Top 10 Alternative Christmas Movie Lists: Horror, Action, Comedy & More

in Film | December 23rd, 2025

Die Hard is a Christ­mas movie. That once-con­trar­i­an cat­e­go­riza­tion has increas­ing­ly been accept­ed over the past cou­ple of decades, at least since an edi­tor with whom I’ve often worked first declared it in a Slate roundup. As a result, John McTier­nan’s stur­dy piece of one-build­ing eight­ies Hol­ly­wood action may have dis­placed It’s a Won­der­ful Life as a hol­i­day home-video tra­di­tion in cer­tain house­holds. But it’s also stoked a broad­er desire for ever more alter­na­tive Christ­mas movies with sub­tle, even sub­ver­sive hol­i­day ele­ments. If you, too, can’t han­dle yet anoth­er view­ing of Mir­a­cle on 34th Street, A Christ­mas Sto­ry, or Home Alone this year, have a look at the top ten lists com­piled in these four videos, which offer a selec­tion of films beyond — some­times well beyond — the estab­lished sea­son­al canon.

These selec­tions come from a vari­ety of gen­res, includ­ing the super­hero pic­ture: if you haven’t seen Bat­man Returns in a few decades, you may have for­got­ten how thor­ough­ly Tim Bur­ton sat­u­rates it with Christ­mas imagery, albeit of a kind suit­ed to the dank, men­ac­ing Gotham City. Those who want to crank up the dark­ness fur­ther still would do well to put on the Cana­di­an soror­i­ty-house slash­er film Black Christ­mas, which also appears on more than one of these lists.

Joe Dan­te’s Yule­tide-set Grem­lins con­tains much high­er-bud­get spec­ta­cles of destruc­tion, albeit comedic ones; the humor of Ter­ry Gilliam’s Brazil, anoth­er elab­o­rate mid-eight­ies auteur project, runs to the dystopi­an, a sen­si­bil­i­ty cer­tain­ly present in the hol­i­day sea­son itself, if sel­dom treat­ed with such grotesque vivid­ness.

The work of no sin­gle pro­fes­sion­al makes these alter­na­tive Christ­mas movie lists more often than Shane Black, the writer of Lethal Weapon (with Die Hard, the mak­ings of a hol­i­day dou­ble bill if ever there was one) and The Long Kiss Good­night, as well as the writer-direc­tor of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man 3, and The Nice Guys. That all of those pic­tures are set at Christ­mas­time makes them feel — no mat­ter how height­ened, fan­tas­ti­cal, or visu­al effects-sat­u­rat­ed they may be — pal­pa­bly con­nect­ed to our own real­i­ty. It also tends to inten­si­fy the dra­ma: as Black remarked in one inter­view, “Christ­mas rep­re­sents a lit­tle stut­ter in the march of days, a hush in which we have a chance to assess and ret­ro­spect our lives.” Which hard­ly means, of course, that it can’t be enter­tain­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch San­ta Claus, the Ear­li­est Movie About San­ta in Exis­tence (1898)

Watch The Insects’ Christ­mas from 1913: A Stop Motion Film Star­ring a Cast of Dead Bugs

An Ani­mat­ed Christ­mas Fable by Mau­rice Sendak (1977)

The Junky’s Christ­mas: William S. Burrough’s Dark Clay­ma­tion Christ­mas Film Pro­duced by Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la (1993)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, the Most Trou­bling Christ­mas Film Ever Made

Blue Christ­mas: A Cri­te­ri­on Video Essay

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Life and Work of Afrobeat Creator Fela Kuti Explored by Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad

in History, Music, Podcasts | December 23rd, 2025

When dis­cussing a musi­cian like Fela Kuti, many of our usu­al terms fail us. They fail us, that is, if we came of age in a musi­cal cul­ture in which artists and bands put out an album of ten or so lyrics-for­ward songs every two or three years, pro­mot­ing it on tour while also play­ing their biggest hits. Fela — as all his fans refer to him — could put out six or sev­en albums in a sin­gle year, and refused to play live any mate­r­i­al he’d already record­ed. Even the word song, as we know it, does­n’t quite reflect the nature of his com­po­si­tions, which got expan­sive enough that two or three of them (or just one, half of it on each side) could fill a long-play­ing record.

