High-Resolution Walking Tours of Italy’s Most Historic Places: The Colosseum, Pompeii, St. Peter’s Basilica & More

in History, Travel | September 18th, 2020

The glob­al tourism indus­try has seen bet­ter days than these. In regions like west­ern Europe, to which trav­el­ers from all parts have long flocked and spent their mon­ey, the coro­n­avirus’ cur­tail­ment of world trav­el this year has sure­ly come as a severe blow. This goes even more so for a coun­try like Italy, whose stock of his­toric struc­tures, both ruined and immac­u­late­ly pre­served, has long assured it touris­tic pre­em­i­nence in its part of the world. So much the worse, then, when Italy became one of the coun­tries hard­est hit by the virus this past spring. But its recov­ery is well under­way, as is Europe’s reopen­ing to trav­el­ers.

Or at least Europe is reopen­ing to cer­tain trav­el­ers: much of the con­ti­nent has remained closed to those from cer­tain afflict­ed coun­tries, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. Of course, the U.S. has also banned entry to trav­el­ers who have recent­ly been in many of those Euro­pean coun­tries, and how­ev­er you look at it, this sit­u­a­tion will take some time to untan­gle.

Until that hap­pens, those of us who’ve had to indef­i­nite­ly sus­pend our planned trips to Italy — or even those of us who’d nev­er con­sid­ered going before the option was removed from the table — can con­tent our­selves with this set of high-res­o­lu­tion jour­neys on foot from the Youtube chan­nel ProWalk Tours, all shot at length in real tourist spots amid vis­i­tors and locals alike.

Whether the Colos­se­um and Pala­tine Hill in Rome, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca in Vat­i­can City, and the towns of Pom­peii (in two parts) and Her­cu­la­neum both ruined and pre­served by Mt. Vesu­vius, ProWalk’s videos show you all you’d see on an in-per­son wak­ing tour. But they also include fea­tures like maps, marks in the time­line denot­ing each impor­tant site, and onscreen facts and expla­na­tions of the fea­tures of these his­toric places. Com­bine these with the immer­sive vir­tu­al muse­um tours pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, as well as the recre­ations of ancient Rome in its prime and Pom­peii on the day of Vesu­vius erup­tion, and you’ll have the kind of under­stand­ing you could­n’t get in per­son — and with no dan­ger of being whacked by your fel­low tourists’ self­ie sticks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 CE: Explore Stun­ning Recre­ations of The Forum, Colos­se­um and Oth­er Mon­u­ments

An Ani­mat­ed Recon­struc­tion of Ancient Rome: Take A 30-Minute Stroll Through the City’s Vir­tu­al­ly-Recre­at­ed Streets

See the Expan­sive Ruins of Pom­peii Like You’ve Nev­er Seen Them Before: Through the Eyes of a Drone

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The Curious Death of Vincent van Gogh

in Art, History | September 15th, 2020

The sto­ry of Vin­cent van Gogh’s sui­cide, like the removal of his ear, has been inte­gral to his mythos for a long time, immor­tal­ized by Kirk Dou­glas in the final scene of Vin­cente Minnelli’s film Lust for Life and in the 1934 bio­graph­i­cal nov­el of the same name by Irv­ing Stone. We’ve all accept­ed this as brute his­tor­i­cal fact, but, appar­ent­ly, “it’s all bunk,” Gre­go­ry White Smith and Steven Naifeh wrote in a 2014 Van­i­ty Fair arti­cle based on a decade of research for a new biog­ra­phy (Van Gogh: The Life).

“Though eager­ly embraced by a pub­lic in love with a hand­ful of mem­o­rable images and spell­bound by the thought of an artist who would cut off his own ear,” the authors argue, “Stone’s sui­cide yarn was based on bad his­to­ry, bad psy­chol­o­gy, and, as a defin­i­tive new expert analy­sis makes clear, bad foren­sics.” An expert analy­sis, you say? Yes. the world’s biggest posthu­mous art star has become an unsolved mys­tery, the sub­ject of a Buz­zfeed video above, part a series that also includes Edgar Allan Poe, JFK, Jim­my Hof­fa, and Natal­ie Wood.

