Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #40 on #MeToo Depictions in TV and Film

in Podcasts, Politics, Pretty Much Pop, Television | April 22nd, 2020


These sto­ries are all heav­i­ly watched, which means they’re enter­tain­ing: The 2019 film Bomb­shell (about the pre­da­tions of Roger Ailes), Apple TV’s The Morn­ing Show (about a dis­graced anchor), and Net­flix’s Unbe­liev­able (about report­ing rape) and 13 Rea­sons Why (about teen sui­cide result­ing from sex­u­al assault). But what’s “enter­tain­ing” about sex­u­al assault and harass­ment? What makes for a sen­si­tive as opposed to a sen­sa­tion­al­ized por­tray­al?

Eri­ca, Mark, and Bri­an con­sid­er which sto­ries work and why. How much diver­gence from true events is allow­able in Bomb­shell or Con­fir­ma­tion (about Ani­ta Hill)? By hav­ing char­ac­ters inter­pret their sit­u­a­tions (Eri­ca gives an exam­ple from the show Sex Edu­ca­tion), are writ­ers essen­tial­ly telling audi­ences how to feel about their own expe­ri­ences? Should cer­tain depic­tions be ruled out as poten­tial­ly trig­ger­ing, or is it good to “bring to light” what­ev­er ter­ri­ble things actu­al­ly hap­pen in the world? Should shows delve into the psy­chol­o­gy of the per­pe­tra­tor (maybe even treat­ing him as a pro­tag­o­nist), or must the mes­sage be whol­ly and unam­bigu­ous­ly about the vic­tim? 

Art is about risk-tak­ing and cap­tur­ing dif­fi­cult ambi­gu­i­ties; this does­n’t sound much like a pub­lic ser­vice mes­sage. So what respon­si­bil­i­ty to do show cre­ators have to con­sult pro­fes­sion­als about how to present dif­fi­cult top­ics like this?

We drew on some arti­cles to help us look at these ques­tions:

Here’s that weird scene where Jen­nifer Anis­ton and Bil­ly Crudup sing on The Morn­ing Show.

If this top­ic is too depress­ing, check out our episode #39 from last week about what to watch on TV dur­ing quar­an­tine:

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear 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 or start with the first episode.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

HBO Is Streaming 500 Hours of Shows for Free: The Sopranos, The Wire, and More

in Television | April 3rd, 2020

We live, one often hears, in a gold­en age of tele­vi­sion. But when did this age begin? Schol­ars of pres­tige TV dra­ma — a field that, for both pro­fes­sion­als and ama­teurs, has expand­ed in recent years — tend to point to The Sopra­nos, which pre­miered in 1999. In its eight-year run, David Chase’s series about a depressed New Jer­sey mafia boss, a pro­tag­o­nist ana­lyzed in the Behind the Cur­tain video essay above, set new stan­dards in its medi­um for craft and com­plex­i­ty. To under­stand how much of a depar­ture The Sopra­nos marked from every­thing else on tele­vi­sion, sim­ply com­pare it to what was air­ing on major broad­cast net­works in the 1990s, most of which now looks unwatch­ably sim­plis­tic and repet­i­tive.

Of course, The Sopra­nos did­n’t air on a major broad­cast net­work: it aired on HBO. Orig­i­nal­ly launched as “Home Box Office” in 1972, the old­est pre­mi­um cable chan­nel of them all has long since expand­ed its man­date from air­ing sec­ond-run movies to cre­at­ing orig­i­nal pro­gram­ming of its own.

Its mid-1990s slo­gan “It’s Not TV. It’s HBO” reflects an intent to go beyond what was pos­si­ble on con­ven­tion­al tele­vi­sion net­works, an enter­prise whose promise The Sopra­nos sig­naled to the world. Crit­ics lav­ished even more praise on The Wire, David Simon’s dra­mat­ic exam­i­na­tion and indict­ment of Amer­i­can insti­tu­tions that ran on HBO from 2002 to 2008. In the video essay just above, Thomas Flight explains what makes The Wire, whose fans include every­one from Barack Oba­ma to Slavoj Žižek, “one of the most bril­liant TV shows ever.”

