Cultrface

A blog dedicated to culture
and how it enriches our lives

The Pudding on Asian American representation in Hollywood

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Nancy Kwan playing Suzie Wong in The World of Suzie Wong (1960). She is in a yellow dress and sat holding a magazine, looking at a man quizzically

Another fine data interactive from The Pudding looking at Asian American representation in Hollywood and how accurate it is1:

This project was prompted by the disheartening experiences we’ve had watching miscast characters in popular media, so we came into this project expecting more miscastings than not.

[…]

But we know how fragile this progress can be. In 2024, racial and gender diversity in Hollywood decreased for the first time in six years, part of a larger social regression. In a recent interview, Constance Wu said that she’s noticed that representation is becoming less important in casting. She said this could be a sign of people in Hollywood “reverting to limited imaginations of what story and characters could be.”

We’re worried about what we might be losing.

Dorothy Lu, who wrote the script and analysed the data for this interactive
  1. Quote slightly truncated as not to reveal the outcome of the analysis ↩︎

What can Democrats do right now?

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Serious questions: in response to the current US administration’s fascist atrocities, what can the Democrats do to make significant changes to what’s happening right now and are they doing them?

I think these are important questions because as a supposed opposition, you should oppose beyond rhetoric. Words are immaterial when people are being disappeared, brutalised, and murdered.

And this isn’t a gotcha moment or an open call to dunk on them. If we get lost in talk as action, the latter doesn’t happen. There needs to be a political plan and following through on that plan because as elected officials, you’re there to do things to improve and maintain your constituency as part of the wider nation. Couching action in language and intellectualism means we’ll never make it out of systematic oppression.

And maybe that’s the goal (I personally think it is but I’m also a cynic without working political knowledge). But my concern is with mistreated people—mostly from marginalised groups—and what they need, not with upholding institutional values, traditions, codes, and conventions. Politics are for and about the citizens, not the few sitting in offices and meetings.

So, what’s it gonna be?

Linus Boman on font piracy

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The secret history of font piracy

So apparently the font used in the ubiquitous “you wouldn’t steal a car” meme was actually pirated and everyone laughed at the irony but there’s a much bigger history of font piracy that goes beyond that which Linus Boman examined.

Copyright is obviously a thing but there’s something of a grey area when it comes to how to copy/resell fonts without direct permission from the creator.

Font related: a visual and oddly political history of the Wingdings font and Departure Mono: a free monospaced pixel font inspired by old command-line

The BBC on how to pronounce Basel

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I know the Swiss city of Basel via two connections: Roger Federer and FC Basel. But during a Champions League match, I remember the commentator pronouncing the team name different to how it was spelt. Rather than saying “baa-zul”, he said “baal”. Was it a classic case of British overpronounciation of European names? Apparently not, according to this BBC guide:

The German spelling is Basel, pronounced BAA-zuhl (-aa as in “father”, -uh as “a” in “ago”, stressed syllable in upper case).

Given that it is in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, one might expect the English pronunciation to be based on the German but, in fact, the English form is Basle and for the pronunciation we give the established anglicisation baal (-aa as in “father”).

This pronunciation is possibly based on the French spelling Bâle, which is also pronounced baal.

So which pronunciation should we use? Our usual recommendation for place names is to recommend the established anglicisation, if one exists.

And to think this was triggered by the same thing that pricked my ears up: a commentator’s pronunciation during a Champions League game between Manchester United and FC Basel.

A flag for London

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A flag depicting wavy blue lines to represent the River Thames and a red roundel in the middle, partly covered by the middle waves
The London Flag by Juan Castro-Varón, shared via CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Did you know that London doesn’t have a flag? Other global capitals have one but not London1 and Juan Castro-Varón, a proud Londoner, flag enthusiast and member of the Flag Institute, decided to make one.

Juan discusses his inspiration on the flag’s website and it makes sense. Some might not like the modernist aesthetic or the colour choices (just because people are sick of red/white/blue flag supremacy in the West) but it’s representative of the city and maybe that’s all you need.

