Watch the Jackson 5’s First Appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show (1969)

in Animation, Music, Television | November 8th, 2021

Who dis­cov­ered the Jack­son 5?

Motown founder Berry Gordy?

Empress of Soul Gladys Knight?

Diva Diana Ross?

Every­one in atten­dance for Ama­teur Night at the Apol­lo on August 13, 1967?

For many unsus­pect­ing Amer­i­cans, the answer may as well have been tele­vi­sion host Ed Sul­li­van, who intro­duced the “sen­sa­tion­al group” of five young broth­ers from Gary, Indi­ana to view­ers in Decem­ber 1969, two years after their Ama­teur Night tri­umph. Thir­teen years ear­li­er, a wall of sound ema­nat­ing from a live in-stu­dio audi­ence of teenage girls told Sullivan’s home view­ers that anoth­er young sen­sa­tion — Elvis Pres­ley — must be some­thing spe­cial.

The Jack­son 5 need­ed no such help.

While there are many close-ups of their fresh young faces, the con­trol room wise­ly chose to zoom out much of the time, in appre­ci­a­tion of the broth­ers’ pre­ci­sion chore­og­ra­phy.

The bright­est star was the youngest, eleven-year-old Michael, tak­ing lead vocals in pur­ple fedo­ra and fringed vest on a cov­er of Sly and the Fam­i­ly Stone’s “Stand.”

Jack­ie, Tito, Jer­maine, and Mar­lon pro­vide sup­port for a bit of hokum that posi­tions Michael at the cen­ter of an ele­men­tary school romance, by way of intro­duc­tion to a full throat­ed cov­er of Smokey Robinson’s “Who’s Lov­ing You”:

We toast­ed our love dur­ing milk break. I gave her my cook­ies! We fell out dur­ing fin­ger­paint­ing. 

Author Carvell Wal­lace reflects on this moment in his 2015 New York­er review of Steve Knopper’s biog­ra­phy MJ: The Genius of Michael Jack­son:

Halfway through, he for­gets his lines and freezes, look­ing back at his old­er broth­ers for help. It’s an alarm­ing­ly vul­ner­a­ble moment, one only pos­si­ble in the era of live tele­vi­sion. You feel bad for him. It sud­den­ly doesn’t seem right that a kid should be made to per­form live in front of an entire coun­try. Yet he some­how finds his way back and stum­bles through.

When the music starts, we see some­thing else entire­ly. The first note he sings is as con­fi­dent, sure, and pur­pose­ful as any adult could ever be. He trans­forms from ner­vous child at a tal­ent show into time­less embod­i­ment of long­ing. Not only does he sing exact­ly on key but he appears to sing from the very bot­tom of his heart. He stares into the cam­era, shakes his head, and blinks back tears in per­fect imi­ta­tion of a six­ties soul man. And it feels, for a moment, as though there are two dif­fer­ent beings here. One is a child—a smart kid, to be sure, and cute, but not more spe­cial than any oth­er child. He is sub­ject to the same laws of life—pain, age, con­fu­sion, fear—as we all are. The oth­er being seems to be a spir­it of sorts, one who knows only the truest expres­sion of human feel­ing. And this spir­it appears to have ran­dom­ly inhab­it­ed the body of this par­tic­u­lar mor­tal kid. In so doing, it has sen­tenced him to a life­time of inde­scrib­able enchant­ment and con­sum­mate suf­fer­ing.

Michael’s explo­sive per­for­mance of the Jack­son 5’s first nation­al sin­gle, “I Want You Back,” released just two months before their Sul­li­van Show appear­ance, gives us that “spir­it” in full force.

It’s also not hard to imag­ine that the broth­ers’ thrilling­ly exe­cut­ed chore­og­ra­phy is the result of a lit­er­al­ly pun­ish­ing rehearsal reg­i­men, a fac­tor of the King of Pop’s trou­bled lega­cy.

