Neuroscience and Propaganda Come Together in Disney’s World War II Film, Reason and Emotion

in Animation, History, Psychology | April 30th, 2012

Last Fri­day, we post­ed Saul Bass’ Why Man Cre­ates. For anoth­er short film which drew Acad­e­my recog­ni­tion by using ani­ma­tion to illu­mi­nate basic human impuls­es, you could do worse than Dis­ney’s Rea­son and Emo­tion. Just as Bass’ pic­ture, a prod­uct of 1968, bears the mark of that era’s ascen­dant free-your-mind coun­ter­cul­ture, Dis­ney’s pic­ture reflects the con­cerns of 1943 Amer­i­ca. Mankind has always and prob­a­bly will always strug­gle with the con­flicts between what we con­sid­er our ratio­nal minds and what we con­sid­er our emo­tion­al impuls­es, but at that par­tic­u­lar time and in that par­tic­u­lar nation, mankind found itself even more con­cerned with the con­flict between the Axis and the Allies. Under­stand­ing how per­sua­sive a mes­sage they could send by unit­ing the cur­rent with the eter­nal, Dis­ney’s wartime pro­pa­gan­da came up with this eight-minute comedic illus­tra­tion of how our rea­son and emo­tion coex­ist, what an ide­al bal­ance between them looks like, and why you, a good Amer­i­can, should hold your emo­tion in check. “That’s right, emo­tion,” insists the nar­ra­tor, “go ahead, put rea­son out of the way. That’s great, fine — for Hitler.”

Enlight­ened 21st-cen­tu­ry view­ers will find plen­ty of the stiff, the square, and the stereo­typ­i­cal to object to here. Ven­tur­ing inside the head of an aver­age Amer­i­can man, the film sees a sober, bespec­ta­cled embod­i­ment of Rea­son at the steer­ing wheel. Behind him sits the jit­tery, club-swing­ing cave­man Emo­tion. When our man spies a “classy dish” on the side­walk, Emo­tion wrests con­trol from Rea­son, but suc­ceeds only in get­ting their humanoid vehi­cle slapped.

We then enter the mind of the slap­per to find Rea­son’s female equiv­a­lent, a syn­the­sis of all char­ac­ters ever named “Pru­dence,” at the wheel. Back-seat dri­ving is a rotund, excitable, (rel­a­tive­ly) skimpi­ly dressed Emo­tion. Rea­son believes she has done jus­tice with the slap, but Emo­tion argues, “He was cute! You wan­na be an old maid?” She then pro­pos­es an eat­ing binge, while Rea­son looks on in hor­ror at their con­trol room’s rapid­ly bal­loon­ing, sag­ging, “CHIN,” PROFILE,” and “FIGURE” charts.

Yet in its old-fash­ioned, super­cil­ious, and sim­plis­tic way, Rea­son and Emo­tion looks frankly at the chal­lenges we all face on a reg­u­lar basis when decid­ing, whether we be male or female, what to do, which foods to eat, and whom to try to meet. Research on what our cen­ters of rea­son and emo­tion actu­al­ly are and how they deter­mine our choic­es has risen to the height of neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic fash­ion, and as for the film’s indict­ment of the Third Reich as a vast emo­tion-manip­u­la­tion machine, the unset­tling but sub­stan­tial field of dic­ta­to­r­i­al mind con­trol in all its forms has accu­mu­lat­ed its own enor­mous body of aca­d­e­m­ic study. We’ve grown just a lit­tle smarter about rea­son and emo­tion, war and peace, and men and women in the past 69 years, which makes Rea­son and Emo­tion a rich­er and more fas­ci­nat­ing watch now than it would have been then. The film has been added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Find more Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Films Here:

The Mak­ing of a Nazi: Disney’s 1943 Ani­mat­ed Short

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream (1942)

Don­ald Duck Wants You to Pay Your Tax­es (1943)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Why Man Creates: Saul Bass’ Oscar-Winning Animated Look at Creativity (1968)

