A recent study from BBC Earth and UC-Berkeley has shown that watching nature documentaries can inspire “significant increases in feelings of awe, contentedness, joy, amusement and curiosity” and conversely “reduce feelings of tiredness, anger and stress.” In short, they can engender what the authors of the study call ‘real happiness’ – a kind of happiness that leads to actual improvement in individuals’ health and wellbeing,
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On canvas and paper, Salvador Dalí created apparently nonsensical realities that nevertheless operated according to logic all their own; in writing, Lewis Carroll, author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, did the very same. It thus only makes sense, despite their differences in nationality and sensibility as well as their barely overlapping life spans, that their artistic worlds — one with its grotesquely misshapen objects, obscure symbols, and hauntingly empty vistas, the other full of wordplay, whimsy, and mathematics — would one day collide. It happened in 1969, when an editor at Random House commissioned the master surrealist to create illustrations for an exclusive edition of Carroll’s timeless story for the house’s book-of-the-month club.
“Although the outrageousness of Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who came up with the pen name Lewis Carroll in 1856, was limned within a conventional fairy tale,” writes Burstein, “the surrealists deliberately sought outrage and provocation in their art and lives and questioned the nature of reality. For both Carroll and the surrealists, what some call madness could be perceived by others as wisdom.” He describes surrealism’s initial objective as making “accessible to art the realms of the unconscious, the irrational, and the imaginary, and its influence soon went far beyond the visual arts and literature, embracing music, film, theater, philosophy, and popular culture. As have the Alice books.” And with so many realms of the unconscious, the irrational, and the imaginary left to explore, this intersection of Carroll and Dalí’s different yet compatible methods of exploration should hold more appeal than ever.
I’ve heard it said many times: “I don’t trust people who don’t swear.” It’s not an empirical statement. Just an intuition, that people who shy away from salty language might also shy away from certain truths—may even be, perhaps, a little delusional. Few people characterize teetotalers of swearing with more bite than Stephen Fry, who believes “the sort of twee person who thinks swearing is in any way a sign of a lack of education or of a lack of verbal interest is just a fucking lunatic.” George Carlin would approve. A comically exaggerated view. No, swearing isn’t necessarily a sign of mental illness. But it does correlate strongly with truthtelling.
It seems all the suspicious salts out there may have happened upon a measurable phenomenon. A study published last year with the cheeky title “Frankly, We Do Give a Damn: The Relationship Between Profanity and Honesty,” notes, “the consistent findings across the studies suggest that the positive relation between profanity and honesty is robust, and that relationship found at the individual level indeed translates to the society level.” It’s true, some research shows that people who swear may be likely to violate other social norms, god bless ‘em, but they are also less likely to lie during police interrogations.
After reviewing the literature, the researchers, led by Maastricht University Psychologist Gilad Feldman, describe the results of their own experiments. They asked 276 people to report on their swearing habits (or not) in detail. Those people then took a psychological test that measured their levels of honesty. Next, the team analyzed 70,000 social media interactions, and reported that “profanity and honesty were found to be significantly and positively correlated, indicating that those who used more profanity were more honest in their Facebook status updates.” They did not say whether high levels of honesty on Facebook is desirable.
Finally, Feldman and his colleagues widened their scope to 48 U.S. states, and were able to correlate social media data with measures of government accountability. States with higher levels of swearing had a higher integrity score according to a 2012 index published by the Center for Public Integrity. (Believe or not, New Jersey had some of the highest scores.) All three of their studies yielded similar results. “At both the individual and society level,” they conclude, “we found that a higher rate of profanity use was associated with more honesty.” This does not mean, as Ephrat Livni writes at Quartz, that “people who curse like sailors” won’t “commit serious ethical crimes—but they won’t pretend all’s well online.”
As to the question of whether swearing betrays a lack of education and an impoverished vocabulary, we might turn to linguist, psychologist, and neuroscientist Steven Pinker, who has made a learned defense of foul language, in drily humorous talks, books, and essays. “When used judiciously,” he writes in a 2008 Harvard Brain article, “swearing can be hilarious, poignant, and uncannily descriptive.” His is an argument that relies not only on data but on philosophical reflection and literary appreciation. “It’s a fact of life that people swear,” he says, and so, it’s a fact of art. Shakespeare invented dozens of swears and was never afraid to work blue. Perhaps that’s why we find his representations of humanity so perennially honest.
Note: If the video plays and you don’t hear sound, look for the volume control in the lower right hand corner of the video.
Within months of moving to London in autumn of 1966, Jimi Hendrix found himself a band, recorded a single, got himself a longterm girlfriend, and proceeded to take the UK by storm. His gigs were essential viewing by rock’s then-royalty–the Who, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Cream, all made sure they caught the American wonder. By the end of the year his first single “Hey Joe” landed him on British television and in the Top 10.
