The Philosophy of Hayao Miyazaki: A Video Essay on How the Traditional Japanese Religion Shinto Suffuses Miyazaki’s Films

in Animation, Film, Philosophy, Religion | November 2nd, 2018

Even if you’ve nev­er watched it before, you always know a Stu­dio Ghi­b­li movie when you see one, and even more so in the case of a Stu­dio Ghi­b­li movie direct­ed by Hayao Miyaza­ki. That goes for his work’s com­mon aes­thet­ic qual­i­ties as well as its com­mon the­mat­ic ones, the lat­ter of which run deep, all the way down to the tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese reli­gion of Shin­to. Or so, any­way, argues “The Phi­los­o­phy of Miyaza­ki,” the Wise­crack video essay above that finds in Shin­to, a belief sys­tem premised on the notion that “we share our world with a vari­ety of gods and spir­its called kami,” the qual­i­ties that give “the films of Miyaza­ki and his team of badass­es at Stu­dio Ghi­b­li that extra Miyaza­ki feel.”

Even view­ers with no knowl­edge of Shin­to and its role in Japan­ese soci­ety — where 80 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion pro­fess­es to prac­tice its tra­di­tions — can sense that “a recur­rent theme run­ning through­out all of Miyaza­k­i’s films is a love for nature.” Going back at least as far as 1984’s World Wildlife Fed­er­a­tion-approved Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind, whose hero­ine takes up the fight on behalf of a race of large bugs, Miyaza­k­i’s work has depict­ed the exploita­tion of nature by the many and the defense of nature by the few.

None of his films have ren­dered kami quite so vivid­ly as My Neigh­bor Totoro, the tit­u­lar crea­ture being just one of the wood­land spir­its that sur­round and even inhab­it a human fam­i­ly’s house. In the world­views of both Shin­to teach­ing and Miyaza­k­i’s cin­e­ma, nature isn’t just nature but “part of the divine fab­ric of real­i­ty, and as such deserves our respect.”

This con­trasts sharply with Aris­totle’s claim that “nature has made all things specif­i­cal­ly for the sake of man,” and indeed to Amer­i­ca’s idea of Man­i­fest Des­tiny and the con­se­quent sub­ju­ga­tion of all things to human use. Any­one who’s only seen one or two of Miyaza­k­i’s movies would be for­giv­en for assum­ing that he con­sid­ers all tech­nol­o­gy evil, but a clos­er view­ing (espe­cial­ly of his “final” film The Wind Ris­es about the design­er of the Zero fight­er plane, which depicts the inven­tion itself as a thing of beau­ty despite its use in war) reveals a sub­tler mes­sage: “Because we’re focused on nature only through the lens of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, we’re blind­ed to the true essence of things.” We’ll learn to live in a prop­er bal­ance with nature only when we learn to see that essence, and Miyaza­ki has spent his career doing his part to reveal it to us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

500,000 Years of Humans Degrad­ing Nature Cap­tured in a Bit­ing Three Minute Ani­ma­tion by Steve Cutts

The Essence of Hayao Miyaza­ki Films: A Short Doc­u­men­tary About the Human­i­ty at the Heart of His Ani­ma­tion

Watch Hayao Miyaza­ki Ani­mate the Final Shot of His Final Fea­ture Film, The Wind Ris­es

How the Films of Hayao Miyaza­ki Work Their Ani­mat­ed Mag­ic, Explained in 4 Video Essays

Watch Moe­bius and Miyaza­ki, Two of the Most Imag­i­na­tive Artists, in Con­ver­sa­tion (2004)

Hayao Miyaza­ki Tells Video Game Mak­ers What He Thinks of Their Char­ac­ters Made with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: “I’m Utter­ly Dis­gust­ed. This Is an Insult to Life Itself”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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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Martin Scorsese Creates a List of the 11 Scariest Horror Films

in Film | October 31st, 2018

“When it comes to ripe old fright­en­ers — or to any oth­er over­heat­ed genre — Scors­ese is the most ardent of pros­e­ly­tiz­ers,” writes the New York­er’s Antho­ny Lane in a review of that respect­ed direc­tor’s ripe-old-fright­en­er-fla­vored Shut­ter Island, “so much so that I would pre­fer to hear him enthuse about Ham­mer Hor­ror films, say, than to watch a Ham­mer Hor­ror film.” And though no Ham­mer pro­duc­tions appear on it, Scors­ese, who often seems as much film enthu­si­ast as film­mak­er, has put togeth­er a sol­id list of his per­son­al eleven scari­est hor­ror movies for The Dai­ly Beast. At its very top we have Robert Wise’s The Haunt­ing, whose trail­er you can watch above. Scors­ese promis­ing­ly describes the sto­ry of the film, orig­i­nal­ly bal­ly­hooed with the tagline “You may not believe in ghosts but you can­not deny ter­ror!,” as “about the inves­ti­ga­tion of a house plagued by vio­lent­ly assaultive spir­its.” His full and fright­en­ing list–perfect for Halloween–runs as fol­lows:

You can watch clips of all these movies over at The Dai­ly Beast. (And if you sim­ply can’t get enough of the things, see also Time Out Lon­don’s list of the 100 best hor­ror films.) Such tastes make it no sur­prise to see a Hitch­cock film make Scors­ese’s list; so much does Scors­ese love Hitch­cock­’s work — “one of my guid­ing lights,” he calls the mak­er of Psy­cho — that he once spoofed his own fan­boy­ism in a com­mer­cial for Freix­enet sparkling wine. For those who’d pre­fer a more con­ven­tion­al Scors­ese-inspired binge watch, we’ve also fea­tured his list of twelve favorite films over­all and his list of 39 Essen­tial For­eign Films. What­ev­er genre you favor, you could do much worse than tak­ing his rec­om­men­da­tions.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Novem­ber, 2014.

via The Dai­ly Beast

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Mar­tin Scorsese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

Time Out Lon­don Presents The 100 Best Hor­ror Films: Start by Watch­ing Four Hor­ror Clas­sics Free Online

Mar­tin Scors­ese Brings “Lost” Hitch­cock Film to Screen in Short Faux Doc­u­men­tary

Where Hor­ror Film Began: The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

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

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Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Performs Songs from His New Soundtrack for the Horror Film, Suspiria

in Film, Music | October 30th, 2018

It’s a strange time to remake a Dario Argen­to movie. The mas­ter of gial­lo (Ital­ian for “yel­low”), the crime, thriller, and hor­ror genre films that flour­ished in the 60s and 70s, took par­tic­u­lar plea­sure in tor­tur­ing his female char­ac­ters, often in scenes involv­ing rape and star­ring his top­less daugh­ter. Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 Sus­piria “opens its eyes in a world where female pow­er has nev­er been stronger or more under attack,” writes Wired’s Angela Water­cut­ter, who advis­es those who haven’t seen the orig­i­nal to save it until they’ve watched the mod­ern homage.

Aim­ing to “de-vic­tim­ize” Argento’s women, the remake takes the orig­i­nal sto­ry of a coven of witch­es oper­at­ing a dance stu­dio in Berlin but empha­sizes its char­ac­ters as fig­ures of mys­te­ri­ous pow­er who are both “fear and revered.” Where Argen­to goes for the max­i­mal amount of luridness—in blaz­ing reds and yel­lows echoed in the first scenes in a neon McDonald’s sign—Guadagnino’s approach “is more mut­ed in both palat­te and tone, opt­ing for insid­i­ous weird­ness over shock and gore,” as David Roony writes at The Hol­ly­wood Reporter.

Con­tribut­ing heav­i­ly to the shift in tone is a score from Radiohead’s Thom Yorke that could “hard­ly be more dis­sim­i­lar to the cacoph­o­nous prog-rock of Gob­lin that was such an essen­tial part of the original’s sen­so­ry assault.” To call the first Sus­piria and its glo­ri­ous score an “assault” is not at all pejo­ra­tive, but a pure­ly accu­rate descrip­tion of their style. But Guadagni­no wise­ly sensed that the grim beau­ty of Yorke’s song­writ­ing would best speak to a con­tem­po­rary ver­sion, so he hound­ed the Radio­head singer until he agreed.

Though he’d nev­er scored a film before, and was inti­mat­ed by the chal­lenge, Yorke found his way in through the script. “There was this melan­choly which I was real­ly sur­prised about. Not like a nor­mal hor­ror film at all,” he says in the BBC inter­view at the top with Mary Anne Hobbs. He calls the film’s mood “a weird form of dark­ness,” which could equal­ly describe the evo­ca­tions of dread under­ly­ing all of his work. The process of scor­ing Sus­piria, he says, was “free­ing… because there’s no sense of my iden­ti­ty on it at all…. I’m who­ev­er he want­ed me to be at the moment, for what­ev­er par­tic­u­lar sec­tion of the film.”

