is huge, although it would seem to run counter to FOXA's stated desire to focus on sports/news. RSNs are basically ATMs. https://t.co/elAgXbvQRL

— Anthony Crupi (@crupicrupicrupi) December 5, 2017

Don't forget FX

If a Disney/Fox mashup is about traditional media girding for an 'over the top' future, the FX network could provide to be a great test case. The network has produced a continued slate of prestige shows with small, but passionate fan bases ("The Americans" got a shoutout in the deal announcement) FX has recently begun offering an ad-free version of the network to Comcast subscribers for $6 a month.

FX CEO John Landgraf is one of the more respected minds in the TV business, and coined the phrase 'peak TV' describing the current glut of scripted series. He said a few months ago during an Advertising Week event that a linear TV network may not be "the best expression of our brand." Maybe FX tries to become the next HBO Go? 

Or, as Landgraf noted, maybe FX figures out a way to bring premium TV content to consumers for free – with a limited number of targeted ads. Either way, FX would be a solid addition to the Disney portfolio.

The power of Avatar

Fox is spending over $1 billion on four planned sequels to James Cameron's smash hit "Avatar." Those movies basically have to work. Is anyone better suited to maximizing a franchise like that (theme parks, merchandise, etc.) than Disney? 

From the deal announcement:

"The addition of Avatar to its family of films also promises expanded opportunities for consumers to watch and experience storytelling within these extraordinary fantasy worlds. Already, guests at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World Resort can experience the magic of Pandora—The World of Avatar, a new land inspired by the Fox film franchise that opened earlier this year."

"I'm not sure this is about taking on Netflix," Chris Silbermann, managing partner of the Hollywood talent firm ICM Partners told Business Insider. "You only need a few big shows to get a subscription service going, like say CBS All Access (with the new "Star Trek"). But on the film side, this makes total sense. Disney owns it from a big brand perspective. You get access to more Marvel brands like X-Men and Fantastic Four. And given the multibillion bet they have on Avatar alone, there's only one company in the world that can market and leverage it to its full potential, and that's Disney."

Netflix won't stay still and may want to make more deals

Netflix is planning to spend an astonishing $8 billion on content next year. How can they keep this spending up? Its subscription service offers a better business model than cable TV or advertising, argued Ted Sarandos, Netflix's chief content officer, speaking at the UBS event.

Sarandos also gushed about the company's recent acquisition of the comic book publisher Millarworld, which provides Netflix with exclusive access to a stable of characters that could be turned into TV shows and movies.

"It's very freeing... owning your IP," said Sarandos. Owning IP can lead to much bigger relationships and partnerships, he said. And Sarandos didn't shoot down the idea when he was asked if Netflix might want to make more such deals.

To read more about media's Game of Thrones-like machinations, click here.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How couples improved their sex lives in one week

