Hear Wade in the Water: An Unprecedented 26-Hour-Long Exploration of the African American Sacred Music Tradition

in History, Music | July 3rd, 2019

Pho­to of Mahalia Jack­son by Dave Brinkman, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

It may well be a tru­ism to say that Amer­i­can music is African Amer­i­can music, but that doesn’t make it any less true. And when we reduce truths down to tru­isms they lose the gran­u­lar detail that makes them inter­est­ing and rel­e­vant. Every­one knows, for exam­ple, that there would be no rock and roll with­out Robert John­son at the cross­roads and Lit­tle Richard in his sequined jack­et and pom­padour. But how many peo­ple know that with­out North Car­oli­na-born Les­ley Rid­dle, A.P. Carter’s one­time musi­cal part­ner, folk and coun­try music as we know it might not exist?

Like­wise, Negro Spir­i­tu­als and the black gospel tra­di­tion are legendary—birthing such tow­er­ing fig­ures as Aretha Franklin and Sam Cooke. But that his­to­ry has often been turned into stereo­type, an easy ref­er­ence for down-home authen­tic­i­ty. Divorced from their roots, easy evo­ca­tions of African Amer­i­can gospel glide over a com­plex tapes­try of syn­cretism and syn­chronic­i­ty, inno­va­tion and preser­va­tion, and the build­ing of local and nation­al com­mu­ni­ties with a glob­al scope and pres­ence.

Black sacred music touch­es every part of U.S. his­to­ry. To hear this his­to­ry in gran­u­lar detail, you need to hear NPR’s just-re-released audio series Wade in the Water: African Amer­i­can Sacred Music Tra­di­tions. First released in 1994 by NPR and the Smith­son­ian, the 26-part doc­u­men­tary details “the his­to­ry of Amer­i­can gospel music and its impact on soul, jazz and R&B.” The series begins with a con­cep­tu­al overview and car­ries us all the way through to the con­tem­po­rary gospel scene.

Along the way, we learn about region­al scenes, the growth and world­wide pop­u­lar­i­ty of the Jubilee singers who so inspired W.E.B. Du Bois, the lined hymn and shaped-note tra­di­tions, and the use of gospel as a doc­u­men­tary medi­um itself, chron­i­cling the sink­ing of the Titan­ic, the Depres­sion, World Wars I and II, and more. Sacred music sup­port­ed Civ­il Rights strug­gles, and move­ment lead­ers like Fan­nie Lou Hamer sang as they marched and orga­nized, a pow­er­ful sound folk singers like Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan picked up and emu­lat­ed.

Talk­ing about music can only take us so far. Wade in the Water suc­ceed­ed by keep­ing music at the cen­ter, even releas­ing a four-CD set, with exten­sive lin­er notes. This time around, the dig­i­tal release comes with Spo­ti­fy playlists like the one above in which you can hear a sam­pling of songs from the series. Here you’ll find the usu­al crossover gospel greats—Aretha, the Sta­ple Singers, Bil­ly Pre­ston, Mahalia Jack­son, BeBe and Cece Winans. You’ll also hear unknown com­mu­ni­ty groups like a Demopo­lis, Alaba­ma Con­gre­ga­tion singing “Come and Go with Me” and the Gatling Funer­al Home singing “Gatling Devo­tion­al.”

The series was researched, pro­duced, and pre­sent­ed by Ber­nice John­son Reagon, who is both a liv­ing exam­ple and a his­to­ri­an of the African Amer­i­can musi­cal tra­di­tion. A founder of the SNCC Free­dom Singers dur­ing the Civ­il Rights move­ment, she went on to found and direct Sweet Hon­ey in the Rock, who appear in Wade in the Water and the playlist above. Reagon earned her Ph.D. from Howard Uni­ver­si­ty and pub­lished sev­er­al schol­ar­ly books on the his­to­ry she explores in the doc­u­men­tary series. Learn more about her (and hear more of her music) here, and hear all 26 episodes of Wade in the Water at NPR.

via metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Mod­ern Free­dom Strug­gle (A Free Course from Stan­ford) 

Hear the First Record­ed Blues Song by an African Amer­i­can Singer: Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” (1920)

Eliz­a­beth Cot­ten Wrote “Freight Train” at 11, Won a Gram­my at 90, and Changed Amer­i­can Music In-Between

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

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A Witty Dictionary of Victorian Slang (1909)

in Books, English Language | July 3rd, 2019

In the intro­duc­tion to his Dic­tio­nary of Con­tem­po­rary Slang, Tony Thorne writes of the dif­fi­cul­ty of defin­ing infor­mal speech: “A sym­po­sium on slang held in France in 1989 broke up after sev­er­al days with­out hav­ing arrived at a def­i­n­i­tion accept­able to even the major­i­ty of par­tic­i­pants.” If you’re think­ing maybe this seems like tak­ing the sub­ject a lit­tle too seri­ous­ly, I’d agree. But if we trav­el back eighty years in time and across the Eng­lish Chan­nel, we’ll meet an eccen­tric lex­i­cog­ra­ph­er who approached the task in the right spir­it.

