757 Episodes of the Classic TV Game Show What’s My Line?: Watch Eleanor Roosevelt, Louis Armstrong, Salvador Dali & More

in Games, Music, Politics, Science, Television | July 30th, 2021

What would the host and pan­elists of the clas­sic prime­time tele­vi­sion game show What’s My Line? have made of The Masked Singer, a more recent offer­ing in which pan­elists attempt to iden­ti­fy celebri­ty con­tes­tants who are con­cealed by elab­o­rate head-to-toe cos­tumes and elec­tron­i­cal­ly altered voiceovers.

One expects such shenani­gans might have struck them as a bit uncouth.

Host John Charles Daly was will­ing to keep the ball up in the air by answer­ing the panel’s ini­tial ques­tions for a Mys­tery Guest with a wide­ly rec­og­niz­able voice, but it’s hard to imag­ine any­one stuff­ing for­mer First Lady Eleanor Roo­sev­elt into the full body steam­punk bee suit the (SPOILER) Empress of Soul wore on The Masked Singer’s first sea­son.

Mrs. Roosevelt’s Oct 18, 1953 appear­ance is a delight, espe­cial­ly her pan­tomimed dis­gust at the 17:29 mark, above, when blind­fold­ed pan­elist Arlene Fran­cis asks if she’s asso­ci­at­ed with pol­i­tics, and Daly jumps in to reply yes on her behalf.

Lat­er on, you get a sense of what play­ing a jol­ly par­lor game with Mrs. Roo­sevelt would have been like. She’s not above fudg­ing her answers a bit, and very near­ly wrig­gles with antic­i­pa­tion as anoth­er pan­elist, jour­nal­ist Dorothy Kil­gallen, begins to home in on the truth.

While the ros­ter of Mys­tery Guests over the show’s orig­i­nal 17-year broad­cast is impres­sive — Cab Cal­loway, Judy Gar­land, and Edward R. Mur­row to name a few — every episode also boast­ed two or three civil­ians hop­ing to stump the sophis­ti­cat­ed pan­el with their pro­fes­sion.

Mrs. Roo­sevelt was pre­ced­ed by a bath­tub sales­man and a fel­low involved in the man­u­fac­ture of Blood­hound Chew­ing Tobac­co, after which there was just enough time for a woman who wrote tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials.

Non-celebri­ty guests stood to earn up to $50 (over $500 today) by pro­long­ing the rev­e­la­tion of their pro­fes­sions, as com­pared to the Mys­tery Guests who received an appear­ance fee of ten times that, win or lose. (Pre­sum­ably, Mrs. Roo­sevelt was one of those to donate her hon­o­rar­i­um.)

The reg­u­lar pan­elists were paid “scan­dalous amounts of mon­ey” as per pub­lish­er Ben­nett Cerf, whose “rep­u­ta­tion as a nim­ble-wit­ted gen­tle­man-about-town was rein­forced by his tenure on What’s My Line?”, accord­ing to Colum­bia University’s Oral His­to­ry Research Office.

The unscript­ed urbane ban­ter kept view­ers tun­ing in. Broad­way actor Fran­cis recalled: “I got so much plea­sure out of ‘What’s My Line?’ There were no rehearsals. You’d just sit there and be your­self and do the best you could.”

Pan­elist Steve Allen is cred­it­ed with spon­ta­neous­ly alight­ing on a bread­box as a unit of com­par­a­tive mea­sure­ment while ques­tion­ing a man­hole cov­er sales­man in an episode that fea­tured June Hav­oc, leg­end of stage and screen as the Mys­tery Guest (at at 23:57, below).

“Want to show us your bread­box, Steve?” one of the female pan­elists fires back off-cam­era.

The phrase “is it big­ger than a bread­box” went on to become a run­ning joke, fur­ther con­tribut­ing to the illu­sion that view­ers had been invit­ed to a fash­ion­able cock­tail par­ty where glam­orous New York scene­mak­ers dressed up to play 21 Pro­fes­sion­al Ques­tions with ordi­nary mor­tals and a celebri­ty guest.