Van Gogh’s sui­cide seems accept­ed as a fact by the Van Gogh Muse­um, at least accord­ing to their web­site, evi­denced by the mor­bid gloom of his late let­ters to his broth­er. But Van Gogh wrote “not a word about his final days,” Smith and Naifeh point out, and he left behind no sui­cide note, “odd for a man who churned out let­ters so prof­li­gate­ly.” A piece of writ­ing found on him turned out to be an ear­ly draft of his last let­ter to Theo, which was “upbeat—even ebullient—about the future.” He had every rea­son to be, giv­en the glow­ing suc­cess of his first show. “He had placed a large order for more paints only a few days before a bul­let put a hole in his abdomen.”

The sto­ry of how the hole got there involves a then-16-year-old Paris phar­ma­cist named René Secré­tan, who cru­el­ly bul­lied Van Gogh dur­ing his 1890 sum­mer in Auvers. (He also sat for some paint­ings and a draw­ing.) His involve­ment explains the “stud­ied silence” the com­mu­ni­ty main­tained after Van Gogh’s death. No one men­tioned sui­cide, but no one would say much of any­thing else either. Secré­tan became a wealthy banker and lived to see Kirk Dou­glas por­tray the eccen­tric artist he mocked as “Toto.” He lat­er admit­ted to own­ing the gun that killed Van Gogh, but denied fir­ing the shot.

The new evi­dence sur­round­ing Van Gogh’s pos­si­ble mur­der has been in the pub­lic eye for sev­er­al years now, but it hasn’t made much of a dent in the Van Gogh sui­cide leg­end. Still, we must admit, that sto­ry has always made lit­tle sense. Even schol­ars at the Van Gogh muse­um pri­vate­ly admit­ted to the artist’s biog­ra­phers that they had seri­ous doubts about it. These were dis­missed, they claimed, as being “too con­tro­ver­sial.” Now that Van Gogh has become a YouTube true crime unsolved mys­tery, there’s no shut­ting the door on spec­u­la­tion about his untime­ly and trag­ic demise.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Near­ly 1,000 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online: View/Download the Col­lec­tion

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s Self Por­traits: Explore & Down­load a Col­lec­tion of 17 Paint­ings Free Online

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s Favorite Books

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

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The Joy of Watching Old, Damaged Things Get Restored: Why the World is Captivated by Restoration Videos

in Design, History | September 15th, 2020

The inter­net has giv­en us a few new ways to watch things, but many more new things to watch. It’s not just that we now tune in to our favorite shows online rather than on tele­vi­sion, but that our “favorite shows” have assumed forms we could­n’t have imag­ined before. Thir­ty years ago, if you’d gone to a TV net­work and pitched a pro­gram con­sist­ing of noth­ing but the process of antique restora­tion — no music, no nar­ra­tion, no sto­ry, and cer­tain­ly no stars — you’d have been told nobody want­ed to watch that. In 2020, we know the truth: not only do peo­ple want to watch that, but quite a lot of peo­ple want to watch that, as evi­denced by the enor­mous view counts of Youtube restora­tion videos.

At Vice, Mike Dozi­er pro­files the Swiss Youtube restora­tion chan­nel My Mechan­ics. Its “videos don’t just appeal to peo­ple inter­est­ed in antique restora­tion, which they sure­ly do, but many view­ers watch because they find the process relax­ing.”

Some come for the tech­niques and stay for the “hyp­not­ic qual­i­ty — the sounds of clink­ing met­al, the grind­ing of sand­pa­per and the whirring of a lathe pop­u­late each video. And watch­ing some­thing, like a rusty old cof­fee grinder, come back to life, shiny and look­ing brand-new, is unique­ly sat­is­fy­ing.” This verges on the new­ly carved-out ter­ri­to­ry of “autonomous sen­so­ry merid­i­an response,” or ASMR, a genre of video engi­neered specif­i­cal­ly to deliv­er psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly pleas­ing sounds.

