Jane Austen, Game Theorist: UCLA Poli Sci Prof Finds Shrewd Strategy in “Cluelessness”

in Books, Literature | April 26th, 2013

Pro­fes­sion­al jeal­ousy is prob­a­bly the worst rea­son to dis­miss a new per­spec­tive, whether it comes from with­in one’s field, out­side it, or any­where else. Snob­bery leads to inbreed­ing and intel­lec­tu­al dead-ends. So when Michael Chwe, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at UCLA who spe­cial­izes in game the­o­ry, has an epiphany about Jane Austen as a pro­to-game the­o­rist, maybe his insights should change the way Eng­lish profs—and every­one else—read the author of Pride and Prej­u­dice.

I don’t know. I haven’t read Chwe’s book, Jane Austen: Game The­o­rist (read a sam­ple chap­ter here), but I’ll con­fess, I’m skep­ti­cal of any­one who calls Austen’s lit­er­ary work a “research pro­gram” that has “results” in a book of “230 dia­gram-heavy pages.”  It seems to miss the point some­how. Austen is per­haps these days the most-adapt­ed of British writ­ers, and her aca­d­e­m­ic cachet couldn’t be high­er. But the best takes on her work—whether schol­ar­ly or popular—are fun, focused on char­ac­ter and lan­guage, not tech­no­crat­ic the­o­ry.

But maybe I’ve mis­judged Chwe’s intent. He was, after all, inspired to read Austen by “watch­ing movies and read­ing books with his chil­dren.” And one of the con­cepts Chwe ascribes to Austen is that of “clue­less­ness,” a term he takes from that clas­sic nineties movie Clue­less (inspired by Austen’s Emma, clip above). In Chwe’s analy­sis, clue­less­ness is not at all gar­den-vari­ety stu­pid­i­ty; it’s the benev­o­lent devi­ous­ness of Eliz­a­beth Ben­net or the “dumb blonde” act Ali­cia Silverstone’s char­ac­ter pulls off in con­vinc­ing oth­ers that she doesn’t know what she’s doing, all the while manip­u­lat­ing, cajol­ing, and demur­ring to get her way.

Chwe also pur­sues the dark­er side of clue­less­ness, relat­ing it to grim episodes like the 2004 killing of four pri­vate con­trac­tors in Fal­lu­ja. Over­all, his book iden­ti­fies fifty “manip­u­la­tion strate­gies” he finds in Austen. While his book seems to promise some enter­tain­ing obser­va­tions it also might fur­ther con­firm for seri­ous Austen read­ers that the eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry nov­el­ist was one of the most psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly insight­ful writ­ers of the past few cen­turies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jane Austen’s Fight Club

New Stamp Col­lec­tion Cel­e­brates Six Nov­els by Jane Austen

As Pride and Prej­u­dice Turns 200, Read Jane Austen’s Man­u­scripts Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jmagness

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Woody Allen Amuses Himself by Giving Untruthful Answers in Unaired 1971 TV Interview

in Comedy, Film, Television | April 26th, 2013

Celebri­ties tire of giv­ing inter­views. I’ve learned this by spend­ing most of my career con­duct­ing inter­views myself, and thus des­per­ate­ly try­ing to mas­ter ask­ing the ques­tions that wake up a weary inter­vie­wee, get­ting them engaged enough to cast aside the boil­er­plate and speak like a con­vers­ing human being. But what about the celebri­ties them­selves? What can they do to spice up their expe­ri­ence? In 1971, the oft-inter­viewed Woody Allen sat down with Grana­da Tele­vi­sion and took a bold move to keep things inter­est­ing, appar­ent­ly chal­leng­ing him­self to reply to each ques­tion as untruth­ful­ly as pos­si­ble. Though the con­ver­sa­tion nev­er aired, Allen did man­age to keep up the rou­tine for quite some time, and you can watch near­ly forty min­utes of it in the clip above.