Jazz great Louis Arm­strong appeared on the show twice, in 1954 and then again in 1964, when he employed a suc­cess­ful tech­nique of light mono­syl­lab­ic respons­es to trick the same pan­elists who had iden­ti­fied him quick­ly on his ini­tial out­ing.

“Are you relat­ed to any­body that has any­thing to do with What’s My Line?” Cerf asks, caus­ing Arm­strong, host Daly, and the stu­dio audi­ence to dis­solve with laugh­ter.

“What hap­pened?” Arlene Fran­cis cries from under her pearl-trimmed mask, not want­i­ng to miss the joke.

Tele­vi­sion — and Amer­i­ca itself — was a long way off from acknowl­edg­ing the exis­tence of inter­ra­cial fam­i­lies.

“It’s not Van Clyburn, is it?” Fran­cis ven­tures a cou­ple of min­utes lat­er.…

Expect the usu­al gen­der-based assump­tions of the peri­od, but also appear­ances by Mary G. Ross, a Chero­kee aero­space engi­neer, and physi­cist Helen P. Mann, a data ana­lyst at Cape Canaver­al.

If you find the con­vivial atmos­phere of this sem­i­nal Good­son-Tod­man game show absorb­ing, there are 757 episodes avail­able for view­ing on What’s My Line?’s YouTube chan­nel.

Allow us to kick things off on a Sur­re­al Note with Mys­tery Guest Sal­vador Dali, after which you can browse chrono­log­i­cal playlists as you see fit:

1950–54

1955–57

1958–60

1961 ‑63

1964–65

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Sal­vador Dalí Gets Sur­re­al with 1950s Amer­i­ca: Watch His Appear­ances on What’s My Line? (1952) and The Mike Wal­lace Inter­view (1958)

How Amer­i­can Band­stand Changed Amer­i­can Cul­ture: Revis­it Scenes from the Icon­ic Music Show

How Dick Cavett Brought Sophis­ti­ca­tion to Late Night Talk Shows: Watch 270 Clas­sic Inter­views Online

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

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Watch the Live TV Adaptation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Most Controversial TV Drama of Its Time (1954)

in Literature, Television | July 30th, 2021

“Wife Dies as She Watch­es,” announced a Dai­ly Express head­line after the broad­cast of Nine­teen Eighty-Four, a BBC adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s nov­el. The arti­cle seems to have attrib­uted the sud­den col­lapse and death of a 42-year-old Herne Bay Woman to the pro­duc­tion’s shock­ing con­tent. That was the most dra­mat­ic of the many accu­sa­tions lev­eled against the BBC of inflict­ing dis­tress on the view­ing pub­lic with Orwell’s bleak and har­row­ing vision of a total­i­tar­i­an future. Yet that same pub­lic also want­ed more, demand­ing a sec­ond broad­cast that drew sev­en mil­lion view­ers, the largest tele­vi­sion audi­ence in Britain since the Coro­na­tion of Eliz­a­beth II, which had hap­pened the pre­vi­ous year; Orwell’s book had been pub­lished just four years before that.

This was the mid-1950s, a time when stan­dards of tele­vi­su­al decen­cy remained almost whol­ly up for debate — and when most of what aired on tele­vi­sion was broad­cast live, not pro­duced in advance. Dar­ing not just in its con­tent but its tech­ni­cal and artis­tic com­plex­i­ty, a project like Nine­teen Eighty-Four pushed the lim­its of the medi­um, with a live orches­tral score as well as four­teen pre-filmed seg­ments meant to estab­lish the unre­lent­ing­ly grim sur­round­ing real­i­ty (and to pro­vide time for scene changes back in the stu­dio).

“This unusu­al free­dom,” says the British Film Insti­tute, “helped make Nine­teen Eighty-Four the most expen­sive TV dra­ma of its day,” though the pro­duc­tion’s effec­tive­ness owes to much more than its bud­get.

