Get a First Glimpse of Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, the “Cursed” Film 29 Years in the Making

One pos­si­ble response to the tan­ta­liz­ing notion of a Ter­ry Gilliam film about Don Quixote: How has­n’t he made one already? Anoth­er pos­si­ble response: Wait, has­n’t he made one already? The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which pre­miered at Cannes last month, arrives 29 years after Gilliam first start­ed work­ing on it — and 16 years after Lost in La Man­cha, a well-received doc­u­men­tary about one of his failed attempts to shoot it. Long the per­fect sym­bol of a “cursed” pro­duc­tion doomed to an eter­ni­ty in “devel­op­ment hell,” it has some­how come back from the dead, res­ur­rect­ed by the sheer dogged­ness of Gilliam and his col­lab­o­ra­tors, time and time again.

The movie even sur­vives John Hurt and Jean Rochefort, two of the stars pre­vi­ous­ly signed on to play Quixote him­self. (The list also includes Robert Duvall and Gilliam’s fel­low Python Michael Palin.) Jonathan Pryce, best known at the moment as Game of Thrones’ High Spar­row, has ulti­mate­ly tak­en on the role, hav­ing been attached to play oth­ers in the project over the pre­vi­ous decades. But just as Gilliam’s film does­n’t straight­for­ward­ly adapt Cer­vantes’ clas­sic of Span­ish lit­er­a­ture, Pryce does­n’t straight­for­ward­ly por­tray Cer­vantes’ icon­ic char­ac­ter. He does it, rather, through a Span­ish shoe­mak­er who tru­ly believes he is Cer­vantes’ icon­ic char­ac­ter, hav­ing played him in a stu­dent film years before.

The stu­dent film­mak­er has grown up to become a cyn­i­cal adman, one meant to be played in pre­vi­ous ver­sions of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote by Robin Williams, John­ny Depp, Ewan McGre­gor, and Jack O’Con­nell. In the trail­er above you’ll see the char­ac­ter played by Adam Dri­ver, who in recent years has fast ascend­ed into the realm of indie-film roy­al­ty. Where­as ear­li­er scripts flung him back through time from mod­ern day into 17th-cen­tu­ry Spain, this one stays in the present and forces him to con­front the out­sized impact of his small film on the even small­er vil­lage in which he shot it. And so the sto­ry of the film, not just the sto­ry behind it, takes on themes of the unpre­dictable com­pli­ca­tions, con­se­quences, and even dan­gers of film­mak­ing.

Those com­pli­ca­tions have ground on for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. The lat­est man­i­fes­ta­tion of the film’s sup­posed curse takes the form of a law­suit by a for­mer pro­duc­er, Paulo Bran­co, who insists he still owns the rights to it. Gilliam’s cur­rent pro­duc­er says oth­er­wise, but their recent loss in the Paris Court of Appeals has giv­en the noto­ri­ous­ly force­ful Bran­co rea­son — valid or not, nobody seems quite able to say — to pub­licly declare vic­to­ry. Whichev­er par­ty will final­ly have to cough up how­ev­er much mon­ey to set­tle all of this, the epic jour­ney of Gilliam’s Don Quixote project looks as if it has entered its home stretch. How­ev­er the world receives the film itself, Gilliam’s fans can almost cer­tain­ly look for­ward to anoth­er acclaimed doc­u­men­tary about it as well. 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ter­ry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions: A 1974 How-To Guide

Watch “The Secret Tour­na­ment” & “The Rematch,” Ter­ry Gilliam’s Star-Stud­ded Soc­cer Ads for Nike

Yale Presents a Free Online Course on Miguel de Cer­vantes’ Mas­ter­piece Don Quixote

Gus­tave Doré’s Exquis­ite Engrav­ings of Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch Paul McCartney Sing Through the Streets of Liverpool on the Latest Episode “Carpool Karaoke”

Above, James Cor­den vis­its Liv­er­pool and takes Paul McCart­ney on a trip down mem­o­ry lane. The 23-minute seg­ment fea­tures a lit­tle “car­pool karaoke” and some live per­for­mances by Sir Paul. Songs on the playlist here include “Dri­ve My Car,” “Pen­ny Lane,” “Let It Be,” “When I’m 64”, “Black­bird,” “Hard Day’s Night,” “Obla­di Obla­da,” “Love Me Do,” and “Hey Jude.” Enjoy!