in Art, Film, History | April 27th, 2012

Maybe you already had a fas­ci­na­tion with Saul Bass’ cel­e­brat­ed movie title sequences, or maybe you gained one from yes­ter­day’s post about the cur­rent design­ers he’s inspired. Either way, you can round out your under­stand­ing of the man’s artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ty by watch­ing Why Man Cre­ates, the ani­mat­ed film by Bass and his wife/collaborator Elaine which won the 1968 Acad­e­my Award for Doc­u­men­tary Short Sub­ject. An eight-part med­i­ta­tion on the nature of cre­ativ­i­ty, the film mix­es ani­ma­tion and live action, using Bass’ advanced reper­toire of opti­cal tech­niques, to look at the issues sur­round­ing how and why humans have, through­out the his­to­ry of civ­i­liza­tion, kept on mak­ing things. It begins with ear­ly hunters felling a beast and mak­ing a cave paint­ing out of it. From that cave ris­es a tow­er built out of every major phase of human civ­i­liza­tion: the wheel near the bot­tom, the pyra­mids some­what high­er up, the lit­er­al dark­ness of the Dark Ages as the cam­era ris­es high­er still, ulti­mate­ly capped by a heap of planes, trains, and auto­mo­biles. One won­ders how Bass might, in an update, have stacked his rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the inter­net atop of all this, but the sequence’s dat­ed­ness costs it none of its vir­tu­os­i­ty.

Some of Why Man Cre­ates’ sub­se­quent chap­ters, in their bold late-six­ties “trip­pi­ness,” may strike you as more dat­ed than vir­tu­osic. But it would take a hard­ened view­er indeed not to crack a smile at Bass’ Pythonesque turn when a drawn hand flips open the tops of a series of unthink­ing par­ty­go­ers’ heads, reveal­ing the empti­ness inside. In its 29 short min­utes, the film also looks at the cre­ative strug­gle in terms of the coarse­ness of eval­u­a­tive crowds, the ten­den­cy of suc­cess­ful rad­i­cal ideas to become self-per­pet­u­at­ing insti­tu­tions, and how peo­ple just like things bet­ter when they have Amer­i­can flags on them. Its jour­ney ends in an unex­pect­ed set­ting, amid the toil of agri­cul­tur­al and med­ical sci­en­tists who may pur­sue an idea for years only to find that it has no appli­ca­tion. This note of frus­tra­tion leads into a mon­tage of sun, fire, stat­u­ary, the Sphinx, can­vass­es, and rock­ets. Assem­bled with Bass’ sig­na­ture sub­tle visu­al com­plex­i­ty, it takes us from antiq­ui­ty to moder­ni­ty in a way only he could.

Why Man Cre­ates has been added to our list of Free Oscar Films on the Web as well as our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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!

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Clive Owen & Nicole Kidman Star in HBO’s Hemingway & Gellhorn: Two Writers, A Marriage and a Civil War

in Books, Film, History | April 20th, 2012

On the 28th of next month, HBO will air Hem­ing­way & Gell­horn, a fea­ture-length dra­ma based on the tit­u­lar writ­ers’ five-year mar­riage. Direct­ed by well-known adapter of lit­er­a­ture and his­to­ry Philip Kauf­man — he of The Right Stuff, Hen­ry & June, and Quills — the film roots itself in the peri­od of 1936 to 1945, begin­ning with the cou­ple’s first encounter in Flori­da and fol­low­ing them into the Span­ish Civ­il War, which pro­vid­ed both of them with vivid mate­r­i­al indeed. Amer­i­cans and Euro­peans — and no doubt much of the rest of the read­ing world — need no intro­duc­tion to Ernest Hem­ing­way, author of such oft-assigned nov­els as The Old Man and the Sea, The Sun Also Ris­es, and For Whom the Bell Tolls. As the quin­tes­sen­tial high-liv­ing, sav­age­ly artis­tic, and aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly respect­ed fig­ure movies love, he’s under­gone a great many cin­e­mat­ic res­ur­rec­tions this last decade and a half: Albert Finney played him in Hem­ing­way, The Hunter of Death; Vin­cent Walsh played him in Hem­ingway: That Sum­mer in Paris; Corey Stoll played him most vis­i­bly in Woody Allen’s Mid­night in Paris; and Antho­ny Hop­kins will play him in next year’s Hem­ing­way and Fuentes. Movie-star buffs must have all kinds of expec­ta­tions for “Papa” as embod­ied in the ever-ris­ing Clive Owen, but some­thing tells me they’ll have even more to say about Nicole Kid­man’s turn as Martha Gell­horn.