In Korea, where I live, ASMR has attained dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly mas­sive pop­u­lar­i­ty — though not quite the pop­u­lar­i­ty of muk­bang, the style of long-form eat­ing-on-cam­era video that has gone inter­na­tion­al in recent years. One the­o­ry of the appeal of muk­bang holds that it offers vic­ar­i­ous sat­is­fac­tion to view­ers who are diet­ing, broke, or oth­er­wise unable to con­sume enor­mous meals them­selves. That may also be true, to a degree, of restora­tion videos. To bring a 19th-cen­tu­ry screw­driv­er, say, or a World War II mil­i­tary watch back to like-new con­di­tion requires not just the right equip­ment but for­mi­da­ble amounts of knowl­edge and dex­ter­i­ty as well. Click­ing on a Youtube video asks of us much less in the way of time and ded­i­ca­tion. And yet, among the bil­lions of views restora­tion videos have racked up, there are sure­ly fans who have act­ed on the inspi­ra­tion and built old-school skills of their own.

In our increas­ing­ly dig­i­tal age — char­ac­ter­ized by noth­ing more acute­ly than our ten­den­cy to spend hours click­ing through increas­ing­ly spe­cial­ized Youtube videos — skilled phys­i­cal work has become an impres­sive spec­ta­cle in itself. As every­where on the inter­net, sub­gen­res have pro­duced sub-sub­gen­res: take the vin­tage toy restora­tion chan­nel Res­cue & Restore or art restor­er Julian Baum­gart­ner (who pro­duces both nar­rat­ed and ASMR ver­sion of his videos), both pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. If those don’t absorb you, have a look at Cool Again Restora­tion, Iron Man Restora­tion, Hand Tool Res­cue, MrRes­cue (a mod­el-car spe­cial­ist), Restora­tion and Met­al, Ran­dom Hands… and the list goes on, giv­en how much needs restor­ing in this world.

via metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Bat­tered & Bruised Vin­tage Toys Get Mes­mer­iz­ing­ly Restored to Near Mint Con­di­tion

Watch an Art Con­ser­va­tor Bring Clas­sic Paint­ings Back to Life in Intrigu­ing­ly Nar­rat­ed Videos

How an Art Con­ser­va­tor Com­plete­ly Restores a Dam­aged Paint­ing: A Short, Med­i­ta­tive Doc­u­men­tary

Watch a 17th-Cen­tu­ry Por­trait Mag­i­cal­ly Get Restored to Its Bril­liant Orig­i­nal Col­ors

The Art of Restor­ing a 400-Year-Old Paint­ing: A Five-Minute Primer

The Art of Restor­ing Clas­sic Films: Cri­te­ri­on Shows You How It Refreshed Two Hitch­cock Movies

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Behold the First Underwater Portrait in the History of Photography (Circa 1899)

in History, Photography | September 14th, 2020

The image above may at first look like a plate from a Jules Verne nov­el, or per­haps a still from one of Georges Méliès’ more fan­tas­ti­cal mov­ing pic­tures. It does indeed come from fin de siè­cle France, a time and place in which Verne, Méliès, and many oth­er imag­i­na­tive cre­ators lived and worked, but it is in fact a gen­uine under­wa­ter pho­to­graph — or rather, a gen­uine under­wa­ter por­trait, and the first exam­ple of such a thing in pho­to­graph­ic his­to­ry. Tak­en in the 1890s (most like­ly 1899) by biol­o­gist and pho­tog­ra­phy pio­neer Louis Boutan, it depicts Boutan’s Roman­ian col­league Emil Racov­itza hold­ing up a sign that reads “Pho­togra­phie Sous Marine,” or “Under­wa­ter Pho­tog­ra­phy.”

Such an out­landish con­cept could hard­ly have crossed many minds back then, and few­er still would have dreamt up prac­ti­cal ways to real­ize it. To start with the most basic of chal­lenges, there is, as David Byrne sung, water at the bot­tom of the ocean — but not a whole lot of light, espe­cial­ly com­pared to the bur­den­some require­ments of late 19th-cen­tu­ry cam­eras. This neces­si­tat­ed the devel­op­ment of what Petapix­el’s Lau­rence Bar­tone calls a “crazy under­wa­ter flash pho­tog­ra­phy rig,” one pow­er­ful enough that it “could eas­i­ly dou­ble as a bomb. The cre­ation involved an alco­hol lamp on an oxy­gen-filled bar­rel. A rub­ber bulb would then blow a puff of mag­ne­sium pow­der over the flame, cre­at­ing a flash.”

