Scandinavian Film & Television: A Free Online Course from the University of Copenhagen

in Film, Television | February 1st, 2022

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“In many ways Scan­di­na­vian film and tele­vi­sion is a glob­al cul­tur­al brand, con­nect­ed with and export­ing some of the cul­tur­al and social val­ues con­nect­ed to a lib­er­al and pro­gres­sive wel­fare soci­ety.” From the Uni­ver­si­ty of Copen­hagen, this free course deals with the social, insti­tu­tion­al and cul­tur­al back­ground of film and tele­vi­sion in Scan­di­navia and in a broad­er Euro­pean and glob­al con­text. Span­ning 5 weeks and taught by pro­fes­sor Eva Novrup Red­vall, Scan­di­na­vian Film and Tele­vi­sion cov­ers the ear­ly cin­e­mat­ic work of Dan­ish direc­tor Carl Drey­er, the films of Ing­mar Bergman and Lars von Tri­er, Scan­di­na­vian new wave cin­e­ma, and final­ly more con­tem­po­rary pro­duc­tions. You can enroll for free here.

Scan­di­na­vian Film and Tele­vi­sion will be added to our list 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Ing­mar Bergman Eval­u­ates His Fel­low Film­mak­ers — The “Affect­ed” Godard, “Infan­tile” Hitch­cock & Sub­lime Tarkovsky

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Dick Cavett’s Wide-Rang­ing TV Inter­view with Ing­mar Bergman and Lead Actress Bibi Ander­s­son (1971)

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When Andy Warhol Guest-Starred on The Love Boat (1985)

in Art, Television | January 18th, 2022

On Fri­day, August 31, 1979, Andy Warhol records in his diary that he took a cab to Elaine’s to “meet the guy who might get me a guest appear­ance on The Love Boat.” But near­ly five years pass before he writes that the writ­ers are work­ing on his episode; with the shoot­ing dates set, “I start­ed to get scared, I don’t know if I can go through with it.” A cou­ple of months lat­er, as the appoint­ed time approach­es, he hears the plot: “There’s a girl on the boat named Mary with her hus­band, and she used to be a super­star of mine, and she doesn’t want her hus­band to know that she used to be ‘Mari­na Del Rey.’ And I just have a few lines, things like ‘Hel­lo, Mary.’ But one of the lines I have to say is some­thing like ‘Art is crass com­mer­cial­ism,’ which I don’t want to say.”

What­ev­er his objec­tions to the script, Warhol does­n’t seem to have been an espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult par­tic­i­pant, of whom The Love Boat must have had more than a few in its 250 episodes. Dur­ing its run on ABC from 1977 to 1986, the series became an Amer­i­can pop-cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non of a scale dif­fi­cult to com­pre­hend today. But as a con­nois­seur of Amer­i­can pop cul­ture, Warhol would have com­pre­hend­ed it ful­ly. By the time of his appear­ance in Octo­ber 1985, The Love Boat had entered its ninth sea­son, pre­sum­ably hun­gri­er than ever for atten­tion-grab­bing guest stars; on “his” episode, Warhol shares that billing with, among oth­ers, Mil­ton Berle, Hap­py Days’ Tom Bosley and Mar­i­on Ross, and Andy Grif­fith (who, Warhol notes, “seems bit­ter to be on The Love Boat”).

“If there was any space where painters and artists could brush shoul­ders with soap stars and teen idols, it was aboard the Pacif­ic Princess,” says MeTV. “In one episode ded­i­cat­ed to the fash­ion indus­try, design­ers Glo­ria Van­der­bilt, Geof­frey Beene and Hal­ston all came aboard.” Warhol’s com­ing aboard, then, “was both unex­pect­ed and some­how inevitable.” You can wit­ness this sur­pris­ing yet unsur­pris­ing cul­tur­al crossover in the video above, which con­tains just the scenes from Warhol’s sto­ry with­in the episode (which, like most Love Boat scripts, has three dif­fer­ent plot­lines). Even if it deliv­ers few pro­found insights into the nature of art, celebri­ty, and human aspi­ra­tion, it does cap­ture Warhol’s pres­ence as it seems real­ly to have been dur­ing his final years.