Wal­ter Ben­jamin said of great lit­er­ary works that they either dis­solve a genre or invent one, and Fela’s musi­cal works invent­ed the genre of Afrobeat. The sound of that genre, as explained by Noah Lefevre in the Poly­phon­ic video above, reflects the dis­tinc­tive for­ma­tion of Fela him­self, who was born and raised in Nige­ria, stud­ied at the Trin­i­ty Col­lege of Music in Lon­don, and came of age dur­ing the end of Africa’s era of decol­o­niza­tion. To a lis­ten­er reared on Anglo-Amer­i­can pop­u­lar music, his sig­na­ture mix­ture of West African rhythms with jazz and funk tex­tures sounds famil­iar enough — at least for the first ten or fif­teen min­utes, after which time the lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence ascends to a dif­fer­ent state entire­ly.

Some­times it takes Fela just about that long to start singing, and when he does, he’s giv­en to procla­ma­tions, chants, calls-and-respons­es, and polit­i­cal exhor­ta­tions deliv­ered in the kind of Eng­lish that sounds high­ly unfa­mil­iar to non-African lis­ten­ers. Not that it’s always alien­at­ing: indeed, this par­tic­u­lar com­bi­na­tion of words and music has cap­ti­vat­ed gen­er­a­tions of lis­ten­ers from far out­side its place of ori­gin. One of them is David Byrne, who used Talk­ing Heads’ Remain in Light as more or less a medi­um for chan­nel­ing the musi­cal spir­it of Fela. Not that he him­self was gone yet: indeed, he had almost two decades of his event­ful life to go, one you can learn much more about from Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, a twelve-part bio­graph­i­cal pod­cast by Jad Abum­rad.

Brought into Fela’s world by a fam­i­ly con­nec­tion, that for­mer Radi­o­lab host con­duct­ed dozens and dozens of inter­views on the rela­tion­ship between the man, his music, and the polit­i­cal con­text in which he found him­self. The facts, as any Fela fan knows, don’t always align com­fort­ably with main­stream sen­si­bil­i­ties of the twen­ty-twen­ties — the charges range from essen­tial­ism to polygamy — but as Lefevre reminds us, an artist should be inter­pret­ed through the lens of his own cul­ture and his­to­ry. How­ev­er many of us con­sid­er him a “prob­lem­at­ic fave” today, Fela Kuti will always be the man who invent­ed Afrobeat — and since nobody else has quite man­aged to repli­cate his grooves in their simul­ta­ne­ous tight­ness and loose­ness, blunt­ness and sub­tle­ty, per­haps also the man who dis­solved it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to the Life & Music of Fela Kuti: Rad­i­cal Niger­ian Band­leader, Polit­i­cal Hero, and Cre­ator of Afrobeat

When Afrobeat Leg­end Fela Kuti Col­lab­o­rat­ed with Cream Drum­mer Gin­ger Bak­er

Zam­rock: An Intro­duc­tion to Zambia’s 1970s Rich & Psy­che­del­ic Rock Scene

Watch the Talk­ing Heads Play Mate­r­i­al From Their Ground­break­ing Album Remain in Light in an Incred­i­ble Con­cert from 1980

The Awe-Inspir­ing But Trag­ic Sto­ry of Africa’s Fes­ti­val In The Desert (2001–2012)

Stream 8,000 Vin­tage Afropop Record­ings Dig­i­tized & Made Avail­able by The British Library

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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What Pompeii Looked Like Hours Before Its Destruction: A Reconstruction

in History | December 22nd, 2025

How­ev­er cel­e­brat­ed by his­to­ri­ans, scru­ti­nized by archae­ol­o­gists, and descend­ed-upon by tourists it may be, Pom­peii is not excep­tion­al — not even in the fate of hav­ing been buried in ash by Mount Vesu­vius in the year 76, which also hap­pened to the near­by town of Her­cu­la­neum. Rather, it is the sheer ordi­nar­i­ness of that medi­um-sized provin­cial Roman city that we most val­ue today, inad­ver­tent­ly pre­served as it was by that vol­canic dis­as­ter. The new Lost in Time video above recon­structs Pom­peii as it must have looked at the very end of its days, tak­ing a look at every­thing from its homes to its aque­ducts, its forum to its basil­i­ca, and its wine and per­fume pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties to its glad­i­a­to­r­i­al are­na.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the Amphithe­atre of Pom­peii is much small­er than the Colos­se­um. But it was actu­al­ly built 140 years ear­li­er, at a time when local lead­ers across the empire were already start­ing to feel that any self-respect­ing Roman town ought to have its own venue for spec­ta­cles involv­ing one-on-one com­bat, feats of ath­leti­cism, exot­ic ani­mals, and even pub­lic exe­cu­tions.