Disney is about to go to war with Netflix and Fox could be a big weapon Disney/Lucafilm Disney is preparing for a full-scale rivalry with Netflix. That means Disney needs all the programming it can get as it plans for a direct-to-consumer, digitally-dominated media future. Disney's first shot in this war may be to buy a collection of assets from 21st Century Fox . More deals are sure to follow. Disney may be closing in on a media-industry-rocking deal to acquire a collection of assets from 21st Century Fox. CNBC reports that a deal, which would include Fox's movie studios, could be announced as soon as next week. The deal comes as media companies look for ways to survive as consumers shift their attention to ad-free streaming services from Netflix and Amazon, cut the cord in increasing numbers and spend an inordinate amount of time glued to mobile screens and social media. Disney's already declared that it is going to war with Netflix by launching its own streaming service. Already Disney has some big assets to offer subscribers to this potential service, including movies made by its own studios and the rights to mega-hits like Star Wars. But it's going to need as many big guns as it can get in that fight. If the future is less about cable bundles and classic TV advertising, and more about bringing content directly to paying subscribers, giants like Disney can't stand pat. That's where Fox comes in. As one industry observer put it, "nobody knows what the business model of the future is. But if you have a lot of content, you're either going to get people to pay for it, run ads in it, or license it to somebody. So this is a pretty good hedge for Disney." So, here's what we're thinking about in terms of breaking down the potential deal: Building out a super-powered library Disney's content library seems as good as it gets: Mickey, Pixar, Marvel. Given the company's plans to pull back on Netflix distribution to build out its own streaming service, it's arguably in great shape to launch its own streaming subscription business. But as consumer media consumption fragments more every year, Disney will need as extensive a menu as possible to make sure they have something for everybody's plate, said Mike Kelly, CEO of Kelly Newman Ventures, a media industry consulting firm. "Media has always been a distribution business, but digital is about one-to-one," he said. "So the only way to remain central to consumers is to continue to have scale by owning as much of a library as possible." Netflix's approach to this has been to spend heavily to develop new shows, and compete with the likes of HBO and major TV networks for potential hits. With Fox, Disney would grab the rights to a trusted library including X-Men, Deadpool, Planet of the Apes, Avatar, and Captain Underpants, and of course the added capability of finding and nurturing future blockbusters. Defending against FANG Beside fighting Netflix, everyone in media is making sure they don't get taken out by the rest of Silicon Valley – namely Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple. These companies have huge scale, deep pockets and are getting aggressive in content while dominating digital advertising. "People talk about Facebook and Google taking 85 cents of every dollar in digital ads, but the way those companies look at it is that they are only taking like 20% of advertising overall," said Kelly. "They want it all." Indeed, overall the so-called FANG companies "are trying to eat [media's] lunch," he said. For big media players, "this is about being around five years from now." What about sports? This is where it gets really interesting. CNBC is now reporting that Fox's regional sports networks will be included if this deal happens. That means that while Disney wouldn't control the Fox broadcasting network and its NFL rights, or FS1, Fox's fledgling ESPN wannabe, it could theoretically control local sports networks like Fox Sports Detroit, which broadcasts Detroit Tigers and Detroit Pistons games, or part of the Yes Network in New York, which streams the Yankees and Brooklyn Nets. There's a massive amount of money in local sports rights and advertising. And remember, like parent company Disney, ESPN is planning to launch its own direct-to-consumer sports streaming service, which could suddenly become a lot more enticing to fans of certain local teams. Is this why Disney purchased the streaming technology firm BAMTech? In other words, even if companies like Amazon and Facebook continued to dabble in live sports rights, a Fox deal could be a total game changer for Disney. Tweet Embed: https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/938102675899498496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Disney/Fox deal would be a massive boost for ESPN if they can use those local RSNs to boost their new OTT service. That’s a huge win if so. Tweet Embed: https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/938064561449721856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw This is huge, although it would seem to run counter to FOXA's stated desire to focus on sports/news. RSNs are basically ATMs. https://t.co/elAgXbvQRL Don't forget FX If a Disney/Fox mashup is about traditional media girding for an 'over the top' future, the FX network could provide to be a great test case. The network has produced a continued slate of prestige shows with small, but passionate fan bases (think "The Americans" and "American Horror Story.") FX has recently begun offering an ad-free version of the network to Comcast subscribers for $6 a month. FX CEO John Landgraf is one of the more respected minds in the TV business, and coined the phrase 'peak TV' describing the current glut of scripted series. He said a few months ago during an Advertising Week event that a linear TV network may not be "the best expression of our brand." Maybe FX tries to become the next HBO Go? Or, as Landgraf noted, maybe FX figures out a way to bring premium TV content to consumers for free – with a limited number of targeted ads. Either way, FX would be a solid addition to the Disney portfolio. The power of Avatar Fox is spending over $1 billion on four planned sequels to James Cameron's smash hit "Avatar." Those movies basically have to work. Is anyone better suited to maximizing the marketing and profit potential of a franchise like that (theme parks, merchandise, etc.) than Disney? Netflix won't stay still and may want to make more deals Netflix is planning to spend an astonishing $8 billion on content next year. How can they keep this spending up? Its subscription service officer a better business model than cable TV or advertising, argued Ted Sarandos, Netflix's chief content officer, speaking at the UBS event on Tuesday. Sarandos also gushed about the company's recent acquisition of the comic book publisher Millarworld, which provides Netflix with exclusive access to a stable of characters that could be turned into TV shows and movies. "It's very freeing... owning your IP," said Sarandos. Owning IP can lead to much bigger relationships and partnerships, he said. And Sarandos didn't shoot down the idea when he was asked if Netflix might want to make more such deals. Then there are a bunch of unanswered questions: What happens to Hulu? According to CNBC, Disney could end up controlling a majority stake in Hulu – which is a joint venture between 21st Century Fox, Disney and Comcast. This could present an odd conflict: would Disney prioritize it's own streaming service over Hulu, even though Hulu already has a built-in subscriber base? What happens to Hulu if Disney/Fox pulls its content? Would Disney sell it to somebody else? Will it outlive its usefulness over time? Or, as one observer suggested, could Hulu be used as the base service to jump-start a Disney subscription offering? Who's in charge? Could a Murdoch best known for a phone hacking scandal in the UK actually run the company that brought you Moana? Yes, reported the Financial Times on Tuesday. Disney has been seeking a successor for CEO Bob Iger for several years, and Iger has extended his stay past a planned retirement. Is James Murdoch the right man for the job? He declined to talk about the deal at the UBS Media Conference on Tuesday, reported Deadline. Murdoch has painted himself as a digitally savvy, ready-to-shake-things-up media mogul. Is he just what Disney needs? What about a smaller Fox? If the deal closes, the Murdochs will suddenly have a pile of cash, and a small collection of assets: Fox network, Fs1 and Fox News. Those networks are all solid, but will suddenly seem very vulnerable as media becomes all about being big. What if Fox suddenly loses the NFL in a few years, for instance? Could the Murdochs suddenly become buyers again? Or could the family recombine the Fox assets with News Corp. (Barron's, The Wall Street Journal, etc), as Kelly suggested? There are so many other dominoes to fall. What happens to Viacom? Discovery/Scripps? What does Facebook do on TV? Amazon? It will be very hard to stand pat in the new media world ahead. To read more about media's Game of Thrones-like machinations, click here. NOW WATCH: How much money you need to save each day to become a millionaire by age 65 December 6, 2017 at 04:43AM

Disney is about to go to war with Netflix and Fox could be a big weapon

Disney/Lucafilm

Disney is preparing for a full-scale rivalry with Netflix.

That means Disney needs all the programming it can get as it plans for a direct-to-consumer, digitally-dominated media future.

Disney's first shot in this war may be to buy a collection of assets from 21st Century Fox.

More deals are sure to follow.

Disney may be closing in on a media-industry-rocking deal to acquire a collection of assets from 21st Century Fox. CNBC reports that a deal, which would include Fox's movie studios, could be announced as soon as next week. 

The deal comes as media companies look for ways to survive as consumers shift their attention to ad-free streaming services from Netflix and Amazon, cut the cord in increasing numbers and spend an inordinate amount of time glued to mobile screens and social media. 