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Genius of Paul McCartney’s Bass Play­ing in 7 Iso­lat­ed Tracks

In 1969 Telegram, Jimi Hen­drix Invites Paul McCart­ney to Join a Super Group with Miles Davis

Watch Glass Walls, Paul McCartney’s Case for Going Veg­e­tar­i­an

Bill Murray Explains How He Pulled Himself Out of a Deep, Lasting Funk: He Took Hunter S. Thompson’s Advice & Listened to the Music of John Prine

Judg­ing by the out­pour­ing of affec­tion in online com­ment sec­tions, Chica­go folk musi­cian John Prine (may he rest in peace) has helped a great many of his fans through tough times with his human­ist, oft-humor­ous lyrics.

Add fun­ny man Bill Mur­ray to the list.

Tap­ing a video in sup­port of The Tree of For­give­ness, Prine’s first album of new mate­r­i­al in over a decade, Mur­ray recalled a grim peri­od in which a deep funk robbed him of all enjoy­ment. Though he care­ful­ly stip­u­lates that this “bum­mer” could not be diag­nosed as clin­i­cal depres­sion, noth­ing lift­ed his spir­its, until Gonzo jour­nal­ist Dr. Hunter S. Thomp­son—whom Mur­ray embod­ied in the 1980 film, Where the Buf­fa­lo Roam—sug­gest­ed that he turn to Prine for his sense of humor.

Mur­ray took Thompson’s advice, and gave his fel­low Illi­nois­ian’s dou­ble great­est hits album, Great Days, a lis­ten.

This could have back­fired, giv­en that Great Days con­tains some of Prine’s most melancholy—and memorable—songs, from “Hel­lo in There” and “Angel from Mont­gomery” to “Sam Stone,” vot­ed the 8th sad­dest song of all time in a Rolling Stone read­ers’ poll.

But the song that left the deep­est impres­sion on Mur­ray is a sil­ly coun­try-swing num­ber “Lin­da Goes to Mars,” in which a clue­less hus­band assumes his wife’s vacant expres­sion is proof of inter­plan­e­tary trav­el rather than dis­in­ter­est.

To hear Mur­ray tell it, as he thumbs through a copy of John Prine Beyond Words, the moment was not one of gut-bust­ing hilar­i­ty, but rather one of self-aware­ness and relief, a sig­nal that the dark clouds that had been hang­ing over him would dis­perse.

A grate­ful Murray’s admi­ra­tion runs deep. As he told The Wash­ing­ton Post, when he was award­ed the Kennedy Cen­ter Mark Twain Prize for Amer­i­can Humor, he lobbied—unsuccessfully—to get Prine flown in for the cer­e­mo­ny:

I thought it would have been a nice deal because John Prine can make you laugh like no else can make you laugh.

Dit­to Prine’s dear friend, the late, great folk musi­cian, Steve Good­man, the author of “The Veg­etable Song,” “The Lin­coln Park Pirates” (about a leg­endary Chica­go tow­ing com­pa­ny), and “Go, Cubs, Go,” which Mur­ray trilled on Sat­ur­day Night Live with play­ers Dex­ter Fowler, Antho­ny Riz­zo, and David Ross short­ly before the Cub­bies won the 2016 World Series.

I just found out yes­ter­day that Lin­da goes to Mars

Every time I sit and look at pic­tures of used cars

She’ll turn on her radio and sit down in her chair

And look at me across the room as if I was­n’t there

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I wish she would­n’t leave me here alone

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I won­der if she’d bring me some­thing home

Some­thing, some­where, some­how took my Lin­da by the hand

And secret­ly decod­ed our sacred wed­ding band

For when the moon shines down upon our hap­py hum­ble home

Her inner space gets tor­tured by some out­er space unknown

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I wish she would­n’t leave me here alone

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I won­der if she’d bring me some­thing home

Now I ain’t seen no saucers ‘cept the ones upon the shelf

And if I ever seen one I’d keep it to myself

For if there’s life out there some­where beyond this life on earth

Then Lin­da must have gone out there and got her mon­ey’s worth

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I wish she would­n’t leave me here alone

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I won­der if she’d bring me some­thing home

Yeah, I won­der if she’d bring me some­thing home

Lis­ten to a Great Days Spo­ti­fy playlist here, though nei­ther Open Cul­ture, nor Bill Mur­ray can be held account­able if you find your­self blink­ing back tears.

Bonus: Below, watch Prine and Mur­ray “swap songs and sto­ries about the ear­ly days in Chica­go cross­ing paths with the likes of John Belushi, Steve Good­man and Kris Kristof­fer­son.” Plus more.


Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

Bill Mur­ray Reads the Poet­ry of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, Wal­lace Stevens, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins, Lorine Niedeck­er, Lucille Clifton & More

Lis­ten to Bill Mur­ray Lead a Guid­ed Medi­a­tion on How It Feels to Be Bill Mur­ray

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Thurs­day June 28 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

A Brief, Visual Introduction to Surrealism: A Primer by Doctor Who Star Peter Capaldi

Sur­re­al­ism, accord­ing to this short Unlock Art video from the Tate, began in Paris, at the cafe Les Deux Magots, in 1924. You can still go there, but among its habitués you won’t find the fel­low on whom the cam­era zooms in: André Bre­ton, author of the Sur­re­al­ist Man­i­festo. That influ­en­tial text drew inspi­ra­tion from the work of Sig­mund Freud, father of psy­cho­analy­sis, specif­i­cal­ly his book The Inter­pre­ta­tion of Dreams.

“Bre­ton believed art and lit­er­a­ture could rep­re­sent the uncon­scious mind,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor Peter Capal­di, well known as one of the Doc­tors of Doc­tor Who. He then names some artists who agreed with Bre­ton on this point, such as Sal­vador Dalí, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, and Rene Magritte — just a few of the Sur­re­al­ists. “Sur­re­al,” as an adjec­tive, has per­haps fall­en vic­tim to debase­ment by overuse in the past 84 years. But Bre­ton had spe­cif­ic ideas about Sur­re­al­is­m’s poten­tial effects, its sources of pow­er, and its meth­ods.

Desire, for instance, “was cen­tral to the Sur­re­al­ist vision of love, poet­ry, and lib­er­ty. It was the key to under­stand­ing human beings.” Sur­re­al­ist artis­tic prac­tices includ­ed putting objects “that were not nor­mal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with one anoth­er togeth­er, to make some­thing that was play­ful and dis­turb­ing at the same time in order to stim­u­late the uncon­scious mind.” Think of Dalí’s 1936 Lob­ster Tele­phone, made out of those very objects. “It’s about food and sex,” Capal­di pro­nounces. The Sur­re­al­ist vision also extend­ed to more com­pli­cat­ed endeav­ors, such as elab­o­rate paint­ings and films that still fas­ci­nate today.

You can catch up on Sur­re­al­ist film here on Open Cul­ture, begin­ning with Luis Buñuel & Sal­vador Dalí’s night­mar­ish 1929 short Un Chien Andalou, con­tin­u­ing on to the Sur­re­al­ist fea­ture Dreams That Mon­ey Can Buy (a col­lab­o­ra­tion by the likes of Man Ray, Mar­cel Duchamp, Alexan­der Calder, Fer­nand Léger and Hans Richter), and the his­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist cin­e­ma as pre­sent­ed by David Lynch, a film­mak­er wide­ly con­sid­ered one of the move­men­t’s mod­ern heirs. Whether Bre­ton would rec­og­nize the Sur­re­al­ist sen­si­bil­i­ty in its cur­rent man­i­fes­ta­tions will remain a mat­ter of debate, but who could watch this Unlock Art primer and fail to sense the fas­ci­na­tion its basic ideas — or basic com­pul­sions, per­haps — still hold today?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

Restored Ver­sion of Un Chien Andalou: Luis Buñuel & Sal­vador Dalí’s Sur­re­al Film (1929)

Watch Dreams That Mon­ey Can Buy, a Sur­re­al­ist Film by Man Ray, Mar­cel Duchamp, Alexan­der Calder, Fer­nand Léger & Hans Richter

When The Sur­re­al­ists Expelled Sal­vador Dalí for “the Glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Hit­ler­ian Fas­cism” (1934)

30 Hours of Doc­tor Who Audio Dra­mas Now Free to Stream Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

A New Massive Helen Keller Archive Gets Launched: Take a Digital Look at Her Photos, Letters, Speeches, Political Writings & More

Take an innocu­ous state­ment like, “we should teach chil­dren about the life of Helen Keller.” What rea­son­able, com­pas­sion­ate per­son would dis­agree? Hers is a sto­ry of tri­umph over incred­i­ble adver­si­ty, of per­se­ver­ance and friend­ship and love. Now, take a state­ment like, “we should teach chil­dren the polit­i­cal writ­ing of Helen Keller,” and you might see brawls in town halls and school board meet­ings. This is because Helen Keller was a com­mit­ted social­ist and seri­ous polit­i­cal thinker, who wrote exten­sive­ly to advo­cate for eco­nom­ic coop­er­a­tion over com­pe­ti­tion and to sup­port the caus­es of work­ing peo­ple. She was an activist for peace and jus­tice who opposed war, impe­ri­al­ism, racism, and pover­ty, con­di­tions that huge num­bers of peo­ple seem devot­ed to maintaining—both in her life­time and today.