“Here is a numer­i­cal­ly weak col­lec­tion of ‘Pass­ing Eng­lish.’ ” writes James Red­ding Ware in the Pref­ace to his posthu­mous­ly-pub­lished 1909 Pass­ing Eng­lish of the Vic­to­ri­an Era, A Dic­tio­nary of Het­ero­dox Eng­lish, Slang and Phrase.

 

“It may be hoped that there are errors on every page, and also that no entry is ‘quite too dull.’” He goes on in a more seri­ous tone to sum­ma­rize the rapid lan­guage change occur­ring in Eng­land in the last few decades of the 19th cen­tu­ry:

Thou­sands of words and phras­es in exis­tence in 1870 have drift­ed away, or changed their forms, or been absorbed, while as many have been added or are being added. ‘Pass­ing Eng­lish’ rip­ples from count­less sources, form­ing a riv­er of new lan­guage which has its tide and its ebb, while its cur­rent brings down new ideas and car­ries away those that have drib­bled out of fash­ion. Not only is ‘Pass­ing Eng­lish’ gen­er­al ; it is local ; often very sea­son­ably local. 

Ware—a pen name of British writer Andrew Forrester—goes on to get very local indeed in his descrip­tions, from “Pet­ty Italia behind Hat­ton Gar­den” to “Anglo-Yid­dish.” The Pub­lic Domain Review high­lights the fol­low­ing quirky entries.

Got the Morbs – tem­po­rary melan­choly
Mut­ton Shunter – the police
Bat­ty-Fang – to thrash thor­ough­ly
Doing the Bear – court­ing that involves hug­ging
Maf­fick­ing – get­ting row­dy in the streets
Orf Chump – no appetite
Poked Up – embar­rassed
Nan­ty Nark­ing – great fun

Ware’s atti­tude may be appro­pri­ate­ly infor­mal, but his method­ol­o­gy is suit­ably rig­or­ous, and this com­pre­hen­sive lex­i­con was clear­ly a labor of love. His book is a seri­ous resource for schol­ars of the peri­od, and, hell, it’s also just great fun. Read and down­load the full dic­tio­nary at the Inter­net Archive.

via The Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read A Clas­si­cal Dic­tio­nary of the Vul­gar Tongue, a Hilar­i­ous & Infor­ma­tive Col­lec­tion of Ear­ly Mod­ern Eng­lish Slang (1785)

The Largest His­tor­i­cal Dic­tio­nary of Eng­lish Slang Now Free Online: Cov­ers 500 Years of the “Vul­gar Tongue”

The Very First Writ­ten Use of the F Word in Eng­lish (1528)

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

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How Sleep Can Become Your “Superpower:” Scientist Matt Walker Explains Why Sleep Helps You Learn More and Live Longer

in Health, TED Talks | July 3rd, 2019

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead”: those words have been a mantra to hard-liv­ing types every­where since War­ren Zevon first sang them back in 1976, but as Berke­ley sleep sci­en­tist and Why We Sleep author Matt Walk­er sees it, tak­ing them to heart is a “mor­tal­ly unwise” choice. The exam­ple of Zevon him­self, who died at the age of 53, would seem to val­i­date that judge­ment, but it also comes backed by seri­ous research. In the TED Talk “Sleep Is Your Super­pow­er” above, Walk­er builds on what we all know — that we need to sleep, reg­u­lar­ly and with­out inter­rup­tion — by explain­ing “the won­der­ful­ly good things that hap­pen when you get sleep, but the alarm­ing­ly bad things that hap­pen when you don’t get enough, both for your brain and for your body.”

Not only, for exam­ple, do “you need sleep after learn­ing to essen­tial­ly hit the save but­ton on those new mem­o­ries so that you don’t for­get,” you also “need sleep before learn­ing to actu­al­ly pre­pare your brain, almost like a dry sponge ready to ini­tial­ly soak up new infor­ma­tion.”

As any­one who has tried to pull an all-nighter before a big test has felt, sleep depri­va­tion shuts down your “your mem­o­ry inbox,” and any incom­ing files just get “bounced” with­out being retained. But deep-sleep brain­waves, as Walk­er puts it, act as a “file-trans­fer mech­a­nism at night, shift­ing mem­o­ries from a short-term vul­ner­a­ble reser­voir to a more per­ma­nent long-term stor­age site with­in the brain, and there­fore pro­tect­ing them, mak­ing them safe.”