The Sul­li­van Show appear­ance ensured that there would be no stop­ping this train. Five months lat­er, when the Jack­sons returned to the Sul­li­van Show, “I Want You Back” had sold over a mil­lion copies, as had “ABC,” which they per­formed as a med­ley.

Boy­hood is fleet­ing, mak­ing Jack­son­ma­nia a carpe diem type sit­u­a­tion.

The peri­od from 1969 to 1972 saw an onslaught of Jack­son 5‑related merch and a funky Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon whose pilot tart­ed up the Diana Ross ori­gin sto­ry with an escaped pet snake.

It was good while it last­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Elvis’ Three Appear­ances on The Ed Sul­li­van Show: Watch His­to­ry in the Mak­ing and from the Waist Up (1956)

The Ori­gins of Michael Jackson’s Moon­walk: Vin­tage Footage of Cab Cal­loway, Sam­my Davis Jr., Fred Astaire & More

The Cho­rus Project Fea­tures Teenagers Per­form­ing Hits by the Kinks, David Byrne, the Jack­son 5 & More

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

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Watch Wes Anderson’s Animated Music Video for The French Dispatch, Featuring a Track by Jarvis Cocker

in Animation, Film, Music | November 3rd, 2021

The French Dis­patch came out near­ly two weeks ago, after hav­ing been pushed back more than a year by COVID-19. But delay­ing the release of a Wes Ander­son movie sure­ly counts among the least regret­table harms of the pan­dem­ic, which has caused mil­lions of deaths world­wide. Among the lives lost was that of Daniel Bevilac­qua, known in France as the chan­son singer Christophe. Set in that coun­try — and more specif­i­cal­ly, the fic­tion­al city of Ennui-sur-Blasé — in the 1960s, The French Dis­patch fea­tures a rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of Christophe’s 1965 hit “Aline” that now plays as some­thing of a trib­ute to the late pop-cul­tur­al icon. Sung by Pulp front­man Jarvis Cock­er, it comes accom­pa­nied by the Ander­son-direct­ed ani­mat­ed music video above.

Cock­er has worked with Ander­son before. In the direc­tor’s 2009 stop-motion adap­ta­tion of Roald Dahl’s The Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox he pro­vid­ed the voice of a singing farmer named Petey; in The French Dis­patch he does the same for a pop star called Tip-Top, and has even record­ed a full-length album in char­ac­ter.

Released on the very same day as The French Dis­patch, Chan­sons d’En­nui Tip-Top con­tains a dozen cov­ers of songs orig­i­nal­ly pop­u­lar­ized by the likes of Serge Gains­bourg, Brigitte Bar­dot, Jacques Dutronc, and Françoise Hardy. (Atten­tive cinephiles, the core audi­ence for all things Ander­son, will also note the pres­ence on the track list of Claude Channes’ “Mao Mao,” first heard in Jean-Luc Godard­’s La Chi­noise.)

Chan­sons d’En­nui Tip-Top exudes the retro-mind­ed Cock­er’s love of 1960s French pop music, just as The French Dis­patch exudes Ander­son­’s love of… well, every­thing Ander­son loves, much of which appears in the “Aline” music video. Its metic­u­lous­ly hand-drawn look comes from Javi Aznarez, who’d orig­i­nal­ly been hired to apply his art to the sets of the film itself. Fol­low­ing Tip-Top as he dances through an elab­o­rate two-dimen­sion­al ren­di­tion of Ennui-sur-Blasé, it intro­duces not only the set­ting (in a stark cut­away man­ner rem­i­nis­cent of The Life Aquat­ic) but all the major char­ac­ters and the actors who play them. Owen Wil­son, Anjel­i­ca Hus­ton, Edward Nor­ton, Bill Mur­ray: the gang, it seems, is all here — “here” being a cer­tain idea of post­war France best real­ized, per­haps, by imag­i­na­tions like Ander­son and Cock­er’s.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wes Ander­son Releas­es the Offi­cial Trail­er for His New Film, The French Dis­patch: Watch It Online