If you haven’t seen these or the oth­er acclaimed HBO shows that have done so much to gild this tele­vi­su­al age, now’s your chance to catch up. That’s true not just for the obvi­ous rea­son — the threat of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic keep­ing so many shut in at home — but also because HBO will make 500 hours of its pro­gram­ming free to stream on its HBO Now and HBO Go plat­forms. If you’re in the Unit­ed States or anoth­er area served by HBO online, you can watch not just The Sopra­nos and The Wire in their entire­ty, but the vam­pire-themed True Blood, the under­tak­ing-themed Six Feet Under, and such comedic takes on Amer­i­can busi­ness and pol­i­tics as Sil­i­con Val­ley and Veep, a video essay from The Take on whose “satire in the age of Trump” appears above. Of all the ways we can define HBO-style pres­tige tele­vi­sion, isn’t “TV shows good enough to inspire video essays” the most apt? Get start­ed here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Wire as Great Vic­to­ri­an Nov­el

The Wire Breaks Down The Great Gats­by, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Clas­sic Crit­i­cism of Amer­i­ca (NSFW)

David Chase Reveals the Philo­soph­i­cal Mean­ing of The Sopra­nos’ Final Scene

The Nine Minute Sopra­nos

Watch Curat­ed Playlists of Exper­i­men­tal Videos & Films to Get You Through COVID-19: Miran­da July, Jan Švankma­jer, Guy Maddin & 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 11 ) |

Stream All 18 Hours of Ken Burns’ Baseball for Free on What Would Have Been Opening Day

in Sports, Television | March 26th, 2020

Base­ball sea­son won’t start today, on what would have been Open Day. So here’s your next best bet. As Sam Barsan­ti writes at AV Club, “PBS and the world’s pre­em­i­nent direc­tor of extreme­ly watch­able and extreme­ly long doc­u­men­taries have a spe­cial treat: The entire­ty of Ken Burns’ Base­ball—over 18 hours—is now avail­able to stream for free on the PBS web­site and all of its relat­ed apps.”

It’s no coin­ci­dence that Burns’ doc­u­men­tary becomes free dur­ing COVID-19. On Twit­ter, Burns adds: “With events can­celed & so much closed, I asked @PBS to stream BASEBALL for free so we can par­tic­i­pate in the nation­al pas­time togeth­er. Watch at the link below or on any stream­ing device. And please look out for those with greater needs. Play ball.”

Stream the videos here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Austin City Lim­its Opens Up Video Archives Dur­ing COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic

Live Per­form­ers Now Stream­ing Shows, from their Homes to Yours: Neil Young, Cold­play, Broad­way Stars, Met­ro­pol­i­tan Operas & More

Watch Curat­ed Playlists of Exper­i­men­tal Videos & Films to Get You Through COVID-19: Miran­da July, Jan Švankma­jer, Guy Maddin & More

The Met Opera Stream­ing Free Operas Online to Get You Through COVID-19

Bruce Spring­steen Releas­es Live Con­cert Film Online: Watch “Lon­don Call­ing: Live In Hyde Park” and Prac­tice Self Dis­tanc­ing

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

When Orson Welles Crossed Paths With Hitler (and Churchill): “He Had No Personality.… I Think There Was Nothing There.”

in History, Television | March 23rd, 2020

Dick Cavett excelled at turn­ing the late-night talk show for­mat into a show­case for gen­uine­ly reveal­ing con­ver­sa­tions (and the occa­sion­al wrestling match). Of the many riv­et­ing guests he had on through­out the 60s and 70s, some appear­ing mul­ti­ple times, few could match Orson Welles for sheer sto­ry­telling prowess. As if in a con­test to out­do him­self, Welles appeared on Cavett’s show three times in 1970, and once more in 1973, as an ami­able, gruff racon­teur who lived a life almost impos­si­ble to believe actu­al­ly hap­pened.

Welles met every­one. He even met Hitler, he says in the clip above from a July 1970 appear­ance on the show, his sec­ond that year. In those ear­ly days, he says, “the Nazis were just a very com­i­cal kind of minor­i­ty par­ty of nuts that nobody took seri­ous­ly at all” except Welles’ Aus­tri­an hik­ing instruc­tor, who brought the leg­endary actor and direc­tor to a Nazi din­ner with the future mass-mur­der­ing dic­ta­tor. Welles was seat­ed next to Hitler, who “made so lit­tle an impres­sion on me that I can’t remem­ber a sec­ond of it. He had no per­son­al­i­ty. He was invis­i­ble…. I think there was noth­ing there.”

By 1938, every­one knew who he was: Hitler was named “man of the year” by Time mag­a­zine, who wrote, “less­er men of the year seemed small indeed beside the Führer”—and Welles was named “Radio’s Man of the Year.” His “famous The War of the Worlds broad­cast, scared few­er peo­ple than Hitler,” the edi­tors wrote, “but more than had ever been fright­ened by radio before, demon­strat­ing that radio can be a tremen­dous force in whip­ping up mass emo­tion.” Welles’ nev­er met Stal­in, he tells Cavett, unprompt­ed, but knew Roo­sevelt “very well.”