Improp­er sleep threat­ens not just learn­ing but life itself: com­pro­mised sleep means a com­pro­mised immune sys­tem, hence the “sig­nif­i­cant links between short sleep dura­tion and your risk for the devel­op­ment of numer­ous forms of can­cer” now being dis­cov­ered. “The short­er your sleep, the short­er your life,” as Walk­er stark­ly puts it. As far as how to improve your sleep and, with luck, elon­gate your life, he has two main pieces of advice: “Go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time, no mat­ter whether it’s the week­day or the week­end,” and “aim for a bed­room tem­per­a­ture of around 65 degrees, or about 18 degrees Cel­sius,” slight­ly cool­er than may feel nor­mal. We’d also do well to remem­ber the impor­tance of break­ing the habit of stay­ing on the inter­net late into the night — or more specif­i­cal­ly, hav­ing stayed up well past mid­night writ­ing this very post, I’d do well to remem­ber it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sleep or Die: Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Matthew Walk­er Explains How Sleep Can Restore or Imper­il Our Health

How a Good Night’s Sleep — and a Bad Night’s Sleep — Can Enhance Your Cre­ativ­i­ty

Dr. Weil’s 60-Sec­ond Tech­nique for Falling Asleep

240 Hours of Relax­ing, Sleep-Induc­ing Sounds from Sci-Fi Video Games: From Blade Run­ner to Star Wars

Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Dymax­ion Sleep Plan: He Slept Two Hours a Day for Two Years & Felt “Vig­or­ous” and “Alert”

The Pow­er of Pow­er Naps: Sal­vador Dali Teach­es You How Micro-Naps Can Give You Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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How to Read Many More Books in a Year: Watch a Short Documentary Featuring Some of the World’s Most Beautiful Bookstores

in Books, Travel | July 2nd, 2019

You don’t have enough time in life to read all the books you want to. But if you change your habits just a bit, you’ll be able to read many more books in the time you do have left than you oth­er­wise could have. Film­mak­er Max Joseph learns these and oth­er lessons about read­ing in this short doc­u­men­tary, Book­store: How to Read More. In it he trav­els in search of not just the advice of some of the world’s most expert read­ers (or at least some of the most expert read­ers in Amer­i­ca), but also in search of the expe­ri­ence of the most beau­ti­ful book­stores in the world (or at least in west­ern Europe and South Amer­i­ca).

Wait But Why blog­ger Tim Urban tells Joseph he would need to read for only half an hour per day to have read more than a thou­sand books by the end of his time on Earth, ver­sus the sin­gle shelf he might read through with his cur­rent habits.

Eric Bark­er of Bark­ing Up the Wrong Tree sug­gests that Joseph redi­rect his social media-view­ing instincts toward whichev­er book he feels most excit­ed about read­ing in the moment, and that he begin by set­ting his dai­ly read­ing goal so low at first — say, just one page — that it’s prac­ti­cal­ly eas­i­er to meet it than not. (To quote from Moby-Dick, “What can­not habit accom­plish?”) Then Howard Berg, who holds the Guin­ness World Record declar­ing him the fastest read­er alive, breaks down the tech­niques that can the­o­ret­i­cal­ly make each page go by in sec­onds.

But how fast do we real­ly want to read? For coun­sel on the what and the why, Joseph vis­its the office of Ruth J. Sim­mons, pres­i­dent of Prairie View A&M Uni­ver­si­ty and for­mer pres­i­dent of Brown Uni­ver­si­ty. She empha­sizes the impor­tance of read­ing not just fre­quent­ly but wide­ly, a con­di­tion that should­n’t be ter­ri­bly hard to ful­fill giv­en Joseph’s trav­el and shop­ping habits: in the video we see him vis­it a vari­ety of high­ly Insta­gram­ma­ble (and drone-filmable) book­stores every­where from Brus­sels and Maas­tricht to São Paulo and Buenos Aires. One of them, Lis­bon’s Ler Deva­gar, tells him to “read slow­ly” with its very name, echo­ing Sim­mons’ descrip­tion of read­ing as “forced med­i­ta­tion.” That fram­ing is apt, but just like vis­it­ing a new book­store, med­i­ta­tion makes the true bib­lio­phile think of only one thing first: all the vol­umes out there still to be read.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

7 Tips for Read­ing More Books in a Year

The Last Book­store: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on Per­se­ver­ance & the Love of Books

A Secret Book­store in a New York City Apart­ment: The Last of a Dying Breed

What Are the Most Stolen Books? Book­store Lists Fea­ture Works by Muraka­mi, Bukows­ki, Bur­roughs, Von­negut, Ker­ouac & Palah­niuk

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Segregated By Design: An Animated Look at How African-American Enclaves in U.S. Cities Is Hardly an Accident

in Animation, History | July 2nd, 2019

From his­to­ri­an Richard Roth­stein comes a sober­ing ani­mat­ed video called “Seg­re­gat­ed by Design.”  Author of the 2017 book The Col­or of Law: A For­got­ten His­to­ry of How Our Gov­ern­ment Seg­re­gat­ed Amer­i­ca, Roth­stein has cre­at­ed a video that’s as infor­ma­tive as it is visu­al­ly cap­ti­vat­ing. Here’s what ground it cov­ers:

Exam­ine the for­got­ten his­to­ry of how our fed­er­al, state and local gov­ern­ments uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly seg­re­gat­ed every major met­ro­pol­i­tan area in Amer­i­ca through law and pol­i­cy.

