Outsiders
Romani Music
Yuri Yunakov is a saxophonist who will do anything to play his music. He is a member of the Roma culture (better known to most people as Gypsies) which historically has been a marginalized group in Europe. Wherever they’ve gone across Europe, they’ve been discriminated against, and have survived mostly by working as horse traders, […]
Howard Finster
The art world uses the label “outsider artist” to apply to a whole range of self-taught creative types — from people in prison to folk painters. But for many people the term is personified by the late Reverend Howard Finster. The Baptist preacher from Summerville, Georgia first began to paint in the mid 1970s after […]
Special Guest: John Waters
John Waters’ films have been shocking — and amusing — audiences for 40 years. His 1972 filmPink Flamingos earned him notoriety for its pure filth. But by the late 80s and 90s the mainstream was flowing more in his direction, and he was making movies like Serial Momand Hairspray, which has now become a huge […]
Outsiders: Challenging Society’s Idea of Normal
Fringe culture has always existed, from the Transcendentalists of the 19th century, to the Modernists of the 20th century, to the hippies, feminists and punks in the years that have followed. But how do we define outsiders today? Does American remain an incubator of alternative viewpoints, or has what’s alternative become mainstream? Are the outsiders […]
American Icons: The Outsiders
This is the underbelly of teen America. Susan Eloise Hinton was a teenager when she wrote The Outsiders, the story of rival gangs in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She used the pen name “S.E.” so readers wouldn’t know she was a girl, and bought a Camaro with the earnings. “Some of [the novel’s] faults, like its over-the-top […]