The same ulti­mate­ly went for all the types of facil­i­ties unearthed in the entombed city’s pub­lic spaces and pri­vate homes alike, includ­ing baths, snack bars, and din­ing rooms. To that extent, Pom­peii had it all, even if life there lacked the poten­tial for advance­ment and intrigue offered only by the Eter­nal City.

As the video gives its tour of a still-thriv­ing Pom­peii, it counts down to the erup­tion of Vesu­vius, which last­ed about two days. “Why did­n’t peo­ple leave the city?” asks the nar­ra­tor. “His­to­ri­ans claim that about 2,000 peo­ple lost their lives in Pom­peii that day, mean­ing about 10,000 man­aged to escape.” It is to the writ­ings of one such escapee, Pliny the Younger, that we owe much of what we know about the expe­ri­ence of the cat­a­stro­phe itself — and to cen­turies of exam­i­na­tion since its redis­cov­ery as an archae­o­log­i­cal site that we have the kind of knowl­edge about the place that goes into a recon­struc­tion like this one. Those efforts have fed our under­stand­ing of life in the ancient world as a whole, for in its after­life, Pom­peii has become not just a medi­um-sized provin­cial Roman city, but the medi­um-sized provin­cial Roman city.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Destruc­tion of Pom­peii by Mount Vesu­vius, Re-Cre­at­ed with Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion (79 AD)

Take a High Def, Guid­ed Tour of Pom­peii

Behold 3D Recre­ations of Pompeii’s Lav­ish Homes–As They Exist­ed Before the Erup­tion of Mount Vesu­vius

The Last Morn­ing in Pom­peii & The Night Pom­peii Died: A New Video Series Explores the End of the Doomed Roman City

The Only Writ­ten Eye-Wit­ness Account of Pompeii’s Destruc­tion: Hear Pliny the Younger’s Let­ters on the Mount Vesu­vius Erup­tion

The Only Writ­ten Eye-Wit­ness Account of Pompeii’s Destruc­tion: Hear Pliny the Younger’s Let­ters on the Mount Vesu­vius Erup­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Langston Hughes’ Homemade Christmas Cards From 1950

in Life, Literature, Poetry | December 22nd, 2025

Who doesn’t trea­sure a hand­made present?

As the years go by, we may begin to offload the ill-fit­ting sweaters, the nev­er lit sand cast can­dles, and the Sty­ro­foam ball snow­men. But a present made of words takes up very lit­tle space, and it has the Ghost of Christ­mas Past’s pow­er to instant­ly evoke the sender as they once were.

Sev­en­ty years ago, poet Langston Hugh­es, too skint to go Christ­mas shop­ping, sent every­one on his gift list sim­ple, home­made hol­i­day post­cards. Typed on white card­stock, each signed card was embell­ished with red and green pen­cils and mailed for the price of a 3¢ stamp.

As biog­ra­ph­er Arnold Ram­per­sad notes:

The last weeks of 1950 found him nev­er­the­less in a melan­choly mood, his spir­its sink­ing low­er again as he again became a tar­get of red-bait­ing.

The year start­ed aus­pi­cious­ly with The New York Times prais­ing his libret­to for The Bar­ri­er, an opera based on his play, Mulat­to: A Tragedy of the Deep South. But the opera was a com­mer­cial flop, and pos­i­tive reviews for his book Sim­ple Speaks His Mind failed to trans­late into the hoped-for sales.

Although he had recent­ly pur­chased an East Harlem brown­stone with an old­er cou­ple who dot­ed on him as they would a son, pro­vid­ing him with a sun­ny, top floor work­space, 1950 was far from his favorite year.

His type­writ­ten hol­i­day cou­plets took things out on a jaun­ty note, while pay­ing light lip ser­vice to his plight.

Maybe we can aspire to the same…

Hugh­es’ hand­made hol­i­day cards reside in the Langston Hugh­es Papers in Yale’s Bei­necke Rare Book and Man­u­script Library, along with hol­i­day cards spe­cif­ic to the African-Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence received from friends and asso­ciates.

via the Bei­necke Rare Book and Man­u­script Library at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Langston Hugh­es Reads Langston Hugh­es

A Sim­ple, Down-to-Earth Christ­mas Card from the Great Depres­sion (1933)

Hear Neil Gaiman Read A Christ­mas Car­ol Just as Dick­ens Read It

How Joni Mitchell’s Song of Heart­break, “Riv­er,” Became a Christ­mas Clas­sic

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er in NYC.