Pho­tog­ra­phy enthu­si­asts will under­stand the mag­ni­tude of Boutan’s achieve­ment (made with the help of his broth­er Auguste and a lab­o­ra­to­ry tech­ni­cian named Joseph David). Some have gone so far as to recre­ate it, an effort you can see in the Barcelona Under­wa­ter Fes­ti­val video just above. Not only are there fish and oth­er sea crea­tures swim­ming every­where, a fea­ture of the envi­ron­ment not vis­i­ble in Boutan’s orig­i­nal shot, but the re-enac­tors face the pres­sure of curi­ous passers­by, young and old, who walk through a near­by trans­par­ent under­wa­ter tun­nel, not a con­sid­er­a­tion for Boutan and his col­lab­o­ra­tors. That ground­break­ing suc­cess in under­wa­ter por­trai­ture came 54 years after a Philadel­phia chemist named Robert Cor­nelius first turned his cam­era on him­self. Has pho­to­graph­ic his­to­ry record­ed how long it took human­i­ty after Boutan’s famous pic­ture to snap the first under­wa­ter self­ie?

via Diane Doniol-Val­croze on Twit­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Under­wa­ter Vol­canic Erup­tion Wit­nessed for the First Time

Reef View: Google Gives Us Stun­ning Under­wa­ter Shots of Great Coral Reefs

Sunken Films: Watch a Cin­e­mat­ic Med­i­ta­tion on Films Found on the Ocean’s Floor

See the First “Self­ie” In His­to­ry Tak­en by Robert Cor­nelius, a Philadel­phia Chemist, in 1839

The His­to­ry of Pho­tog­ra­phy in Five Ani­mat­ed Min­utes: From Cam­era Obscu­ra to Cam­era Phone

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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19th-Century Japanese Woodblocks Illustrate the Lives of Western Inventors, Artists, and Scholars (1873)

in Art, History | September 11th, 2020

For more than 200 years between the mid-17th and mid-19th cen­tu­ry, Japan closed itself to the out­side world. But when it final­ly opened again, it could­n’t get enough of the out­side world. The Amer­i­can Navy com­modore Matthew Per­ry arrived with his for­mi­da­ble “Black Ships” in 1853, demand­ing that Japan engage in trade. Five years lat­er came the Mei­ji Restora­tion, which con­sol­i­dat­ed Japan’s polit­i­cal sys­tem under impe­r­i­al rule and encour­aged both indus­tri­al­iza­tion and West­ern­iza­tion. Or rather, it encour­aged the impor­ta­tion of West­ern tech­nol­o­gy and ideas for use in Japan­ese ways, a com­bi­na­tion known as wakon-yōsai, mean­ing “Japan­ese spir­it and West­ern tech­niques.”

It is in the mind­set of wakon-yōsai, says the Pub­lic Domain Review, that we should view these Japan­ese wood­block prints of West­ern inven­tors, schol­ars, and artists. Most like­ly dat­ing from 1873 — a heady time for the mix­ture of Japan­ese spir­it and West­ern tech­niques — they depict these fig­ures fac­ing a vari­ety of chal­lenges, some more plau­si­ble than oth­ers.

“The great nat­u­ral­ist John James Audubon bat­tles with a mis­chie­vous rat who has eat­en his work; the dog of his­to­ri­an and poet Thomas Car­lyle has upset a lamp burn­ing his papers; the wife of Richard Ark­wright, inven­tor of the spin­ning-frame, smash­es his cre­ation; the devel­op­er of the Watt steam engine James Watt suf­fers the wrath of his impa­tient Aunt; pot­tery impre­sario Bernard Palis­sy has to burn his fam­i­ly’s fur­ni­ture to keep his kil­n’s fire going.”

