The New York Public Library Lets Patrons Check Out Ties, Briefcases & Handbags for Job Interviews

in Business, Entrepreneurship, Libraries, Life | September 10th, 2018

Once upon a time, pubic libraries’ cir­cu­lat­ing col­lec­tions were lim­it­ed to books and oth­er print­ed mate­ri­als.

Then audio record­ings and movies entered into the mix.

Tele­scopes…

Board games…

There’s a library in Ohio that lets its patrons check out gui­tars.

And now, New York Pub­lic Library card­hold­ers can bor­row a neck­tie, brief­case, or busi­nesslike purse for a one-time, three-week lend­ing peri­od.

The New York Pub­lic Library Grow Up pro­gram at the River­side branch is mod­eled on sim­i­lar ini­tia­tives in Philadel­phia and Queens.

The branch is sit­u­at­ed across the street from two high schools, and librar­i­an Thad­deus Krupo told Crain’s New York Busi­ness that the pro­gram was launched in response to the high num­ber of stu­dents tak­ing advan­tage of the library’s free career resources, such as print­ed sheets of job inter­view tips.

Most of the kids from Fiorel­lo H. Laguardia High School Of Music & Art and Per­form­ing Arts (aka the “Fame” school), one of New York City’s most com­pet­i­tive pub­lic schools, can be pre­sumed to have a tie or two in their clos­ets, along with what­ev­er else they’re required to wear onstage for their var­i­ous con­certs and per­for­mances. They’re also being trained in how to present them­selves in an audi­tion-type sit­u­a­tion.

Such uni­ver­sal assump­tions don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly apply to the mas­sive Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Edu­ca­tion­al Com­plex next door. Stu­dents there tend to have a rougher time of it than their neigh­bors across 65th street.

While Laguardia coasts on its rep­u­ta­tion, MLK has nev­er real­ly got­ten out from under the trou­bling sto­ries left over from its bad old days. (Its orig­i­nal incar­na­tion was ordered closed in 2005 as part of sweep­ing city­wide edu­ca­tion­al reforms. These days, the build­ing hous­es sev­en small­er schools.)

Hope­ful­ly, the library’s teen patrons won’t seek to com­plete their pro­fes­sion­al look by check­ing out pants and pumps. The Grow Up pro­gram isn’t set up to pro­vide the full-body cov­er­age offered by like­mind­ed non-prof­its Dress for Suc­cess and Career Gear… though its bor­rowed bags and ties are cleared to attend prom and grad­u­a­tion.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New York Pub­lic Library Card Now Gives You Free Access to 33 NYC Muse­ums

Med­i­ta­tion is Replac­ing Deten­tion in Baltimore’s Pub­lic Schools, and the Stu­dents Are Thriv­ing

100 Nov­els All Kids Should Read Before Leav­ing High School

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 24 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Museum of Failure: A Living Shrine to New Coke, the Ford Edsel, Google Glass & Other Epic Corporate Fails

in Business, Design | March 27th, 2018

All suc­cess­ful prod­ucts are alike; every unsuc­cess­ful prod­uct is unsuc­cess­ful in its own way. Or so a mod­ern-day Tol­stoy might find him­self inspired to write after a vis­it to the Muse­um of Fail­ure, a mov­able feast of flops which began last year in Hels­ing­borg, Swe­den and has now opened its doors on Hol­ly­wood Boule­vard in Los Ange­les. The Don­ald Trump board game, Apple’s New­ton, Noki­a’s N‑Gage, Ford’s Edsel, Col­gate Beef Lasagne, Harley-David­son Cologne, New Coke, Google Glass: these and oth­er shin­ing exam­ples of fail­ure appear in the videos about the muse­um at the top of the post and just below.


Con­sid­ered today, many of these prod­ucts, whether well-known or thor­ough­ly obscure, look hilar­i­ous­ly ill-con­ceived. But the Muse­um of Fail­ure’s founder, a psy­chol­o­gist named Samuel West, does have high praise for some of the prod­ucts he’s col­lect­ed in his insti­tu­tion.

As you’ll find out on a vis­it there, though, they’ve all got at least one fatal flaw — a design prob­lem, bad tim­ing, mis­judg­ment of the mar­ket, falling into the cracks of exist­ing offer­ings — that drove con­sumers away. You can’t say that any of them did­n’t take a risk, but risks, by their very nature, burn out more often than they pay off.