Disney's already declared that it is going to war with Netflix by launching its own streaming service. Already Disney has some big assets to offer subscribers to this potential service, including movies made by its own studios and the rights to mega-hits like Star Wars. But it's going to need as many big guns as it can get in that fight.  If the future is less about cable bundles and classic TV advertising, and more about bringing content directly to paying subscribers, giants like Disney can't stand pat. That's where Fox comes in.

As one industry observer put it, "nobody knows what the business model of the future is. But if you have a lot of content, you're either going to get people to pay for it, run ads in it, or license it to somebody. So this is a pretty good hedge for Disney."

So, here's what we're thinking about in terms of breaking down the potential deal:

Building out a super-powered library

Disney's content library seems as good as it gets: Mickey, Pixar, Marvel. Given the company's plans to pull back on Netflix distribution to build out its own streaming service, it's arguably in great shape to launch its own streaming subscription business.

But as consumer media consumption fragments more every year, Disney will need as extensive a menu as possible to make sure they have something for everybody's plate, said Mike Kelly, CEO of Kelly Newman Ventures, a media industry consulting firm.

"Media has always been a distribution business, but digital is about one-to-one," he said. "So the only way to remain central to consumers is to continue to have scale by owning as much of a library as possible."

Netflix's approach to this has been to spend heavily to develop new shows, and compete with the likes of HBO and major TV networks for potential hits. With Fox, Disney would grab the rights to a trusted library including  X-Men, Deadpool, Planet of the Apes, Avatar, and Captain Underpants, and of course the added capability of finding and nurturing future blockbusters.

Defending against FANG

Beside fighting Netflix, everyone in media is making sure they don't get taken out by the rest of Silicon Valley – namely Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple. These companies have huge scale, deep pockets and are getting aggressive in content while dominating digital advertising.

"People talk about Facebook and Google taking 85 cents of every dollar in digital ads, but the way those companies look at it is that they are only taking like 20% of advertising overall," said Kelly. "They want it all."

Indeed, overall the so-called FANG companies "are trying to eat [media's] lunch," he said. For big media players, "this is about being around five years from now."

What about sports?

This is where it gets really interesting. CNBC is now reporting that Fox's regional sports networks will be included if this deal happens.

That means that while Disney wouldn't control the Fox broadcasting network and its NFL rights, or FS1, Fox's fledgling ESPN wannabe, it could theoretically control local sports networks like Fox Sports Detroit, which broadcasts Detroit Tigers and Detroit Pistons games, or part of the Yes Network in New York, which streams the Yankees and Brooklyn Nets.

There's a massive amount of money in local sports rights and advertising. And remember, like parent company Disney, ESPN is planning to launch its own direct-to-consumer sports streaming service, which could suddenly become a lot more enticing to fans of certain local teams. Is this why Disney purchased the streaming technology firm BAMTech?

In other words, even if companies like Amazon and Facebook continued to dabble in live sports rights, a Fox deal could be a total game changer for Disney.

Tweet Embed: https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/938102675899498496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Disney/Fox deal would be a massive boost for ESPN if they can use those local RSNs to boost their new OTT service. That’s a huge win if so.Tweet Embed: https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/938064561449721856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw This is huge, although it would seem to run counter to FOXA's stated desire to focus on sports/news. RSNs are basically ATMs. https://t.co/elAgXbvQRL

Don't forget FX

If a Disney/Fox mashup is about traditional media girding for an 'over the top' future, the FX network could provide to be a great test case. The network has produced a continued slate of prestige shows with small, but passionate fan bases (think "The Americans" and "American Horror Story.") FX has recently begun offering an ad-free version of the network to Comcast subscribers for $6 a month.

FX CEO John Landgraf is one of the more respected minds in the TV business, and coined the phrase 'peak TV' describing the current glut of scripted series. He said a few months ago during an Advertising Week event that a linear TV network may not be "the best expression of our brand." Maybe FX tries to become the next HBO Go? 

Or, as Landgraf noted, maybe FX figures out a way to bring premium TV content to consumers for free – with a limited number of targeted ads. Either way, FX would be a solid addition to the Disney portfolio.

The power of Avatar

Fox is spending over $1 billion on four planned sequels to James Cameron's smash hit "Avatar." Those movies basically have to work. Is anyone better suited to maximizing the marketing and profit potential of a franchise like that (theme parks, merchandise, etc.) than Disney?

Netflix won't stay still and may want to make more deals

Netflix is planning to spend an astonishing $8 billion on content next year. How can they keep this spending up? Its subscription service officer a better business model than cable TV or advertising, argued Ted Sarandos, Netflix's chief content officer, speaking at the UBS event on Tuesday.

Sarandos also gushed about the company's recent acquisition of the comic book publisher Millarworld, which provides Netflix with exclusive access to a stable of characters that could be turned into TV shows and movies.

"It's very freeing... owning your IP," said Sarandos. Owning IP can lead to much bigger relationships and partnerships, he said. And Sarandos didn't shoot down the idea when he was asked if Netflix might want to make more such deals.

Then there are a bunch of unanswered questions:

What happens to Hulu? According to CNBC, Disney could end up controlling a majority stake in Hulu – which is a joint venture between 21st Century Fox, Disney and Comcast. This could present an odd conflict: would Disney prioritize it's own streaming service over Hulu, even though Hulu already has a built-in subscriber base?

What happens to Hulu if Disney/Fox pulls its content? Would Disney sell it to somebody else? Will it outlive its usefulness over time?

Or, as one observer suggested, could Hulu be used as the base service to jump-start a Disney subscription offering?

Who's in charge? Could a Murdoch best known for a phone hacking scandal in the UK actually run the company that brought you Moana? Yes, reported the Financial Times on Tuesday. Disney has been seeking a successor for CEO Bob Iger for several years, and Iger has extended his stay past a planned retirement. Is James Murdoch the right man for the job? He declined to talk about the deal at the UBS Media Conference on Tuesday, reported Deadline.