“The care­ful use of close-ups, accom­pa­nied by record­ed voice-over, allows us a win­dow into Win­ston’s inner tor­ment” as he “strug­gles to dis­guise his ‘thought­crimes’, while effec­tive­ly rep­re­sent­ing Big Broth­er’s fright­en­ing omni­science.” It also demon­strates star Peter Cush­ing’s “grasp of small screen per­for­mance,” though he would go on to greater renown on the big screen in Ham­mer Hor­ror pic­tures, and lat­er as Star Wars’ Grand Moff Tarkin. (Wil­frid Bram­bell, who plays two minor parts, would for his part be immor­tal­ized as Paul McCart­ney’s very clean grand­fa­ther in A Hard Day’s Night.) Though it got pro­duc­er-direc­tor Rudolph Carti­er death threats at the time — per­haps because Orwell’s implic­it indict­ment of a grub­by, dimin­ished post­war Britain hit too close to home — this adap­ta­tion of  Nine­teen Eighty-Four holds its own along­side the many made before and since. That’s true even now that its tit­u­lar year is decades behind us rather than decades ahead.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Very First Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s 1984 in a Radio Play Star­ring David Niv­en (1949)

Hear George Orwell’s 1984 Adapt­ed as a Radio Play at the Height of McCarthy­ism & The Red Scare (1953)

Hear a Radio Dra­ma of George Orwell’s 1984, Star­ring Patrick Troughton, of Doc­tor Who Fame (1965)

A Com­plete Read­ing of George Orwell’s 1984: Aired on Paci­fi­ca Radio, 1975

Rick Wakeman’s Prog-Rock Opera Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s 1984

David Bowie Dreamed of Turn­ing George Orwell’s 1984 Into a Musi­cal: Hear the Songs That Sur­vived the Aban­doned Project

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

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What’s the Role of a Director in Constructing Comedy? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #100

in Comedy, Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | July 22nd, 2021

What makes for a good com­e­dy film or show? Fun­ny peo­ple read­ing (or impro­vis­ing) fun­ny lines is not enough; an good direc­tor needs to cap­ture (or recre­ate in the edit­ing room) com­ic tim­ing, con­struct shots so that the humor comes through and coach the actors to make sure that the tone of the work is con­sis­tent.

Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by Heather Fink to dis­cuss the role of the direc­tor in mak­ing a com­e­dy (or any­thing else) actu­al­ly good. Heather has direct­ed for TV, film, and com­mer­cials and spent a lot of time doing sound (a boom oper­a­tor or sound util­i­ty) for pro­duc­tions like Sat­ur­day Night Live, Get Out, The Morn­ing Show, and Mar­vel’s Dare­dev­il.

We talk about main­tain­ing com­e­dy through the tedious process of film­ing, putting actors through sex scenes and oth­er hard­ships, not telling them how to say their lines, come­di­ans in dra­mas, direct­ing improv/prank shows, and more. We touch on include Bad Trip, Bar­ry, and Ted Las­so, and more.

Watch some of Heather’s work:

  • Alleged, a short about dra­ma­tiz­ing accu­sa­tions against Steven Segal
  • Inside You, a film she wrote, direct­ed, and (reluc­tant­ly) starred in
  • The Focus Group, a short Heather direct­ed writ­ten by and star­ring Sara Ben­in­casa

We used some arti­cles to bring var­i­ous direc­tors and tech­niques to mind:

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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The Meaning of Hieronymus Bosch’s Spellbinding Triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights

in Art, History, Television | July 20th, 2021

Hierony­mus Bosch was born Jheron­imus van Aken. We know pre­cious lit­tle else about him, not even the year of his birth, which schol­ar Nicholas Baum guess­es must have been right in the mid­dle of the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry. But we do know that the artist was born in the Dutch town of ‘s‑Hertogenbosch, bet­ter known as Den Bosch, to which his assumed name pays trib­ute. It is thus to Den Bosch that Baum trav­els in the The Mys­ter­ies of Hierony­mus Bosch, the 1983 BBC TV movie above, in search of clues to an inter­pre­ta­tion of Bosch’s mys­te­ri­ous, grotesque, and some­times hilar­i­ous paint­ings. What man­ner of place could pro­duce an artis­tic mind capa­ble of The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights?