“My Stephen Sprouse jack­ets were there on the wardrobe rack,” Warhol writes in his diary dur­ing the shoot. “When I wear them, I think I final­ly look like peo­ple want Andy Warhol to look again.” That must have been true of the shiny sil­ver num­ber he wears in his first scene of the episode, when first he rolls up with his “entourage” to the ship’s recep­tion desk. “As we’re walk­ing off, the Love Boat girl asks Ray­mond St. Jacques, ‘How does an artist know when a paint­ing is real­ly suc­cess­ful?’ And he says, ‘When the check clears.’ ” But on one take “they did it wrong and it was bet­ter — she said, ‘When is a paint­ing real­ly fin­ished.’ ” Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that ver­sion of the line seems to have been a bit too Warho­lian for the Pacif­ic Princess.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Andy Warhol & Edie Sedg­wick, the First Cou­ple of Pop Art, Made an Odd Appear­ance on the Merv Grif­fin Show (1965)

Andy Warhol’s 15 Min­utes: Dis­cov­er the Post­mod­ern MTV Vari­ety Show That Made Warhol a Star in the Tele­vi­sion Age (1985–87)

Andy Warhol Hosts Frank Zap­pa on His Cable TV Show, and Lat­er Recalls, “I Hat­ed Him More Than Ever” After the Show

When Frank Zap­pa & Miles Davis Played a Drug Deal­er and a Pimp on Mia­mi Vice

Andy Warhol Eats a Burg­er King Whop­per, and We Watch … and Watch

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.

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Jon Hamm Narrates a Modernized Version of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Helping to Diagnose Our Social Media-Induced Narcissism

in Philosophy, Psychology, Technology, Television | January 10th, 2022

The Matrix gave a gen­er­a­tion or two rea­son to recon­sid­er, or indeed first to con­sid­er, Pla­to’s alle­go­ry of the cave. That era-defin­ing block­buster’s cav­al­cade of slick visu­al effects came deliv­ered atop a plot about human­i­ty’s hav­ing been enslaved — plugged into a colos­sal machine, as I recall, like an array of liv­ing bat­ter­ies — while con­vinced by a direct-to-brain sim­u­la­tion that it was­n’t. Here in real life, about two and a half mil­len­nia ear­li­er, one of Pla­to’s dia­logues had con­jured up a not-dis­sim­i­lar sce­nario. You can see it retold in the video above, a clip drawn from a form as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry as The Matrix’s was of the late 20th: Legion, a dra­mat­ic tele­vi­sion series based on a com­ic book.

“Imag­ine a cave, where those inside nev­er see the out­side world,” says nar­ra­tor Jon Hamm (him­self an icon of our Gold­en Age of Tele­vi­sion, thanks to his lead per­for­mance in Mad Men). “Instead, they see shad­ows of that world pro­ject­ed on the cave wall. The world they see in the shad­ows is not the real world, but it’s real to them. If you were to show them the world as it actu­al­ly is, they would reject it as incom­pre­hen­si­ble.” Then, Hamm sug­gests trans­pos­ing this rela­tion­ship to real­i­ty into life as we know it — or rather, as we two-dimen­sion­al­ly per­ceive it on the screens of our phones. But “unlike the alle­go­ry of the cave, where the peo­ple are real and the shad­ows are false, here oth­er peo­ple are the shad­ows.”

This prop­a­gates “the delu­sion of the nar­cis­sist, who believes that they alone are real. Their feel­ings are the only feel­ings that mat­ter, because oth­er peo­ple are just shad­ows, and shad­ows don’t feel.” And “if every­one lived in caves, then no one would be real. Not even you.” With the rise of dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion in gen­er­al and social media in par­tic­u­lar, a great many of us have ensconced our­selves, by degrees and for the most part uncon­scious­ly, inside caves of our own. Over the past decade or so, increas­ing­ly sober­ing glimpses of the out­side world have moti­vat­ed some of us to seek diag­noses of our col­lec­tive con­di­tion from thinkers of the past, such as social the­o­rist Christo­pher Lasch.

“The new nar­cis­sist is haunt­ed not by guilt but by anx­i­ety,” Lasch writes The Cul­ture of Nar­cis­sism. “Lib­er­at­ed from the super­sti­tions of the past, he doubts even the real­i­ty of his own exis­tence” — won­ders, in oth­er words, whether he isn’t one of the shad­ows him­self. Nev­er­the­less, he remains “facile at man­ag­ing the impres­sions he gives to oth­ers, rav­en­ous for admi­ra­tion but con­temp­tu­ous of those he manip­u­lates into pro­vid­ing it,” and depen­dent on “con­stant infu­sions of approval and admi­ra­tion.” Social media has revealed traces of this per­son­al­i­ty, belong­ing to one who “sees the world as a mir­ror of him­self and has no inter­est in exter­nal events except as they throw back a reflec­tion of his own image,” in us all. It thus gives us pause to remem­ber that Lasch was writ­ing all this in the 1970s; but then, Pla­to was writ­ing in the fifth cen­tu­ry B.C.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear John Malkovich Read Plato’s “Alle­go­ry of the Cave,” Set to Music Mixed by Ric Ocasek, Yoko Ono & Sean Lennon, OMD & More