The above video is the first known footage of a live Jimi Hendrix Experience, though the band had been gigging for months. It takes place at the Chelmsford Corn Exchange, in the City of Chelmsford, about 50 miles north-east of London. The date is February 25, 1967, and the gig had only been advertised in the paper two days before (where he was listed as “Jimi Hendric”). As you can see, that’s all it took to fill this old traders building-turned-rock venue to the rafters.
The footage was shot for “Telixer: A Thing of Beat Is a Joy Forever,” a documentary on the current British music scene made for KRO, The Netherlands.
Hendrix and the band launch into Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” with a few ordinary opening bars setting up the guitar magic to follow. He then plays “Stone Free,” the b‑side of “Hey Joe.” You can see Pete Townshend and John Entwistle to the side of the stage, very briefly. The footage is intercut with shots of Swinging London and fashion hub Portobello Road, where it is said Hendrix bought his Hussars military jacket.
Hendrix gave two sets. That was the normal arrangement for the Corn’ole. Both sets usually 45 minutes to one hour each and there was absolutely no music to be had after 11.30pm…I have spent a long time looking for myself on that film clip but to no avail. I was probably still at the rear of the venue or even more likely in the local pub for the break!…Hendrix, at the end of the performance, walked straight up to a few of us standing just there and one of my mates lit his joint for him. They were so knocked out by that I recall. My recollection was more nasal. Rock musicians have this uncanny ability to harbour their own post-set aromas about themselves: in this case that unmistakeable aroma of cannabis…I will always remember that part even if my music recollections are a bit sparse. I have also ‘dined out’ on that anecdote for many years since. I had passed close by the ‘God’.
Ted Mills is a freelance writer on the arts who currently hosts the artist interview-based FunkZone Podcast and is the producer of KCRW’s Curious Coast. You can also follow him on Twitter at @tedmills, read his other arts writing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.
How do you get ordinary people interested in philosophy? If we are to believe the accounts of Plato, this wasn’t so difficult in ancient Athens. One simply lounged around the Acropolis harassing passersby, a tactic sure to fail in most city centers, town squares, and strip malls today. Podcasts and YouTube videos grab their share of eyes and ears, though many in their audiences also sing in the choir. Former Python John Cleese has done his part to popularize philosophical thinking. As someone who has moved between the worlds of academia and popular culture, Cleese has both credibility and visibility on his side. Some younger audiences (I write with apologies to Cleese) may be inclined to tune him out.
How about another actor with both fame and higher ed cred? Someone “very appealing to a younger demographic”? Someone like… James Franco—currently a doctoral student at Yale, and formerly a lecturer and/or student/graduate of UCLA, Columbia, NYU, Brooklyn College, Warren Wilson College, and the Rhode Island School of Design? This might seem like the resume either of an academic dilettante, or of a lifelong student and lover of knowledge.
Given Franco’s commitment to teaching, writing, and developing and starring in literary films like As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, The Broken Tower, and Howl, we might give him the benefit of the doubt. Not everyone’s a fan, but he does bring a good deal of academic enthusiasm to the role of philosophy popularizer.
Franco also brings along an actual philosopher, Eliot Michaelson, of King’s College, a former teacher of his. He proposed the idea of their project, “Philosophy Time,” while the two were at UCLA together, Michaelson as a grad student and Franco as an undergrad finishing his English degree after taking a hiatus from college to become a star. “We had somehow ended up becoming friends,” writes Michaelson, “In part, probably because I had no idea who he was.” Their long-gestating idea—an attempt to widen philosophy’s audience—has finally come to fruition. In the short episodes here, you can see the two in conversation with Rutgers University’s Andy Egan, at the top (on beauty), Princeton’s Liz Harmon, further up (on the fraught topic of abortion), and Rutgers’ Liz Camp, above and below (on imagination and metaphor).
Michaelson is a moderating influence. Franco’s laid back presentation will remind you of his performances in stoner comedy Pineapple Express, the 83rd Academy Awards ceremony, and the 2008 High Times Stoner of the Year event (though he swears he doesn’t touch the stuff anymore). Squiggly, animated word and thought bubbles add another comic touch. But whether or not viewers are charmed by his persona, they’ll find that he lets his guests do most of the talking, and they each make it plain that philosophy can be fascinating and imminently relevant to our ordinary modern lives. The kinds of questions Socrates needled hapless Athenians with—about beauty, ethics, and language—are just as pressing now as they were 2400 years ago.
In a press release issued last week, the Edward Hopper House announced that it will be receiving over 1,000 artifacts and memorabilia documenting Edward Hopper’s family life and early years. The collection “consists of juvenilia and other materials from the formative years of Hopper’s life and includes original letters, drawings from his school years … photographs, original newspaper articles, and other items that allow visitors to experience firsthand how Hopper’s childhood and home environment shaped his art.”
