university daily kansan Entertainment
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Wednesday, October 30, 1996
Lawrence ranks 15th as an arts town
By Eric Weslander
Kansan staff writer
Lawrence is a great town for the arts and has the best main street in America.
That is the opinion of author John Villam, who ranked Lawrence 15th in his recent book The 100 Best Small Arts Towns in America.
"I loved what I saw here, and the way art was integrated into the landscape around Massachusetts Street and hung on the walls in downtown businesses," Villani said in a press release. "I was just floored. Lawrence has the best main street in America."
Villani also cited the Lied Center, the
annual Indian Art Show and the Spencer Museum of Art as reasons for Lawrence's high ranking in his current book.
"It's the things that we all know here in Lawrence," said Ann Evans, executive director of the Lawrence Arts Center.
She said that she always had known Lawrence was a great town for the arts but that it was nice to be recognized.
"It is wonderful to have that outside person acknowledge how important the arts are here," Evans said. "It gives that official seal that you can't do yourself."
Villani is a travel writer who lives in Santa Fe, N.M.
This is the second book he has written
Lawrence was also listed in Villani's first book, but the towns were not ranked. This year, Eureka, Calif., emerged as his favorite artistic small town.
about art in small towns.
Other towns listed ahead of Lawrence include Durango, Colo., and Panama City, Fla.
Gary Toebben, president of the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, said he planned to use the ranking in future literature promoting Lawrence.
"I think it's a credit to the citizens of this community who care a lot about and who are willing to invest both private and public funds in the arts," he said.
Villani wrote that a balance between the University and the community differentiated Lawrence from most towns.
"While the University arts scene is dynamic, broad and well-funded, what makes Lawrence special is its perfect integration of the community's and the University's cultural programming," he said in his book.
Villani also mentioned the University's Natural History Museum and Museum of Anthropology as contributors to the arts scene.
"Art is everywhere you turn in Lawrence just take a look around town," the book stated.
Small Art Towns
The Top 15 Small Art Towns in the United States, according to author John Villani:
1. Eureka, Calif.
2. Northampton, Mass.
3. Taos, N.M.
4. Durango, Colo.
5. Deer Isle, Maine
6. Panama City, Fla.
7. Burlington, Vt.
8. Newport, Ore.
9. Asheville, N.C.
10. Belfast, Maine
11. Olympia, Wash.
12. Middlebury, Vt.
13. Nantucket, Mass.
14. Ashland, Ore.
15. Lawrence, Kan.
The Associate: another feminist setback
Male-bashing prevalent in new Goldberg flick
By Jeff Ruby
Kansan staff writer
First of all, this is a movie that should never have been made. Let me get that out of the way.
At a time when female dissatisfaction with gender roles seems to be at a peak, Petrie had a chance to tap into gender issues by standing on the shoulders of 1988's Working Girl, but instead chose to make a puzzling, humorless and unimportant movie.
With that said about Whoopi Goldberg's excruciatingly void movie The Associate, we can focus on the important issue at hand: Lame feminist films such as this only set back the women's movement to pre-Steinhem days.
14. Ashman, Orc.
15. Lawrence, Kan.
Director Donald Petrie (Mystic Pizza, Grumpy Old Men) may as well have put out a filer that said "Woman good, man bad," and saved a lot of people a lot of time and money.
From a male standpoint, I suppose I should feel threatened by Goldberg's new fem-power flick, in which her character proves she can make morons out of every member of my gender, but when a movie is this implausible and transparent, I can't even raise my eye
brows in surprise.
After months of convincing people that her mythical partner simply is attending meetings around the world, Goldberg is forced to transform herself into a man in a scene that looks uncannily familiar, perhaps because it was stolen from the only marginally original Mrs. Doubtfire.
The Associate stars a subdued Goldberg as Laurel Ayres, a Wall Street wizard who finds she has to invent a fictional male business partner in order to infiltrate the male-dominated New York financial world. It probably looked good on paper. The big screen was another story.