Two Ani­ma­tions of Plato’s Alle­go­ry of the Cave: One Nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles, Anoth­er Made with Clay

Plato’s Cave Alle­go­ry Ani­mat­ed Mon­ty Python-Style

New Ani­ma­tion Explains Sher­ry Turkle’s The­o­ries on Why Social Media Makes Us Lone­ly

The Case for Delet­ing Your Social Media Accounts & Doing Valu­able “Deep Work” Instead, Accord­ing to Com­put­er Sci­en­tist Cal New­port

A 1947 French Film Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed Our 21st-Cen­tu­ry Addic­tion to Smart­phones

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.

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Watch Bing Crosby’s Final Christmas Special, Featuring a Famous Duet with Bowie, and Bowie Introducing His New Song, “Heroes” (1977)

in Music, Television | December 24th, 2021

Bing Cros­by died in Octo­ber of 1977, but that did­n’t stop him from appear­ing in liv­ing rooms all over Amer­i­ca for Christ­mas. He’d already com­plet­ed the shoot for his final CBS tele­vi­sion spe­cial Bing Cros­by’s Mer­rie Olde Christ­mas, along with such col­lab­o­ra­tors as Ron Moody, Stan­ley Bax­ter, the Trin­i­ty Boys Choir, Twig­gy, and a young fel­low by the name of David Bowie. Of course, Bowie had long since achieved his own dream of fame, at least to the younger gen­er­a­tion; it was view­ers who’d grown up lis­ten­ing to Cros­by who need­ed an intro­duc­tion. And they received a mem­o­rable one indeed, in the form of the Bowie-Cros­by duet “Peace on Earth/Little Drum­mer Boy,” pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

This year you can watch Bing Cros­by’s Mer­rie Olde Christ­mas in its hour­long entire­ty, which includes per­for­mances of “Have Your­self a Mer­ry Lit­tle Christ­mas” and “Side by Side by Side” (from the late Stephen Sond­heim’s Com­pa­ny), a (per­haps embell­ished) musi­cal delin­eation of the extend­ed Cros­by fam­i­ly, and a ses­sion of lit­er­ary rem­i­nis­cence with none oth­er than Charles Dick­ens.

The set­up for all this is that Cros­by, his wife, and chil­dren have all been brought to Eng­land by the invi­ta­tion of the pre­vi­ous­ly unknown Sir Per­ci­val Cros­by, who desires to extend a hand to his “poor Amer­i­can rela­tions” — and who hap­pens to live next door to Bowie, that most Eng­lish of all 1970s rock stars.

The search for Sir Cros­by pro­ceeds mer­ri­ly, at one point prompt­ing his famous rel­a­tive to chat with Twig­gy about the nature of love and lone­li­ness, emo­tions “just as painful and just as beau­ti­ful as they ever were. Whether you’re a nov­el­ist, poet, or even a song­writer, it’s all in the way you sing.” These reflec­tions lead into a stark music video for the title track of Bowie’s “ ‘Heroes’ ”, which had come out just weeks before (coin­ci­den­tal­ly, on the very day of Cros­by’s death). Though a some­what incon­gru­ous addi­tion to such an old-fash­ioned pro­duc­tion, it does vivid­ly reflect a cer­tain chang­ing of the transat­lantic pop-cul­tur­al guard.

In their scene togeth­er, Cros­by and Bowie do exude an unde­ni­able mutu­al respect, the younger man admit­ting even to have tried his hand at the old­er man’s sig­na­ture hol­i­day song, “White Christ­mas.” Hav­ing set off the 1940s Christ­mas-music boom by record­ing it 35 years before, Cros­by sings it one last time him­self to close out this spe­cial. Before doing so, he describes the Christ­mas sea­son as “a time to look back with grat­i­tude at being able to come this far, and a time to look ahead with hope and opti­mism.” Like all the ele­ments of Bing Cros­by’s Mer­rie Olde Christ­mas not involv­ing David Bowie, these words were noth­ing new even then, but some­how they still man­age to stoke our Christ­mas spir­it all these decades lat­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie & Bing Cros­by Sing “The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy/Peace on Earth” (1977)

David Bowie Sends a Christ­mas Greet­ing in the Voice of Elvis Pres­ley

John­ny Cash’s Christ­mas Spe­cials, Fea­tur­ing June Carter, Steve Mar­tin, Andy Kauf­man & More (1976–79)

Revis­it Kate Bush’s Pecu­liar Christ­mas Spe­cial, Fea­tur­ing Peter Gabriel (1979)

Why “White Christ­mas,” “Here Comes San­ta Claus,” “Let It Snow,” and Oth­er Clas­sic Christ­mas Songs Come from the 1940s

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.