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Hunter S. Thompson Sets His Christmas Tree on Fire, Nearly Burning His House Down (1990)

in Literature, Random | December 19th, 2025

It was some­thing of a Christ­mas rit­u­al at Hunter S. Thomp­son’s Col­orado cab­in, Owl Farm. Every year, his sec­re­tary Deb­o­rah Fuller would take down the Christ­mas tree and leave it on the front porch rather than dis­pose of it entire­ly. That’s because Hunter, more often than not, want­ed to set it on fire. In 1990, Sam Allis, a writer for the then for­mi­da­ble TIME mag­a­zine, vis­it­ed Thomp­son’s home and watched the fiery tra­di­tion unfold. He wrote:

I gave up on the inter­view and start­ed wor­ry­ing about my life when Hunter Thomp­son squirt­ed two cans of fire starter on the Christ­mas tree he was going to burn in his liv­ing-room fire­place, a few feet away from an unopened wood­en crate of 9‑mm bul­lets. That the tree was far too large to fit into the fire­place mat­tered not a whit to Hunter, who was sport­ing a dime-store wig at the time and resem­bled Tony Perkins in Psy­cho. Min­utes ear­li­er, he had smashed a Polaroid cam­era on the floor.

Hunter had decid­ed to video­tape the Christ­mas tree burn­ing, and we lat­er heard on the replay the ter­ri­fied voic­es of Deb­o­rah Fuller, his long­time sec­re­tary-baby sit­ter, and me off-cam­era plead­ing with him, “NO, HUNTER, NO! PLEASE, HUNTER, DON’T DO IT!” The orig­i­nal man­u­script of Hell’s Angels was on the table, and there were the bul­lets. Noth­ing doing. Thomp­son was a man pos­sessed by now, full of the Chivas Regal he had been slurp­ing straight from the bot­tle and the gin he had been mix­ing with pink lemon­ade for hours.

The wood­en man­tel above the fire­place appar­ent­ly still has burn marks on it today.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Filled Dai­ly Rou­tine

Free: Read the Orig­i­nal 23,000-Word Essay That Became Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Future, Telling Studs Terkel About the Com­ing Revenge of the Eco­nom­i­cal­ly & Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly “Obso­lete” (1967)

Hunter S. Thomp­son, Exis­ten­tial­ist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Find­ing Mean­ing in Life

Hunter S. Thompson’s Ball­sy & Hilar­i­ous Job Appli­ca­tion Let­ter (1958)

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A Visual Timeline of World History: Watch the Rise & Fall of Civilizations Over 5,000 Years

in Design, History | December 18th, 2025

In the video above, Use­fulCharts cre­ator Matt Bak­er sug­gests that we not refer to the peri­od span­ning the fifth and the late fif­teenth cen­turies as the “dark ages.” In jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, he does­n’t put forth the argu­ment, now fair­ly com­mon, that the time in ques­tion was actu­al­ly full of sub­tle inno­va­tion occlud­ed by mod­ern prej­u­dice. The real prob­lem, as he sees it, is that the slow­ing, if not revers­ing, of the progress of human soci­ety that we’ve tra­di­tion­al­ly regard­ed as occur­ring in what are com­mon­ly known as the Mid­dle Ages only occurred in Europe. What’s more, there have been mul­ti­ple such eras in the world: take the ear­li­er “Greek dark ages” asso­ci­at­ed with the Bronze Age civ­i­liza­tion­al col­lapse of 1177 BC.

All this and more comes across at a glance on Bak­er’s Time­line of World His­to­ry, whose design is explained in the video. With char­ac­ter­is­tic Use­fulCharts clar­i­ty (also demon­strat­ed by the World Reli­gions Fam­i­ly Tree and the Evo­lu­tion of the Alpha­bet, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture), it lays out all the peri­ods of his­to­ry we may know bet­ter by their names than by their rela­tion­ship to actu­al events.

At the top, it begins with the end of pre­his­to­ry and the start of his­to­ry: that is, when writ­ing devel­oped around 5,300 years ago. At that point, mul­ti­ple civ­i­liza­tions had already begun to estab­lish them­selves around the world, and it is their growth and decline rep­re­sent­ed by the thick­ness of the lines run­ning down the time­line’s reg­u­lar cen­tu­ry-long divi­sions.