Keller’s mov­ing, per­sua­sive writ­ing is elo­quent and uncom­pro­mis­ing and should be taught along­side that of oth­er great Amer­i­can rhetori­cians. Con­sid­er, for exam­ple, the pas­sage below from a let­ter she wrote in 1916 to Oswald Vil­lard, then Vice-Pres­i­dent of the NAACP:

Ashamed in my very soul I behold in my own beloved south-land the tears of those who are oppressed, those who must bring up their sons and daugh­ters in bondage to be ser­vants, because oth­ers have their fields and vine­yards, and on the side of the oppres­sor is pow­er. I feel with those suf­fer­ing, toil­ing mil­lions, I am thwart­ed with them. Every attempt to keep them down and crush their spir­it is a betray­al of my faith that good is stronger than evil, and light stronger than dark­ness…. My spir­it groans with all the deaf and blind of the world, I feel their chains chaf­ing my limbs. I am dis­en­fran­chised with every wage-slave. I am over­thrown, hurt, oppressed, beat­en to the earth by the strong, ruth­less ones who have tak­en away their inher­i­tance. The wrongs of the poor endure ring fierce­ly in my soul, and I shall nev­er rest until they are lift­ed into the light, and giv­en their fair share in the bless­ings of life that God meant for us all alike.

It is dif­fi­cult to choose any one pas­sage from the let­ter because the whole is writ­ten with such expres­sive feel­ing. This is but one doc­u­ment among many hun­dreds in the new Helen Keller archive at the Amer­i­can Foun­da­tion for the Blind (AFB), which has dig­i­tized let­ters, essays, speech­es, pho­tographs, and much more from Keller’s long, tire­less career as a writer and pub­lic speak­er. Fund­ed by the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties, the archive includes over 250,000 dig­i­tal images of her work from the late 19th cen­tu­ry to well into the 20th. There are many films of Keller, pho­tos like that of her and her dog Sieglinde at the top, a col­lec­tion of her cor­re­spon­dence with Mark Twain, and much more.

In addi­tion to Keller’s own pub­lished and unpub­lished work, the archive con­tains many let­ters to and about her, press clip­pings, infor­ma­tive AFB blog posts, and resources for stu­dents and teach­ers. The site aims to be “ful­ly acces­si­ble to audi­ences who are blind, deaf, hard-of-hear­ing, low vision, or deaf­blind.” On the whole, this project “presents an oppor­tu­ni­ty to encounter this renowned his­tor­i­cal fig­ure in a new, dynam­ic, and excit­ing way,” as AFB writes in a press release. “For exam­ple, despite her fame, rel­a­tive­ly few peo­ple know that Helen Keller wrote 14 books as well as hun­dreds of essays and arti­cles on a broad array of sub­jects rang­ing from ani­mals and atom­ic ener­gy to Mahat­ma Gand­hi.”

And, of course, she was a life­long advo­cate for the blind and deaf, writ­ing and speak­ing out on dis­abil­i­ty rights issues for decades. Indeed, it’s dif­fi­cult to find a sub­ject in which she did not take an inter­est. The archive’s sub­ject index shows her writ­ing about games, sports, read­ing, shop­ping, swim­ming, trav­el, archi­tec­ture and the arts, edu­ca­tion, law, gov­ern­ment, world reli­gions, roy­al­ty, women’s suf­frage, and more. There were many in her time who dis­missed Keller’s unpop­u­lar views, call­ing her naïve and claim­ing that she had been duped by nefar­i­ous actors. The charge is insult­ing and false. Her body of work shows her to have been an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly well-read, wise, cos­mopoli­tan, sen­si­tive, self-aware, and hon­est crit­i­cal thinker.

Two years after the NAACP let­ter, Keller wrote an essay called “Com­pe­ti­tion,” in which she made the case for “a bet­ter social order” against a cen­tral con­ceit of cap­i­tal­ism: that “life would not be worth while with­out the keen edge of com­pe­ti­tion,” and that with­out it “men would lose ambi­tion, and the race would sink into dull same­ness.” Keller advances her coun­ter­ar­gu­ment with vig­or­ous and inci­sive rea­son­ing.