Com­mis­sioned by the Japan­ese Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion, these school­book illus­tra­tions may bring to mind the 1861 Japan­ese his­to­ry of Amer­i­ca pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Open Cul­ture, with its tiger-punch­ing George Wash­ing­ton and ser­pent-slay­ing John Adams. But the text that accom­pa­nies these might­i­ly strug­gling West­ern lumi­nar­ies, trans­la­tions of which you can find along with the images at the Pub­lic Domain Review, “paints a slight­ly more pos­i­tive pic­ture, reveal­ing the moral, some­thing akin to ‘If at first you don’t suc­ceed then try again,’ or ‘Per­se­ver­ance pros­pers.’ ” In Japan’s case, per­se­ver­ance would indeed make it one of the most pros­per­ous nations in the world — if only after its defeat in World War II, by some of the very nations whose his­tor­i­cal fig­ures it had lion­ized less than a cen­tu­ry before. Find more images at the Pub­lic Domain Review and the Library of Con­gress.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Hap­pens When a Japan­ese Wood­block Artist Depicts Life in Lon­don in 1866, Despite Nev­er Hav­ing Set Foot There

A Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca (1861): Fea­tures George Wash­ing­ton Punch­ing Tigers, John Adams Slay­ing Snakes & Oth­er Fan­tas­tic Scenes

19th Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Wood­block Prints Cre­ative­ly Illus­trate the Inner Work­ings of the Human Body

Down­load Hun­dreds of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Mas­ters of the Tra­di­tion

Enter a Dig­i­tal Archive of 213,000+ Beau­ti­ful Japan­ese Wood­block Prints

The 10 Com­mand­ments of Chindōgu, the Japan­ese Art of Cre­at­ing Unusu­al­ly Use­less Inven­tions

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Leonardo da Vinci’s Elegant Studies of the Human Heart Were 500 Years Ahead of Their Time

in Art, Biology, Health, History | September 11th, 2020

Leonar­do da Vin­ci didn’t real­ly have hob­bies; he had pas­sion­ate, unpaid obses­sions that filled whole note­books with puz­zles sci­en­tists are still try­ing to solve. Many of the prob­lems to which he applied him­self were those none of his con­tem­po­raries under­stood, because he was the only per­son to have noticed them at all. The ama­teur anatomist was the first, for exam­ple, “to sketch tra­bec­u­lae,” notes Medievalists.net, “and their snowflake-like frac­tal pat­terns in the 16th cen­tu­ry.”

These geo­met­ric pat­terns of mus­cle fibers on the inner sur­face of the heart have remained a mys­tery for over 500 years since Leonardo’s anatom­i­cal inves­ti­ga­tions, car­ried out first on pig and oxen hearts, then lat­er, in hasty dis­sec­tions in the win­ter cold, on human spec­i­mens. He spec­u­lat­ed they might have warmed the blood, but sci­en­tists have recent­ly found they enhance blood flow “just like the dim­ples on a golf ball reduce air resis­tance.”

Leonar­do may have been wide of the mark in his tra­bec­u­lae the­o­ry, not hav­ing access to genet­ic test­ing, AI, or MRI. But he was the first to describe coro­nary artery dis­ease, which would become one of the lead­ing caus­es of death 500 years lat­er. Many of his med­ical con­clu­sions have turned out to be start­ing­ly cor­rect, in fact. He detailed and ele­gant­ly sketched the heart’s anato­my from 1507 until his death in 1519, work­ing out the flow of the blood through the body.

As the Medlife Cri­sis video above explains, Leonardo’s stud­ies on the heart ele­gant­ly brought togeth­er his inter­ests in art, anato­my, and engi­neer­ing. Because of this mul­ti-dimen­sion­al approach, he was able to explain a fact about the heart’s oper­a­tion that even many car­di­ol­o­gists today get wrong, the move­ment of the aor­tic valve. In order to visu­al­ize the “flow dynam­ics” of the heart’s machin­ery, with­out imag­ing machin­ery of his own, he built a glass mod­el, and drew sev­er­al sketch­es of what he saw. “Incred­i­bly, it took 450 years to prove him right.”

The mind of this extra­or­di­nary fig­ure con­tin­ues to divulge its secrets, and schol­ars and doc­tors across mul­ti­ple fields con­tin­ue to engage with his work, in the pages, for exam­ple, of the Nether­lands Heart Jour­nal. His stud­ies on the heart par­tic­u­lar­ly show how his aston­ish­ing breadth of knowl­edge and skill para­dox­i­cal­ly made him such a focused, deter­mined, and cre­ative thinker.

via Medievalists.net

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of Leonar­do Da Vinci’s Codex Atlanti­cus, the Largest Exist­ing Col­lec­tion of His Draw­ings & Writ­ings

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Ear­li­est Note­books Now Dig­i­tized and Made Free Online: Explore His Inge­nious Draw­ings, Dia­grams, Mir­ror Writ­ing & More