As the ear­ly Bronze Age gives way to the Bronze Age, the Bronze Age gives way to the Iron Age, and the Iron Age gives way to Clas­si­cal Antiq­ui­ty, these lines of civ­i­liza­tion thick­en into those of empire. None come thick­er than that of ancient Rome, which occu­pies the visu­al cen­ter of the poster (itself, inci­den­tal­ly, avail­able for pur­chase from Use­fulCharts’ site), but the design’s strength lies less in under­scor­ing the impor­tance of any one empire than of reveal­ing how much his­to­ry was going on all over the world at any giv­en time. Using its ver­ti­cal lines to trace the rise and fall of the Olmecs, say, or the Aksum­ite Empire or the Mis­sis­sip­pi­an Cul­ture, one can hard­ly sup­press a feel­ing of Ozy­man­di­an tran­sience. Nor, for that mat­ter, can one ignore that all of us live out our lives with­in the span of two of its hor­i­zon­tal ones.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Inter­ac­tive Time­line Cov­er­ing 14 Bil­lion Years of His­to­ry: From The Big Bang to 2015

The His­to­ry of Civ­i­liza­tion Mapped in 13 Min­utes: 5000 BC to 2014 AD

World Reli­gions Explained with Use­ful Charts: Hin­duism, Bud­dhism, Judaism, Islam, Chris­tian­i­ty & More

The His­to­ry of the Earth (All 4.5 Bil­lion Years) in 1 Hour: A Mil­lion Years Cov­ered Every Sec­ond

6,000 Years of His­to­ry Visu­al­ized in a 23-Foot-Long Time­line of World His­to­ry, Cre­at­ed in 1871

The Writ­ing Sys­tems of the World Explained, from the Latin Alpha­bet to the Abugi­das of India

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Hear Debussy Play Debussy: A Vintage Recording from 1913

in History, Music, Photography | December 18th, 2025

A cen­tu­ry ago, the great French com­pos­er Claude Debussy sat down at a con­trap­tion called a Welte-Mignon repro­duc­ing piano and record­ed a series of per­for­mances for pos­ter­i­ty. The machine was designed to encode the nuances of a pianist’s play­ing, includ­ing ped­al­ing and dynam­ics, onto piano rolls for lat­er repro­duc­tion.

Debussy record­ed 14 pieces onto six rolls in Paris on or before Novem­ber 1, 1913. Accord­ing to Debussy enthu­si­ast Steve Bryson’s web site, the com­pos­er was delight­ed with the repro­duc­tion qual­i­ty, say­ing in a let­ter to Edwin Welte: “It is impos­si­ble to attain a greater per­fec­tion of repro­duc­tion than that of the Welte appa­ra­tus. I am hap­py to assure you in these lines of my aston­ish­ment and admi­ra­tion of what I heard. I am, Dear Sir, Yours Faith­ful­ly, Claude Debussy.”

The selec­tion above is “La soirée dans Grenade” (“Grena­da in the evening”), from Debussy’s 1903 trio of com­po­si­tions titled Estam­pes, or “Prints.” Debussy was inspired by the Sym­bol­ist poets and Impres­sion­ist painters who strove to go beyond the sur­face of a sub­ject to evoke the feel­ing it gave off. “La soirée dans Grenade” is described by Chris­tine Steven­son at Notes From a Pianist as a “sound pic­ture” of Moor­ish Spain:

Debussy’s first-hand expe­ri­ence of Spain was neg­li­gi­ble at that time, but he imme­di­ate­ly con­jures up the coun­try by using the per­sua­sive Haben­era dance rhythm to open the piece–softly and sub­tly. It insin­u­ates itself into our con­scious­ness with its qui­et insis­tence on a repeat­ed C sharp in dif­fer­ent reg­is­ters; around it cir­cles a lan­guid, Moor­ish arabesque, with nasal aug­ment­ed 2nds, and a nag­ging semi­tone pulling against the tonal cen­tre, occa­sion­al­ly inter­rupt­ed by mut­ter­ing semi­qua­vers [16th notes] and a whole-tone based pas­sage. Debussy writes Com­mencer lente­ment dans un rythme non­cha­la­m­ment gra­cieux [Begin slow­ly in a casu­al­ly grace­ful rhythm] at the begin­ning, but lat­er Tres ryth­mé [Very rhyth­mic] in a bright­ly lit A major as the dance comes out of the shad­ows, ff [Fortissimo–loudly], with the click of cas­tanets and the stamp­ing of feet.