Murdoch has painted himself as a digitally savvy, ready-to-shake-things-up media mogul. Is he just what Disney needs? 

What about a smaller Fox? If the deal closes, the Murdochs will suddenly have a pile of cash, and a small collection of assets: Fox network, Fs1 and Fox News. Those networks are all solid, but will suddenly seem very vulnerable as media becomes all about being big. What if Fox suddenly loses the NFL in a few years, for instance?

Could the Murdochs suddenly become buyers again?  Or could the family recombine the Fox assets with News Corp. (Barron's, The Wall Street Journal, etc), as Kelly suggested?

There are so many other dominoes to fall. What happens to Viacom? Discovery/Scripps? What does Facebook do on TV? Amazon? It will be very hard to stand pat in the new media world ahead. 

To read more about media's Game of Thrones-like machinations, click here.

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PWE Chapter 217

Chapter 217: Adventurers Association Lin Le followed the blond haired little Mar’s advice and went to the nearby chamber of commerce. Their sign had a picture of a fist and a coin. He slowly entered. FrozenCloud went to the local division of the War God’s Temple. As for Ye Cang, he stood at the entrance to a treehouse, blinking his eyes. He turned to see the large buildings that Lin Le and FrozenCloud’s instructors lived at. The War God’s Temple was made entirely of marble, a single glance was enough to tell it was high-end. He then turned back and looked at the hole in the tree, it was even more shoddy than a haunted house. With a sigh, he slowly walked in. What amazed Ye Cang was that the inside was spacious. He then saw a few grandpas and grandmas sitting at a wooden table, playing boardgames. It reminded him of the senior’s activity center they use to frequent. He broke out in cold sweat and wanted to leave. I should just got the the mage’s association or War God’s Temple to see if I can change classes. Seeing them all look over at him, he rubbed his head, feeling embarrassed. “My bad, I’m at the wrong place…” At this time, a wrinkled hand pressed down on Ye Cang’s shoulder. Ye Cang turned and saw a kind looking granny. “Young man, mm~ you’re aptitude is good. Linda, bring him to get an ID…” “Umm… I’m really in the wrong place…” Ye Cang saw everyone smiling at him and tried to leave. At this time a tall and beautiful woman, wearing a cyan mantle with long white legs and long white hair, who looked both fairy like and sisterly, walked down the stairs. She had some birds chirping around her. Ye Cang gasped. This pointy eared beauty’s chest might even be an N!? Looks like I underestimated this place… The white haired elven woman and Ye Can sized each other up. However, she was checking his body while he was unable to tear his eyes away from her jiggling chest. “Welcome, this is the adventurers association. I’m the one in charge, Linda…” The white haired elven woman said indifferently. Then Linda introduced the elders to him. They were all retired members of the adventurers association. Bale, Ken, Esse, Carina, as well as the one who just spoke with him was Black Rock City’s Adventurers Association’s (Ranger’s Guild) branch manager - Ivy. Ye Cang snapped out of his daze and once again wanted to change classes. “Umm… I…” Linda interrupted him, “Come with me…” Linda brought the once again dazed Ye Cang to a room on the 2nd floor. The walls were covered in wanted posters, and mission postings. Linda explained the system to Ye Cang. These were separated into ranks. Once one has performed a certain amount of work for the association, one can start accepting better quests. Moreover, they were always being replaced. She then explained the ranks in the adventurers association (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Amethyst). The adventurers association was a neutral organization, specialized in gathering information, and performing various missions. Different from the assassins guild, the adventurers association accepted mainly quests to hunt dangerous creatures or solve unfathomable mysteries. After her explanation, Linda reached out, as quick as lightning, handing Ye Cang a medal, not letting him refuse. “Congratulations! You’ve become a member of the adventurers associations. Prestige - friendly…“ “……” To him, the system message sounded like ‘Congratulations! You’ve become a member of the senior’s activity center’. Ye Cang was immediately astonished. He felt like a tourist that had been scammed into joining a sketchy organization. “I know what you’re thinking. Uncle Bale and the others are like that now, but they were once renowned adventurers in Black Rock City, completing many S rank quests. They’ve even complete quests such as defending White Stone City from the Steel Empire. From now on, I’ll be your trainer…” Linda’s words pulled Ye Cang out of his despair. Since he’s already joined, then there’s probably nothing he can do. He took a look at the quests that he was qualified to take. As for this associations function, Ye Cang had no complaints. It was already pretty good that you could get some quests to kill bosses, but you really had to look for them. Most of the quests were things like ‘help Lily find her missing puppy’ or ‘the barber shop’s scissors outside the city’. Soon after, Linda passed on some skills to Ye Cang. He received 3 skills, 2 talents, as well as 2 talent points and 2 skillpoints. Adventurer’s Medal (Bronze): +3 All Attributes. Can view bronze rank quests. Hunter’s Mark (Rare - Beginner Level): Mark the target, allowing you to know its general location from a distance, and increases damage you deal to it by 5%. Cost: 3 mana, 10 energy. Cooldown: 10 seconds. Cloudwalk (Super Rare - Beginner Level): Activate to increase movement speed by 100% for 5 seconds. During this time, you are immune to physical attacks and can walk on liquids. Cost: none. Cooldown: 10 minutes. Triple Shot (Rare - Beginner Level): Shoot 3 arrows at a target, each dealing 85% damage. Cost: 20 energy. Cooldown: 7 seconds. (Automatically replaces double shot) Adventurer’s Essentials (Adventurer - Beginner Level): +9 Wisdom. Increases the chance you will be given a quest. Tactics - Rapid Withdrawal/Pursuit (Adventurer - Linda - Beginner Level): When leading a party, your party members gain +8% movement speed and +5 Attack Speed. Once activated, this bonus improves to +50% movement speed and +30 Attack Speed for 20 seconds. Cost: 30 energy. Cooldown: 15 minutes. Ye Cang felt like these skills were pretty good. Especially the Tactics skill and Cloudwalk. If they ever had to escape again like in the tomb, it would definitely be much simpler. Following Linda, who could now be considered his master, back to the first floor, he looked closely at what these once formidable but now retired members were playing. Eh~ Monopoly… Lele should have come here. His title of number one public enemy of all senior’s activity centers wasn’t just for show… “Ok, you’re now a member of the adventurer’s association. When you have time, come check out the mission postings. If you want a quest, just rip it off the board, and leave a signed message in it’s place. Remember to put my name as your trainer. Every month, I’ll have to send your completed missions to headquarters. Also, the association will take 20% of your reward. Work hard.” Linda said these meaningful and heartfelt words, then patted Ye Cang’s shoulder. Her actions sent waves through her lethal weapons, making Ye Cang nod his head obediently. He even waved to the friendly retired adventurers, then walked out before suddenly realizing, what just happened!? He just now registered Linda’s final words, looked at the sheepskin missions that had suddenly appeared in his hand, and broke out in cold sweat. Am I working for some company!? Doesn’t this mean that after I finish a mission, I have to split the rewards with her!? He sighed, Who told me to get such a trainer. I’m just an apprentice, and can only pretend to smile. Working in a virtual game really isn’t simple. Hah~ Previous       Main menu       Next Click to Post