Watch the New Trail­er for Wes Anderson’s Stop-Motion Film Isle of Dogs, Inspired by Aki­ra Kuro­sawa

Wes Anderson’s Ani­mat­ed Books

Wes Anderson’s Shorts Films & Com­mer­cials: A Playlist of 8 Short Ander­son­ian Works

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

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The Myth of Sisyphus Creatively Animated in an Oscar-Nominated Short Film (1974)

in Animation | October 12th, 2021

Even if you don’t know the myth by name, you know the sto­ry. In Greek mythol­o­gy, Sisy­phus, King of Corinth, was pun­ished “for his self-aggran­diz­ing crafti­ness and deceit­ful­ness by being forced to roll an immense boul­der up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, repeat­ing this action for eter­ni­ty.” In mod­ern times, this sto­ry inspired Albert Camus to write “The Myth of Sisy­phus,” an essay where he famous­ly intro­duced his con­cept of the “absurd” and iden­ti­fied Sisy­phus as the absurd hero. And it pro­vid­ed the cre­ative mate­r­i­al for a breath­tak­ing­ly good ani­ma­tion cre­at­ed by Mar­cell Jankovics in 1974. The film, notes the anno­ta­tion that accom­pa­nies the ani­ma­tion on Youtube, is “pre­sent­ed in a sin­gle, unbro­ken shot, con­sist­ing of a dynam­ic line draw­ing of Sisy­phus, the stone, and the moun­tain­side.” Fit­ting­ly, Jankovics’ lit­tle mas­ter­piece was nom­i­nat­ed for the Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film at the 48th Acad­e­my Awards. Enjoy watch­ing it above.

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly 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:

Mythos: An Ani­ma­tion Retells Time­less Greek Myths with Abstract Mod­ern Designs

Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vas­es Come to Life with 21st Cen­tu­ry Ani­ma­tion

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Dis­cov­er the “Brazen Bull,” the Ancient Greek Tor­ture Machine That Dou­bled as a Musi­cal Instru­ment

The Absurd Phi­los­o­phy of Albert Camus Pre­sent­ed in a Short Ani­mat­ed Film by Alain De Bot­ton

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Watch a Gripping 10-Minute Animation About the Hunt for Nazi War Criminal Adolf Eichmann

in Animation, Film, History | September 26th, 2021

In Feb­ru­ary 2018, the Con­fer­ence on Jew­ish Mate­r­i­al Claims Against Ger­many con­duct­ed inter­views with 1,350 Amer­i­can adults, aged 18 and up.

Their find­ings, pub­lished as the Holo­caust Knowl­edge and Aware­ness Study, reveal a sharp decline in Amer­i­cans’ aware­ness of the state-spon­sored exter­mi­na­tion of six mil­lion Jew­ish men, women, and chil­dren by Nazi Ger­many and its col­lab­o­ra­tors.

This knowl­edge gap was par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­nounced among the mil­len­ni­al respon­dents. Six­ty-six per­cent had not heard of Auschwitz — the largest of the Ger­man Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camps and exter­mi­na­tion cen­ters, where over a mil­lion per­ished. Twen­ty-two per­cent of them had not heard of (or were unsure if they had heard of) the Holo­caust.

This is shock­ing to those of us who grew up read­ing The Diary of Anne Frank and attend­ing assem­blies where Holo­caust sur­vivors — often the old­er rel­a­tive of a class­mate — spoke of their expe­ri­ences, rolling up their sleeves to show us the ser­i­al num­bers that had been tat­tooed on their arms upon arrival at Auschwitz.

The study did make the heart­en­ing dis­cov­ery that near­ly all of the respon­dents — 93% — believed that the Holo­caust should be a top­ic of study in the schools, many cit­ing their belief that such an edu­ca­tion will pre­vent a calami­ty of that mag­ni­tude from hap­pen­ing again.