“My first reac­tion was dis­ap­point­ment,” Baum says of Den Bosch. “I was­n’t expect­ing such a very ordi­nary, very com­mer­cial, very provin­cial lit­tle town. I could­n’t for the life of me fit any­body as extra­or­di­nary as Bosch into a sleepy lit­tle place like this.” A hard­work­ing every­day Dutch­man might laugh at Baum’s Eng­lish imag­i­na­tion hav­ing got away with him; per­haps he’d even quote his coun­try’s well-worn proverb about nor­mal human behav­ior being crazy enough.

Nev­er­the­less, fueled by a near-life­long fas­ci­na­tion with Bosch’s fan­tas­ti­cal and for­bid­ding art, Baum goes deep­er: quite lit­er­al­ly deep­er, in one case, descend­ing to the dank cel­lar beneath the house where the artist grew up in order to take in “the authen­tic smell and feel of Bosch’s own day.”

Fur­ther insights come when Baum inves­ti­gates Bosch’s mem­ber­ship in the Catholic fra­ter­ni­ty of the Com­mon Life. A few decades lat­er, that same order would also edu­cate north­ern Renais­sance philoso­pher Eras­mus, whose reli­gios­i­ty is well known. Bosch must have been no less pious, but for cen­turies that did­n’t fig­ure as thor­ough­ly into the inter­pre­ta­tion of his paint­ings as it might have. Focused on the vivid images of bac­cha­na­lia Bosch incor­po­rat­ed into his work, some spec­u­lat­ed on his involve­ment in orgy-ori­ent­ed secret soci­eties. But Baum’s jour­ney con­vinces him that Bosch was “a fierce and pious Chris­t­ian” who paint­ed with the goal of turn­ing a glut­to­nous, wealth- and plea­sure-obsessed human­i­ty back toward the teach­ings of the Bible. And half a mil­len­ni­um lat­er, it is his wild­ly imag­i­na­tive ren­der­ings of sin that con­tin­ue to com­pel us — as well as hold out the promise of fur­ther secrets yet unex­plained.

For any­one inter­est­ed, Taschen now pub­lish­es an Bosch: The Com­plete Works, a beau­ti­ful and exhaus­tive explo­ration of the painter’s work. It includes a spe­cial chap­ter on The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mean­ing of Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Explained

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

Hierony­mus Bosch’s Medieval Paint­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Comes to Life in a Gigan­tic, Mod­ern Ani­ma­tion

Take a Mul­ti­me­dia Tour of the But­tock Song in Hierony­mus Bosch’s Paint­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

The Musi­cal Instru­ments in Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Get Brought to Life, and It Turns Out That They Sound “Painful” and “Hor­ri­ble”

New App Lets You Explore Hierony­mus Bosch’s “The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights” in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

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

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How American Bandstand Changed American Culture: Revisit Scenes from the Iconic Music Show

in Music, Television | July 16th, 2021

In a Pon­ti­ac adver­tise­ment that aired just before the 1969 episode of Amer­i­can Band­stand above, the year’s mod­els are tout­ed as “break­away cars” — vehi­cles for escape with­out rebel­lion. The ad shows a hand­ful of get­aways, all end­ing at the deal­er­ship, presided over by a bland sales­man who smiles and nods his approval. It’s an appo­site choice for the pro­gram that fol­lows — a show which, for 37 years, gave Amer­i­can audi­ences safe teenage rebel­lion in the whole­some con­tain­er of Dick Clark’s fic­tion­al 50s record shop.