If you can’t imme­di­ate­ly place the name of Martha Gell­horn in the life of Ernest Hem­ing­way, it’s per­haps because she, her­self, helped ensure that. After she divorced him in 1945, Gell­horn specif­i­cal­ly request­ed that her inter­view­ers nev­er so much as bring up Hem­ing­way’s name. Though it counts as no fail­ure to fall under Hem­ing­way’s shad­ow in the pub­lic lit­er­ary imag­i­na­tion — most writ­ers do, after all — Gell­horn carved out her own siz­able place in the his­to­ry of for­eign cor­re­spon­dence, report­ing on war not only from Spain but from Eng­land, Hong Kong, Viet­nam, Fin­land, Sin­ga­pore, Ger­many, Czecho­slo­va­kia, Bur­ma, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, and the Mid­dle East. Hem­ing­way & Gell­horn, whose trail­er you can watch above, seems like­ly to fill in plen­ty of bio­graph­i­cal details that many of Hem­ing­way’s read­ers, and even many of Gell­horn’s, don’t know. But you can’t yet watch it on the inter­net, or on DVD — or in any form at all, for that mat­ter — until after May 28th. Then, pre­sum­ably, you can see exact­ly how Martha Gell­horn inspired For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Remem­ber­ing Ernest Hem­ing­way, Fifty Years After His Death

Ernest Hem­ing­way Reads “In Harry’s Bar in Venice”

Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea Ani­mat­ed Not Once, But Twice

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters Performs The Wall at the Berlin Wall (1990)

in Film, History, Music | April 6th, 2012

Per­haps you enjoyed yes­ter­day’s post on Pink Floyd: Live at Pom­peii but today find your­self unsat­is­fied, long­ing for more footage that com­bines the band with a his­tor­i­cal­ly icon­ic work of archi­tec­ture. Today, dear read­ers, we have a con­cert film that might fit your bill: The Wall — Live in Berlin, view­able free on YouTube. While it fea­tures nei­ther the actu­al Berlin Wall — that had already fall­en — nor the com­plete line­up of Pink Floyd, it com­pen­sates with a degree of spec­ta­cle that, in terms of human labor, must rank along­side sev­er­al of the won­ders of the ancient world. This live per­for­mance of The Wall, Pink Floy­d’s dri­ving, para­noid 1979 rock opera, takes place on Pots­damer Platz, nor far from where the Berlin Wall stood a mere eight months before. The show’s crew grad­u­al­ly builds their own wall right there onstage over the course of the show, express­ly to suf­fer the same fate as both the real one that divid­ed East Ger­many from the West and the metaphor­i­cal one that sep­a­rates The Wall’s dis­af­fect­ed rock-star pro­tag­o­nist from the rest of human­i­ty.

The Wall — Live in Berlin hap­pened not as an offi­cial Pink Floyd show, but more as a pro­duc­tion by found­ing mem­ber Roger Waters. But you could­n’t accu­rate­ly call it a Roger Waters solo show either, since, even aside from the large tech­ni­cal staff need­ed to orches­trate such an event, he enlist­ed count­less guest stars to put their own spin on the songs, includ­ing Cyn­di Lau­per, Van Mor­ri­son, Thomas Dol­by, Ger­many’s own Scor­pi­ons, and — who could for­get? — the band of the Com­bined Sovi­et Forces in Ger­many.

The per­for­mance drew hun­dreds of thou­sands of view­ers, a sight from the stage which must sure­ly have kept Waters won­der­ing, in the fol­low­ing decades, if it might make sense to return to The Wall’s well. But could the show ulti­mate­ly rep­re­sent a non-replic­a­ble moment in cul­tur­al, musi­cal, and polit­i­cal his­to­ry? Could only the Berlin of July 1990 have seen pro­gres­sive rock­ers and pop stars join forces to turn a dark, heady dou­ble con­cept album into one of the most elab­o­rate and well-attend­ed con­certs in rock his­to­ry?

You can find an answer to these ques­tions in Waters’ recent The Wall Live tour, which began in Sep­tem­ber 2010. The video above cap­tures the show in Mel­bourne last year. Just as they did not sim­ply stage a live repli­ca of The Wall (the album) for Live in Berlin, Rogers and com­pa­ny have, this time around, wise­ly cho­sen not to attempt a recre­ation of that impres­sive evening twen­ty years before. While no less bold and com­plex than its all-out pre­de­ces­sor, the project of The Wall Live some­how inter­prets its musi­cal source mate­r­i­al in a more sub­dued and — for lack of a bet­ter word — artis­tic man­ner. These choic­es acknowl­edge the fact that pop­u­lar music, even as gen­er­at­ed by the Lady Gagas of the world, has stepped back from the straight­for­ward spec­ta­cle at its height in the late eight­ies. Under­stand­ing, too, that the world-divid­ing clash between com­mu­nism and cap­i­tal­ism no longer looms quite so over­whelm­ing­ly in the zeit­geist, Waters has updat­ed the new shows with an infu­sion of his cur­rent anti-war views. In Pink Floyd: Live in Pom­peii, Waters open­ly wor­ried about becom­ing “a rel­ic of the past.” Watch the evo­lu­tion between these two per­for­mances and judge for your­self whether he’s suc­ceed­ed so far in avoid­ing it.