These live per­for­mances for the BBC, espe­cial­ly “Sus­pir­i­um” fur­ther up, might seem to belie that assess­ment. The songs draw deeply from Yorke’s famil­iar well of spare, atmos­pher­ic angst, which is all to the good. They also see him mov­ing in unex­pect­ed direc­tions. “Open Again” builds on a gen­tly fin­ger-picked acoustic gui­tar fig­ure, and “Unmade,” above, almost chan­nels Burt Bacharach’s mood­i­er film pieces, with its lounge‑y piano and yearn­ing vocal melody.

The score became a fam­i­ly project; Yorke’s son played drums on some of the tracks and his daugh­ter helped design the art­work. On a BBC Radio 6 appear­ance, Yorke also played an hour-long mix of his favorite atmos­pher­ic records and debuted a pre­vi­ous­ly unre­leased track called “Sus­piria Solo Glass Har­mon­i­ca.” Lis­ten here and see the new Sus­piria trail­er below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10 Most Depress­ing Radio­head Songs Accord­ing to Data Sci­ence: Hear the Songs That Ranked High­est in a Researcher’s “Gloom Index”

The Secret Rhythm Behind Radiohead’s “Video­tape” Now Final­ly Revealed

Thom Yorke’s Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track on Radiohead’s 1992 Clas­sic, ‘Creep’

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

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The Big Lebowski at 20: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman & Steve Buscemi Reunite to Discuss the Coen Brothers’ Beloved Film

in Film | October 22nd, 2018

The Big Lebows­ki came out 20 years ago. State­ments of that kind are often pre­ced­ed by the ques­tion of whether you want to feel old, but this one would­n’t have quite the same effect: on some lev­el, The Big Lebows­ki feels as old as, or maybe even old­er than, cin­e­ma itself. In their half-hour con­ver­sa­tion look­ing back at the film and its lega­cy, NBC’s Har­ry Smith asks actors John Good­man, Steve Busce­mi, and Jeff Bridges, bet­ter known to the movie’s legions of fans as Wal­ter Sobchak, Don­ny Ker­abat­sos, and of course Jeff Lebows­ki — also known as His Dude­ness, Dud­er, El Dud­eri­no if you’re not into the whole brevi­ty thing, but above all as the Dude — whether it felt like 20 years have passed. More than one of them come right back with just the right response: “It does and does­n’t.”

The con­ver­sa­tion touch­es on such sub­jects as what they first thought of the script (“Right on the page, it felt like it was impro­vi­sa­tion,” says Bridges), the spir­i­tu­al impli­ca­tions of the sto­ry and char­ac­ters (Bridges tells of the encounter with a Bud­dhist teacher that led to the book The Dude and the Zen Mas­ter in 2013), how many “F‑bombs” the final prod­uct end­ed up con­tain­ing (275), and what usu­al­ly hap­pens in the still extreme­ly com­mon event of an encounter with a Lebows­ki fan on the street.

All three actors evince great plea­sure at the oppor­tu­ni­ty to remem­ber work­ing with Joel and Ethan Coen on what would become the direct­ing broth­ers’ most beloved film, one that has inspired its own fes­ti­val, its own reli­gion, and much more besides. But as many of the movie’s cur­rent enthu­si­asts (per­haps due to their youth, per­haps due to their indul­gence in mem­o­ry-cloud­ing sub­stances) won’t remem­ber, The Big Lebows­ki did­n’t become a phe­nom­e­non right away.

“So you make a movie like this, you love the script, you love work­ing togeth­er,” as Smith puts it, “and then nobody goes to see it.” Indeed, the moviego­ing pub­lic of 1998 did­n’t quite know what to make of the fact that, as a fol­low-up to the Acad­e­my Award-win­ning Far­go, the Coen broth­ers served up what Good­man describes as “Philip Mar­lowe meets The Trip.” As Busce­mi remem­bers, “it took like five or six years before peo­ple start­ed com­ing up to me and say­ing that they loved it.” Then came the col­lege kids, who would tell him not just that they loved it, but that they’d seen it eight, nine, ten times. The first time peo­ple saw The Big Lebows­ki they came out in bewil­der­ment ask­ing what it means, but “what the movie does so bril­liant­ly is, once you know what it is, then you real­ly enjoy, like, every moment of it.”