As the episode opens, the cam­era pans around the bod­ies of teenage dancers, as if they were this year’s newest mod­els, then lands on the smil­ing, square-jawed Clark, the seem­ing­ly age­less host who gave approval to the pro­ceed­ings for the folks back home. What was he sell­ing?

View­ers could con­sume the lat­est dance trends and pop hits in their liv­ing rooms, then jour­ney to the local record shop — just like the one on set! The show’s reach was huge, and most every artist who made an appear­ance crossed over into main­stream suc­cess.

Amer­i­can Band­stand began its life in 1952 on a local ABC affil­i­ate sta­tion in Philadel­phia. Then it was called Band­standand its hosts were radio per­son­al­i­ty Bob Horn and for­mer ad sales­man Lee Stew­art, whom, it was thought, “could bring some of his clients on board as adver­tis­ers,” as Steve Cohen writes at the Cul­tur­al Crit­ic. “Stew­art had no charis­ma and even­tu­al­ly was dropped from the pro­gram.” Horn con­tin­ued until 1956, when he was fired from the show after a drunk-dri­ving arrest. The show’s whole­some image belied sor­did begin­nings.

Clark joined at the young age of 26 to replace Horn, the hard-drink­ing, chain-smok­ing 40-year-old. Estab­lish­ing an easy rap­port with the show’s young dancers, who came from the local West Philadel­phia Neigh­bor­hood, Clark helped return Band­stand to respectabil­i­ty, then pushed for it to go nation­al, which it did in 1957, “beam­ing images of clean-cut, aver­age teenagers,” notes History.com, “danc­ing to the not-so-clean-cut Jer­ry Lee Lewis’ ‘Whole Lot­ta Shakin’ Goin’ On’ to 67 ABC affil­i­ates across the nation.” (A gross­ly iron­ic musi­cal choice.)

Renamed Amer­i­can Band­stand, the new­ly nation­al pro­gram fea­tured a num­ber of new ele­ments that became part of its trade­mark, includ­ing the high school gym-like bleach­ers and the famous seg­ment in which teenage stu­dio guests rat­ed the newest records on a scale from 25 to 98 and offered such crit­i­cisms as “It’s got a good beat, and you can dance to it.” But the heart of Amer­i­can Band­stand always remained the sound of the day’s most pop­u­lar music com­bined with the sight of the show’s unpol­ished teen “reg­u­lars” danc­ing and show­ing off the lat­est fash­ions in cloth­ing and hair­styles.

Four years after becom­ing the show’s host, Clark became a mil­lion­aire at age 30. Hauled before Con­gress in 1960 to answer pay­ola charges, he admit­ted to tak­ing a few bribes, promised to divest, and skat­ed away on charm while a busi­ness part­ner con­fessed and resigned. At the time, he described him­self as “hav­ing an inter­est in 33 busi­ness­es,” Becky Krys­tal writes at The Wash­ing­ton Post, “rang­ing from music pub­lish­ers to, as The New York Times report­ed, an oper­a­tion that made and sold a stuffed kit­ten for sale on Amer­i­can Band­stand called the Plat­ter-Puss.” His busi­ness mod­el was decades ahead of the indus­try.

“A man with an unerr­ing sense of what Amer­i­cans want­ed to hear and see,” Krys­tal writes (or a sense of who to ask), Clark “achieved his great­est renown for an abil­i­ty to con­nect with the taste of the post-World War II baby-boom gen­er­a­tion. By the show’s 30th anniver­sary, almost 600,000 teenagers and 10,000 per­form­ers had appeared on the pro­gram. Among those to make ear­ly nation­al appear­ances includ­ed Bud­dy Hol­ly, James Brown, Ike and Tina Turn­er, and Simon and Gar­funkel. Dance crazes such as the Twist and the Watusi could be traced to the ‘Band­stand’ stu­dio.”