‘Seg­re­gat­ed By Design’ exam­ines the for­got­ten his­to­ry of how our fed­er­al, state and local gov­ern­ments uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly seg­re­gat­ed every major met­ro­pol­i­tan area in Amer­i­ca through law and pol­i­cy.

Prej­u­dice can be birthed from a lack of under­stand­ing the his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate details of the past. With­out being aware of the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al res­i­den­tial poli­cies the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment enact­ed dur­ing the mid­dle of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, one might have a neg­a­tive view today of neigh­bor­hoods where African Amer­i­cans live or even of African Amer­i­cans them­selves.

We can com­pen­sate for this unlaw­ful seg­re­ga­tion through a nation­al polit­i­cal con­sen­sus that leads to leg­is­la­tion. And this will only hap­pen if the major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans under­stand how we got here. Like Jay‑Z said in a recent New York Times inter­view, “you can’t have a solu­tion until you start deal­ing with the prob­lem: What you reveal, you heal.” This is the major chal­lenge at hand: to edu­cate fel­low cit­i­zens of the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al inequal­i­ty that we’ve woven and, on behalf of our gov­ern­ment, accept respon­si­bil­i­ty to fix it.

Learn more about the film at the web­site, Seg­re­gat­ed by Design. And find it added to our list of Free Ani­ma­tions, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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!

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. Used Niet­zsche, Hegel & Kant to Over­turn Seg­re­ga­tion in Amer­i­ca 

How Zora Neale Hurston & Eleanor Roo­sevelt Helped Cre­ate the First Real­is­tic African Amer­i­can Baby Doll (1951)

The Negro Trav­el­ers’ Green Book, the Pre-Civ­il Rights Guide to Trav­el­ing Safe­ly in the U.S. (1936–66)

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Watch The Velvet Underground Perform in Rare Color Footage: Scenes from a Vietnam War Protest Concert (1969)

in Music | July 2nd, 2019

There are many rea­sons to think of The Vel­vet Under­ground for­ev­er in black and white: Nico’s Nordic monot­o­ne; John Cale and Moe Tucker’s mono­chro­mat­ic drones; Lou Reed’s per­pet­u­al invo­ca­tion of rock and roll’s black and white 50s ori­gins. White Light/White Heat and its stark black-and-white cov­er; “The Black Angel’s Death Song,” from their debut; pal­lid, sun-starved faces and a pen­chant for black sun­glass­es; an indeli­ble asso­ci­a­tion with Warhol’s black and white Fac­to­ry scene….

Then there’s lit­er­al­ly the fact that we’ve almost aways seen the band filmed and pho­tographed in black and white, until now. “Yes, you read that right,” announces Dan­ger­ous Minds, “pre­vi­ous­ly unseen col­or film of the Vel­vet Under­ground has been dis­cov­ered!” and boy is it groovy.

Always walk­ing an avant-garde line between pro­to-punk and psy­che­del­ic folk/rock, this footage from 1969 seems to catch the band lean­ing in the lat­ter direc­tion for Dal­las Peace Day, a Viet­nam War Protest held on the grounds of the Win­frey Point build­ing over­look­ing White Rock Lake.

“There were like­ly between 600 and 3,000 peo­ple in atten­dance,” and the per­form­ers that day includ­ed Lou Rawls and groups like Vel­vet Dream, Stone Creek, and Bradley & David. “The VU were in town for a week of shows at a Dal­las club.… These were the first con­certs they ever played in the south. It’s unknown how the group became involved with Dal­las Peace Day.” They were a band in tran­si­tion. Bassist Doug Yule had recent­ly tak­en over for the depart­ed John Cale. They were leav­ing behind their Warhol/Nico/Factory days.

The unearthed film here includes some per­for­mance footage, at the top. The band plays “I’m Wat­ing for the Man,” “Begin­ning to the See the Light,” and “I’m Set Free.” There’s also an inter­view with Ster­ling Mor­ri­son, who talks about the “tone of anar­chy” at New York anti-war ral­lies and the vio­lence in Chica­go the pre­vi­ous year. Above, see some silent B‑roll and below, a lit­tle more footage, with some unre­lat­ed, over­dubbed music. All of this film comes cour­tesy of the G. William Jones Film & Video Col­lec­tion.

The footage “was uncov­ered only by chance and the archive doesn’t know the orig­i­nal motives for record­ing it, or even know how they came to obtain the film.” It’s a side of the band we don’t often see. While hard­core fans may be famil­iar with the post-John Cale—and post-Lou Reed—years, most peo­ple tend to asso­ciate The Vel­vet Under­ground with black leather and white… um… sub­stances… not pais­ley and peace ral­lies.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Explains Why He Decid­ed to Give Up Paint­ing & Man­age the Vel­vet Under­ground Instead (1966)

Watch Footage of the Vel­vet Under­ground Com­pos­ing “Sun­day Morn­ing,” the First Track on Their Sem­i­nal Debut Album The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

Hear Lost Acetate Ver­sions of Songs from The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

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

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The First Museum Dedicated Exclusively to Poster Art Opens Its Doors in the U.S.: Enter the Poster House

in Art, Design, History, Museums | July 1st, 2019

How times have changed since our late 80s col­lege days. Under­grads do research online, upload assign­ments to a serv­er, stream music, down­load affir­ma­tive sex­u­al con­sent con­tracts, and turn to Face­book when it’s time to find a ride home for the hol­i­days.