“Why do I have all these fail­ures?” asks West in his TED Talk. “The point of hav­ing the muse­um is that we can learn from these fail­ures. I want us to start to admit our fail­ures as com­pa­nies, as indi­vid­u­als, so we can learn from it.” Amer­i­ca’s rel­a­tive lack of cul­tur­al stigma­ti­za­tion of fail­ure often gets cit­ed among the rea­sons for the coun­try’s rep­u­ta­tion for inno­va­tion and eco­nom­ic dynamism, but there, as any­where else, an increased will­ing­ness not just to fail but to bet­ter under­stand the nature of indi­vid­ual fail­ures would­n’t go amiss. Noth­ing suc­ceeds like suc­cess, so the say­ing goes, but the fas­ci­na­tion that has built around the Muse­um of Fail­ure so far sug­gests that we have much to gain from its oppo­site as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Thomas Edison’s Creepy Talk­ing Dolls: An Inven­tion That Scared Kids & Flopped on the Mar­ket

Blade Run­ner: The Pil­lar of Sci-Fi Cin­e­ma that Siskel, Ebert, and Stu­dio Execs Orig­i­nal­ly Hat­ed

Why Do So Many Peo­ple Adore The Room, the Worst Movie Ever Made? A Video Explain­er

Meet the World’s Worst Orches­tra, the Portsmouth Sin­fo­nia, Fea­tur­ing Bri­an Eno

Paulo Coel­ho on The Fear of Fail­ure

“Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Bet­ter”: How Samuel Beck­ett Cre­at­ed the Unlike­ly Mantra That Inspires Entre­pre­neurs Today

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

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Why Incompetent People Think They’re Amazing: An Animated Lesson from David Dunning (of the Famous “Dunning-Kruger Effect”)

in Business, Psychology, TED Talks | December 6th, 2017

The busi­ness world has long had spe­cial jar­gon for the Kafkaesque incom­pe­tence bedev­il­ing the ranks of upper man­age­ment. There is “the Peter prin­ci­ple,” first described in a satir­i­cal book of the same name in 1968. More recent­ly, we have the pos­i­tive notion of “fail­ing upward.” The con­cept has inspired a mantra, “fail hard­er, fail faster,” as well as pop­u­lar books like The Gift of Fail­ure. Famed research pro­fes­sor, author, and TED talk­er Brené Brown has called TED “the fail­ure con­fer­ence,” and indeed, a “Fail­Con” does exist, “in over a dozen cities on 6 con­ti­nents around the globe.”

The can­dor about this most unavoid­able of human phe­nom­e­na may prove a boon to pub­lic health, low­er­ing lev­els of hyper­ten­sion by a sig­nif­i­cant mar­gin. But is there a dan­ger in prais­ing fail­ure too fer­vent­ly? (Samuel Beckett’s quote on the mat­ter, beloved by many a 21st cen­tu­ry thought leader, proves decid­ed­ly more ambigu­ous in con­text.) Might it present an even greater oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to “rise to their lev­el of incom­pe­tence”? Giv­en the preva­lence of the “Dun­ning-Kruger Effect,” a cog­ni­tive bias explained by John Cleese in a pre­vi­ous post, we may not be well-placed to know whether our efforts con­sti­tute suc­cess or fail­ure, or whether we actu­al­ly have the skills we think we do.

First described by social psy­chol­o­gists David Dun­ning (Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan) and Justin Kruger (N.Y.U.) in 1999, the effect “sug­gests that we’re not very good at eval­u­at­ing our­selves accu­rate­ly.” So says the nar­ra­tor of the TED-Ed les­son above, script­ed by Dun­ning and offer­ing a sober reminder of the human propen­si­ty for self-delu­sion. “We fre­quent­ly over­es­ti­mate our own abil­i­ties,” result­ing in wide­spread “illu­so­ry supe­ri­or­i­ty” that makes “incom­pe­tent peo­ple think they’re amaz­ing.” The effect great­ly inten­si­fies at the low­er end of the scale; it is often “those with the least abil­i­ty who are most like­ly to over­rate their skills to the great­est extent.” Or as Cleese plain­ly puts it, some peo­ple “are so stu­pid, they have no idea how stu­pid they are.”

Com­bine this with the con­verse effect—the ten­den­cy of skilled indi­vid­u­als to under­rate themselves—and we have the pre­con­di­tions for an epi­dem­ic of mis­matched skill sets and posi­tions. But while imposter syn­drome can pro­duce trag­ic per­son­al results and deprive the world of tal­ent, the Dun­ning-Kruger effect’s worst casu­al­ties affect us all adverse­ly. Peo­ple “mea­sur­ably poor at log­i­cal rea­son­ing, gram­mar, finan­cial knowl­edge, math, emo­tion­al intel­li­gence, run­ning med­ical lab tests, and chess all tend to rate their exper­tise almost as favor­ably as actu­al experts do.” When such peo­ple get pro­mot­ed up the chain, they can unwit­ting­ly do a great deal of harm.