Amer­i­can Band­stand did­n’t only dis­sem­i­nate pop cul­ture to the mass­es; it also has been cred­it­ed with help­ing to inte­grate Amer­i­can cul­ture with its inte­grat­ed for­mat. It’s a claim large­ly spread, his crit­ics allege, by Clark him­self. Amer­i­can Stud­ies pro­fes­sor Matthew Del­mont argues that, while the show sold an image of inte­gra­tion, allow­ing a few Black kids from the large­ly inte­grat­ed West Philly neigh­bor­hood to appear, it also employed dis­crim­i­na­to­ry tac­tics to exclude the major­i­ty of Black stu­dents who want­ed to dance.

Clark may have bowed to the pres­sure of the times, but he was a con­sum­mate sales­man who nev­er lost a chance to make a buck. As Del­mont says, he began tout­ing the show’s his­to­ry of inte­gra­tion when Amer­i­can Band­stand faced stiff com­pe­ti­tion in the 70s from upstart rival Soul Train,a show that taught a new, post-boomer, post-Civ­il Rights gen­er­a­tion of kids how to dance, and whose smooth-voiced cre­ator-host Don Cor­nelius made the square-jawed Clark look like a total square. See many more clips and edit­ed episodes of Amer­i­can Band­stand from 1963–1970, before Soul Train con­sid­er­ably upped the ante for dance shows every­where, on YouTube here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

John Lydon & Pub­lic Image Ltd. Sow Chaos on Amer­i­can Band­stand: The Show’s Best and Worst Moment (1980)

Talk­ing Heads’ First TV Appear­ance Was on Amer­i­can Band­stand, and It Was a Lit­tle Awk­ward (1979)

Dick Clark Intro­duces Jef­fer­son Air­plane & the Sounds of Psy­che­del­ic San Fran­cis­co to Amer­i­ca: Yes Par­ents, You Should Be Afraid (1967)

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

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Carl Sagan Tells Johnny Carson What’s Wrong with Star Wars: “They’re All White” & There’s a “Large Amount of Human Chauvinism in It” (1978)

in Film, Sci Fi, Science, Television | July 14th, 2021

Is Star Wars sci­ence fic­tion or fan­ta­sy? Dif­fer­ent fans make dif­fer­ent argu­ments, some even opt­ing for a third way, claim­ing that the ever-mul­ti­ply­ing sto­ries of its ever-expand­ing fic­tion­al uni­verse belong to nei­ther genre. Back in 1978, the year after the release of the orig­i­nal Star Wars film (which no one then called “A New Hope,” let alone “Episode Four”), the ques­tion was approached by no less a pop­u­lar sci­en­tif­ic per­son­al­i­ty than Carl Sagan. It hap­pened on nation­al tele­vi­sion, as the astronomer, cos­mol­o­gist, writer, and tele­vi­sion host in his own right sat oppo­site John­ny Car­son. “The eleven-year-old in me loved them,” Sagan says in the clip above of Star Wars, Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind, and oth­er then-recent space-themed block­busters. “But they could’ve made a bet­ter effort to do things right.”

Every­one remem­bers how Star Wars sets its stage: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” But right there, Sagan has a prob­lem. Despite its remote­ness from us, this galaxy hap­pens also to be pop­u­lat­ed by human beings, “the result of a unique evo­lu­tion­ary sequence, based upon so many indi­vid­u­al­ly unlike­ly, ran­dom events on the Earth.”

So Homo sapi­ens could­n’t have evolved on any oth­er plan­et, Car­son asks, let alone one in anoth­er galaxy? “It’s extreme­ly unlike­ly that there would be crea­tures as sim­i­lar to us as the dom­i­nant ones in Star Wars.” He goes on to make a more spe­cif­ic cri­tique, one pub­li­cized again in recent years as ahead of its time: “They’re all white.” That is, in the skins of most of the movie’s char­ac­ters, “not even the oth­er col­ors rep­re­sent­ed on the Earth are present, much less greens and blues and pur­ples and oranges.”