The inter­view­er asks Allen for a syn­op­sis of his new pic­ture. “It’s a dra­ma about human emo­tion in the Unit­ed States,” the direc­tor flat­ly replies. “It deals with the tragedy of divorce as it relates to the chil­dren and those who have to suf­fer con­tin­u­al­ly from the effects of an unhap­py home.” So it con­tains no com­e­dy what­so­ev­er, then? “No, I try and keep as much com­e­dy out of my films as pos­si­ble.” The film osten­si­bly under dis­cus­sion: Bananas. Asked ques­tion after broad, brief ques­tion, Allen lobs back ever dri­er and more implau­si­ble fab­ri­ca­tions. His ded­i­cat­ed fans, though, will notice that he does slip in a fac­tu­al state­ment. Asked if he watch­es his own films, he says no; and indeed, he famous­ly nev­er looks back at past work. The increas­ing­ly ner­vous-sound­ing inter­view­er (who may be in on the joke?) asks why. “Because I don’t have the patience to sit through them.”

h/t @lit_hum

Relat­ed con­tent:

Woody Allen Answers 12 Uncon­ven­tion­al Ques­tions He Has Nev­er Been Asked Before

Meetin’ WA: Jean-Luc Godard Meets Woody Allen in 26 Minute Film

Woody Allen Lives the “Deli­cious Life” in Ear­ly-80s Japan­ese Com­mer­cials

Woody Allen Box­es a Kan­ga­roo, 1966

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd Get Brian Wilson Out of Bed and Force Him to Go Surfing, 1976

in Comedy, Music, Television | April 25th, 2013

There are cer­tain leg­ends sur­round­ing Bri­an Wil­son, the trou­bled genius behind the Beach Boys. One is that he hates going to the beach. He nev­er went surf­ing, even though he wrote clas­sic songs like “Surfer Girl,” “Surfin’ Safari,” and “Surfin’ USA.” Anoth­er is that he basi­cal­ly stayed in bed for two or three years in the ear­ly 1970s, weight­ed down by drugs and depres­sion.

In this clas­sic com­e­dy sketch from the sum­mer of 1976, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd play a pair of Cal­i­for­nia High­way Patrol offi­cers who burst into the bed­room of Wilson’s Bel Air home and force the reclu­sive musi­cian to get up and go surf­ing. “Bri­an,” says Aykroyd, “we have a cita­tion here for you sir under Sec­tion 936A of the Cal­i­for­nia Catch a Wave Statute. Bri­an, you’re in vio­la­tion of Para­graph 12: fail­ing to surf, neglect­ing to use a state beach for surf­ing pur­pos­es, and oth­er­wise avoid­ing surf­boards, surf­ing and surf.”

The scene is from the NBC tele­vi­sion spe­cial It’s OK, which was pro­duced by Sat­ur­day Night Live cre­ator Lorne Michaels dur­ing the break between SNL’s first and sec­ond sea­sons. It was direct­ed by the show’s res­i­dent flm­mak­er Gary Weis. The one-hour spe­cial was orga­nized to cel­e­brate the Beach Boys’ 15th anniver­sary and to pro­mote their album, 15 Big Ones. Wil­son had just rejoined the group, and the spe­cial was part of the “Bri­an’s Back” pub­lic­i­ty cam­paign. The pro­gram, which is cur­rent­ly avail­able on Euro­pean-for­mat­ted DVD as The Beach Boys: Good Vibra­tions Tour,  includes an inter­view of Wil­son in bed, comedic scenes of band mem­bers doing off­beat things, and live footage from a July 3, 1976 Beach Boys con­cert at Ana­heim Sta­di­um. In the two inter­cut scenes above, Mike Love leads the Beach Boys onstage in a per­for­mance of “Surfin’ USA” as Wil­son is forced into the ocean in his bath robe. “Okay, Mr. Wil­son,” says Aykroyd. “Here’s your wave.”

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds: A Video Break­down

Leonard Bern­stein Demys­ti­fies the Rock Rev­o­lu­tion for Curi­ous (if Square) Grown-Ups in 1967

John Belushi’s Impro­vised Screen Test for Sat­ur­day Night Live (1975)

The Mak­ing of The Blues Broth­ers: When Belushi and Aykroyd Went on a Mis­sion for Com­e­dy & Music

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Listen to Iggy & The Stooges’ New Album Ready to Die — Online For a Limited Time

in Music | April 25th, 2013

It’s prob­a­bly fair to say that Iggy Pop is the Kei­th Richards of punk. He’d prob­a­bly hate the com­par­i­son, but giv­en his super­hu­man sur­vival skills in an are­na that turns less­er mor­tals to mush, it seems apt. And now, at 66 years old, Pop and the remain­ing Stooges—James Williamson, Scott Asheton, and the great Mike Watt (replac­ing Ron Asheton)—have released a new album, their first since 2007’s The Weird­ness.