A Friendship of Warcraft

At age eleven, I discovered the massively multiplayer online game ‘Club Penguin’. It was the first online community I was to be a part of, filled with similar, web-obsessed preteens. You dressed up a colorful penguin, met strangers, and played games for currency. It was simple, but it was where I eventually started learning HTML, online etiquette, and time un-management skills.

These relationships, however fleeting, are strange at first. What kind of person would purposely shut themselves off from the real world in favor of mere fiber-generated connections—so regularly and for so long?

World of Warcraft has over 100 million user accounts. It’s fostered friendships, information tech strategy, and new advances in internet gaming since its release in 2005. Popular around the world, it’s known for its broad user demographic and social “prestige”.

____

A QUARTER to 7PM, Rikeni sits down at her self-built, Vaio PC, preparing for a group raid. Raids are deliberately strategized attacks on groups of other people. Logging in to a “realm”, or server, she puts on a headset with an attached microphone. Rikeni’s real name is Lucy, and she’s also my 31-year old sister.

This isn’t a real raid, of course—it’s a raid on World of Warcraft.

WoW— stylized “WoW”—is also a massively multiplayer online game. The main criteria for WoW is that you need an online environment to play, much like one needs a casino to gamble. The point of WoW: you can get good at fighting other players, sort of like a sports championship, and you work with other players to kill “bad guys” via team encounters.

As Rikeni puts it: “You’re trying to kill Bowser, and you need other people to help you do it—other real human beings.”

Given its collaborative nature, friendship in these realms knows no bounds. Rikeni and ‘Tied’ have been friends since 2005, “raiding” together sharing their combat skills, Tuesday night schedules, and life stories.

Tied is not his actual name. His real name is Brandon. Rikeni recounts: “I know that he’s in Florida, and that he’s gay, and he’s super frustrated ‘cause he hates Florida. He was gonna be a graphic designer, so he went to a private college, but never made a portfolio and only did two projects ever, and so he can’t get a media job.”

These don’t seem like deep-seated emotional connections, but rather a random set of census data. Rikeni and Tide don’t share much in common, but aren’t like. Rikeni is detached from her real, IT colleagues.

“I know that one of my coworkers has 7 siblings, is Catholic; another one is married with 2 kids and 2 dogs. I talk to them every day, but don’t feel close with them. I don’t care about their lives.”

Rikeni texts her WoW counterparts happy birthday and sends them memes. She doesn’t know when her coworkers’ birthdays are.

____

I asked Lucy how long she’d been playing. She relayed the question to her husband, Nathan.

“When did WoW come out? …Look it up! For… I think 7 years. 12th anniversary? So 2016, 12 years, yeah,” she murmurs. “—12 for him, 8 for me.  He saw an ad in a magazine.”

“I did not,” Nathan quipped.

Lucy plays WoW around three times a week. The majority of her online friendships are mediated through text, although Nathan uses voice communication apps like Skype. WoW requires you to talk to everyone anyway, and members learn each other’s voices quickly.

Assuming that individuals actually like the people they spend time with—your relationships online mostly resemble your relationships offline, except there’s just distance. Lucy says, “You treat people online the same as you treat people offline.”

The level of anonymity can change things. You can always turn the computer off if you get tried of talking to people, but turning people “off” is a different story.

____

Lucy and Nathan married in spring of 2016. Lucy, being the team’s assistant leader, notified them about her upcoming absence from the game honeymoon.

- You’re what?

/ Yeah I’m going on my honeymoon - YOU GOT MARRIED?

Lucy had offhandedly mentioned this on voice chat months before, even using Nathan’s character’s name. The group was astonished. Lucy and Nathan had been together for 10 years before that—the same amount of time she’d known Tied.

- “How long have you been together? How’d u meet?

- “You went to Iowa? How’s Iowa? How’s the corn?”