Among the few view­ers attuned enough to its fre­quen­cy to enjoy it right away was Roger Ebert: “Some may com­plain The Big Lebows­ki rush­es in all direc­tions and nev­er ends up any­where,” he wrote in his ini­tial review. “That isn’t the film’s flaw, but its style.” But even his appre­ci­a­tion grew over time, and in 2010 he anoint­ed it one of his offi­cial Great Movies, describ­ing it as involv­ing “kid­nap­ping, ran­som mon­ey, a porno king, a reclu­sive mil­lion­aire, a run­away girl, the Mal­ibu police, a woman who paints while nude and strapped to an over­head har­ness, and the last act of the dis­agree­ment between Viet­nam vet­er­ans and Flower Pow­er,” all held togeth­er by “a plot and dia­logue that per­haps only the Coen broth­ers could have devised.” Hence Bridges’ wor­ries about get­ting the music of the script down cold before shoot­ing: “Did I get the ‘man’ in the right place? Did I add anoth­er F‑bomb?”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Is The Big Lebows­ki a Great Noir Film? A New Way to Look at the Coen Broth­ers’ Icon­ic Movie

What Makes a Coen Broth­ers Movie a Coen Broth­ers Movie? Find Out in a 4‑Hour Video Essay of Bar­ton Fink, The Big Lebows­ki, Far­go, No Coun­try for Old Men & More

The Big Lebows­ki Reimag­ined as a Clas­sic 8‑Bit Video Game

Tui­leries: The Coen Broth­ers’ Short Film About Steve Buscemi’s Very Bad Day in the Paris Metro

The City in Cin­e­ma Mini-Doc­u­men­taries Reveal the Los Ange­les of Blade Run­ner, Her, Dri­ve, Repo Man, and More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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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Watch Richard Linklater’s Anti-Ted Cruz Political Ads: The Texas Director Versus the Texas Senator

in Film, Politics | October 17th, 2018

If you think of Texas film­mak­ers, Richard Lin­klater sure­ly comes to mind right away. Despite the suc­cess and acclaim he has steadi­ly gar­nered over the past three decades, the direc­tor of Slack­er, Dazed and Con­fused, Boy­hood, and the Before tril­o­gy remains res­olute­ly based in Austin, and even con­tin­ues to set many of his movies in his home state. If you think of Texas politi­cians, can you pos­si­bly keep Ted Cruz from com­ing to mind? The state’s junior sen­a­tor has remained a fix­ture on the high­est-pro­file Amer­i­can polit­i­cal scene since at least his can­di­da­cy in the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial pri­maries of 2016. Lin­klater and Cruz’s fan bases might not over­lap much, and giv­en Texas’ famous­ly enor­mous size, the men them­selves may nev­er have run into each oth­er before. But now, in the form of polit­i­cal adver­tise­ments, their worlds have col­lid­ed.

Since his rise to promi­nence, Cruz has suf­fered some­thing of an image prob­lem. (“Cruz may be unique among politi­cians any­where in that every men­tion of his name is always accom­pa­nied by remarks on his loathe­some­ness,” as essay­ist Eliot Wein­berg­er puts it.) His cam­paign in the run-up to the 2018 midterm elec­tions has attempt­ed to cor­rect that prob­lem with the slo­gan “Tough as Texas,” but not every Tex­an has accept­ed its por­tray­al of the can­di­date as a macho, no-non­sense son of the Lone Star State.

Cer­tain­ly Lin­klater seems to have had trou­ble swal­low­ing it, see­ing as he’s direct­ed a cou­ple of video ads for the unam­bigu­ous­ly named polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee Fire Ted Cruz. Both fea­ture actor Son­ny Carl Davis, seem­ing­ly stay­ing in the char­ac­ter he played in Bernie, one of Lin­klater’s most thor­ough­ly Tex­an pic­tures. In them he airs the kind of crit­i­cisms of Cruz one might imag­ine com­ing from the mouth of the straight-talk­ing and some­what ornery Texas every­man.