But one aspect of the col­le­giate lifestyle remains unchanged.

They still fes­toon their dorm rooms with posters—the actu­al paper arti­cle, affixed to the walls with blue put­ty, a care­ful­ly curat­ed col­lec­tion of taste and aspi­ra­tion.

As Cait Munro writes in Refin­ery 29:

Fresh­man, already scram­bling to find and loud­ly artic­u­late an iden­ti­ty, can leave the poster sale with two or three plas­tic tubes hous­ing scrolls that rep­re­sent the very essence of their new, par­ent-free, on-cam­pus selves. Posters become an afford­able, demon­stra­ble expres­sion of who they are as a per­son — or, in the tra­di­tion of peo­ple eager to leave behind their home­town selves, who they want to be.

Legions of style blogs have decreed that these posters should be giv­en the heave-ho along with the plas­tic milk crate shelv­ing, come grad­u­a­tion.

Per­son­al­ly, I would rather gaze upon the tat­tered repro­duc­tion of the first paint­ing that spoke to me at the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go than any­thing the design experts float as an accept­ably grown up alter­na­tive.

Is Alphonse Mucha’s Byzan­tine 1896 ad for Job rolling papers some­how unwor­thy because legions of dewy eyed under­grads have giv­en it a peren­ni­al place of unframed hon­or?

The dri­ving forces behind the new­ly opened Poster House in New York City would say no. The first Amer­i­can muse­um ded­i­cat­ed exclu­sive­ly to poster art, its cura­tors cast a wide net through the form’s 160 year his­to­ry, whether the end goal of the work was war bond sales, pub­lic health edu­ca­tion, or straight-up box office sales. As the Poster House writes:

For a poster to suc­ceed, it must com­mu­ni­cate. By com­bin­ing the pow­er of images and words, posters speak to audi­ences quick­ly and per­sua­sive­ly. Blend­ing design, adver­tis­ing, and art, posters clear­ly reflect the place and time in which they were made.

What did the best-sell­ing poster of actress Far­rah Faw­cett in a red tank suit say to—and about—teenage boys in 1976? What did it say about Amer­i­can val­ues and gen­der norms in that Bicen­ten­ni­al year? Why no posters of Bet­sy Ross?

How does the offi­cial poster for Juras­sic Park, above, com­pare to the hand-paint­ed, pre­sum­ably unau­tho­rized image used to mar­ket it to audi­ences in Ghana?

(End­less grat­i­tude to illus­tra­tor and mon­ster movie fan Aeron Alfrey for bring­ing this and oth­er Ghan­ian spins on Amer­i­can film releas­es to our atten­tion.)

Some posters have remark­able stay­ing pow­er, reap­pear­ing in a num­ber of guis­es. Wit­ness Rosie the Riv­et­er and James Mont­gomery Flagg’s Uncle Sam-themed WWI recruit­ment poster, to say noth­ing of the Barack Oba­ma “Hope” poster by Shep­ard Fairey, the poster that launched a thou­sand par­o­dies, most­ly dig­i­tal, but even so.

To learn more about vis­it­ing Poster House, its inau­gur­al Alphonse Mucha exhib­it and upcom­ing events such as Drink and Draw, click here.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Film Posters of the Russ­ian Avant-Garde

10,000 Clas­sic Movie Posters Get­ting Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter at UT-Austin: Free to Browse & Down­load

Chill­ing and Sur­re­al Pro­pa­gan­da Posters from the NSA Are Now Declas­si­fied and Put Online

40,000 Film Posters in a Won­der­ful­ly Eclec­tic Archive: Ital­ian Tarkovsky Posters, Japan­ese Orson Welles, Czech Woody Allen & Much More

The Library of Con­gress Makes Thou­sands of Fab­u­lous Pho­tos, Posters & Images Free to Use & Reuse

Vin­tage 1930s Japan­ese Posters Artis­ti­cal­ly Mar­ket the Won­ders of Trav­el

100 Great­est Posters of Film Noir

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

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Watch a Star-Studded Cast Read The Mueller Report: John Lithgow, Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Annette Bening & More

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Politics | July 1st, 2019

Laugh­ter is good med­i­cine, but I’ve found lit­tle gen­uine humor in satire of the 2016 elec­tion and sub­se­quent events. Polit­i­cal real­i­ty defies par­o­dy. So, I guess I wasn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly amused by the idea of a com­ic stag­ing of the Mueller Report. But aside from whether or not the report has com­ic poten­tial, the exer­cise rais­es a more seri­ous ques­tion: Should ordi­nary cit­i­zens read the report?