Car­son responds, as any­one would, by bring­ing up Star Wars’ can­ti­na scene, with its rogue’s gallery of var­i­ous­ly non-humanoid habitués. “But none of them seemed to be in charge of the galaxy,” Sagan points out. “Every­body in charge of the galaxy seemed to look like us. I thought there was a large amount of human chau­vin­ism in it.” That no medal is bestowed upon Chew­bac­ca, despite his hero­ics, Sagan declares an exam­ple of “anti-Wook­iee dis­crim­i­na­tion” — with tongue in cheek, grant­ed, but point­ing up how much more inter­est­ing sci­ence fic­tion could be if it relied a lit­tle less on human con­ven­tions and drew a lit­tle more from sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies. Not that Star Wars is nec­es­sar­i­ly sci­ence fic­tion. “It was a shootout, was­n’t it?” Car­son asks. “A West­ern in out­er space.” John­ny nev­er did hes­i­tate to call ’em as he saw ’em.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fans Recon­struct Authen­tic Ver­sion of Star Wars, As It Was Shown in The­aters in 1977

The Com­plete Star Wars “Fil­mu­men­tary”: A 6‑Hour, Fan-Made Star Wars Doc­u­men­tary, with Behind-the-Scenes Footage & Com­men­tary

Carl Sagan Pre­dicts the Decline of Amer­i­ca: Unable to Know “What’s True,” We Will Slide, “With­out Notic­ing, Back into Super­sti­tion & Dark­ness” (1995)

Carl Sagan on the Impor­tance of Choos­ing Wise­ly What You Read (Even If You Read a Book a Week)

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

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

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Storytelling and Race in Captain America — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #98

in Comics/Cartoons, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | July 6th, 2021

What is it for a super-hero to rep­re­sent Amer­i­ca? Though the char­ac­ter cre­at­ed by Joe Simon and Jack Kir­by in 1941 may have been a way to cap­i­tal­ize on WWII patri­o­tism, it has since been used to ask ques­tions about what it real­ly means to be patri­ot­ic and how Amer­i­ca’s ideals and its real­i­ty may con­flict. We’re of course talk­ing about race, a theme explored by Sam Wil­son, for­mer­ly Cap’s side-kick, pick­ing up the shield in the comics and now on TV (and in the forth­com­ing film).

Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca, and Bri­an are joined by com­ic super-fan Antho­ny LeBlanc (return­ing from our ep.  56 on black nerds) to dis­cuss the recent com­ic runs by Ta-Nehishi Coates and Nick Spencer and espe­cial­ly Truth: Red, White and Black, Mar­vel’s 2003 comics mini-series by Robert Morales and Kyle Bak­er that tells the sto­ry of Amer­i­can super-sol­dier exper­i­ments on unknow­ing black men (rem­i­nis­cent of the real-life Tuskegee Syphilis Study). This was the source of the “first black Cap­tain Amer­i­ca” char­ac­ter Isa­iah Bradley fea­tured in The Fal­con and the Win­ter Sol­dier Dis­ney+ show, which we also dis­cuss.

Here are a few arti­cles that fed into our dis­cus­sion:

The final issue of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Cap­tain Amer­i­ca is com­ing July 7.

We rec­om­mend the Cap­tain Amer­i­ca Com­ic Book Fans pod­cast for more infor­ma­tion. Their recent inter­view with long­time edi­tor Tom Brevoort was illu­mi­nat­ing, and they spent eps.  33 and 34 walk­ing through Truth: Red, White & Black.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Considering Mare of Easttown — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #97

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | July 1st, 2021

Inso­far as some­thing is a TV hit at all these days, the small-town Penn­syl­va­nia mur­der mys­tery star­ring Kate Winslet seems to qual­i­fy, but what dis­tin­guish­es it from the many many oth­er crime dra­mas on TV? Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt dis­cuss the plot struc­ture, cast­ing, and oth­er cre­ative choic­es and try to fig­ure out how the show relates to Broad­church, The Undo­ing, etc. Should there be a sea­son two?

Here are a few of the arti­cles that fed the dis­cus­sion:

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.