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inven­tions Come to Life as Muse­um-Qual­i­ty, Work­able Mod­els: A Swing Bridge, Scythed Char­i­ot, Per­pet­u­al Motion Machine & More

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

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Watch Lime Kiln Club Field Day, One of the Earliest Surviving Feature Films with an All Black Cast (1913)

in Film, History | September 11th, 2020

For some of us (no names) the world of Tik­Tok is baf­fling and bizarre. Why does Gen Z flock to it? Who knows, but they do, in droves. Any­one can be a “cre­ator” on what Jason Parham at Wired calls “the most excit­ing cul­tur­al prod­uct of this time.” It also hap­pens to be a place where “dig­i­tal black­face” has evolved—an online cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non in which Black users of a plat­form get dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly cen­sored while oth­ers who adopt the trap­pings of Black Amer­i­can cul­ture, often in exag­ger­at­ed, stereo­typ­i­cal ways, rack up fol­low­ers and views.

21st cen­tu­ry forms of black­face per­sist for all sorts of rea­sons. The intent may not be con­scious­ly to demean, but the effects are usu­al­ly oth­er­wise, espe­cial­ly giv­en the long his­to­ry of black­face as a way of mock­ing Black Amer­i­cans, while forc­ing Black actors to them­selves per­form in black­face to gain an audi­ence and get work. Min­strel­sy per­formed by white stage actors, come­di­ans, musi­cians, etc. set a trag­i­cal­ly low bar for Black actors.

A once-promi­nent exam­ple comes from the career of per­former Bert Williams. “Large­ly for­got­ten today,” Clau­dia Roth Pier­pont writes at The New York­er, Williams was “the first African-Amer­i­can star: the most famous ‘col­ored man’ in Amer­i­ca dur­ing the ear­ly years of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.” He per­formed at Buck­ing­ham Palace, was the only Black mem­ber of Ziegfeld Fol­lies (and a head­lin­er) and played “along­side Fan­ny Brice and Eddie Cantor—for near­ly a decade.”

He did all of it in black­face, decades after the orig­i­nal Jim Crow char­ac­ter appeared in 1830. Born in 1874 in the Bahamas, says Caribbean nov­el­ist Caryl Phillips, Williams “was an out­sider in all sorts of ways… He didn’t see him­self to be ful­ly a part of African Amer­i­can tra­di­tions, so in a sense he didn’t quite under­stand the full impli­ca­tions of the black­face per­for­mance. He saw it as part of his cos­tume.” That may not nec­es­sar­i­ly be so. In his stage act, Williams and his part­ner resist­ed the prac­tice for as long as they could, until they real­ized that they would be sub­ject to con­stant vio­lence from white audi­ences with­out it.

Black­face affec­ta­tions helped Williams cross over into a film career. He “pro­duced, wrote, direct­ed and starred in two short films for Bio­graph,” the San Fran­cis­co Silent Film Fes­ti­val notes, “A Nat­ur­al Born Gam­bler (1916) and Fish (1916). Pro­duced by a black man for white audi­ences, they were ground­break­ing, how­ev­er, these films fea­tured char­ac­ters and sto­ry­lines that still sat­is­fied dom­i­nant racist stereo­types of black men.”

In con­trast, a third film, pro­duced three years ear­li­er, titled Lime Kiln Club Field Day, “one of a hand­ful of sur­viv­ing silent films with an all-black cast,” told a very dif­fer­ent kind of sto­ry. Williams appeared in black­face, but the oth­er actors did not. “The film … fea­tures one of the first exam­ples of on-screen inti­ma­cy between a black man and a black woman—a kiss—along with scenes of mid­dle class leisure; sto­ry ele­ments that chal­lenged the most­ly neg­a­tive, some­times evil, depic­tions of blacks in the major­i­ty of white-pro­duced films, which reached a dis­tress­ing nadir in D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, released two years lat­er.”

Lime Kiln Club Field Day was nev­er com­plet­ed. Its many unedit­ed reels of film were only recent­ly redis­cov­ered, a cen­tu­ry lat­er, in the archives at New York’s Muse­um of Mod­ern Art. See the film above, restored by cura­tor Ron Magliozzi and preser­va­tion offi­cer Peter Williamson, who con­duct­ed research “over near­ly a decade,” the MoMA writes, to deci­pher the plot of the film and recov­er its pro­duc­tion his­to­ry, even going so far as to employ a lip read­er and explore Stat­en Island and New Jer­sey in search of loca­tions.”