While arro­gant self-impor­tance plays its role in fos­ter­ing delu­sions of exper­tise, Dun­ning and Kruger found that most of us are sub­ject to the effect in some area of our lives sim­ply because we lack the skills to under­stand how bad we are at cer­tain things. We don’t know the rules well enough to suc­cess­ful­ly, cre­ative­ly break them. Until we have some basic under­stand­ing of what con­sti­tutes com­pe­tence in a par­tic­u­lar endeav­or, we can­not even under­stand that we’ve failed.

Real experts, on the oth­er hand, tend to assume their skills are ordi­nary and unre­mark­able. “The result is that peo­ple, whether they’re inept or high­ly skilled, are often caught in a bub­ble of inac­cu­rate self-per­cep­tion.” How can we get out? The answers won’t sur­prise you. Lis­ten to con­struc­tive feed­back and nev­er stop learn­ing, behav­ior that can require a good deal of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and humil­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (a.k.a. the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

Research Finds That Intel­lec­tu­al Humil­i­ty Can Make Us Bet­ter Thinkers & Peo­ple; Good Thing There’s a Free Course on Intel­lec­tu­al Humil­i­ty

The Pow­er of Empa­thy: A Quick Ani­mat­ed Les­son That Can Make You a Bet­ter Per­son

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es

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

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The Edvard Munch Scream Action Figure

in Art, Business | November 3rd, 2017

“I was out walk­ing with two friends – the sun began to set – sud­den­ly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feel­ing exhaust­ed, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trem­bling with anx­i­ety – and I sensed an end­less scream pass­ing through nature.”― Edvard Munch

That’s how painter Edvard Munch described the dread-filled scene that led him to paint “The Scream” in 1910. As Dr. Noelle Paul­son notes over at Smarthis­to­ry, except for da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Munch’s paint­ing “may be the most icon­ic human fig­ure in the his­to­ry of West­ern art. Its androg­y­nous, skull-shaped head, elon­gat­ed hands, wide eyes, flar­ing nos­trils and ovoid mouth have been engrained in our col­lec­tive cul­tur­al con­scious­ness.”

“The Scream” might also be one of the more fetishized and com­mod­i­fied paint­ings we’ve seen to date. These days, you’ll find “The Scream” on t‑shirts, jig­saw puz­zles, and non-slip jar grip­pers. And, thanks to a Japan­ese com­pa­ny called Good Smile, you can now buy The Scream Action fig­ure. It has pos­able joints, allow­ing you to put the fig­ure into dif­fer­ent pos­es (wit­ness above). Or you can stand it along­side the oth­er art his­to­ry fig­ures in Good Smile’s collection–da Vin­ci’s Vit­ru­vian Man, Rod­in’s The Thinker, and The Venus de Milo. Oh, the fun you could have this week­end.

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!

via io9

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edvard Munch’s Famous Paint­ing “The Scream” Ani­mat­ed to the Sound of Pink Floyd’s Pri­mal Music

30,000 Works of Art by Edvard Munch & Oth­er Artists Put Online by Norway’s Nation­al Muse­um of Art

Hierony­mus Bosch Fig­urines: Col­lect Sur­re­al Char­ac­ters from Bosch’s Paint­ings & Put Them on Your Book­shelf

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

The Tarot Card Deck Designed by Sal­vador Dalí

Sal­vador Dalí Fig­urines Let You Bring the Artist’s Sur­re­al Paint­ings Into Your Home

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Coursera Partners with Leading Universities to Offer Master’s Degrees at a More Affordable Price

in Business, Computer Science, Online Courses | October 24th, 2017

If you’re a reg­u­lar Open Cul­ture read­er, you’re already famil­iar with Cours­era, the ed tech com­pa­ny, which, since its found­ing in 2012, has giv­en the world access to online cours­es from top universities–e.g. cours­es on Roman Archi­tec­ture (Yale), Mod­ern and Post­mod­ern Phi­los­o­phy (Wes­leyan), and Bud­dhism and Neu­ro­science (Prince­ton). And you’ve per­haps noticed, too, that Cours­era has recent­ly bun­dled cer­tain cours­es into “Spe­cial­iza­tions”–essen­tial­ly areas of concentration–that let stu­dents spe­cial­ize in fields like Deep Learn­ing and Data Sci­ence.