Giv­en the snowjob sum­ma­ry offered by the Attor­ney General—and cer­tain press out­fits who repeat­ed claims that it exon­er­at­ed the president—probably. Espe­cial­ly (good luck) if they can score an unredact­ed copy. Yet, this rais­es yet anoth­er ques­tion: Does any­one actu­al­ly want to read it? The answer appears to be a resound­ing yes. Even though it’s free, the [redact­ed] report is a best­seller.

And yet, “the pub­lished ver­sion is as dry as a [redact­ed] saltine,” writes James Poniewozik at The New York Times. “Robert Mueller him­self has the sto­ic G‑man bear­ing of some­one who would laugh by writ­ing ‘ha ha’ on a memo pad.” (Now that’s a fun­ny image.) One won­ders how many peo­ple duti­ful­ly down­load­ing it have stayed up late by the light of their tablets com­pelled to read it all.

But of course, one does not approach any gov­ern­ment doc­u­ment with the hopes of being enter­tained, though unin­ten­tion­al hilar­i­ty can leap from the page at any time. How should we approach The Inves­ti­ga­tion: A Search for the Truth in 10 Acts? Script­ed by Pulitzer Prize-win­ning  play­wright Robert Schenkkan from the Mueller Report’s tran­scripts, the pro­duc­tion is “part old-time pub­lic recita­tion,” writes Ponei­wozik, and “part Hol­ly­wood table read.”

The stag­ing above at New York’s River­side Church was host­ed by Law Works and per­formed live by a cast includ­ing Annette Ben­ing, Kevin Kline, John Lith­gow (as “Indi­vid­ual 1” him­self), Michael Shan­non, Justin Long, Jason Alexan­der, Wil­son Cruz, Joel Gray, Kyra Sedg­wick, Alfre Woodard, Zachary Quin­to, Mark Ruf­fa­lo, Bob Bal­a­ban, Alyssa Milano, Sigour­ney Weaver, Julia Louis-Drey­fus, Mark Hamill, and more. Bill Moy­ers serves as emcee.

Can this dark­ly com­ic pro­duc­tion deliv­er some com­ic balm for hav­ing lived through the sor­did real­i­ty of the events in ques­tion? It has its moments. Can it offer us some­thing resem­bling truth? You be the judge. Or you be the pro­duc­er, direc­tor, actor, etcetera. If you find value—civic, enter­tain­ment, or otherwise—in the exer­cise, Schenkkan encour­ages you to put on your own ver­sion of The Inves­ti­ga­tion. “Your pro­duc­tion can be as mod­est or extrav­a­gant as you like,” he writes at Law Works, fol­lowed by a list of fur­ther instruc­tions for a pos­si­ble stag­ing.

If, like maybe mil­lions of oth­er peo­ple, you’ve got an unread copy of the Mueller Report on your night­stand, maybe watching—or per­form­ing—The Inves­ti­ga­tion is the best way to get your­self to final­ly read it. Or the most grim­ly humor­ous, moron­ic, pathet­ic, and sur­re­al parts of it, any­way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mueller Report Released as a Free Well-For­mat­ted eBook (by The Dig­i­tal Pub­lic Library of Amer­i­ca)

Sat­ur­day Night Live: Putin Mocks Trump’s Poor­ly Attend­ed Inau­gu­ra­tion 

The Mueller Report Is #1, #2 and #3 on the Ama­zon Best­seller List: You Can Get It Free Online

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

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Queen Guitarist Brian May Is Also an Astrophysicist: Read His PhD Thesis Online

in Astronomy, Music, Physics | July 1st, 2019

Pho­to by ESO/G. Huede­pohl, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Queen could­n’t pos­si­bly have been Queen with­out Fred­die Mer­cury, nor could it have been Queen with­out Bri­an May. Thanks not least to the recent biopic, Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, the band’s already larg­er-than-life lead singer has become even larg­er still. But its gui­tarist, despite the film’s sur­face treat­ment of his char­ac­ter, is in his own way an equal­ly implau­si­ble fig­ure. Not only did he show musi­cal promise ear­ly, form­ing his first group while still at school, he also got his A Lev­els in physics, math­e­mat­ics, and applied math­e­mat­ics, going on to earn a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Physics with hon­ors at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don.

Nat­u­ral­ly, May then went for his PhD, con­tin­u­ing at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege where he stud­ied the veloc­i­ty of, and light reflect­ed by, inter­plan­e­tary dust in the Solar Sys­tem. He began the pro­gram in 1970, but “in 1974, when Queen was but a princess in its infan­cy, May chose to aban­don his doc­tor­ate stud­ies to focus on the band in their quest to con­quer the world.” So wrote The Tele­graph’s Felix Lowe in 2007, the year the by-then 60-year-old (and long world-famous) rock­er final­ly hand­ed in his the­sis. “The 48,000-word tome, Radi­al Veloc­i­ties in the Zodi­a­cal Dust Cloud, which sounds sus­pi­cious­ly like a Spinal Tap LP, was stored in the loft of his home in Sur­rey.” You can read it online here.