(In defense of mil­len­ni­als, it’s worth not­ing that in the decades since 1977, when more than half of the coun­try tuned in to watch the minis­eries Roots, the Civ­il War and the hor­rors of slav­ery had all but dis­ap­peared from Amer­i­can cur­ricu­lums, a direc­tion the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment is fight­ing to redress.)

The Holo­caust is such a huge sub­ject that there is a ques­tion of how to intro­duce it, ide­al­ly, in such a way that young peo­ple’s inter­est is sparked toward con­tin­u­ing their edu­ca­tion.

The Dri­ver is Red, Ran­dall Christo­pher’s ani­mat­ed short, above, could make an excel­lent, if some­what unusu­al, start­ing place.

The film’s text is drawn from Israeli Mossad Spe­cial Agent Zvi Aha­roni’s first per­son account of the suc­cess­ful man­hunt that tracked Adolf Eich­mann, a mem­ber of Hein­rich Himm­ler’s inner cir­cle and archi­tect of the Nazi’s “final solu­tion,” to Argenti­na.

This event tran­spired in 1960, fif­teen years after Sovi­et troops lib­er­at­ed Auschwitz.

Aha­roni, voiced by actor Mark Pin­ter, recalls receiv­ing the tip that Eich­mann was liv­ing in Argenti­na under an assumed name, and locat­ing him in a mod­est dwelling on the out­skirts of Buenos Aires.

Film­mak­er Christo­pher builds the ten­sion dur­ing the ensu­ing stake­out with effec­tive, noir-ish, pen­cil sketch­es that take shape before our eyes, map­ping sur­veil­lance points, a cou­ple of hap­py acci­dents, and one har­row­ing moment where Aha­roni feared his for­eign accent might give him away.

There’s more to the sto­ry than can be packed in a four­teen minute film, but those four­teen min­utes are as grip­ping as any tight­ly plot­ted spy movie.

Christo­pher is less inter­est­ed in direct­ing the next James Bond flick than putting Holo­caust edu­ca­tion back on the table for all Amer­i­cans.

A 2016 New York Times arti­cle about the hand­writ­ten let­ter Eich­mann sent Israeli Pres­i­dent Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, beg­ging for clemen­cy, paved the way for the film by moti­vat­ing Christo­pher to fill in some gaps in his edu­ca­tion with regard to the Holo­caust.

As the then-46-year-old told Leo­rah Gavi­dor of The San Diego Read­er in 2018:

I (felt) so dumb, so igno­rant, being an adult in Amer­i­ca and not know­ing the his­to­ry of it.

My friends, peo­ple I told this sto­ry to, they were fas­ci­nat­ed. They would start lis­ten­ing very care­ful­ly when I start­ed to talk about this Nazi from Ger­many that was found 15 years after the war, halfway around the world. They didn’t know any­thing about it. That’s how I knew I was on to some­thing.

Before the film was com­plet­ed, Christo­pher staged a live read­ing of the script at San Diego’s Ver­ba­tim Books, then passed the mic to Holo­caust sur­vivor Rose Schindler, who told the audi­ence about sur­viv­ing Auschwitz.

As Christo­pher recalled:

Peo­ple were trip­ping. There’s three lines about Tre­blin­ka in the film, and this Nazi war crim­i­nal, and then they see some­one there, with the tat­too on her arm, in front of them, who expe­ri­enced this first­hand.

Mrs. Schindler became a Holo­caust edu­ca­tor in 1972, when her son’s teacher invit­ed her to share her sto­ry with his mid­dle school class­mates.