Unlike the Stones, The Stooges don’t rest on their lau­rels. Lis­ten to “Burn” above and tell me this isn’t as raw pow­er as Raw Pow­er. Pop’s voice has deep­ened con­sid­er­ably, his youth­ful machis­mo tem­pered into apoc­a­lyp­tic doom­say­ing. But he’s still got the cocked-hip grav­i­tas and full-frontal gri­mace that car­ried him through well over three decades of boom-bust-boom rock swag­ger. Wan­na hear more? Lucky for you, NPR streams the full album, Ready to Die, this week. Lis­ten to it below and be awed.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

From The Stooges to Iggy Pop: 1986 Doc­u­men­tary Charts the Rise of Punk’s God­fa­ther

Cre­ative Uses of the Fax Machine: From Iggy Pop’s Bile to Stephen Hawking’s Snark

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Hear the Voice of Alexander Graham Bell for the First Time in a Century

in History, Technology | April 25th, 2013

graham bell

In the past, we’ve brought you sound record­ings from the 19th cen­tu­ry — record­ings that recap­ture the long lost voic­es of fig­ures likes Walt Whit­man, Alfred Lord Ten­nyson, William Glad­stone, Tchaikovsky, and Thomas Edi­son. Now, thanks to the “dra­mat­ic appli­ca­tion of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy,” the Smith­son­ian brings you (quite fit­ting­ly) the lost voice of the tele­phone’s inven­tor, Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell. Accord­ing to biog­ra­ph­er Char­lotte Gray, Bell record­ed his voice onto discs while con­duct­ing sound exper­i­ments between 1880 and 1886. Although the discs remained in the Smith­so­ni­an’s pos­ses­sion for decades, researchers lacked the tech­ni­cal abil­i­ty to play them back, and Bel­l’s voice went “mute” until Carl Haber, a sci­en­tist at the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry, fig­ured out how to take high res­o­lu­tions scans of the discs and con­vert them into playable audio files. That’s what you can hear below. In the short record­ing dat­ed April 15, 1885, the inven­tor declares: “Hear my voice — Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell.”

H/T Mal­colm; audio via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Voic­es from the 19th Cen­tu­ry: Ten­nyson, Glad­stone, Whit­man & Tchaikovsky

Thomas Edi­son Recites “Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb” in Ear­ly Voice Record­ing

Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

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The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World

in Books, History | April 25th, 2013

coffee plantation

Like so many dai­ly comestibles we com­plete­ly take for grant­ed—salt, sug­ar, and (far few­er of us) tobac­co—cof­fee has a long and often bru­tal his­to­ry. And like many of these sub­stances, it tends to be addic­tive. But cof­fee has also inspired a long­stand­ing social tra­di­tion that shows no signs of ever going out of fash­ion. It’s a drug that makes us thinky and chat­ty and socia­ble (I for one don’t speak a human lan­guage until I’ve had my first cup). It’s these con­tra­dic­tions of cof­fee history—its com­plic­i­ty in slave economies and the Enlight­en­ment pub­lic square—that Mark Pen­der­grast takes on in his new book Uncom­mon Grounds: The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World. Pen­der­grast puts it this way:

One of the ironies about cof­fee is it makes peo­ple think. It sort of cre­ates egal­i­tar­i­an places — cof­fee­hous­es where peo­ple can come togeth­er — and so the French Rev­o­lu­tion and the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion were planned in cof­fee­hous­es. On the oth­er hand, that same cof­fee that was fuel­ing the French Rev­o­lu­tion was also being pro­duced by African slaves who had been tak­en to San­to Domin­go, which we now know as Haiti.

In the inter­view above with NPR’s “Morn­ing Edi­tion,” Pen­der­grast explains his inter­est in cof­fee his­to­ry as a way to look at the “rela­tion­ship between the have-nots and the haves.” His inves­ti­ga­tion is anoth­er for­ay into the hun­dreds of years of Euro­pean colo­nial his­to­ry that gave us both mas­sive glob­al inequal­i­ty and Star­bucks on every cor­ner. Lis­ten to the short inter­view, read Pendergrast’s book, and the next time you get thinky over cof­fee, you may just think a lot about how cof­fee shaped the world.