Debussy was 52 years old and suf­fer­ing from can­cer when he made his piano roll record­ings. He died less than five years lat­er, on March 25, 1918. Since then, his beau­ti­ful and evoca­tive music has secured a place for him as one of the most influ­en­tial and pop­u­lar com­posers of the 20th cen­tu­ry. As Roger Hecht writes at Clas­si­cal Net, “Debussy was a dream­er whose music dreamed with him.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear The Rite of Spring Con­duct­ed by Igor Stravin­sky Him­self: A Vin­tage Record­ing from 1929

Hear a 1930 Record­ing of Bolero, Con­duct­ed by Rav­el Him­self

Rare 1946 Film: The Great Russ­ian Com­pos­er Sergei Prokofiev Plays Piano, Dis­cuss­es His Music

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The Evil Genius of Fascist Design: How Mussolini and Hitler Used Art & Architecture to Project Power

in Architecture, History, Politics | December 17th, 2025

When the Nazis came to pow­er in 1933, they declared the begin­ning of a “Thou­sand-Year Reich” that ulti­mate­ly came up about 988 years short. Fas­cism in Italy man­aged to hold on to pow­er for a cou­ple of decades, which was pre­sum­ably still much less time than Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni imag­ined he’d get on the throne. His­to­ry shows us that regimes of this kind suf­fered a fair­ly severe sta­bil­i­ty prob­lem, which is per­haps why they need­ed to put forth such a sol­id, for­mi­da­ble image. The IMPERIAL video above explores “the evil genius of fas­cist design,” focus­ing on how Hitler and Mus­soli­ni ren­dered their ide­olo­gies in art and the built envi­ron­ment, but many of its obser­va­tions can be gen­er­al­ized to any polit­i­cal move­ment that seeks total con­trol of a soci­ety, espe­cial­ly if that soci­ety has a suf­fi­cient­ly glo­ri­ous-seem­ing past.

Fas­cis­m’s visu­al lan­guage has many inspi­ra­tions, two of the most impor­tant cit­ed in the video being  Roman­ti­cism and Futur­ism. The for­mer offered “a long­ing for the past, an obses­sion with nature, and a focus on the sub­lime”; the lat­ter “wor­shiped speed, machines, and vio­lence.” Despite their appar­ent con­tra­dic­tion, these dual cur­rents allowed fas­cism “a pecu­liar abil­i­ty to look both back­ward and for­ward, to sum­mon the glo­ry of past empires while promis­ing a rad­i­cal new future.”

In Italy, such an empire may have been dis­tant in time, but it was nev­er­the­less close at hand. “We dream of a Roman Italy that is wise and strong, dis­ci­plined and Impe­r­i­al.” Even Hitler drew from the glo­ries of ancient Rome and Greece to shape his own aspi­ra­tional vision of an all-pow­er­ful Ger­man civ­i­liza­tion.

Hence both of those dic­ta­tors under­tak­ing large-scale Neo­clas­si­cal-style archi­tec­tur­al projects “to bring the aes­thet­ics of ancient Rome to their city streets,” includ­ing even mus­cu­lar stat­ues meant to embody the offi­cial­ly sanc­tioned human ide­al. Of course, the builders of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca had also looked to Roman forms, but they did so at a small­er, more humane scale. Fas­cist struc­tures were designed not just to be eter­nal sym­bols but over­whelm­ing pres­ences, intend­ed “not to ele­vate the soul, but to crush the indi­vid­ual into the crowd and pro­mote con­for­mi­ty.” This, in the­o­ry, would make the cit­i­zen feel small and pow­er­less, but with an accom­pa­ny­ing qua­si-reli­gious long­ing to be part of a larg­er project: that of fas­cism, which sub­or­di­nates every­thing to the state. For the likes of Mus­soli­ni and Hitler (an artist-turned-politi­cian, as one can hard­ly fail to note), aes­thet­ics was pow­er — albeit not quite enough, in the event, to ensure their own sur­vival.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wal­ter Ben­jamin Explains How Fas­cism Uses Mass Media to Turn Pol­i­tics Into Spec­ta­cle (1935)

Yale Pro­fes­sor Jason Stan­ley Iden­ti­fies 10 Tac­tics of Fas­cism: The “Cult of the Leader,” Law & Order, Vic­tim­hood and More

Mus­soli­ni Sends to Amer­i­ca a Hap­py Mes­sage, Full of Friend­ly Feel­ings, in Eng­lish (1927)

Are You a Fas­cist?: Take Theodor Adorno’s Author­i­tar­i­an Per­son­al­i­ty Test Cre­at­ed to Com­bat Fas­cism (1947)

The Sto­ry of Fas­cism: Rick Steves’ Doc­u­men­tary Helps Us Learn from the Painful Lessons of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Umber­to Eco’s List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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