She is now 91.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Holo­caust in Film and Lit­er­a­ture: A Free Online Course from UCLA 

Holo­caust Sur­vivor Vik­tor Fran­kl Explains Why If We Have True Mean­ing in Our Lives, We Can Make It Through the Dark­est of Times

96-Year-Old Holo­caust Sur­vivor Fronts a Death Met­al Band

100-Year-Old Holo­caust Sur­vivor Helen Fagin Reads Her Let­ter About How Books Save Lives

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

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How The Pink Panther Painted The Mona Lisa’s Smile: Watch the 1975 Animation, “Pink Da Vinci”

in Animation, Comedy | July 23rd, 2021

Just a lit­tle fun to send you into the sum­mer week­end. Above, we present the 1975 ani­mat­ed short, “Pink Da Vin­ci,” which IMDB frames as fol­lows:

Anoth­er bat­tle of the paint­brush between the Pink Pan­ther and a diminu­tive painter, who this time is Leonar­do Da Vin­ci, paint­ing his mas­ter­piece, the Mona Lisa. The lit­tle Da Vin­ci paints a pout­ing mouth on the Mona Lisa, but the Pink Pan­ther decides to covert­ly replace the pout with a smile. When the smile wins the appre­ci­a­tion of an art patron, Da Vin­ci is enraged and repaints the pout. The Pink Pan­ther repeat­ed­ly changes the pout to a smile while the lit­tle painter is not look­ing, and ulti­mate­ly it is the Pink Pan­ther’s ver­sion of the Mona Lisa that hangs in the Lou­vre.

If this whets your appetite, watch 15 hours of Pink Pan­ther ani­ma­tions here.

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 

The Orig­i­nal 1940s Super­man Car­toon: Watch 17 Clas­sic Episodes Free Online

Watch 15 Hours of The Pink Pan­ther for Free

Watch La Lin­ea, the Pop­u­lar 1970s Ital­ian Ani­ma­tions Drawn with a Sin­gle Line

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Watch 15 Hours of The Pink Panther for Free

in Animation, Film, K-12 | July 19th, 2021

Remem­ber Sat­ur­day morn­ings?

If you’re an Amer­i­can of a cer­tain age, you prob­a­bly spent a good chunk of them sprawled in front of the TV, absorb­ing a steady stream of net­work car­toons pep­pered with ads for toys and sug­ared cere­al.

One of Sat­ur­day morn­ing’s ani­mat­ed stars stood out from the crowd, a lanky, bipedal feline of a dis­tinct­ly rosy hue.

He shared Bugs Bunny’s anar­chic streak, with­out the hopped-up, motor­mouthed inten­si­ty.

In fact, he bare­ly spoke, and soon went entire­ly mute, rely­ing instead on Hen­ry Mancini’s famous theme, which fol­lowed him every­where he went.

Above all, he was sophis­ti­cat­ed, with a min­i­mal­ist aes­thet­ic and a long cig­a­rette hold­er.

Direc­tor Blake Edwards attrib­ut­es his last­ing appeal to his “promis­cu­ous, fun-lov­ing, dev­il­ish” nature.

John Cork’s short doc­u­men­tary Behind the Feline: The Car­toon Phe­nom­e­non, below, details how Edwards charged com­mer­cial ani­ma­tors David DePatie and Friz Fre­leng with cre­at­ing a car­toon per­sona for the Pink Pan­ther Dia­mond in his upcom­ing jew­el heist caper.

DePatie, Fre­leng and their team draft­ed over a hun­dred ren­der­ings in response to the char­ac­ter notes Edwards bom­bard­ed them with via telegram.

Edward’s favorite, designed by direc­tor Haw­ley Pratt, fea­tured the icon­ic cig­a­rette hold­er and appeared in the fea­ture film’s trail­er and title sequence, ulti­mate­ly upstag­ing a star stud­ded cast includ­ing David Niv­en, Clau­dia Car­di­nale, Robert Wag­n­er, and Peter Sell­ers as Inspec­tor Clouse­au.

The car­toon panther’s sen­sa­tion­al debut prompt­ed Unit­ed Artists to order up anoth­er 156 shorts, to be released over a four to five year peri­od. The first of these, The Pink Phink, not only estab­lished the tone, it also nabbed the Acad­e­my Award for 1964’s best ani­mat­ed short.