H/T Kim L.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pod­cast His­to­ry of Our World Will Take You From Cre­ation Myths to (Even­tu­al­ly) the Present Day

The His­to­ry of the World in 46 Lec­tures From Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: London’s First Cafe Cre­ates Ad for Cof­fee in the 1650s

Every­thing You Want­ed to Know About Cof­fee in Three Min­utes

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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David Lynch Explains How Meditation Enhances Our Creativity

in Creativity, Film, Psychology | April 25th, 2013

David Lynch med­i­tates, and he med­i­tates hard. Begin­ning his prac­tice in earnest after it helped him solve a cre­ative prob­lem dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of his break­out 1977 film Eraser­head, he has con­tin­ued med­i­tat­ing assid­u­ous­ly ever since, going so far as to found the David Lynch Foun­da­tion for Con­scious­ness-Based Edu­ca­tion and Peace and pub­lish a pro-med­i­ta­tion book called Catch­ing the Big Fish.

It might seem non­sen­si­cal to hear an artist of the grotesque like Lynch speak rap­tur­ous­ly about voy­ag­ing into his own con­scious­ness, let alone in his frac­tured all-Amer­i­can, askew-Jim­my-Stew­art man­ner, but he does med­i­tate for a prac­ti­cal rea­son: it gives him ideas. Only by med­i­tat­ing, he says, can he dive down and catch the “big fish” he uses as ingre­di­ents in his inim­itable film, music, and visu­al art. You can hear more of his thoughts on med­i­ta­tion, con­scious­ness, and cre­ativ­i­ty in his nine-minute speech above.

If you’d like to hear more, the video just above offers a near­ly two-hour pre­sen­ta­tion at UC Berke­ley with Lynch as its star. You’ll also hear from out­spo­ken quan­tum physi­cist John Hagelin and Fred Travis, direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Brain, Con­scious­ness and Cog­ni­tion Mahar­ishi Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­age­ment. Some of what they say might make good sense to you: after all, we could all use a method to clear our minds so we can cre­ate what we need to cre­ate. Some of what they say might strike you as total non­sense. But if you feel tempt­ed to dis­miss all as too bizarre for seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion, you might med­i­tate, as it were, on oth­er things Lynchi­an: back­wards-talk­ing dwarves, sev­ered ears on sub­ur­ban lawns, alien babies, women liv­ing in radi­a­tors, sit­com fam­i­lies in rab­bit suits. He’s cer­tain­ly pitched us weird­er con­cepts than med­i­ta­tion.

For some sec­u­lar intro­duc­tions to med­i­ta­tion, you may wish to try UCLA’s free guid­ed med­i­ta­tion ses­sions or check out the Med­i­ta­tion 101 ani­mat­ed beginner’s guide above. If you’re not too put off by the occa­sion­al Bud­dhist ref­er­ence, I would also high­ly rec­om­mend the Insight Med­i­ta­tion Center’s free six-part intro­duc­tion to mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Lynch Talks Med­i­ta­tion with Paul McCart­ney

Mihaly Czik­szent­mi­ha­lyi Explains Why the Source of Hap­pi­ness Lies in Cre­ativ­i­ty and Flow, Not Mon­ey

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Mark Rothko is Toast … and More Edible Art from SFMOMA

in Art, Food & Drink | April 25th, 2013

rothko_toast

If you head to SFMO­MA’s café on Third Street in San Fran­cis­co, you can order up some Damien Hirst “Amy­lamine” lemon vel­vet cake, Don­ald Judd toma­to soup, and Mark Rothko Toast. The Rothko Toast comes paint­ed with apri­cot but­ter along the top, and wild blue­ber­ry jam along the bot­tom, cre­at­ing an edi­ble imi­ta­tion of Rothko’s paint­ing known as “No. 14, 1960.” The paint­ing (see below) hangs at SFMOMA, the West Coast’s first muse­um devot­ed to 20th cen­tu­ry art.

rothko 14

via Boing­Bo­ing & sfist

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