H/T goes to Kate for flag­ging this con­cert for us…

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Nelson Mandela Archive Goes Online (With Help From Google)

in History | March 29th, 2012

Last week, the Albert Ein­stein Archive went online, bring­ing thou­sands of the physi­cist’s papers and let­ters to the web. This week, we get the launch of the Nel­son Man­dela Dig­i­tal Archive, which makes avail­able thou­sands of papers belong­ing to the man who gal­va­nized the anti-apartheid move­ment in South Africa, before even­tu­al­ly becom­ing the leader of the nation. (Don’t miss his first record­ed TV inter­view from 1961 here.)

Made pos­si­ble by a $1.25 mil­lion grant from Google, the archive orga­nizes Man­de­la’s papers chrono­log­i­cal­ly and the­mat­i­cal­ly. You can jump into sec­tions cov­er­ing his Ear­ly Life, Prison Years, and Pres­i­den­tial Years, or explore his exten­sive book col­lec­tions and work with young­sters. And, much like Ein­stein, you’ll get to know a dif­fer­ent side of Man­dela, the pri­vate side that was often hid­den from pub­lic view.

Note: We recent­ly men­tioned that Google Street View will let you take a vir­tu­al tour of the Ama­zon basin. Now, it turns out, you can also use the soft­ware to take a train ride through the Swiss Alps. Start your jour­ney here.

Image from Nel­son Man­de­la’s prison jour­nals.

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The Bayeux Tapestry Animated

in Animation, History | March 29th, 2012

We had to do it. We had to bring back a won­der­ful lit­tle ani­ma­tion of The Bayeux Tapes­try — you know, the famous embroi­dery that offers a pic­to­r­i­al inter­pre­ta­tion of the Nor­man Con­quest of Eng­land (1066) and the events lead­ing up to this piv­otal moment in medieval his­to­ry. Cur­rent­ly resid­ing in France, the tapes­try mea­sures 20 inch­es by 230 feet, and you can now see an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of the sto­ry it nar­rates. The clip above starts rough­ly halfway through the his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive, with the appear­ance of Hal­ley’s Comet, and it con­cludes with the Bat­tle of Hast­ings in 1066. The video cre­at­ed by David New­ton began as a stu­dent project at Gold­smiths Col­lege.

P.S. Don’t miss the many cours­es in the His­to­ry sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. They’re all from top flight uni­ver­si­ties.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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Newly Discovered Piece by Mozart Performed on His Own Fortepiano

in History, Music | March 27th, 2012

A music schol­ar made an astound­ing dis­cov­ery recent­ly while going through the per­son­al belong­ings from the attic of a recent­ly deceased church musi­cian and band leader in the Lech Val­ley of the Aus­tri­an Tyrol.

Comb­ing through the dead man’s col­lec­tion of old music man­u­scripts, Hilde­gard Her­rmann-Schnei­der of the Insti­tute for Tyrolean Music Research noticed a hand-writ­ten book with the date “1780” on the cov­er. On pages 12 to 14 she found an uniden­ti­fied sonata move­ment with the tem­po mark “alle­gro molto,” Ital­ian for “very quick­ly.” On the upper right-hand side of page 12 was writ­ten “Del Sig­nore Gio­vane Wolf­gan­go Mozart,” or “The young Wolf­gan­go Mozart.”

“Wolf­gan­go” was a name Mozart’s father, Leopold, called him when he was a boy. Look­ing fur­ther into the man­u­script, Her­rmann-Schnei­der found sev­er­al pieces that were already known to have been writ­ten by Leopold Mozart. Those com­po­si­tions were respect­ful­ly marked “Sig­nore Mozart,” or “Lord Mozart.”

Although the writ­ing was clear­ly not in the hand of either the elder or the younger Mozart, the metic­u­lous­ness of the tran­scrip­tions, along with the accu­ra­cy of every ver­i­fi­able detail through­out the 160-page book, led Her­rmann-Schnei­der to sus­pect that the com­po­si­tion by “The Young Wolf­gan­go Mozart” was an authen­tic, pre­vi­ous­ly unknown piece.

On the back of the man­u­script was the copy­ist’s name: Johannes Reis­er­er. After an exten­sive inves­ti­ga­tion, Her­rmann-Schnei­der was able to learn that Reis­er­er was born in 1765 and had gone to gym­na­si­um, or high school, in Salzburg, where he was a mem­ber of the cathe­dral choir from 1778 to 1780. That would have placed him in close prox­im­i­ty to Leopold Mozart. “Researchers have thus con­clud­ed,” writes The His­to­ry Blog, “that Johannes Reis­er­er used the note­book to copy com­po­si­tions as part of a rig­or­ous pro­gram of music instruc­tion by Kapell­haus music mas­ters, per­haps Leopold him­self.”