Although he was cre­at­ed with an adult audi­ence in mind — the nar­ra­tor of the orig­i­nal the­atri­cal trail­er asks him about bed­room scenes — his word­less tor­ment of the sim­pli­fied car­toon Inspec­tor proved to be mon­ey in the bank on Sat­ur­day morn­ings.

The Pink Pan­ther Show ran from 1969 to 1980, weath­er­ing var­i­ous title tweaks and a jump from NBC to ABC.

Syn­di­ca­tion and cable TV ensured a vibrant after­life, here and in oth­er coun­tries, where the character’s sophis­ti­ca­tion and reliance on body lan­guage con­tin­ues to be a plus.

The plots unfold­ed along pre­dictable lines — the groovy pan­ther spends 6 min­utes thwart­ing and bedev­il­ing a less cool, less pink-ori­ent­ed char­ac­ter, usu­al­ly the Inspec­tor.

Every episode’s title includes a ref­er­ence to the star’s sig­na­ture col­or, often to groan­ing degree — Pink of the Lit­ter, Pink-A-Boo, The Hand Is Pinker Than the Eye, Pinkcome Tax, The Scar­let Pinker­nel.…

We won’t ask you to guess the col­or of Pink Pan­ther Flakes, man­u­fac­tured under the aus­pices of Post, a Pink Pan­ther Show co-spon­sor.

“I thought it was just fine for the film,” Edwards says of the ani­mat­ed Pink Pan­ther in Cork’s 2003 doc­u­men­tary, “But I had no idea that it would take off like that, that it would have that kind of a life of its own… that kind of a mer­chan­dis­ing life of its own. Thank god it did!”

Stay cool this sum­mer with an 11-hour Pink Pan­ther marathon, com­prised of the fol­low­ing free com­pi­la­tions of Sea­sons 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Sea­son 1

Sea­son 2

Sea­son 3

Sea­son 4

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Looney Tunes & Oth­er Clas­sic Car­toons Helped Amer­i­cans Become Musi­cal­ly Lit­er­ate

The Ani­ma­tions That Changed Cin­e­ma: The Ground­break­ing Lega­cies of Prince Achmed, Aki­ra, The Iron Giant & More

Peter Sell­ers Per­forms The Bea­t­les “A Hard Day’s Night” in Shake­speare­an Voice

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

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An Introduction to Nicolas Bourbaki, One of the Most Influential Mathematicians of All Time … Who Never Actually Lived

in Animation, Math, TED Talks | July 13th, 2021

In 20th-cen­tu­ry math­e­mat­ics, the renowned name of Nico­las Bour­ba­ki stands alone in its class — the class, that is, of renowned math­e­mat­i­cal names that don’t actu­al­ly belong to real peo­ple. Bour­ba­ki refers not to a math­e­mati­cian, but to math­e­mati­cians; a whole secret soci­ety of them, in fact, who made their name by col­lec­tive­ly com­pos­ing Ele­ments of Math­e­mat­ic. Not, mind you, Ele­ments of Math­e­mat­ics: “Bourbaki’s Ele­ments of Math­e­mat­ic — a series of text­books and pro­gram­mat­ic writ­ings first appear­ing in 1939—pointedly omit­ted the ‘s’ from the end of ‘Math­e­mat­ics,’ ” writes JSTOR Dai­ly’s Michael Barany, “as a way of insist­ing on the fun­da­men­tal uni­ty and coher­ence of a dizzy­ing­ly var­ie­gat­ed field.”