This whole argu­ment is a fal­la­cy. What­ev­er is worth while in our civ­i­liza­tion has sur­vived in spite of com­pe­ti­tion. Under the com­pet­i­tive sys­tem the work of the world is bad­ly done. The result is waste and ruin [….] Prof­it is the aim, and the pub­lic good is a sec­ondary con­sid­er­a­tion. Com­pe­ti­tion sins against its own pet god effi­cien­cy. In spite of all the strug­gle, toil and fierce effort the result is a depress­ing state of des­ti­tu­tion for the major­i­ty of mankind. Com­pe­ti­tion diverts man’s ener­gies into use­less chan­nels and degrades his char­ac­ter. It is immoral as well as inef­fi­cient, since its com­mand­ment is “Thou shalt com­pete against thy neigh­bor.” Such a rule does not fos­ter Truth­ful­ness, hon­esty, con­sid­er­a­tion for oth­ers. [….] Com­peti­tors are indif­fer­ent to each oth­er’s wel­fare. Indeed, they are glad of each oth­er’s fail­ure because they find their advan­tage in it. Com­pas­sion is dead­ened in them by the neces­si­ty they are under of nul­li­fy­ing the efforts of their fel­low-com­peti­tors.

Keller refused to become cyn­i­cal in the face of seem­ing­ly inde­fati­ga­ble greed, cru­el­ty, and hypocrisy. Though not a mem­ber of a main­stream church (she belonged to the obscure Chris­t­ian sect of Swe­den­bor­gian­ism), she exhort­ed Amer­i­can Chris­tians to live up to their professions—to fol­low the exam­ple of their founder and the com­mand­ments of their sacred text. In an essay writ­ten after World War I, she argued mov­ing­ly for dis­ar­ma­ment and “the vital issue of world peace.” While mak­ing a num­ber of log­i­cal argu­ments, Keller prin­ci­pal­ly appeals to the com­mon ethos of the nation’s dom­i­nant faith.

This is pre­cise­ly where we have failed, call­ing our­selves Chris­tians we have fun­da­men­tal­ly bro­ken, and taught oth­ers to break most patri­ot­i­cal­ly, the com­mand­ment of the Lord, “Thou shalt not kill” [….] Let us then try out Chris­tian­i­ty upon earth—not lip-ser­vice, but the teach­ing of Him who came upon earth that “all men might have life, and have it more abun­dant­ly.” War strikes at the very heart of this teach­ing.

We can hear Helen Keller’s voice speak­ing direct­ly to us from the past, diag­nos­ing the ills of her age that look so much like those of our own. “The mytho­log­i­cal Helen Keller,” writes Kei­th Rosen­thal, “has apt­ly been described as a sort of ‘plas­ter saint;’ a hol­low, emp­ty ves­sel who is lit­tle more than an apo­lit­i­cal sym­bol for per­se­ver­ance and per­son­al tri­umph.” Though she embod­ied those qual­i­ties, she also ded­i­cat­ed her entire life to care­ful obser­va­tion of the world around her, to writ­ing and speak­ing out on issues that mat­tered, and to car­ing deeply about the wel­fare of oth­ers. Get to know the real Helen Keller, in all her com­plex­i­ty, fierce intel­li­gence, and fero­cious com­pas­sion, at the Amer­i­can Foun­da­tion for the Blind’s exhaus­tive dig­i­tal archive of her life and work.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Spe­cial Friend­ship: He Treat­ed Me Not as a Freak, But as a Per­son Deal­ing with Great Dif­fi­cul­ties

Helen Keller Writes a Let­ter to Nazi Stu­dents Before They Burn Her Book: “His­to­ry Has Taught You Noth­ing If You Think You Can Kill Ideas” (1933)

Watch Helen Keller & Teacher Annie Sul­li­van Demon­strate How Helen Learned to Speak (1930)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The Encyclopedia of Women Philosophers: A New Web Site Presents the Contributions of Women Philosophers, from Ancient to Modern

In a recent con­ver­sa­tion with Julian Bag­gi­ni on why there are so few women in aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy, Mary Warnock notes that “of all the human­i­ties depart­ments in British uni­ver­si­ties, only phi­los­o­phy depart­ments have a mere 25% women mem­bers.” That num­ber is even low­er in the US. “Why should this be?” Warnock asks. She asserts that the prob­lem may lie with the dis­ci­pline itself. “I think that aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy has become an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly inward-look­ing sub­ject,” she says, “If you pick up a pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal now, you find lit­tle nit­pick­ing respons­es to pre­vi­ous arti­cles. Women tend to get more eas­i­ly bored with this than men. Phi­los­o­phy seems to stop being inter­est­ing just when it starts to be pro­fes­sion­al.”