After the fact, Lucy and Nathan weren’t open about the fact that they were a couple. In the game, they act as separate people. It would otherwise lead to too much tension—like after-work basketball, but with a friend’s girlfriend that can only play PIG.

Lucy’s an assistant leader of her raid, and Nathan a soldier. She recruits, and he does whatever needs to be done.

“When you join a competitive raid, you have to apply. You have to go through interviews, present your credentials, have a portfolio. And you don’t bring your girlfriend.”

____

Lucy met Tied through an aggressively competitive group, winning multiple top US ranks for timed WoW races. The idea of meeting strangers off the internet isn’t new to Lucy, but she’s never met anyone. The topic hasn’t really come up, aside from in jokes. She might never still.

Penguins or not, the autonomy of online gaming networks shows a versatility through WoW. Internet friends don’t need to remain a taboo for much longer—but there’s not quite such a need with the World Wide Web.

One of the more comforting lines from my arsenal of stolen ideas comes from world-famous, long dead artist and print maker Katsushika Hokusai, creator of the renowned and thoroughly absorbed images of Mt Fuji. It goes:

From the age of six, I had a passion for copying the form of things and since the age of fifty I have published many drawings, yet of all I drew by my seventieth year there is nothing worth taking in to account. At seventy-three years I partly understood the structure of animals, birds, insects and fishes, and the life of grasses and plants. And so, at eighty-six I shall progress further; at ninety I shall even further penetrate their secret meaning, and by one hundred I shall perhaps truly have reached the level of the marvelous and divine. When I am one hundred and ten, each dot, each line will possess a life of its own.

For me it’s impossible not be be heartened by this idea that growth will come with time and effort.  Even though it may not be true in most cases, it’s true enough to be valuable. The Japanese phrase Ganbatte, usually used when a westerner would say ‘good luck’ actually translates closer to ‘do your best’ and goes some way to crystallize the work ethic of Japanese people from an outsider’s perspective. Effort, not luck or chance, wins out and is to be appreciated. Speaking of value derived from effort, here’s another heartening export from Japan:

Netsuke, the ancient Japanese art of hanging stuff from things

Netsuke began as a perfunctory, pragmatic item; since samurai robes had no appreciable pocket space, samurai held their pipes, writing equipment, d20s etc in little boxes (called sagemono) which were suspended from their sashes. Tying the sagemono onto the sashes would be time-consuming and unsightly if the knots weren’t pristine, and would require more cordage to achieve.

The more elegant solution was to connect the sagemono to a cord, the other end of which would hold something like what you see above; a peg, disc, sphere or other shaped bauble that prevented the cord from simply falling away between the sash and the samurai’s bod. This allowed for speedy removal but also allowed the samurai to express themselves (or in rather more cases, commission someone to do the expressing for them)

073 Working Title/Artist: Inrô with design of thatched hut Department: Asian Art Culture/Period/Location: HB/TOA Date Code: Working Date: 18th–19th century photography by mma, Digital File DP223431.tif retouched by film and media (jnc) 1_26_10

216

At the above left you can see the complete ensemble, in this case from the Edo period but likely made in the late 18th century, with phenomenal detail pushed into every aspect of the sagemono and netsuke. In this instance, the netsuke was made by ôhara Mitsuhiro and the sagemono by Koami Shinsaburo, which goes some way in suggesting the amount of labour that went into these items, and the prestige connected to the ownership of such functional high-art.

On the above right there’s a depiction of the demon-queller Shoki, bursting from his scroll to defend the owner of the netsuke and protect them from evil spirits, perhaps. As with the first example, spiritual allusions and representations of deities, characters from fables and mythological creatures were fairly common, and allowed the craftsmen to create massively diverse pieces; rabbits, frogs, children or even whole families have been immortalized in ivory and hardwood.

The reason I’m so hyped about these items should be of no surprise; it’s damn hard to make intricate pieces from wood, harder still to make them small, and harderer stiller to do so while incorporating various inlays and metallurgical techniques to, say, give a roof silver tiling or an animal mother-of-pearl eyes. It’s astonishing to me, and inspirational in the extreme to know that skill such as that has existed for hundreds of years. The industry may have died down, but the ingenuity and drive for quality are traits still shown in modern day artists who keep the craft and history of the artform alive.

For example, Tatsuya Ino‘s combination of videographic style and evident skill makes watching the process a pleasure unto itself, with the finished article seeming all the more impressive for our knowledge of its creation. That’s how I feel, anyway:

Next up:

  The Olympic Channel’s video series

So naturally the legacy of the Olympics kinda requires people to still be engaged with the idea of international sport and cooperation to achieve excellence in order to work, and so far I’ve seen precisely zero engagement on that platform from non-athletes and fairweather sports enthusiasts.

Which is a shame since the video series put out by The Olympic Channel has high quality videos released every few days, showing the culture of elite athleticism as well as the physical output of those athletes. it’s fascinating stuff, but as a person more keen on working with people than working on myself, the series called The Z Team really took my eye in. It follows bottom-of-the-leaguers as they receive coaching from Olympians who walk the talk and know the sport they’re coaching in forwards and backwards:

  Aside from these stories, The Olympic Channel website has hundreds of articles and videos on every sport in the Olympics, brimming with insight into coaching, training and performing at an international level. I’m surprised the page isn’t pushed more.

  Genius is Eternal Patience – Michelangelo

I was going back over my architecture notes recently and found a pattern that I’d either forgotten about or never noticed; when talking about spaces or movements through a building, the people I worked under would talk about impressions and abstractions, “this could feel very Philosopher in Meditation, couldn’t it?” but when it came to talk about façades, particularly the newer additions to Birmingham’s walkways and public buildings, only one name was mentioned- Michelangelo.