I also like the idea that the stripes can be recoloured to create flag variants, to represent London’s global community and its multicultural heritage, and to celebrate every Londoner who calls the city their home. I think that’s an important touch given the multiculturalism of London that often becomes a footnote when talking about London—or a focal point for negative rhetoric.

What do you think? Let Juan know or leave a comment here.

  1. The City of London has a flag, but that’s a different to London, the capital city of England and the UK ↩︎

I.

Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
The transient pleasures as a vision seem,
And yet we think the greatest pain’s to die.

II.

How strange it is that man on earth should roam,
And lead a life of woe, but not forsake
His rugged path; nor dare he view alone
His future doom which is but to awake.

On Death by John Keats (1814)

Every time Norm Peterson walked into Cheers

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Cheers | Every Time Norm Peterson Enters the Bar

George Wendt passed away yesterday. He was best known for his role as Norm Peterson in Cheers. Jason Kottke posted a supercut of every time he entered the bar. It’s 18 minutes long and the call-and-response between Norm, the people in the bar, and whoever got him a beer was really funny.

(If you’ve never watched Cheers, perhaps you’ll recognise him as Macauley Culkin’s dad in the video for Michael Jackson’s Black or White.)

Cheers related: Classic Frasier

Damien Davis on Thomas J Price’s Times Square sculpture and “Black fatigue” in art

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For Hyperallergic, Damien Davis discussed Thomas J Price’s Times Square sculpture, “Grounded in the Stars”, and the manufacture of “Black fatigue” in art:

But the attacks reveal more than discomfort; they expose a strategy. By framing Price’s work as “wokeness,” it is easier to justify its removal or marginalization. When the fatigue narrative is deployed, it doesn’t just suggest that society is tired of conversations about race — it implies that Black presence itself is the burden. This isn’t incidental; it’s strategic. Reframing “Black fatigue” as society’s exhaustion with Black visibility absolves institutions from responsibility and makes retreat feel reasonable. Price’s sculpture, by merely existing, is treated as an act of provocation.

Funny how everyone craves realism in all forms of art (see the incessant need for immersive graphics in video games as an example) but when it comes to a sculpture of a real Black woman in a real pose with a real hairstyle, there’s a problem.

NatGeo on the misunderstood history of geisha

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a group of 5 geisha

For National Geographic, Julia Shiota examined some of the misconceptions about geisha with photography by Kin Coedel:

Thanks to centuries of sexualization in Western media, the image of the geisha is often closely linked with sex work. There is some historical truth here—geisha had been connected to the pleasure quarters and, back in the Tokugawa period, did engage in sex work during a time when it was more widely practiced.

However, much of the contemporary, erotically charged conceptions stem from highly sensationalized tales told by writers like Arthur Golding, whose novel Memoirs of a Geisha set the tone for how these women have been understood in the West for decades.

But this misunderstanding of the geisha strips them of a centuries-long history rooted in culture and art.

When life doesn't give your garden water, try xeriscaping

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Something I found out about recently: xeriscaping is a form of gardening that doesn’t use irrigation, usually in places where fresh water isn’t available. It’s also good if you want some low-maintenance greenery. But there can be drawbacks:

A recent study by a pair of Arizona State University researchers, however, revealed that xeriscaped yards contain higher levels of nitrate than turf yards. Downstream, as irrigation transports nitrate into the soil, those levels could affect water quality, leading to algal blooms and wreaking havoc with aquatic ecosystems.

When a homeowner decides to xeriscape and rips out the lawn, either the turf is killed and removed or killed and tilled into the soil. If it’s tilled into the soil, organic material left behind decomposes and nitrates build up.

via ASU

And if you’re thinking all xeriscaping means no water, think again:

While some xeriscapes may require no added water, some may use more. “It’s about getting water to plants when they actually need it,” Bone says, “not because there’s a clock or timer that says they need it.”

Further reading