It’s a provoca­tive claim, one I’m sure many women in phi­los­o­phy would con­test, though the more gen­er­al idea that aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy has become an arid prac­tice divorced from real life con­cerns might have wider sup­port. The data on women in aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy presents a very com­plex pic­ture. “No sin­gle inter­ven­tion is like­ly to change the cli­mate,” as Tania Lom­bro­zo writes at NPR. Explic­it and implic­it bias­es do play a role, as do instances of sex­u­al harass­ment and coer­cion by those in posi­tions of pow­er. But anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant issue Warnock seems to ignore is the way that phi­los­o­phy is gen­er­al­ly taught at the under­grad­u­ate lev­el.

In the research on which Lom­bro­zo reports, stud­ies found that “the biggest drop in the pro­por­tion of women in the phi­los­o­phy pipeline seems to be from enroll­ment in an intro­duc­to­ry phi­los­o­phy class to becom­ing a phi­los­o­phy major. At Geor­gia State, for exam­ple, women make up about 55 per­cent of Intro­duc­tion to Phi­los­o­phy stu­dents but only around 33 per­cent of phi­los­o­phy majors.” This may have to do with the fact that “read­ings on the syl­labus were over­whelm­ing­ly by men (over 89 per­cent).” As Geor­gia State grad­u­ate stu­dent Mor­gan Thomp­son explained at a con­fer­ence in 2013:

This prob­lem is com­pound­ed by the fact that intro­duc­to­ry phi­los­o­phy text­books have an even worse gen­der bal­ance; women account for only 6 per­cent of authors in a num­ber of intro­duc­to­ry phi­los­o­phy text­books.

Does this dis­par­i­ty reflect an unal­ter­able truth about the his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy? No, and it can very well be reme­died. The Cen­ter for the His­to­ry of Women Philoso­phers and Sci­en­tists is work­ing to do that with a new site, the Ency­clo­pe­dia of Con­cise Con­cepts by Women Philoso­phers. The joint project of Pader­born University’s Ruth Hagen­gru­ber and Cleve­land State’s Mary Ellen Wait­he, this resource aims to intro­duce “women philoso­phers who most­ly have been omit­ted from the philo­soph­i­cal canon despite their his­tor­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal influ­ence.” So far, reports Dai­ly Nous, “there are around 100 entries… with more to be added every few months.”

Each entry is writ­ten by a rec­og­nized schol­ar. The easy-to-nav­i­gate site has four main sec­tions: Con­cepts, Key­words, Philoso­phers, and Con­trib­u­tors. There are a few names most peo­ple will rec­og­nize, like Mary Woll­stonecraft, Ayn Rand, and Simone de Beau­voir. But most of these thinkers will seem obscure, despite their mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tions to var­i­ous fields of thought. Inte­grat­ing these philoso­phers into syl­labi and text­books could go a long way toward retain­ing women in phi­los­o­phy depart­ments. As impor­tant­ly, it will broad­en the tra­di­tion, giv­ing all stu­dents a wider range of per­spec­tives.

For exam­ple, much of the aca­d­e­m­ic work on social ethics in democ­ra­cy might ref­er­ence Adam Smith’s “The­o­ry of Moral Sen­ti­ments” or the pro­lif­ic 20th cen­tu­ry work of John Dewey. But it might over­look the work of Dewey’s con­tem­po­rary Jane Addams (top), who also wrote crit­i­cal stud­ies on democ­ra­cy and edu­ca­tion and who “sees a con­nec­tion,” writes Mau­rice Ham­ing­ton in a short entry about her, “between sym­pa­thet­ic under­stand­ing and a robust democ­ra­cy.… For Addams, it is cru­cial that cit­i­zens in a democ­ra­cy engage with one anoth­er to reach across dif­fer­ence to care and find com­mon cause.”

Addams brought her philo­soph­i­cal con­cerns into real world prac­tice. She made impor­tant inter­ven­tions in the treat­ment of immi­grants and African-Amer­i­cans in Chica­go, sup­port­ed work­ing moth­ers, and helped pass child pro­tec­tion laws and end child labor. But while she has long been renowned as a social reformer and Nobel Peace Prize win­ner, “the dynam­ics of canon for­ma­tion,” notes the Stan­ford Ency­clo­pe­dia of Phi­los­o­phy, “result­ed in her philo­soph­i­cal work being large­ly ignored until the 1990s.” Now, many philoso­phers rec­og­nize that works like Democ­ra­cy and Social Ethics antic­i­pat­ed key con­tem­po­rary issues in polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy a cen­tu­ry ago.