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Class Critiques in Squid Game, Succession, etc. — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #112

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | December 22nd, 2021

Pop­u­lar shows have com­ment­ed on wealth inequal­i­ty by show­ing how dire the sit­u­a­tion is for the poor and/or how dis­con­nect­ed and clue­less the rich are. How effec­tive is this type of social com­men­tary?

Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er is joined by philoso­pher and NY Times writer Lawrence Ware, nov­el­ist and writ­ing pro­fes­sor Sarahlyn Bruck, and edu­ca­tor with a rhetoric doc­tor­ate Michelle Par­rinel­lo-Cason to dis­cuss the appeal of both real­i­ty show (“fish­bowl”) hor­ror and satire. Is it OK if we don’t like any of the char­ac­ters in Suc­ces­sion? Does Squid Game actu­al­ly deserve its 94% on Rot­ten Toma­toes? Are we even capa­ble as Amer­i­can view­ers of appre­ci­at­ing what it’s try­ing to do?

We also touch on White Lotus, The Hunt, Schit­t’s Creek, tor­ture porn, social com­men­tary in songs, and more. Lurk­ing in the back­ground here are foun­da­tion­al works for this trend: Par­a­site, Get Out, Bat­tle Royale, and The Hunger Games.

A few arti­cles we may have drawn on for the dis­cus­sion:

Hear more from our guests on past episodes: Law on var­i­ous PEL dis­cus­sions on race and reli­gion, Sarahlyn on PMP on soap operas, Michelle on PMP on board games. Fol­low them @law_writes, @sarahlynbruck and @DaylaLearning.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Watch 11-Year-Old Billy Preston Duet with Nat King Cole: A Star is Born (1957)

in Music, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | December 13th, 2021

The Bea­t­les aren’t the only fab tal­ents caus­ing a stir in the recent­ly released Bea­t­les doc­u­men­tary, Get Back.

As has been wide­ly not­ed, soul singer Bil­ly Pre­ston lights up every scene he’s in.

One of the 60’s finest ses­sion key­boardists, Pre­ston con­tributed to the Bea­t­les’ Let It Be and Abbey Road albums, and joined them for their famous final gig on the roof of Apple Records.

He also served as a lev­el­ing influ­ence when ten­sions with­in the band fre­quent­ly explod­ed into fits of tem­per.

“It’s inter­est­ing to see how nice­ly peo­ple behave when you bring a guest in,” George Har­ri­son observed.

In addi­tion to his suc­cess­ful solo career, with a num­ber of funk and R&B hits, Pre­ston gigged for a host of all time greats: Ray Charles, Lit­tle Richard, Sam Cooke, Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones…the list goes on.

A child­hood prodi­gy who nev­er took a music les­son, by 10, he was back­ing gospel lumi­nar­ies like Mahalia Jack­son, James Cleve­land, and Andraé Crouch.

A year lat­er, he entered America’s liv­ing rooms, when he appeared on The Nat King Cole Show, above, to duet with TV’s first nation­al Black vari­ety show host on “Blue­ber­ry Hill,” a 40s tune Fats Domi­no had pop­u­lar­ized ear­li­er in the decade.

“You have a very excel­lent career ahead of you,” Cole pre­dicts, fol­low­ing their per­for­mance.

Daugh­ter Natal­ie Cole lat­er enthused that the cel­e­brat­ed croon­er “lets this kid have all the glo­ry,” though the self-pos­sessed pre-teen holds his own ably, alter­nat­ing between organ and his own impres­sive pipes.

With­in the year, Cole and Pre­ston shared the big screen, and a mem­o­rable part, when they were cast as “The Father Of The Blues” W.C. Handy, as a child and adult, in the 1958 movie St Louis Blues.