In Lin­klater’s first anti-Cruz spot, Davis ques­tions whether some­one who so pub­licly allies him­self with a pres­i­dent who insult­ed him so vicious­ly dur­ing the last elec­tion has tru­ly demon­strat­ed a Texas-grade tough­ness (not that he puts it quite that way). The sec­ond moves on to a ter­ri­to­ry even more suit­ed to fight­in’ words: cheese­burg­ers. It seems that Cruz recent­ly called his elec­tion rival Beto O’Rourke a “Triple Meat Whataburg­er lib­er­al who is out of touch with Texas val­ues.” But to the mind of Davis’ char­ac­ter, such a tone-deaf insult to as beloved a Texas insti­tu­tion as Whataburg­er — espe­cial­ly from a man who has also praised the “lit­tle burg­ers” of White Cas­tle — can­not stand. Can the pow­er of such ridicule, har­nessed to the pow­er of cin­e­ma, unseat a sen­a­tor? We’ll have to wait until Novem­ber to find out, but if I were Cruz, I would­n’t exact­ly be look­ing for­ward to what Lin­klater comes up with next.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Richard Lin­klater (Slack­er, Dazed and Con­fused, Boy­hood) Tells Sto­ries with Time: Six Video Essays

Scenes from Wak­ing Life, Richard Linklater’s Philo­soph­i­cal, Fea­ture-Length Ani­mat­ed Film (2001)

Archive of 35,000 TV Polit­i­cal Ads Launched, Cre­at­ing a Bad­ly Need­ed Way to Hold Politi­cians Account­able

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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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The Library of Congress Launches the National Screening Room, Putting Online Hundreds of Historic Films

in Film, History | October 16th, 2018

Pub­lic domain fans, pull your noses out of those musty old books on Project Guten­berg, but keep your eyes glued to the screen!

The Library of Con­gress just cut the rib­bon on the Nation­al Screen­ing Room, an online trove of cin­e­mat­ic good­ies, free for the stream­ing.

Giv­en that the col­lec­tion spans more than 100 years of cin­e­ma his­to­ry, from 1890–1999, not all of the fea­tured films are in the pub­lic domain, but most are, and those are free to down­load as well as watch.

Archivist Mike Mashon, who heads the Library’s Mov­ing Image Sec­tion, iden­ti­fies the project’s goal as pro­vid­ing the pub­lic with a “broad range of his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al audio-visu­al mate­ri­als that will enrich edu­ca­tion, schol­ar­ship and life­long learn­ing.”

Can’t argue with that. Those seek­ing to become bet­ter versed in the art of con­sen­su­al kiss­ing whilst mus­ta­chioed will find sev­er­al valu­able take­aways in the above clip.

Per­son­al expe­ri­ence, how­ev­er, com­pels me to expand upon Mashon’s stat­ed goal: artists, the­ater­mak­ers, filmmakers—use those down­load­able pub­lic domain films in your cre­ative projects! (Prop­er­ly attrib­uted, of course.)

You can edu­cate your­self about a par­tic­u­lar clip’s rights and the gen­er­al ins and outs of motion pic­ture copy­rights by scrolling past the clip’s call num­ber to click on “Rights & Access.”

The Library does empha­size that rights assess­ment is the individual’s respon­si­bil­i­ty. Few artists con­ceive of this as the fun part, but do it, or risk the sort of cre­ative heart­break ani­ma­tor Nina Paley set her­self up for when inte­grat­ing inad­e­quate­ly checked out vin­tage record­ings into her fea­ture-length Sita Sings the Blues, hav­ing “decid­ed (she) was just going to use this music, and let the chips fall where they may.”

A hypo­thet­i­cal exam­ple: Liza Min­nel­li’s 2nd or 3rd birth­day par­ty at her god­fa­ther Ira Gershwin’s Bev­er­ly Hills estate?

It’s adorable to the point of irre­sistible, but alas “for edu­ca­tion­al pur­pos­es only,” a des­ig­na­tion that applies to all the Gersh­win home movies.

(Watch em, any­way! You nev­er know when you may be called upon to throw an opu­lent 1940’s‑style tod­dler par­ty. Fore­warned is fore­armed! Insta­gram’s gonna LOVE you.)

Copy­right-wise, a good way to hedge your bets is to look for mate­r­i­al filmed before 1922, like The New­ly­weds, DW Griffith’s meet-cute silent short, star­ring America’s Sweet­heart, Mary Pick­ford. Look to the lead­ing ladies of that era, if you want to find some wor­thy tales (and footage) to shoe­horn into your #metoo doc­u­men­tary.

Sounds like you’ve got a lot of research ahead of you, friend. But wait, there’s more!

Recharge your bat­ter­ies with a vis­it to Peking’s For­bid­den City cir­ca 1903.