Oth­er thinkers in the Ency­clo­pe­dia of Con­cise Con­cepts by Women Philoso­phers like Dio­ti­ma of Man­ti­nea (whom Socrates revered) and ear­ly Amer­i­can thinker Mer­cy Otis War­ren made impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions to the the­o­ries of beau­ty and gov­ern­ment, respec­tive­ly. Yet they may receive no more than a foot­note in most under­grad­u­ate phi­los­o­phy cours­es. This may have less to do with explic­it bias than with the way pro­fes­sors them­selves have been edu­cat­ed. But the his­to­ry, and cur­rent prac­tice, of phi­los­o­phy needs the inclu­sion of these views. Learn more about many his­tor­i­cal­ly over­looked women in phi­los­o­phy at the Ency­clo­pe­dia here.

via Dai­ly Nous

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Con­tri­bu­tions of Women Philoso­phers Recov­ered by the New Project Vox Web­site

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Fem­i­nist Phi­los­o­phy of Simone de Beau­voir

The Map of Phi­los­o­phy: See All of the Dis­ci­plines, Areas & Sub­di­vi­sions of Phi­los­o­phy Mapped in a Com­pre­hen­sive Video

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

What Makes Taxi Driver So Powerful? An In-Depth Study of Martin Scorsese’s Existential Film on the Human Condition

The field jack­et, the mohawk, the “real rain” that will “wash all this scum off the streets,” the vir­tu­oso track­ing shot over the after­math of a mas­sacre, “You talkin’ to me?”: so many ele­ments of Taxi Dri­ver have found per­ma­nent places in cin­e­mat­ic cul­ture, and almost as many have found per­ma­nent places in the cul­ture, peri­od. Thanks to its wide-rang­ing influ­ence as well as its pres­ence that endures more than forty years on, even those who’ve nev­er seen the movie in some sense already know it.

What makes Taxi Dri­ver so pow­er­ful? Lewis Bond, video essay­ist and cre­ator of Chan­nel Criswell, sets out to answer that ques­tion in the two-part, fea­ture-length analy­sis above. Mar­tin Scors­ese’s fifth film, and the sec­ond of his col­lab­o­ra­tions with Robert de Niro, Taxi Dri­ver came out in 1976.

Adapt­ing the film noir tra­di­tion for an even more cyn­i­cal post-Viet­nam era, it osten­si­bly mount­ed a grim cri­tique of Amer­i­ca. Audi­ences of the 1970s, espe­cial­ly audi­ences of New York­ers, might have read­i­ly iden­ti­fied with the judg­ments of moral, social and urban decay bit­ter­ly aired by de Niro as Travis Bick­le.

But before long, those first view­ers sure­ly real­ized that they were watch­ing a work of art both more com­plex and more uni­ver­sal than that. Bond’s read­ing of the film gets right to the study at its heart of iso­la­tion, hypocrisy, puri­ty, cor­rup­tion, desire, and vengeance, char­ac­ter­is­tics found in but hard­ly unique to the human expe­ri­ence in 70s New York City. “Mar­tin Scors­ese’s 1976 film is a film that does not grow dat­ed, or over-famil­iar,” writes Roger Ebert in a 2004 appre­ci­a­tion. “I have seen it dozens of times. Every time I see it, it works; I am drawn into Travis’ under­world of alien­ation, lone­li­ness, hap­less­ness and anger.”

Ebert under­stands, as Bond does, that “utter alone­ness is at the cen­ter of Taxi Dri­ver, one of the best and most pow­er­ful of all films, and per­haps it is why so many peo­ple con­nect with it even though Travis Bick­le would seem to be the most alien­at­ing of movie heroes. We have all felt as alone as Travis. Most of us are bet­ter at deal­ing with it.” Yet over the past four decades, even as New York has emerged from near-bank­rupt­cy to become one of the most expen­sive and glam­orous of all cities, real-life Travis Bick­les have vis­it­ed their vio­lent, mis­be­got­ten vengeance all over Amer­i­ca. Mak­ing Taxi Dri­ver, Scors­ese and his col­lab­o­ra­tors thought they were cap­tur­ing the dying gasp of a city. Instead, they cap­tured an aspect of the human con­di­tion that haunts us more than ever today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Revis­it Mar­tin Scorsese’s Hand-Drawn Sto­ry­boards for Taxi Dri­ver