As an adult, Pre­ston’s star was tar­nished by addic­tion, arrests and self-sab­o­tag­ing behav­ior that his man­ag­er, Joyce Moore, and half-sis­ter Let­tie, said was most deeply root­ed in his mother’s refusal to believe that he was being sex­u­al­ly abused by the pianist of a sum­mer tour­ing com­pa­ny, and lat­er a local pas­tor.

It’s part of a lurid, longer tale, call­ing to mind oth­er promis­ing, oft-prodi­gious young tal­ents who nev­er man­aged to get out from under dam­age inflict­ed by adults when they were chil­dren.

He was 9.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Paul McCart­ney Com­pose The Bea­t­les Clas­sic “Get Back” Out of Thin Air (1969)

The Bea­t­les’ 8 Pio­neer­ing Inno­va­tions: A Video Essay Explor­ing How the Fab Four Changed Pop Music

Is “Rain” the Per­fect Bea­t­les Song?: A New Video Explores the Rad­i­cal Inno­va­tions of the 1966 B‑Side

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Punks, Goths, and Mods on TV (1983)

in Fashion, Music, Television | December 8th, 2021

The Riv­et­head pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with fash­ion is inescapably relat­ed to their anx­i­ety over being con­fused for sub­cul­tures they pro­fess to hate: Goths, Punks, Met­al­heads, Death Rock­ers… The fact that so many sub­cul­tures claim black as their col­or of choice con­tributes to the con­fu­sion.

There are two points upon which the­o­rists of post-indus­tri­al British sub­cul­tures gen­er­al­ly agree: 1) No mat­ter the music or the fash­ion, the bound­aries between one sub­cul­ture and anoth­er were rig­or­ous­ly, even vio­lent­ly, enforced (hence the wars between the mods and rock­ers), and; 2) The music and fash­ions of every sub­cul­ture were sub­ject to coop­ta­tion by the machin­ery of cap­i­tal­ism, to be mass pro­duced, pack­aged, and sold as off-the-rack com­mod­i­ty, a phe­nom­e­non that occurred almost as soon as punks, mods, rock­ers, goths, ted­dy boys, skin­heads, New Roman­tics, etc. began appear­ing on tele­vi­sion — as in the post-Grundy Irish TV appear­ance of four young indi­vid­u­als above from 1983.

The inter­view­er intro­duces these punks, goths, and mods by refer­ring first to their employ­ment — or lack of employ­ment — sta­tus, and then to the num­ber of chil­dren in their fam­i­ly. Com­ments drip­ping with class dis­dain sit along­side a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of var­i­ous sub­cul­tures as “gangs” — the Hell’s Angels thrown in among them just to dri­ve the point home. Of course, there’s more to say about the denizens of ear­ly-80s UK sub­cul­tur­al street cor­ners — more than these four rep­re­sen­ta­tives have to say them­selves. It is com­mu­ni­cat­ed through per­for­mance rather than ver­bal expo­si­tion, through the affil­i­a­tions of cloth­ing, music, and pose — as in the mini-his­tor­i­cal slideshow of late-20th cen­tu­ry British sub­cul­tures below, from the 50s to the 80s.

In 1979, British the­o­rist Dick Heb­di­ge pub­lished what many con­sid­ered the defin­i­tive analy­sis of these work­ing-class scenes, which fre­quent­ly cen­tered around forms of racial and cul­tur­al exchange — as with mods who loved jazz or punks who loved ska and dub reg­gae; or racial and cul­tur­al exclu­sion — as with fas­cist skin­heads and chau­vin­ist ted­dy boys who glo­ri­fied the past, while oth­er sub­cul­tur­al ide­olo­gies looked to the future (or, as the case may be, no future).

Hebdige’s Sub­cul­ture: the Mean­ing of Style begins with a sto­ry about French writer Jean Genet, humil­i­at­ed in prison by homo­pho­bic guards over his pos­ses­sion of a tube of Vase­line:

Like Genet, we are inter­est­ed in sub­cul­ture – in the expres­sive forms and rit­u­als of those sub­or­di­nate groups – the ted­dy boys and mods and rock­ers, the skin­heads and the punks – who are alter­nate­ly dis­missed, denounced and can­on­ized; treat­ed at dif­fer­ent times as threats to pub­lic order and as harm­less buf­foons.

The irony of sub­cul­tures is that they iden­ti­fy with social out­siders, while re-enforc­ing bound­aries that cre­ate exclu­siv­i­ty (cf. the quote at the top, from Heb­di­ge-inspired Sub­cul­tures List). When the nov­el­ty and shock recedes, they become ripe fod­der for com­mer­cial coop­ta­tion, even lux­u­ry brand­ing.