But what if stu­dents want to deep­en their knowl­edge fur­ther and get a tra­di­tion­al degree? In what per­haps marks the begin­ning of a sig­nif­i­cant new trend, Cours­era has part­nered with lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties to offer full-fledged grad­u­ate degrees in a more afford­able online for­mat. As described in the video above, HEC Paris (the #2 busi­ness school in Europe) now offers through Cours­er­a’s plat­form a Mas­ter’s in Inno­va­tion and Entre­pre­neur­ship. Designed for aspir­ing entre­pre­neurs, the pro­gram con­sists of 20 cours­es (all online) and takes an esti­mat­ed 10–16 months to com­plete. The total tuition amounts to 20,000 Euros (rough­ly 23,500 U.S. dol­lars), a sum that’s con­sid­er­ably less than what exec­u­tive edu­ca­tion pro­grams usu­al­ly cost.

For stu­dents look­ing for a broad­er edu­ca­tion in busi­ness, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois at Urbana-Cham­paign has launched an entire MBA pro­gram through Cours­era. Con­sist­ing of 18 online cours­es and three cap­stone projects, the iMBA pro­gram cov­ers the sub­jects usu­al­ly found in b‑school programs–leadership, strat­e­gy, eco­nom­ics, account­ing, finance, etc. The com­plete cur­ricu­lum should take rough­ly 24 to 36 months to com­plete, and costs less than $22,000–about 25%-33% of what an on-cam­pus MBA pro­gram typ­i­cal­ly runs.

(The iMBA is actu­al­ly one of three degree pro­grams the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois has launched on Cours­era. The oth­er two include a Mas­ters in Account­ing (iMSA) and a Mas­ter of Com­put­er Sci­ence in Data Sci­ence (MCS-DS).)

Now, in case you’re won­der­ing, the diplo­mas and tran­scripts for these pro­grams are grant­ed direct­ly by the uni­ver­si­ties them­selves (e.g., the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois at Urbana-Cham­paign and HEC Paris). The paper­work does­n’t car­ry Cours­er­a’s name. Nor does it indi­cate that the stu­dent com­plet­ed an “online pro­gram.” In short, online stu­dents get the same tran­script as bricks and mor­tar stu­dents.

Final­ly, all of the degree pro­grams men­tioned above are “stackable”–meaning stu­dents can (at no cost) take an indi­vid­ual course offered by any of these pro­grams. And then they can decide lat­er whether they want to apply to the degree pro­gram, and, if so, retroac­tive­ly apply that course towards the actu­al degree. Essen­tial­ly, you can try things out before mak­ing a larg­er com­mit­ment.

If you want to learn more about these pro­grams, or sub­mit an appli­ca­tion, check out the fol­low­ing links. We’ve includ­ed the dead­lines for sub­mit­ting appli­ca­tions.

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: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Deep Learn­ing Cours­es Released on Cours­era, with Hope of Teach­ing Mil­lions the Basics of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties (Many With Cer­tifi­cates)

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Ingmar Bergman’s 1950s Soap Commercials Wash Away the Existential Despair

in Business, Film, Television | October 19th, 2017

Ing­mar Bergman is usu­al­ly remem­bered for the intense­ly seri­ous nature of his films. Death, anguish, the absence of God–his themes can be pret­ty gloomy. So it might come as a sur­prise to learn that Bergman once direct­ed a series of rather sil­ly soap com­mer­cials.

The year was 1951. Bergman was 33 years old. The Swedish film indus­try, his main source of income, had just gone on strike to protest high gov­ern­ment tax­es on enter­tain­ment. With two ex-wives, five chil­dren, a new wife and a sixth child on the way, Bergman need­ed to find anoth­er way to make mon­ey.

A solu­tion pre­sent­ed itself when he was asked to cre­ate a series of com­mer­cials for a new anti-bac­te­r­i­al soap called Bris (“Breeze,” in Eng­lish). Bergman threw him­self into the project. He lat­er recalled:

Orig­i­nal­ly, I accept­ed the Bris com­mer­cials in order to save the lives of my self and my fam­i­lies. But that was real­ly sec­ondary. The pri­ma­ry rea­son I want­ed to make the com­mer­cials was that I was giv­en free rein with mon­ey and I could do exact­ly what I want­ed with the pro­duc­t’s mes­sage. Any­how, I have always found it dif­fi­cult to feel resent­ment when indus­try comes rush­ing toward cul­ture, check in hand.