Accord­ing to its abstract, May’s the­sis “doc­u­ments the build­ing of a pres­sure-scanned Fab­ry-Per­ot Spec­trom­e­ter, equipped with a pho­to­mul­ti­pli­er and pulse-count­ing elec­tron­ics, and its deploy­ment at the Obser­va­to­rio del Tei­de at Iza­ña in Tener­ife, at an alti­tude of 7,700 feet (2567 m), for the pur­pose of record­ing high-res­o­lu­tion spec­tra of the Zodi­a­cal Light.” Space.com describes the Zodia­cial Light as “a misty dif­fuse cone of light that appears in the west­ern sky after sun­set and in the east­ern sky before sun­rise,” one that has long tricked casu­al observers into “see­ing it as the first sign of morn­ing twi­light.” Astronomers now rec­og­nize it as “reflect­ed sun­light shin­ing on scat­tered space debris clus­tered most dense­ly near the sun.”

In his abstract, May also notes the unusu­al­ly long peri­od of study as 1970–2007, made pos­si­ble in part by the fact that lit­tle oth­er research had been done in this par­tic­u­lar sub­ject area dur­ing Queen’s reign on the charts and there­after. Still, he had catch­ing up to do, includ­ing obser­va­tion­al work in Tener­ife (as much of a hard­ship post­ing as that isn’t). Since being award­ed his doc­tor­ate, May’s sci­en­tif­ic activ­i­ties have con­tin­ued, as have his musi­cal ones and oth­er pur­suits besides, such as ani­mal-rights activism and stere­og­ra­phy. (Some­times these inter­sect: the 2017 pho­to­book Queen in 3‑D, for exam­ple, uses a VR view­ing device of May’s own design.) The next time you meet a young­ster dither­ing over whether to go into astro­physics or found one of the most suc­cess­ful rock bands of all time, point them to May’s exam­ple and let them know doing both isn’t with­out prece­dent.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gui­tarist Bri­an May Explains the Mak­ing of Queen’s Clas­sic Song, ‘Bohemi­an Rhap­sody’

Bri­an May’s Home­made Gui­tar, Made From Old Tables, Bike and Motor­cy­cle Parts & More

Stephen Hawking’s Ph.D. The­sis, “Prop­er­ties of Expand­ing Uni­vers­es,” Now Free to Read/Download Online

Watch 94 Free Lec­tures From the Great Cours­es: Dystopi­an Fic­tion, Astro­physics, Gui­tar Play­ing & Much More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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A Quick Six Minute Journey Through Modern Art: How You Get from Manet’s 1862 Painting, “The Luncheon on the Grass,” to Jackson Pollock 1950s Drip Paintings

in Art | June 28th, 2019

Even those not inti­mate­ly famil­iar with Jack­son Pol­lock­’s work know to file him under a cat­e­go­ry called “abstract expres­sion­ism,” but some­how his mas­sive paint­ings — and the lay­er upon lay­er of drips that con­sti­tute their visu­al and tex­tur­al sur­face — still seem to slip cat­e­go­riza­tion. Some of the painter’s fans would sure­ly claim that, more than six­ty years after his death, he does indeed still stand apart. But how far apart, real­ly? Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, takes on that ques­tion in the video essay above, “How Art Arrived at Jack­son Pol­lock.”

Puschak con­sid­ers a par­tic­u­lar Pol­lock paint­ing from 1950, “the only abstract work of art that has ever floored me in per­son as soon as my eyes caught it,” and asks why appre­ci­a­tion comes so much more eas­i­ly for him with it than with oth­er non-fig­u­ra­tive works of art. “I don’t think the pow­er of this Pol­lock depends on its place in the his­to­ry of art.” he says. “Its style, its use of col­or, its hyper­ac­tiv­i­ty are intrin­sic qual­i­ties, but I do think the his­to­ry of art has a lot to say.” In many ways, “they’re the cul­mi­na­tion of some­thing that has a fog­gy begin­ning about a cen­tu­ry or two before, with the grad­ual end of church and noble patron­age of the arts and the dawn of painters paint­ing what was impor­tant to them.”

This line of think­ing sets Puschak in search of the begin­ning of mod­ern art itself, which some find in the ear­ly 1860s in the high­ly fig­u­ra­tive work of Edouard Manet, with its “flat­tened” imagery and “scan­dalous sub­ject mat­ter.” Mon­et and his col­leagues brought about the move­ment known as Impres­sion­ism, “con­cern­ing them­selves not with the objects they see in the world but how the light plays off them.” From then on the degree of abstrac­tion inten­si­fies with each sub­se­quent move­ment in paint­ing, and by the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry “art has unrav­eled. Its cen­turies-long aim of repro­duc­ing the phys­i­cal world in per­spec­tive, col­or and form is rapid­ly being aban­doned.”

