The 'Dance of the 41' changed the way that Mexico interpreted gender and sexuality forever. The number 13 is commonly considered unlucky, but in Mexico, the number 41 has been seen as taboo and avoided—at one point the Army left the number out of battalions, hotel and hospital rooms didn’t use it and some even skipped their 41st birthday altogether. The reason has to do with a party held in a secret location in Mexico on November 17, 1901. On that night 41—possibly 42—men gathered under the cover of night to dance together. Though some may not consider this scandalous by today’s standards, fallout from “The Dance of the 41,” as it was called by the press, was controversial enough to change the landscape of sexuality in Mexico.
Vienna was an intellectual powerhouse in the early 20th Century and two male artists are considered the giants of Viennese modernism: Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. But Vienna's Belvedere Museum is now showcasing the long-neglected contribution of women artists in that period. City of Women displays works by about 60 female artists, covering the years 1900-1938. Some works had been hidden away in attics and storerooms gathering dust. The City of Women exhibition runs at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna from January 25th to May 19, 2019.
Is there a cure for disinformation, propaganda, and other offenses against the truth? Twitter’s answer has been to add fact-checks to misleading statements, a move that has led to a showdown with President Donald Trump. While this fight has been framed as an issue of free speech, ancient Greek philosophers, who worried deeply about what “fake news” meant for their own societies, would say it’s much more profound and more urgent than that. As technologically advanced as the fight between Twitter and Trump now seems, this dilemma is not new at all.
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“Nomadland,” Chloé Zhao’s meditation on grief and the damaged American dream, won Academy Awards for best picture, director and actress at Sunday night’s surreal ceremony, a stage show broadcast on television about films mostly distributed on the internet. It was a sleepy event until the final minutes, when academy voters served up a dramatic twist ending: Anthony Hopkins, 83, won the best actor Oscar for “The Father,” beating out the late Chadwick Boseman (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”), who was the runaway favorite going into the night, having been lauded by film organizations and critics’ groups for months. Frances McDormand was named best actress for “Nomadland,” the third time she has won the award. “Nomadland” gave Searchlight Pictures its fourth best-picture prize in eight years, an astounding run unrivaled by any other specialty film company. “We give this one to our wolf,” McDormand said as she held the best picture statuette, an apparent reference to Michael Wolf Snyder, a “Nomadland” sound mixer who took his own life in March. She then unleashed an unbridled wolf howl.