Bergman enlist­ed his favorite cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er at that time, Gun­nar Fis­ch­er, and togeth­er they made nine minia­ture films, each a lit­tle more than one minute long, to be screened in movie the­aters over the next three years. Bergman used the oppor­tu­ni­ty to exper­i­ment with visu­al and nar­ra­tive form.

Many of the styl­is­tic devices and motifs that would even­tu­al­ly fig­ure into his mas­ter­pieces can be spot­ted in the com­mer­cials: mir­rors, dou­bles, the tele­scop­ing in or out of a sto­ry-with­in-a-sto­ry. You don’t need to under­stand Swedish to rec­og­nize the mark of the mas­ter.

In the win­dow above we fea­ture Episode 1, “Bris Soap,” which is per­haps the most basic of the com­mer­cials. They become pro­gres­sive­ly more imag­i­na­tive as the series moves along:

  • Episode 2, Ten­nis Girl: An inno­cent game of ten­nis sets the stage for an epic bat­tle between good (Bris soap) and evil (bac­te­ria). Can you guess which side wins?
  • Episode 3, Gus­ta­vian: Bad hygiene in the 17th cen­tu­ry court of King Gus­tav III. Plen­ty of fop­pish­ness, but no Bris.
  • Episode 4, Oper­a­tion: “Per­haps the most intrigu­ing of the com­mer­cials,” writes Swedish film schol­ar Fredrik Gustafs­son. “In this one Bergman is decon­struct­ing the whole busi­ness of film­mak­ing, using all the tricks of his dis­pos­al to trick and treat us.”
  • Episode 5, The Mag­ic Show: Anoth­er bat­tle between good and evil, this time in minia­ture.
  • Episode 6, The Inven­tor: A man hero­ical­ly invents anti-bac­te­r­i­al soap, only to awak­en and real­ize it was all a dream. (And any­way, the mak­ers of Bris had already done it.)
  • Episode 7, The Rebus: Bergman uses mon­tage to cre­ate a game of “rebus,” a heraldic rid­dle (non ver­bis, sed rebus: “not by words but by things”), to piece togeth­er the slo­gan, “Bris kills the bacteria–no bac­te­ria, no smell.”
  • Episode 8, Three-Dimen­sion­al: Bergman thought 3‑D films were “ridicu­lous­ly stu­pid,” and in this episode he takes a few play­ful jabs.
  • Episode 9, The Princess and the Swine­herd: In this rein­ven­tion of Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­son­’s “The Swine­herd,” a 15-year-old Bibi Ander­s­son, who went on to star in many of Bergman’s great­est films, makes her screen debut as a beau­ti­ful princess who promis­es a swine­herd 100 kiss­es in exchange for a bar of soap. Not a bad deal for the swine­herd.

To learn more about Bergman’s soap com­mer­cials you can watch a 2009 report by Slate film crit­ic Dana Stevens here. (Note the video requires a flash play­er.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mir­rors of Ing­mar Bergman, Nar­rat­ed with the Poet­ry of Sylvia Plath

Ing­mar Bergman Vis­its The Dick Cavett Show, 1971

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

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20 Free Business MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) That Will Advance Your Career

in Business | September 11th, 2017

Art, phi­los­o­phy, lit­er­a­ture and history–that’s main­ly what we dis­cuss around here. We’re about enrich­ing the mind. But we’re not opposed to help­ing you enrich your­self in a more lit­er­al way too.

Recent­ly, Busi­ness Insid­er Italy asked us to review our longer list of 1600 MOOCs (Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es) and cre­ate a short list of 20 cours­es that can help you advance your career. And, with the help of Cours­era and edX, the two top MOOC providers, we whit­tled things down to the fol­low­ing list.

Above, you’ll find the intro­duc­to­ry video for Design Think­ing for Inno­va­tion, a course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia. Oth­er cours­es come from such top insti­tu­tions as Yale, MIT, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan and Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. Top­ics include every­thing from busi­ness fun­da­men­tals, to nego­ti­a­tion and deci­sion mak­ing, to cor­po­rate finance, strat­e­gy, mar­ket­ing and account­ing.

One tip to keep in mind. If you want to take a course for free, select the “Full Course, No Cer­tifi­cate” or “Audit” option when you enroll. If you would like an offi­cial cer­tifi­cate doc­u­ment­ing that you have suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed the course, you will need to pay a fee. Here’s the list:

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!