Based on the style and the lev­el of accom­plish­ment in the piece, now known as the “Alle­gro Molto in C Major,” researchers place the date of com­po­si­tion at around 1767, when Mozart was 11 years old. A press release from the Insti­tute for Tyrolean Music Research describes the piece:

Mozart fre­quent­ly select­ed a C‑major key, and the Alle­gro molto has a sonata form with a length of 84 mea­sures. Its ambi­tus is tai­lored to the clavi­chord. The Alle­gro molto could be a first major attempt by Wolf­gang Amadé to assert him­self in the area of the sonata form. This is sug­gest­ed by the rel­a­tive­ly high lev­el of com­po­si­tion­al technique.…Throughout the Alle­gro molto, the­mat­ic for­ma­tion, com­po­si­tion­al set­ting and har­mo­ny have a num­ber of com­po­nents that are found repeat­ed in oth­er Mozart piano works. Hard­ly a com­po­si­tion­al detail points to a con­tra­dic­tion with the gen­er­al char­ac­ter­is­tics of Mozart’s com­sum­mate musi­cal com­po­si­tion. Accord­ing to cur­rent schol­ar­ly knowl­edge, it must there­fore be regard­ed as an authen­tic sonata move­ment by Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart.

Aus­tri­an musi­cian Flo­ri­an Bir­sak, who spe­cial­izes in play­ing ear­ly key­board instru­ments, gave the pre­mier per­for­mance of the piece on Mozart’s own fortepi­ano last Fri­day at the Mozart fam­i­ly home in Salzburg, which is now a muse­um of the Salzburg Mozar­teum Foun­da­tion. You can watch a video, above, which was record­ed some­time ear­li­er in the same place and on the same instru­ment. You can also read a PDF of the score, and down­load Bir­sak’s record­ing at iTunes.

The first page of Mozart’s Alle­gro Molto in C Major (above) from the 1780 note­book. Cred­it: Salzburg Mozar­teum Foun­da­tion.

via @MatthiasRascher

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‘Keep Calm and Carry On’: The Story of the Iconic World War II Poster

in Art, Books, History | March 21st, 2012

In an old Vic­to­ri­an rail­way sta­tion in the pic­turesque vil­lage of Alnwick, Northum­ber­land, just South of the Scot­tish bor­der, is a one-of-a-kind book­store called Barter Books. The New States­man called it “The British Library of sec­ond­hand books.” A mod­el rail­way winds along a track laid out across row upon row of book­shelves in what was once the depar­ture hall. Dur­ing the win­ter months, cus­tomers sit and read by a roar­ing fire in the old wait­ing room.

One day in 2000, the store’s co-own­er, Stu­art Man­ley, was search­ing through a dusty box of books that were bought at auc­tion, when he found a fold­ed-up piece of paper at the bot­tom. He took the paper out, opened it and showed it to his wife and busi­ness part­ner, Mary Man­ley. Nei­ther of them had seen it before. It said: “Keep Calm and Car­ry On.” As the BBC’s Stu­art Hugh­es lat­er put it, “the sim­ple five-word mes­sage is the very mod­el of British restraint and stiff upper lip.”

It turned out that the poster was one of mil­lions that were print­ed on the eve of World War II but nev­er dis­trib­uted. The Man­leys decid­ed to frame the poster and hang it in the shop. Before long, cus­tomers were offer­ing to buy it, so the Man­leys decid­ed to print some copies. Then in 2005 a nation­al news­pa­per sup­ple­ment rec­om­mend­ed the poster as a Christ­mas gift and, as Stu­art Man­ley put it, “all hell broke loose.”

Since that time, tens of thou­sands of the posters have been sold, and the slo­gan has found its way onto t‑shirts and cof­fee mugs and has been the inspi­ra­tion of count­less par­o­dies like “Keep Calm and Par­ty On” and “Freak Out and Run Like Hell.” Removed from its orig­i­nal con­text, the wartime slo­gan has an uncan­ny res­o­nance in today’s world. “It’s very good, almost zen,” psy­chol­o­gist Les­ley Prince told the BBC. “It works as a per­son­al mantra now.”

For the sto­ry of this most improb­a­ble of 21st cen­tu­ry icons, watch the three-minute film above, which was made by Temu­jin Doran in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the design and pro­duc­tion stu­dio Nation.

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