Would­n’t that make a fine back­drop to your band’s next music video!

And dibs on the fabled div­ing horse of Coney Island, whose feats of der­ring-do were filmed by Thomas Edi­son.

I could watch that horse dive all day! And so could the audi­ence of that 8‑hour pup­pet opera I may wind up writ­ing one of these days. It’s set in Coney Island….

Read­ers, have a rum­mage and report back. What’s your favorite find in the Nation­al Screen­ing Room? Any plans for future use, real or imag­i­nary? Let us know.

If you’re not imme­di­ate­ly inspired, don’t despair. Just check back. New con­tent will be uploaded month­ly. There are also plans afoot to cre­ate edu­ca­tor les­son plans on his­tor­i­cal and social top­ics doc­u­ment­ed in the col­lec­tion. Teach­ers, imag­ine what your stu­dents might cre­ate with this class­room tool.…

Begin your vis­it to the Nation­al Screen­ing Room here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Down­load 6600 Free Films from The Prelinger Archives and Use Them How­ev­er You Like

The Library of Con­gress Makes 25 Mil­lion Records From Its Cat­a­log Free to Down­load

Library of Con­gress Releas­es Audio Archive of Inter­views with Rock ‘n’ Roll Icons

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 15 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Learn Anatomy Through a Pictorial History of James Bond 007

in Art, Biology, Comics/Cartoons, Film, Science | October 15th, 2018

Remem­ber the scene in Tomor­row Nev­er Dies when sexy dou­ble agent Wai Lin hand­cuffs James Bond to the show­er and leaves him there?

Alter­nate­ly, remem­ber “Table 9” from anatomist Bernard Siegfried Albi­nus’ 1749 Tab­u­lae sceleti et mus­cu­lo­rum cor­poris humani?

Kri­o­ta Will­berg, an edu­ca­tor, mas­sage ther­a­pist at Memo­r­i­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing Can­cer Cen­ter, and author of Draw Stronger: Self-Care For Car­toon­ists and Oth­er Visu­al Artists, is suf­fi­cient­ly steeped in both Bond and Albi­nus to iden­ti­fy strik­ing visu­al sim­i­lar­i­ties.

That show­er scene is just one icon­ic moment that Will­berg includ­ed in her mini-com­ic, Pic­to­r­i­al Anato­my of 007.

Agent Bond’s sar­to­r­i­al sense is a cru­cial aspect of his appeal, but Will­berg, a Bond fan who’s seen every film in the canon at least five times, digs below that cel­e­brat­ed sur­face, peel­ing back skin to expose the struc­tures that lie beneath.

Sean Connery’s Bond exhibits a vet­er­an artist’s mod­el’s still­ness wait­ing for the right time to make his move against Dr. No’s “eight-legged assas­sin.” Even before Will­berg got involved, it was an excel­lent show­case for his pecs, delta, and ster­n­ocleit­o­mas­toid mus­cles.

Leav­ing her flayed Bonds in their cin­e­mat­ic set­tings are a way of pay­ing trib­ute to the antique anatom­i­cal illus­tra­tions Will­berg admires for their dynamism:

…sit­ting in a chair, tak­ing a stroll, hold­ing its skin or organs out of the way so that the read­er can get a bet­ter look at deep­er struc­tures. Some of the cadav­ers are very flir­ty. The pic­tures remind us that we are the organs we see on the page. They do stuff! 

The New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine select­ed Will­berg as its first Artist in Res­i­dence, because of the way she explores the inter­sec­tions between body sci­ences and artis­tic prac­tices. (Oth­er projects include an intri­cate needle­point X‑Ray of her own root canal and Stitchin’ Time!, a fic­tion­al encounter in which Aulus Cor­nelius Cel­sus (c. 25 BCE – c. 50 CE), author of  De Med­i­c­i­na, and sur­geon Aelius Galenus (129  – c. 200 CE) team up to repair a dis­em­bow­eled glad­i­a­tor.

Is there a squea­mish bone in this artist’s body?

All signs point to no.

