First-of-its-Kind Fund for Women in Film and Theater

Last week, as the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment announced the creation of a $5 million fund to help women film- and theater-makers, New York City became the first city in the country with a major municipal program for helping women in these fields. The commissioner of the office, Julie Menin, explains: “[W]e’re simply not seeing as many women get to the top of their field as men, and we felt it was our duty to address that.” The funds, administered over five years, are intended for projects that are “by, for, or about women,” as financing has been shown to be a major hurdle for female filmmakers. The plans for the fund also include a TV pilot writing contest, the winner of which will be picked up for more episodes on NYC Life, a local TV channel. Menin explained her hopes that this fund will only be the first of its kind, opening the door for others like it: “This could absolutely serve as a blueprint and paradigm for what we want to do in these other fields.” Hopefully this money will help the arts scene benefit from the talent and perspectives of those who otherwise would not be able to share their creations with the world.

Grumpy Cat’s Broadway Debut

As the beloved show “Cats” has returned to the Broadway stage, a more recently famous feline has also made an appearance: this last week, for one night only, Grumpy Cat joined the cast of “Cats” as an honorary Jellicle Cat at the end of the show. Representatives for Grumpy Cat issued a press release indicating that, in typical curmudgeonly fashion, she’d probably much rather prefer to be in “The Phantom of the Opera.” For Grumpy Cat, whose real name is Tardar Sauce, this most recent honor seems to be a typical day in the life of a feline with 8.7 million Facebook followers. She can be seen posing in Instagrams with the cast of the show decked out in their elaborate costumes. The guest appearance no doubt surprised and delighted audience members, who probably felt it safe to assume they wouldn’t see any real cats on stage that night.

NY Public Library Acquires Hip-Hop Dance Archive

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts recently acquired its first hip-hop dance archive, to be kept alongside the archives of dance greats like Mikhail Baryshnikov and Merce Cunningham. Specifically, the library has acquired the archive of Michael Holman, a “hip-hop polymath” who has been a NYC dance impresario, film maker, journalist, musician, and choreographer since the late 1970s. Holman described the significance of the library’s acquisition in a recent interview: “The library is making a statement. Ballet, modern, dance, tap– the library is placing hip-hop culture on the same pedestals as other established dance movements.” Most of Holman’s archive is made up of video material, including underground performances by b-boys and break-dancers. The archive also includes hours of audiotape recordings capturing oral history and over 100 photographs of the hip-hop scene from Holman’s experience. He hopes his archive at the library will help researchers and historians understand how “D.I.Y. hip-hop was in its early days,” calling it a “great subcultural alchemy.” It is certainly exciting that the library’s acquisition will help its collection better reflect the wide variety of cultures and styles in the dance world.

The Consequences of Banning Books

Every year in the last week of September, book lovers across the globe celebrate Banned Books Week, an event started in 1982 and meant to bring attention to literary works frequently challenged by parents, schools, and libraries. The books themselves have been banned or censored for a variety of reasons, including violence or offensive language and religious controversy (the case with both the Harry Potter series and the Bible). Over half of the books (52 percent) challenged int he last decade have featured supposed “diverse content,” meaning they explore controversial issues such as race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, mental illness, and disability. The consequences of banning such books, argues The Atlantic’s Paul Ringel, are devastating for many children. With the outward intention of protecting children from “emotionally inappropriate” material, he argues, these parents, school administrators, and librarians are often preserving structural biases that make it more difficult for minority authors to get children’s books published–leaving children themselves to read stories without content about diverse walks of life. For these reasons, the organizers of Banned Books Week have chosen the theme “Celebrating Diversity” for its 2016 event, joining movements like the We Need Diverse Books campaign in calling out the lack of diversity in children’s books and the publishing world. In the end, Ringel hopes that librarians, teachers, and parents can curate children’s choices not with the goal of obscuring new ideas, but of inspiring them–allowing children “to learn to navigate imaginary worlds filled with differences, with the faith that they will apply those lessons to their own lives.” The world may indeed be the better for it.