Above you can find Exhibit A from the collection. A picture that young Hopper, only 9 years old, drew on the back of his 3rd grade report card. A sure early sign of his talents.
Portions of this archive will be available for viewing this fall. If you’re in Nyack, New York, pay the Edward Hopper House a visit.
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Americans swim in propaganda all the time, even those of us who think the word refers to some exotic form of foreign authoritarianism rather than our own good ol’ home-cooked variety. But the sad fact—admittedly very far down the list of rather tragic facts—is that U.S. propaganda is particularly crude, obnoxious, and unappealing. Contrast, for example, the symbol of the pantsuit, or the casual racism, misogyny, and homicidal fantasies on trucker hats, t‑shirts, and beach towels with the alarming pageantry of Maoist China, Stalinist Russia, or name-your-showy-totalitarian-regime.
In the early days of the Soviet Union, state propaganda received a special boost from a cadre of eager and willing avant-garde artists, including poet, actor, director, etc. Vladimir Mayakovsky, who wrote Soviet children’s books, and a number of Russian Futurists who seized the opportunity to promote the new order with totally incomprehensible poetry and art.
In no way regimented or standardized, as were later Socialist Realists, early Soviet propagandists used politics as another material in their work, rather than its primary raison d’être.
These pioneers were joined by experimental composers, filmmakers, and even textile designers, who had a brief moment under the shining Soviet star between 1927 and 1933, when, as one publication from a wealthy collector notes, “a fascinating experiment in textile making took place in the Soviet Union. As the new nation emerged and the Communist party struggled to transform an agrarian country into an industrialized state, a group of young designers began to create thematic textile designs.”
Their designs—adorning tablecloths, sheets, curtains, and scarves and other items of everyday, off-the-rack wear—showcase bold, striking patterns, many, writes Dangerous Minds, “thematic of classical Russian art: you see lush color, dense scapes and even the odd Orientalist trope.” They are also filled with “delightfully propagandist imagery,” notes Marina Galperina at Flavorwire, “of revving tractors, smoke-pumping factor pipes, and babushka-clad women taking a sickle to wheat… woven in between opulent florals and pretty, constructivist squiggles.”
Factory gears, war machines, athletes, and scenes of industry were popular, as were the expected state symbols and iconography—as in the Lenin linen at the top, framed at the top by Marx and Engels; Trotsky at the bottom left has been purged from the textile record. See many more examples of early Soviet textiles at io9, Flashbak, and Messy Nessy.
No Japanese filmmaker has received quite as much international scrutiny, and for so long, as Akira Kurosawa. Though now almost twenty years gone, the man known in his homeland as the “Emperor” of cinema only continues to grow in stature on the landscape of global film culture. Film students still watch Rashomon, swords-and-sandals fans still thrill to Seven Samurai and Yojimbo, midcentury crime-picture buffs still turn up for screenings of Drunken Angel and Stray Dog, and many a Shakespeare buff still looks in admiration at his interpretations of Macbeth (as Throne of Blood) and King Lear (as Ran).
How did Kurosawa and his collaborators imbue these and many other acclaimed pictures with such enduring power? An entire subgenre of video essays has emerged to approach an answer to that question. At the top of the post we have one from Tony Zhou, creator of the well-known cinematic video essay series Every Frame a Painting, on Kurosawa’s “innate understanding of movement and how to capture it onscreen.”
His staging also demonstrates a highly developed sense of space, which Zhou reveals in the short essay just above by breaking down a scene from 1960’s corporate-corruption drama The Bad Sleep Well.
All of those film students watching Seven Samurai may not consider it a true action film, at least by their ultra-modern standards, but the way Kurosawa’s best-known picture tells its story through artfully rendered movement and violence has stood as an example for action filmmakers ever since. Lewis Bond, the video essayist behind Channel Criswell, draws out the lessons Seven Samurai still holds for action cinema today, in the essay above. But what happens in the frame also gains much of its impact from the construction of the frame itself. A video essayist by the name of Mr. Nerdista looks at Kurosawa’s unusual mastery of the art of framing, as seen in Rashomon, in the essay below.
But no film, no matter how skillfully made, could cross as many historical and cultural boundaries as Kurosawa’s have with aesthetics alone. The strong moral sense at the dramatic core of his work — a characteristic, too, of the Shakespeare plays from which he drew inspiration — will keep it forever relevant, not because it presents the audience with simple lessons about what to do and what not to do, but because it forces them to consider the most difficult moral questions. This comes most clearly to the fore in 1963’s modern-day ransom story High and Low, examined in the Jack’s Movie Reviews essay below.
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