What we usu­al­ly don’t get from tame ret­ro­spec­tives, or from patron­iz­ing mass media of the time, are deviant out­siders like Genet who can­not be reab­sorbed into the sys­tem because their very exis­tence pos­es a threat to the social order as so con­strued. So much of the fash­ion and music of post-war Britain was direct­ly cre­at­ed or inspired by West Indi­an migrants of the Win­drush gen­er­a­tion, for exam­ple. In too many pop­u­lar rep­re­sen­ta­tions of post­war British sub­cul­tures, that essen­tial part of the work­ing class UK sub­cul­ture sto­ry has been entire­ly left out.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A His­to­ry of Punk from 1976–78: A Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Read­ing

The Sex Pis­tols Make a Scan­dalous Appear­ance on the Bill Grundy Show & Intro­duce Punk Rock to the Star­tled Mass­es (1976)

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock in 300 Tracks: A 13-Hour Playlist Takes You From 1965 to Present

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

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Watch Hilarious Spoofs of Classic Film Genres: Film Noir, Spaghetti Westerns, Scandinavian Crime Dramas, Time Travel Films & More

in Comedy, Film, Podcasts, Television | November 29th, 2021

Come­di­an Alas­dair Beck­ett-King has a keen ear for enter­tain­ment tropes and sub­scribes to the belief that “putting too much effort into things makes them fun­nier.”

The result is a series of one-minute videos in which he spoofs the con­ven­tions of a par­tic­u­lar genre or long run­ning series, with per­fect visu­als, meta dia­logue, and faith­ful­ly ren­dered per­for­mance styles.

Beck­ett-King put his Lon­don Film School train­ing to use with this project dur­ing lock­down, spend­ing “absolute­ly ages putting togeth­er some­thing very tiny.”

Wit­ness his take on every episode of Star Trek: The Next Gen­er­a­tion, in which the cap­tain of the ship, a Patrick Stew­art dop­pel­gänger and “veg­e­tar­i­an space social­ist who is always right” nego­ti­ates with a “rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a kind of iffy alien race not nec­es­sar­i­ly based on a spe­cif­ic human eth­nic­i­ty.” As Beck­ett-King told Eric John­son, host of Fol­low Fri­day pod­cast:

That one was very, very hard work because I had to do a CGI bald cap for myself because I have long, long flow­ing hair. I had to try and do an impres­sion of Cap­tain Picard of the Star­ship Enter­prise… it’s not that good. There’s so much work that went into it.

Before I post­ed it, I was con­vinced I’d wast­ed my time. Then luck­i­ly it did quite well and peo­ple real­ly liked it. Peo­ple kept say­ing, “When are you doing Cap­tain Picard again?” I’m like, “I’m not! because it took ages to do the bald head, and you’ve seen it now.” I think what’s nice about it though, is you get to try some­thing, com­mit to it and then see if it’s fun­ny after­wards. It’s quite like doing live standup.

(Beckett-King’s part­ner Rachel Anne Smith gets cred­its for the non-CGI cos­tumes.)

Some oth­er favorites:

Every Sin­gle Scan­di­na­vian Crime Dra­ma: The killer could be any­one in Hel­ga­sund. That’s over sev­en peo­ple.

Every Sin­gle Spooky Pod­cast: The frozen soil was lit­tered with what appeared to be dis­card­ed Casper mat­tress­es and Bom­bas socks.

Every Sin­gle Spaghet­ti West­ern: Yeah, well your lips don’t synch…

Every Haunt­ed House Movie: It’s the per­fect place for me to quit drink­ing, fin­ish my nov­el, and real­ly come to terms with that deer we hit on the way over.

Every Episode of Pop­u­lar Time Trav­el Show: Help us, Doc­tor. The intran­si­gent Implaca­blons are poised to destroy us.

How Every Film Noir Ends: Talk your way out of a snub nosed pis­tol held at waist height.

Should you find your­self at loose ends, wait­ing for the next Beck­ett-King “every sin­gle…” episode to drop, try  bid­ing your time with his Art House Movie Spoil­ers and North East of Eng­land spin on Jaws.

Buy a Cof­fee for Alas­dair Beck­ett-King here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hard­ware Wars: The Moth­er of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Prof­itable Short Film Ever Made)

Down­load a Com­plete, Cov­er-to-Cov­er Par­o­dy of The New York­er: 80 Pages of Fine Satire

The Time When Nation­al Lam­poon Par­o­died Mad Mag­a­zine: A Satire of Satire (1971)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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