Thursdays – Famous Jewish Personalities in Politics, Science, Music and Art
6/4 @ 3:15 – 6/11, 6/18 & 6/25 @ 3:00 PM/ CH
Instructor: Stuart Liss
6/4 Walt Disney: The release of 1928’s Steamboat Willie put a young animator Walt Disney on the map. Soon he won Academy Awards left and right—but he wasn’t satisfied with a few measly trophies. At the time, animation was an incredibly labor-intensive process, and everyone in Hollywood believed anything longer than a five to 10-minute short was a fool’s errand. Except for Walt Disney.
6/11 Salvador Dali: A Salvador Dalí painting is instantly recognizable, whether the viewer realizes that’s what they’re looking at or not. Smashing into the art scene in the mid-1900s, Dalí ensured that artistic expression never looked the same. However, his outlandish and occasionally obscene behavior proved a detriment to his image. So, who was Salvador Dalí: A madman or a genius?
6/18 Pauline Kael: When word got out that Quentin Tarantino’s self-professed “final film” was called The Movie Critic, with rumors that it centered on a female lead and was set in the 1970s, most fans jumped to the same conclusion: It must be about Pauline Kael. Tarantino has since denied that the movie will be about her, but it’s hard to imagine she won’t loom large over the production—Tarantino has openly admitted that Kael was a huge influence on him. So why does everyone’s favorite schlocky, foot-obsessed movie nerd think Pauline Kael is so special? It’s simple: Pauline Kael was awesome.
6/25 Women who quietly influenced history: We’ve heard the cliché: behind every powerful man is a powerful woman. How many powerful women lurk from the shadows of men, whispering (presumably) advice and manipulating their way? But then again, the shadows of history were sometimes the only place in which women could work. How much of women “secretly” influencing history is them deliberately trying to be discrete (especially if they were spies)? And how much have women simply been pushed from the spotlight? Is “secret influencer” the name we give women forcibly shoved from the center of their stories?