That’s mere­ly the tip of Bour­bak­i’s ice­berg of eccen­tric­i­ties. Formed in 1934 “by alum­ni of the École nor­male supérieure, a sto­ried train­ing ground for French aca­d­e­m­ic and polit­i­cal elites,” this group of high-pow­ered math­e­mat­i­cal minds set about rec­ti­fy­ing their coun­try’s loss of near­ly an entire gen­er­a­tion of math­e­mati­cians in the First World War. (While Ger­many had kept its bright­est stu­dents and sci­en­tists out of bat­tle, the French com­mit­ment to égal­ité could per­mit no such favoritism.) It was the press­ing need for revised and updat­ed text­books that spurred the mem­bers of Bour­ba­ki to their col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly pseu­do­ny­mous, indi­vid­u­al­ly anony­mous work.

“Yet instead of writ­ing text­books,” explains Quan­ta’s Kevin Hart­nett, “they end­ed up cre­at­ing some­thing com­plete­ly nov­el: free-stand­ing books that explained advanced math­e­mat­ics with­out ref­er­ence to any out­side sources.” The most dis­tinc­tive fea­ture of this already unusu­al project “was the writ­ing style: rig­or­ous, for­mal and stripped to the log­i­cal studs. The books spelled out math­e­mat­i­cal the­o­rems from the ground up with­out skip­ping any steps — exhibit­ing an unusu­al degree of thor­ough­ness among math­e­mati­cians.”  Not that Bour­ba­ki lacked play­ful­ness: “In fan­ci­ful and pun-filled nar­ra­tives shared among one anoth­er and allud­ed to in out­ward-fac­ing writ­ing,” adds Barany, “Bourbaki’s col­lab­o­ra­tors embed­ded him in an elab­o­rate math­e­mat­i­cal-polit­i­cal uni­verse filled with the abstruse ter­mi­nol­o­gy and con­cepts of mod­ern the­o­ries.”

You can get an ani­mat­ed intro­duc­tion to Bour­ba­ki, which sur­vives even today as a still-pres­ti­gious and at least nom­i­nal­ly secret math­e­mat­i­cal soci­ety, in the TED-Ed les­son above. In the decades after the group’s found­ing, writes les­son author Pratik Aghor, “Bour­rbak­i’s pub­li­ca­tions became stan­dard ref­er­ences, and the group’s mem­bers took their prank as seri­ous­ly as their work.” Their com­mit­ment to the front was total: “they sent telegrams in Bour­bak­i’s name, announced his daugh­ter’s wed­ding, and pub­licly insult­ed any­one who doubt­ed his exis­tence. In 1968, when they could no longer main­tain the ruse, the group end­ed their joke the only way they could: they print­ed Bour­bak­i’s obit­u­ary, com­plete with math­e­mat­i­cal puns.” And if you laugh at the math­e­mat­i­cal pun with which Aghor ends the les­son, you may car­ry a bit of Bour­bak­i’s spir­it with­in your­self as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Beau­ti­ful Equa­tions: Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Beau­ty of Ein­stein & Newton’s Great Equa­tions

The Math­e­mat­ics Behind Origa­mi, the Ancient Japan­ese Art of Paper Fold­ing

The Unex­pect­ed Math Behind Van Gogh’s Star­ry Night

Can You Solve These Ani­mat­ed Brain Teasers from TED-Ed?

The Map of Math­e­mat­ics: Ani­ma­tion Shows How All the Dif­fer­ent Fields in Math Fit Togeth­er

Why the World’s Best Math­e­mati­cians Are Hoard­ing Japan­ese Chalk

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

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The Beautiful, Innovative & Sometimes Dark World of Animated Soviet Propaganda (1925–1984)

in Animation, Film, History, Politics | April 20th, 2021

Grow­ing up, we assem­bled our world­view from sev­er­al dif­fer­ent sources: par­ents, sib­lings, class­mates. But for most of us, wher­ev­er and when­ev­er we passed our for­ma­tive years, noth­ing shaped our ear­ly per­cep­tions of life as vivid­ly, and as thor­ough­ly, as car­toons — and this is just as Lenin knew it would be. “With the estab­lish­ment of the Sovi­et Union in 1922,” writes New York Times film crit­ic Dave Kehr, “Lenin pro­claimed the cin­e­ma the most impor­tant of all the arts, pre­sum­ably for its abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate direct­ly with the oppressed and wide­ly illit­er­ate mass­es.”