The high­ly com­pressed six-minute jour­ney that Puschak takes through art his­to­ry to get him to Pol­lock­’s “drip paint­ings,” which the artist began cre­at­ing in the 1940s, also includes stops at post impres­sion­ism; the work of Vin­cent Van Gogh (notably his “ugli­est mas­ter­piece” Night Cafe, sub­ject of a pre­vi­ous Nerd­writer analy­sis); Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky and Pablo Picas­so; Dada and the Sur­re­al­ist Man­i­festo, all in the span of less than a hun­dred years. “A fast-chang­ing world con­tributed huge­ly, of course, but beyond that I do believe there’s a dri­ve in us to take things as far as they can go, and the cen­tu­ry of mod­ern art is an exhil­a­rat­ing exam­ple of that” — and the oeu­vre of Pol­lock him­self remains an exam­ple of “how irre­press­ible human cre­ativ­i­ty can be.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Was Jack­son Pol­lock Over­rat­ed? Behind Every Artist There’s an Art Crit­ic, and Behind Pol­lock There Was Clement Green­berg

Jack­son Pol­lock 51: Short Film Cap­tures the Painter Cre­at­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ist Art

Watch Por­trait of an Artist: Jack­son Pol­lock, the 1987 Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed by Melvyn Bragg

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters

Dripped: An Ani­mat­ed Trib­ute to Jack­son Pollock’s Sig­na­ture Paint­ing Tech­nique

60-Sec­ond Intro­duc­tions to 12 Ground­break­ing Artists: Matisse, Dalí, Duchamp, Hop­per, Pol­lock, Rothko & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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How Cinemas Taught Early Movie-Goers the Rules & Etiquette for Watching Films (1912): No Whistling, Standing or Wearing Big Hats

in Film | June 28th, 2019

I admit, I some­times pay a pre­mi­um at a cer­tain din­ner the­ater chain with a lob­by-slash-bar designed to look like clas­sic indie video stores of yore. It’s not only the padded reclin­ers and half-decent grub that keeps me com­ing back. Nope, it’s the rules. Print­ed on the menu are a list of dis­rup­tive behav­iors that will get you uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly tossed out—no refunds and no back­sies.

I’ve nev­er seen it hap­pen. Giv­en what peo­ple put down for tick­ets, din­ner, drinks, and/or a babysit­ter, it’s unlike­ly many risk blow­ing the evening. But know­ing that the the­ater takes silence seri­ous­ly brings seri­ous movie­go­ers peace of mind. What is a movie, after all, with­out the all-impor­tant dia­logue, music, and sound cues?

Well, it’s silent film. And even then, when movies were sound-tracked with live accom­pa­ni­ment and dia­logue appeared on title cards, peo­ple wor­ried very much about dis­trac­tions. It just so hap­pens that talk­ing and tex­ting (obvi­ous­ly) were the least of ear­ly audience’s con­cerns.

For one thing, the cin­e­ma was a place where class­es, races, sex­es, and ages “mixed much more freely than had been Vic­to­ri­an cus­tom,” notes Rebec­ca Onion at Slate. There were the usu­al con­cerns about cor­rup­tion of the “del­i­cate sen­si­bil­i­ties” of ladies.

“But female cin­e­ma-goers were just as like­ly to be seen as a prob­lem,” writes Onion, “giv­en their sup­posed propen­si­ty for wear­ing big hats and chat­ting.” The melt­ing pot demo­graph­ic of the nick­elodeon could be exhil­a­rat­ing, and audi­ence mem­bers found they some­times lost their inhi­bi­tions. “Some­how you enter into the spirt of the thing,” observed author W.W. Win­ters in 1910. “Don’t you slip away from your­self, lose your ret­i­cence, reserve, pride, and a few oth­er things?”

These days we’re accus­tomed to cram­ming in elbow-to-elbow next to any­one and every­one, and we most­ly heed the onscreen cajol­ing to put our phones away and keep qui­et, even when we aren’t quar­an­tined in spe­cial­ty bou­tique chains or local art­house the­aters. Then again, if cer­tain behav­iors weren’t an issue, there wouldn’t be ads pro­hibit­ing them.

Enor­mous hats and applause (and applause with things oth­er than hands) may be relics of cinema’s infan­cy. But swap out those admo­ni­tions for oth­ers of the smart­phone vari­ety and these lantern slides instruct­ing view­ers in 1912 about prop­er movie the­ater eti­quette don’t look so dif­fer­ent from today… sort of.

We might want for inter­mis­sions to return, espe­cial­ly after the two-hour mark, and wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of keep­ing us in our seats for post-cred­it scenes, big block­buster movies just said “Good Night”? See more of these delight­ful pub­lic ser­vice announce­ments from 1912 nick­elodeons at Back Sto­ry Radio.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Cre­at­ing Spe­cial Effects in Silent Movies: Inge­nu­ity Before the Age of CGI

Enjoy the Great­est Silent Films Ever Made in Our Col­lec­tion of 101 Free Silent Films Online

The Char­lie Chap­lin Archive Opens, Putting Online 30,000 Pho­tos & Doc­u­ments from the Life of the Icon­ic Film Star

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

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