Film his­to­ri­ans do not know why the project was aban­doned. They do know that Williams suf­fered sig­nif­i­cant­ly for the racist car­i­ca­tures he felt forced to per­form. Read more about his extra­or­di­nary career at The New York­er and learn more about the Lime Kiln Club Field Day restora­tion project at the San Fran­cis­co Silent Film Fes­ti­val site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Free Films by African Amer­i­can Film­mak­ers in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion … and the New Civ­il Rights Film, Just Mer­cy

Watch the Pio­neer­ing Films of Oscar Micheaux, America’s First Great African-Amer­i­can Film­mak­er

Watch the First-Ever Kiss on Film Between Two Black Actors, Just Hon­ored by the Library of Con­gress (1898)

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

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In 1183, a Chinese Poet Describes Being Domesticated by His Own Cats

in History, Poetry | September 9th, 2020

Here in Korea, where I live, cat own­ers aren’t called cat own­ers: they’re called goyan­gi jib­sa, lit­er­al­ly “cat but­lers.” Clear­ly the idea that felines have flipped the domes­tic-ani­mal script, not serv­ing humans but being served by humans, tran­scends cul­tures. It also goes far back in his­to­ry: wit­ness the 12th-cen­tu­ry vers­es recent­ly tweet­ed out in trans­la­tion by writer Xiran Jay Zhao, in which “Song dynasty poet Lu You” — one of the most pro­lif­ic lit­er­ary artists of his time and place — “poem-live­blogged his descent from cat own­er to cat slave.”

The sto­ry begins in 1138, writes Zhao, when “Down On His Luck schol­ar-offi­cial Lu You gets a cat because rats keep munch­ing on his books.” The eight poems in this series begin with praise for the ani­mal — “It’s so soft to touch and warm to hold in bed / So brave and capa­ble that it has oust­ed the rat nest” — and goes on to describe the cats he sub­se­quent­ly acquires, who self­less­ly van­quish the house­hold rats while indulging in noth­ing more than the occa­sion­al cat­nip binge.

Or at least they do at first. “Night after night you used to mas­sacre rats / Guard­ing the grain store so fero­cious­ly,” Lu asks one in “Poem for Pink-Nose.” “So why do you now act as if you live with­in palace walls / Eat­ing fish every day and sleep­ing in my bed?”

As time goes on, Lu finds him­self “serv­ing fish on time” to his cats only to find them “sleep­ing with­out wor­ry.” As the rats ram­page, he poet­i­cal­ly moans, “my books are get­ting ruined and the birds wake me before dawn.” Has it all been noth­ing more than “a ruse to get food from me?”

Yet it seems that Lu has no regrets about cat own­er­ship, if own­er­ship be the word. “Wind sweeps the world and rain dark­ens the vil­lage / Rum­bles roll off the moun­tains like ocean waves churn­ing,” he writes in 1192’s “A Rain­storm on the Fourth Day of the Eleventh Month.” Yet “the fur­nace is sooth­ing and the rug is warm / Me and my cat are not leav­ing the house.” This is relat­able con­tent for the cat but­lers of Korea (a cul­ture thor­ough­ly influ­enced by Chi­na in Lu’s day), or indeed any­where else in the world. The patri­ot­ic poet would sure­ly be pleased by the mod­ern-day ascent of Chi­na — and per­haps just as much by the high and ever-ris­ing sta­tus of the domes­tic cat.

via Xiran

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

Two Cats Keep Try­ing to Get Into a Japan­ese Art Muse­um … and Keep Get­ting Turned Away: Meet the Thwart­ed Felines, Ken-chan and Go-chan

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

T.S. Eliot Reads Old Possum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats & Oth­er Clas­sic Poems (75 Min­utes, 1955)

What Ancient Chi­nese Phi­los­o­phy Can Teach Us About Liv­ing the Good Life Today: Lessons from Harvard’s Pop­u­lar Pro­fes­sor, Michael Puett

Free Chi­nese Lessons

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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