“It’s not what Michelangelo envisioned” is a quote I have down from my second day at the firm, said on the way to work as I quizzed a junior architect about the new Birmingham library. “look up: Saint Peter’s Longitudinal” is in the margin of my notes 5 days later, when I was encouraged to be less reliant on the software to create accurate renderings of buildings we had visited.

Michelangelo was an inspiration for half the firm, it seemed, and here was me thinking he was only good for making Davids. One thing I really enjoyed when looking for Michelangelo’s works was the amount of bits and pieces we still have that give a glimpse of the process; sketches unfinished but with a hint of an idea intact that can be found extant in the building he designed or the painting he finished. It’s a pretty cool rabbit hole to fall down:

    Listening to Paradise Lost

I ditched my Now TV account in order to remain cost-neutral when I took up an Audible subscription, a choice that made sense both in terms of content (I had finished Lost again, and zombies/American dramas do very little for me) and in terms of time: catching 15 minutes of a book on the way to work instead of listening to the same Jazz megamix feels a more productive use of the cycle’s duration.

After milling about on the site I remembered there was one book i was always encouraged to read aloud (to get the wordfeel textflavour or some such literary sommelier contrivance). This seemed to be a handy sidestep to that hassle, and thus I came to own the audiobook of Paradise Lost, by John Milton.

There may be some merit to the reading-aloud point, since Milton was blind at the time of writing and had to dictate his work, meaning he would’ve had to face the syntax ear-on. Either way, returning to the work has provided some choice quotations, such as:

The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less than he Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least We shall be free…

Here we see Satan coming to terms with his Fall; realising that Hell, being a land ostensibly for him and his compatriots, is his lot to mould, he begins to make the best of it and encourages others to do the same.

This is one of the first passages Milton creates that builds on the concept of the Devil being a sympathetic, even relatable character. We see him try to rouse his friends to action with commanding rhetoric rather than violence, we see him display mental fortitude in the face of adversity but better still, we see him open a democratic dialogue with his peers to discover the next course of action. No such traits are displayed in the following book by God, who (perhaps necessarily) is inscrutable and single-minded, or by Jesus who is almost too willing to sacrifice himself for the creature who has yet to even come into existence.

Satan here highlights the power in perception, along the lines of Camus’ Sisyphus, and shows that there can only be a victor if the enemy accepts defeat. If the Devil can make a heaven of hell, even if it only is so within his own mind, he has defeated God by perverting the punishment He’s laid out. This is a skill that, if applied wholeheartedly, makes one immune to pain, loss, hunger and death itself. If the Biblical God gave us the gift of life, Milton’s Satan has given us the gift of navigating that life powerfully.

No Song this week, since I’ve been neck deep in the podcasts I’m behind on BUT SPEAKING OF PODCASTS

Song Exploder is the podcast I wish I was cool enough to make, and it does a job desperately needed in the music industry: it allows artists to wax lyrical on their processes and methods, machines and mechanics and gives the listeners deeper insights into how the music they love got made. Highlights in this Clipping. episode include: all of the sounds are made from field recordings?! and Clipping. set stipulations for their raps like never using first person pronouns. ever. It’s super duper cool and they’re not overly long so you can burn through your favorite artists fairly quickly then get into some new music with a newly focused ear-hole.

That’s all for now, I’m working on a longer-form piece about fasting, metabolemics and doing things because you haven’t done them before, but that’ll be out around June 25th so until then, listen to all of The Adventure Zone podcasts.

Jozef

  Olympic-Level Bits of Tat One of the more comforting lines from my arsenal of stolen ideas comes from world-famous, long dead artist and print maker Katsushika Hokusai, creator of the renowned and…

Disney is about to go to war with Netflix and Fox could be a big weapon

Disney is preparing for a full-scale rivalry with Netflix.

That means Disney needs all the programming it can get as it plans for a direct-to-consumer, digitally-dominated media future.

Disney's first shot in this war may be to buy a collection of assets from 21st Century Fox.

More deals are sure to follow.

Disney may be closing in on a media-industry-rocking deal to acquire a collection of assets from 21st Century Fox. CNBC reports that a deal, which would include Fox's movie studios, could be announced as soon as next week. 

The deal comes as media companies look for ways to survive as consumers shift their attention to ad-free streaming services from Netflix and Amazon, cut the cord in increasing numbers and spend an inordinate amount of time glued to mobile screens and social media. 

Disney's already declared that it is going to war with Netflix by launching its own streaming service. Already Disney has some big assets to offer subscribers to this potential service, including movies made by its own studios and the rights to mega-hits like Star Wars. But it's going to need as many big guns as it can get in that fight.  If the future is less about cable bundles and classic TV advertising, and more about bringing content directly to paying subscribers, giants like Disney can't stand pat. That's where Fox comes in.

As one industry observer put it, "nobody knows what the business model of the future is. But if you have a lot of content, you're either going to get people to pay for it, run ads in it, or license it to somebody. So this is a pretty good hedge for Disney."

So, here's what we're thinking about in terms of breaking down the potential deal:

Building out a super-powered library

Disney's content library seems as good as it gets: Mickey, Pixar, Marvel. Given the company's plans to pull back on Netflix distribution to build out its own streaming service, it's arguably in great shape to launch its own streaming subscription business.

But as consumer media consumption fragments more every year, Disney will need as extensive a menu as possible to make sure they have something for everybody's plate, said Mike Kelly, CEO of Kelly Newman Ventures, a media industry consulting firm.

"Media has always been a distribution business, but digital is about one-to-one," he said. "So the only way to remain central to consumers is to continue to have scale by owning as much of a library as possible."