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Discover Dr. Seuss’s Audacious Advertisements from the 1930s & 40s: All on Display in a Digital Archive

in Business, Literature | July 12th, 2017

I well remem­ber learn­ing that Dr. Seuss’s real name was Theodor Geisel, most­ly because I found Theodor Geisel was just as much fun to say as “Dr. Seuss.” Both names rolled around in the mouth, did som­er­saults and back­flips off the tongue like the author’s mul­ti­tude of strange­ly rub­bery char­ac­ters. With his Rube Gold­berg machines, minis­cule Whos, enor­mous Hor­tons, and moun­tains of com­ic absur­di­ty, Seuss is like Swift for kids, his sto­ries full of fan­tas­tic satire along­side much good clean com­mon sense. Books like Hor­ton Hears a Who and The Grinch Who Stole Christ­mas are chock full of “pos­i­tive mes­sages,” writes Amy Chyao at the Har­vard Polit­i­cal Review, as well as tren­chant social cri­tique for five-year-olds.

Among the many lessons, “embrac­ing diver­si­ty is per­haps the sin­gle most salient one embed­ded in many of Dr. Seuss’s books.” Geisel did not always espouse this val­ue. There are those who read Hor­ton’s refrain, “a person’s a per­son no mat­ter how small,” as penance for work he did as a polit­i­cal car­toon­ist dur­ing World War II, when he drew what Jonathan Crow described in a pre­vi­ous post as “breath­tak­ing­ly racist” depic­tions of the Japan­ese, pro­mot­ing the big­otry that led to vio­lence and the intern­ment of Japan­ese Amer­i­cans, an action he vig­or­ous­ly sup­port­ed.

You can see many of his polit­i­cal car­toons at UC San Diego’s dig­i­tal library, “Dr. Seuss Went to War.” UCSD also hosts an online archive of Geisel’s adver­tis­ing work, which sus­tained him through­out much of the 30s and 40s, and not all of which has aged well either.

Geisel lat­er expressed regret for his blan­ket anti-Japan­ese atti­tudes after a trip to Japan in 1953. And he lat­er made sev­er­al anti-racist car­toons against Jim Crow laws and anti-Semi­tism. These might have been meant to atone for more of his less well-known work, adver­tise­ments fea­tur­ing crude, ugly stereo­types of Africans and Arabs.

You will find some of these ads in the USCD archive; Geisel did truck in some bla­tant­ly inflam­ma­to­ry images. But he most­ly drew innocu­ous, yet visu­al­ly excit­ing, car­toons like the one at the top, one of the dozens of ads he drew dur­ing a 17-year cam­paign for Flit, an insect repel­lant made by Stan­dard Oil.

Geisel did ads for Stan­dard Oil’s main prod­uct, pro­mot­ing Essol­ube motor oil, fur­ther up, with the kind of crea­ture that would lat­er inhab­it his children’s books. He got irrev­er­ent­ly high con­cept with a GE ad set in hell, pub­lished explic­it­ly under the pen name Dr. Theophras­tus Seuss. And just above, in a brochure for the Nation­al Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny, he intro­duces the visu­al aes­thet­ic of Horton’s jun­gle, with a troupe of stereo­typ­i­cal grass-skirt­ed Africans that might have come from one of Hergé’s offen­sive colo­nial­ist Tintin comics. (Both Seuss’s and Hergé’s ear­ly work are tes­ta­ments to the com­mon co-exis­tence of pro­gres­sive pol­i­tics with often con­temp­tu­ous or con­de­scend­ing treat­ment of non­white peo­ple in the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.)

The Seuss adver­tise­ments archive shows us the artist’s devel­op­ment from visu­al puns and quirks to the ful­ly-fledged mechan­i­cal sur­re­al­ism of his mature style, as in the Nation­al Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny brochure above, with its musi­cal con­trap­tion the “Zim­ba­phone,” a pre­cur­sor to the many cacoph­o­nous, over­com­pli­cat­ed instru­ments to come. It is when he is at his most inven­tive that Geisel is at his best. When he aban­doned lazy, mean-spir­it­ed stereo­types, his work embraced a world of joy­ous pos­si­bil­i­ty and weird­ness.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dr. Seuss Draws Anti-Japan­ese Car­toons Dur­ing WWII, Then Atones with Hor­ton Hears a Who!

Dr. Seuss’ World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Films: Your Job in Ger­many (1945) and Our Job in Japan (1946)

Neil Gaiman Reads Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham

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

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