Bloodthirsty women cheered as Thelma and Louise stuck it to the evil white male in 1991. Revenge-hungry females were delighted when Angela Bassett set fire to her cheating man's car in last year's Waiting to Exhale. And most recently, people flocked to theaters to watch Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton and Bette Midler exact revenge on their philandering husbands in First Wives Club.
Now we have The Associate, which leads me to wonder why Hollywood always disguises angry, anti-male movies as positive, power-affirming feminist movies.
If this is the best the mainstream movie industry can come up with, I'd be angry if I were a woman too.
True feminism ignored by Hollywood males
By Ashlee Roll Kansan staff writer
Sisters are doing it for themselves.
Or at least that's what Hollywood would have us believe this fall. With movies like The First Wives Club making millions of dollars, the men in tinsel-town have begun to turn out movies with what they believe is a feminist message. The Associate starring Whoopi Goldberg is exactly that. The movie is about Laurel Ayres, played by Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg
who is a financial genius. However, she hit the glass ceiling of Wall Street.
Laurel creates Robert Cutty, a mysterious partner, and using her ideas and his name, makes billions of dollars for her clients. But, as in all movies, the truth catches up with her, and she winds up coming clean in front of all of the men who had alienated her, to a standing ovation no less.
Edged out of a promotion for vice-president by her sleazy partner, played by Wings' Tim Daly, she quits her job to start her own company.
But then Laurel realizes that no male on Wall Street will hand his investment money to a female. This is where the wacky, over-formulated, great big whammy begins to take shape.
If this movie is meant to stir up female pride in women, it falls short. The movie is laden with the typical female helplessness that male filmmakers seem so fond of.
By presenting the audience with the simultaneous images of the strong and determined Goldberg and the submissive Bebe Neuwirth, previously Lilith on Cheers, the movie contradicts itself.
Neuwirth plays a high-stakes accountant, who spends her time in lingerie shops and fetches drinks for her old male clients.
The only highlight was Dianne Wiest, the soft-spoken assistant who forces Goldberg to realize she is good for more than making coffee. West is more of the hero than Goldberg by doing a good job and being proud of it.
The reason The Associate is offensive is its promotion as a movie for women about women. It was anything but that.
With this typical female role, the movie negates the attempt to show women as the competent business people they can be.
Tommy inspires a race discussion
By Erin Rooney Kansan staff writer
The Who's musical Tommy sparked discussions after it opened on Broadway in 1993 because it exposed conversations about racial identity.
Barry Shank, associate professor of American studies, will present That Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Kid: The Who's Construction of Whiteness, at 4 p.m. on Nov. 14 in the Multicultural Resource Center. Tommy opens at the Lied Center at 8 p.m. on Nov. 15.
"If you listen to early Who music and read what they talk about in their early interviews, you'll see the mod movement in England." Shank said.
Shank said that The Who explained the dialogue between American soul music and the English mod rock scene.
He suggested that The Who belonged to the working class in England and that their music was influenced by American soul.
As The Who became popular in the United States, this influence then was transformed into the white rock scene, Shank said. Therefore, the white rock scene has its roots in American soul.
Evan Heimlich, program assistant for the office of minority affairs and Mariboro, N.J., graduate student, said that understanding the differences between Black and white was as culturally defined as everything else in our society.
"The concepts are mutually dependent," Heimlich said. "White means not Black, and Black means not white. I'm not saying these things are real. I'm just saying that they are important for understanding our culture."
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Attention W. 6th Riders!
Please note the following changes to the W. 6th Route that will take place on Nov.1, 1996
6th Street
Please Note: The bus will no longer go up Lawrence and down Mesa Way. Times will not change.
These changes were not made by the KU on Wheels Management nor were they made by Lawrence Bus Co. These changes were made by the businesses on Mesa Way
842-9445
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