Netflix's approach to this has been to spend heavily to develop new shows, and compete with the likes of HBO and major TV networks for potential hits. With Fox, Disney would grab the rights to a trusted library including  X-Men, Deadpool, Planet of the Apes, Avatar, and Captain Underpants, and of course the added capability of finding and nurturing future blockbusters.

Defending against FANG

Beside fighting Netflix, everyone in media is making sure they don't get taken out by the rest of Silicon Valley – namely Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple. These companies have huge scale, deep pockets and are getting aggressive in content while dominating digital advertising.

"People talk about Facebook and Google taking 85 cents of every dollar in digital ads, but the way those companies look at it is that they are only taking like 20% of advertising overall," said Kelly. "They want it all."

Indeed, overall the so-called FANG companies "are trying to eat [media's] lunch," he said. For big media players, "this is about being around five years from now."

What about sports?

This is where it gets really interesting. CNBC is now reporting that Fox's regional sports networks will be included if this deal happens.

That means that while Disney wouldn't control the Fox broadcasting network and its NFL rights, or FS1, Fox's fledgling ESPN wannabe, it could theoretically control local sports networks like Fox Sports Detroit, which broadcasts Detroit Tigers and Detroit Pistons games, or part of the Yes Network in New York, which streams the Yankees and Brooklyn Nets.

There's a massive amount of money in local sports rights and advertising. And remember, like parent company Disney, ESPN is planning to launch its own direct-to-consumer sports streaming service, which could suddenly become a lot more enticing to fans of certain local teams. Is this why Disney purchased the streaming technology firm BAMTech?

In other words, even if companies like Amazon and Facebook continued to dabble in live sports rights, a Fox deal could be a total game changer for Disney.

Disney/Fox deal would be a massive boost for ESPN if they can use those local RSNs to boost their new OTT service. That’s a huge win if so.

— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) December 5, 2017

This is huge, although it would seem to run counter to FOXA's stated desire to focus on sports/news. RSNs are basically ATMs. http://bit.ly/2irQDZP

— Anthony Crupi (@crupicrupicrupi) December 5, 2017

Don't forget FX

If a Disney/Fox mashup is about traditional media girding for an 'over the top' future, the FX network could provide to be a great test case. The network has produced a continued slate of prestige shows with small, but passionate fan bases (think "The Americans" and "American Horror Story.") FX has recently begun offering an ad-free version of the network to Comcast subscribers for $6 a month.

FX CEO John Landgraf is one of the more respected minds in the TV business, and coined the phrase 'peak TV' describing the current glut of scripted series. He said a few months ago during an Advertising Week event that a linear TV network may not be "the best expression of our brand." Maybe FX tries to become the next HBO Go? 

Or, as Landgraf noted, maybe FX figures out a way to bring premium TV content to consumers for free – with a limited number of targeted ads. Either way, FX would be a solid addition to the Disney portfolio.

The power of Avatar

Fox is spending over $1 billion on four planned sequels to James Cameron's smash hit "Avatar." Those movies basically have to work. Is anyone better suited to maximizing the marketing and profit potential of a franchise like that (theme parks, merchandise, etc.) than Disney?

Netflix won't stay still and may want to make more deals

Netflix is planning to spend an astonishing $8 billion on content next year. How can they keep this spending up? Its subscription service officer a better business model than cable TV or advertising, argued Ted Sarandos, Netflix's chief content officer, speaking at the UBS event on Tuesday.

Sarandos also gushed about the company's recent acquisition of the comic book publisher Millarworld, which provides Netflix with exclusive access to a stable of characters that could be turned into TV shows and movies.

"It's very freeing... owning your IP," said Sarandos. Owning IP can lead to much bigger relationships and partnerships, he said. And Sarandos didn't shoot down the idea when he was asked if Netflix might want to make more such deals.

Then there are a bunch of unanswered questions:

What happens to Hulu? According to CNBC, Disney could end up controlling a majority stake in Hulu – which is a joint venture between 21st Century Fox, Disney and Comcast. This could present an odd conflict: would Disney prioritize it's own streaming service over Hulu, even though Hulu already has a built-in subscriber base?

What happens to Hulu if Disney/Fox pulls its content? Would Disney sell it to somebody else? Will it outlive its usefulness over time?

Or, as one observer suggested, could Hulu be used as the base service to jump-start a Disney subscription offering?

Who's in charge? Could a Murdoch best known for a phone hacking scandal in the UK actually run the company that brought you Moana? Yes, reported the Financial Times on Tuesday. Disney has been seeking a successor for CEO Bob Iger for several years, and Iger has extended his stay past a planned retirement. Is James Murdoch the right man for the job? He declined to talk about the deal at the UBS Media Conference on Tuesday, reported Deadline.

Murdoch has painted himself as a digitally savvy, ready-to-shake-things-up media mogul. Is he just what Disney needs? 

What about a smaller Fox? If the deal closes, the Murdochs will suddenly have a pile of cash, and a small collection of assets: Fox network, Fs1 and Fox News. Those networks are all solid, but will suddenly seem very vulnerable as media becomes all about being big. What if Fox suddenly loses the NFL in a few years, for instance?

Could the Murdochs suddenly become buyers again?  Or could the family recombine the Fox assets with News Corp. (Barron's, The Wall Street Journal, etc), as Kelly suggested?

There are so many other dominoes to fall. What happens to Viacom? Discovery/Scripps? What does Facebook do on TV? Amazon? It will be very hard to stand pat in the new media world ahead. 

To read more about media's Game of Thrones-like machinations, click here.

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