Asked to pick a favorite Bond movie, she names Goldfin­ger for the mythol­o­gy con­cern­ing the infa­mous scene where­in a beau­ti­ful woman is paint­ed gold, but also 2006’s Casi­no Royale for keep­ing the tor­ture scene from the book:

I didn’t think they’d have the balls! Sor­ry! Poor taste but I couldn’t resist. Although Tim­o­thy Dal­ton phys­i­cal­ly resem­bled Bond as described in the books, most of the movies make Bond out to be smarter than Flem­ing wrote him. I think Judy Dench called Daniel Craig, Casi­no Royale’s Bond, a “blunt instru­ment” which is pret­ty much how he’s writ­ten. He’s tough and lucky and that’s why he’s sur­vived. Plus the machete fight is great. 

Some­times peo­ple get too pris­sy about the body. I am meat and liv­er and sausage and so are you. Your body is inescapable while you live. You should get to know it. Think about it in dif­fer­ent con­texts. It’s fun!

When From Rus­sia With Love’s Rosa Klebb punch­es mas­ter assas­sin, Red Grant, in the stom­ach, she is squish­ing a liv­ing liv­er through liv­ing abdom­i­nal mus­cles.

Hard copies of Kri­o­ta Willberg’s anato­my-based comics, includ­ing Pic­to­r­i­al Anato­my of 007, are avail­able from Bird­cage Bot­tom Books.

Lis­ten to an hour-long inter­view with Comics Alter­na­tive in which Will­berg dis­cuss­es her New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine res­i­den­cy, anatom­i­cal research, and the ways in which humor informs her approach here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Spell­bind­ing Art of Human Anato­my: From the Renais­sance to Our Mod­ern Times

Down­load the Sub­lime Anato­my Draw­ings of Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Avail­able Online, or in a Great iPad App

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est script, Fawn­book, is avail­able in a dig­i­tal edi­tion from Indie The­ater Now.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Noam Chomsky Talks About How Kids Acquire Language and Ideas in an Animated Video by Michel Gondry

in Film, Philosophy | October 12th, 2018

These days Noam Chom­sky is prob­a­bly most famous for his con­sis­tent, out­spo­ken crit­i­cism of U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy. Yet before the War on Ter­ror and the War on Drugs, Chom­sky became inter­na­tion­al­ly famous for propos­ing a nov­el solu­tion to an age-old ques­tion: what does a baby know?

Pla­to argued that infants retain mem­o­ries of past lives and thus come into this world with a grasp of lan­guage. John Locke coun­tered that a baby’s mind is a blank slate onto which the world etch­es its impres­sion. After years of research, Chom­sky pro­posed that new­borns have a hard-wired abil­i­ty to under­stand gram­mar. Lan­guage acqui­si­tion is as ele­men­tal to being human as, say, dam build­ing is to a beaver. It’s just what we’re pro­grammed to do. Chomsky’s the­o­ries rev­o­lu­tion­ized the way we under­stand lin­guis­tics and the mind.

A lit­tle while ago, film direc­tor and music video auteur Michel Gondry inter­viewed Chom­sky and then turned the whole thing into an extend­ed ani­mat­ed doc­u­men­tary called Is the Man Who Is Tall Hap­py?.

Above is a clip from the film. In his thick French accent, Gondry asks if there is a cor­re­la­tion between lan­guage acqui­si­tion and ear­ly mem­o­ries. For any­one who’s watched Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind, you know that mem­o­ry is one of the director’s major obses­sions. Over Gondry’s rough-hewn draw­ings, Chom­sky expounds: “Chil­dren know quite a lot of a lan­guage, much more than you would expect, before they can exhib­it that knowl­edge.” He goes on to talk about new tech­niques for teach­ing deaf-blind chil­dren and how a day-old infant inter­prets the world.

As the father of a tod­dler who is at the cusp of learn­ing to form thoughts in words, I found the clip to be fas­ci­nat­ing. Now, if only Chom­sky can explain why my son has tak­en to shout­ing the word “bacon” over and over and over again.

To gain a deep­er under­stand­ing of Chom­sky’s thoughts on lin­guis­tics, see our pre­vi­ous post:  The Ideas of Noam Chom­sky: An Intro­duc­tion to His The­o­ries on Lan­guage & Knowl­edge (1977)

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.

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

Relat­ed con­tent:

Direc­tor Michel Gondry Makes a Charm­ing Film on His iPhone, Prov­ing That We Could Be Mak­ing Movies, Not Tak­ing Self­ies

Michel Gondry’s Finest Music Videos for Björk, Radio­head & More: The Last of the Music Video Gods

Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er (1971)

What Makes Us Human?: Chom­sky, Locke & Marx Intro­duced by New Ani­mat­ed Videos from the BBC

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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