Lenin cer­tain­ly did­n’t exclude ani­ma­tion, which assumed its role in the Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da machine right away: Sovi­et Toys, the first U.S.S.R.-made car­toon, pre­miered just two years lat­er. It was direct­ed by Dzi­ga Ver­tov, the inno­v­a­tive film­mak­er best known for 1929’s A Man with a Movie Cam­era, a thrilling artic­u­la­tion of the artis­tic pos­si­bil­i­ties of doc­u­men­tary. Ver­tov stands as per­haps the most rep­re­sen­ta­tive fig­ure of Sovi­et cin­e­ma’s ear­ly years, in which tight polit­i­cal con­fines nev­er­the­less per­mit­ted a free­dom of  artis­tic exper­i­men­ta­tion lim­it­ed only by the film­mak­er’s skill and imag­i­na­tion.

This changed with the times: the 1940s saw the ele­va­tion of skilled but West-imi­ta­tive ani­ma­tors like Ivan Ivanov-Vano, whom Kehr calls the “Sovi­et Dis­ney.” That label is suit­able enough, since an Ivanov-Vano short like Some­one Else’s Voice from 1949 “could eas­i­ly pass for a Dis­ney ‘Sil­ly Sym­pho­ny,’ ” if not for its un-Dis­ney­like “threat­en­ing under­tone.” (Not that Dis­ney could­n’t get dark­ly pro­pa­gan­dis­tic them­selves.)

With its mag­pie who “returns from a flight abroad and dares to war­ble some of the jazz music she has heard on her trav­els” only to have “the hearty peas­ant birds of the for­est swoop down and rip her feath­ers out,” Some­one Else’s Voice tells a more alle­gor­i­cal sto­ry than those in most of the shorts gath­ered in this Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da ani­ma­tion playlist.

The playlist’s selec­tions come from the col­lec­tion Ani­mat­ed Sovi­et Pro­pa­gan­da: From the Octo­ber Rev­o­lu­tion to Per­e­stroi­ka; “work­ers are strong-chinned, noble, and gener­ic,” writes the A.V. Club’s Tasha Robin­son. “Cap­i­tal­ists are fat, pig­gish cig­ar-chom­pers, and for­eign­ers are ugly car­i­ca­tures sim­i­lar to those seen in Amer­i­can World War II pro­pa­gan­da.” With their strong “anti-Amer­i­can, anti-Ger­man, anti-British, anti-Japan­ese, anti-Cap­i­tal­ist, anti-Impe­ri­al­ist, and pro-Com­mu­nist slant,” as Kehr puts it, they would require an impres­sion­able audi­ence indeed to do any con­vinc­ing out­side Sovi­et ter­ri­to­ry. But they send an unmis­tak­able mes­sage to view­ers back in the U.S.S.R.: you don’t know how lucky you are.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Unset­tling Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

Watch Inter­plan­e­tary Rev­o­lu­tion (1924): The Most Bizarre Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Pro­pa­gan­da Film You’ll Ever See

Watch the Sur­re­al­ist Glass Har­mon­i­ca, the Only Ani­mat­ed Film Ever Banned by Sovi­et Cen­sors (1968)

When Sovi­et Artists Turned Tex­tiles (Scarves, Table­cloths & Cur­tains) into Beau­ti­ful Pro­pa­gan­da in the 1920s & 1930s

Ani­mat­ed Films Made Dur­ing the Cold War Explain Why Amer­i­ca is Excep­tion­al­ly Excep­tion­al

The Red Men­ace: A Strik­ing Gallery of Anti-Com­mu­nist Posters, Ads, Com­ic Books, Mag­a­zines & Films

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

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