Robert De Niro’s Taxi Cab License Used to Pre­pare for Taxi Dri­ver (1976)

What Is Apoc­a­lypse Now Real­ly About? An Hour-Long Video Analy­sis of Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s Viet­nam Mas­ter­piece

Mar­tin Scors­ese Teach­es His First Online Course on Film­mak­ing: Fea­tures 30 Video Lessons

The Essen­tial Ele­ments of Film Noir Explained in One Grand Info­graph­ic

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Read a Huge Annotated Online Edition of Frankenstein: A Modern Way to Celebrate the 200th Anniversary of Mary Shelley’s Classic Novel

Born out of evening read­ing of spooky sto­ries on a rain-soaked hol­i­day, Mary Shelley’s 1818 nov­el Franken­stein has res­onat­ed through the years into pop cul­ture, a warn­ing against sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, of how the thirst for knowl­edge can lit­er­al­ly cre­ate mon­sters. If you’ve been bing­ing West­world or loved Ex Machi­na you are see­ing Shelley’s lega­cy, both filled with sci­en­tif­ic cre­ations that ques­tion their own rea­son for exis­tence.

Just like those works are prod­ucts of our era, Franken­stein did not just arise from a dream state—-Shelley was influ­enced by the con­cerns, events, and news of her day.

There­fore this anno­tat­ed ver­sion of Franken­stein, called Franken­book, should make a top­i­cal and impor­tant read this sum­mer. And every­body can take part, if they choose to join the dis­cus­sion.

“Anno­tat­ed for sci­en­tists, engi­neers, and cre­ators of all kinds,” is how the web­site describes the project, cre­at­ed in Jan­u­ary 2018 by Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty to hon­or the bicen­ten­ni­al of the book’s pub­li­ca­tion. “Franken­book gives read­ers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to trace the sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, polit­i­cal, and eth­i­cal dimen­sions of the nov­el, and to learn more about its his­tor­i­cal con­text and endur­ing lega­cy.”

You will have to sign up (just an email and a pass­word is nec­es­sary) to actu­al­ly see the nov­el, but once in, you can get read­ing. Along the way on the right hand side of the mar­gin, a clus­ter of black dots indi­cate if a sec­tion is anno­tat­ed. Click on the dots with your mouse and the anno­ta­tion will appear. (The anno­ta­tions are also avail­able at the end of each of the nov­el­’s three parts for those who just want to read the nov­el straight through.)

Dozens of experts have con­tributed to the anno­ta­tions so far, and open­ing an account allows you to sub­mit your own to the edi­tors for con­sid­er­a­tion. You can also fil­ter anno­ta­tions by one of eight themes: “Equi­ty & Inclu­sion” (social jus­tice issues), “Health & Med­i­cine,” “Influ­ences and Adap­ta­tions,” “Mary Shel­ley” (per­son­al infor­ma­tion about the author), “Moti­va­tions & Sen­ti­ments,” “Phi­los­o­phy & Pol­i­tics,” “Sci­ence,” and “Tech­nol­o­gy.”

The site also fea­tures sev­er­al essays on the nov­el­’s var­i­ous themes, includ­ing ones by Cory Doc­torow, Anne K. Mel­lor, Josephine John­ston, and oth­ers.

If you’ve been putting off read­ing Shelley’s clas­sic for what­ev­er rea­son, this is prob­a­bly the best chance to read it. And if you’ve read it before, it’s time to revis­it it along­side a host of vir­tu­al experts. The web, that Prome­thi­an cre­ation of our own time, is actu­al­ly good for some things, you know!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read­ing Mary Shelley’s Franken­stein on Its 200th Anniver­sary: An Ani­mat­ed Primer to the Great Mon­ster Sto­ry & Tech­nol­o­gy Cau­tion­ary Tale

Dis­cov­ered: Lord Byron’s Copy of Franken­stein Signed by Mary Shel­ley

The Very First Film Adap­ta­tion of Mary Shelley’s Franken­stein, a Thomas Edi­son Pro­duc­tion (1910)

Mary Shelley’s Hand­writ­ten Man­u­scripts of Franken­stein Now Online for the First Time
Dis­cov­ered: Lord Byron’s Copy of Franken­stein Signed by Mary Shel­ley

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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