Saturday, April 17, 2010

Thursday, April 15, 2010


Struwwelpeter has been reprinted...

Struwwelpeter stands or falls on the credo that children can bear to be scared by art and thereby grow. It addresses its youthful audiences as such. Understanding that children ought not be burdened with scenes or themes that go far beyond their own experience, Hoffmann draws deft, bright lines between each childish act and an extreme consequence. This matters today, when a generation of parents is being compared with hovering helicopters and snowplows. In this book, it is not the parents who are in control. They pronounce their interdictions and then, as Becket would say, things take their course...

Seven unproduced screenplays by famous intellectuals

...In a departure from earlier roles, Fernandel was to play a bourgeois Marseilles soap manufacturer who, during his children’s holidays, assumes the costume and character of the Marquis de Sade....

Old New York in Colour

Tuesday, April 13, 2010


Dead Dogs

The state’s power over dogs expanded in tandem with its empowerment of the newly established societies for “humane treatment.” So too did claims of humanitarian enlightenment. Dogs were no longer as legally insignificant as before, but they continued to be subject to the rigor of law: judged as dangerous, accused of damage or injury, impounded or killed. Their representation and treatment—cared for, beaten, ignored—offer limit cases in the extravagance of status-making in law...