In a lat­er appear­ance on the show, in Sep­tem­ber 1970, Welles claimed Roo­sevelt told him no one believed the Pearl Har­bor announce­ment because of the War of the Worlds hoax. Here, in this twelve-minute clip from July, he has many more sto­ries to tell and excel­lent ques­tions from Cavett to answer (if he went back to school, he says, and “real­ly want­ed to get good at a sub­ject,” he would study anthro­pol­o­gy). Towards the end, at 9:00, he talks about anoth­er world leader who did make a dis­tinct impres­sion on him: Win­ston Churchill. “He was quite anoth­er thing,” says Welles. “He had great humor and great irony.”

Welles tells a sto­ry of Churchill com­ing to see him play Oth­el­lo in Lon­don. “I heard a mur­mur­ing in the front row. I thought he was talk­ing to him­self.” Churchill lat­er came to vis­it Welles in his dress­ing room and began to recite all of Othello’s lines from mem­o­ry, “includ­ing the cuts which I had made.” Years lat­er, after the war, when Churchill was out of office, Welles ran into him once more in Venice, and their pri­or asso­ci­a­tion came very much in handy in the financ­ing of his next pic­ture. (He doesn’t name the film, but it might have been The Stranger.)

No one expe­ri­enced the 20th cen­tu­ry quite like Orson Welles, and no one left such a cre­ative lega­cy. Always enter­tain­ing, his Cavett appear­ances are more than oppor­tu­ni­ties for name dropping—they’re tele­vised mem­oirs, in extem­po­ra­ne­ous vignettes, from one of history’s most engag­ing sto­ry­tellers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sal­vador Dalí Strolls onto The Dick Cavett Show with an Anteater, Then Talks About Dreams & Sur­re­al­ism, the Gold­en Ratio & More (1970)

Orson Welles Trash­es Famous Direc­tors: Alfred Hitch­cock (“Ego­tism and Lazi­ness”), Woody Allen (“His Arro­gance Is Unlim­it­ed”) & More

Alfred Hitch­cock Talks with Dick Cavett About Sab­o­tage, For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent & Lax­a­tives (1972)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Janis Joplin’s Last TV Performance & Interview: The Dick Cavett Show (1970)

in Music, Television | February 26th, 2020

The best celebri­ty inter­view­ers have the abil­i­ty to show us how the stars are not like us at all—not only because of the entourages, wardrobes, and bank accounts, but because of the tal­ent for which we revere them —and also how they’re kind of just like us after all: shar­ing the same inse­cu­ri­ties, fears, doubts, for­get­ful­ness, con­fu­sion, etc. They are, that is to say, real human beings.

Like no oth­er inter­view­er on net­work tele­vi­sion before or since, Dick Cavett could draw all of this out of his guests: both their cre­ativ­i­ty and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. What seemed like sil­ly chit chat was a dis­arm­ing cam­ou­flage for inci­sive ques­tions he let casu­al­ly slip through the ban­ter.

“Cavett’s prime-time show famous­ly fea­tured a who’s who of rock stars that both per­formed and sat for loose, freeform con­ver­sa­tions,” writes Jam­base, “which brought the ethos of the hip­pie gen­er­a­tion to the homes of mil­lions.” Amongst his many rock star guests, he devel­oped a spe­cial bond with Janis Joplin who sat down with him on August 3, 1970 for her appear­ance on his show and what would turn out to be her final tele­vised per­for­mance and inter­view.

Joplin belts out “My Baby” and “Half Moon,” which you can see in her full appear­ance above, with an intro­duc­tion by Cavett. Then after both songs, she walks over the couch to hang out with the host, who greets with her warm­ly with, “Very nice to see you, my lit­tle song­bird.” Cavett poked fun at his guests, but he did­n’t talk down or kiss up. Most every­one who sat down with him found his dry wit and can­dor refresh­ing.

Joplin, who admits she doesn’t like doing inter­views, “seems total­ly at ease dur­ing this con­ver­sa­tion,” Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock points out, “a wide-rang­ing but infor­mal chat that touch­es on every­thing from her feel­ings regard­ing con­cert riots to whether or not she ever water­skis.” She is poised through­out and throws Cavett off-guard with her dead­pan humor.


They play off each oth­er in a charm­ing exchange that doesn’t go near­ly as deep as her final inter­view with the Vil­lage Voice’s Howard Smith four days before her death that Octo­ber, but which cap­tures Joplin’s thought­ful, easy­go­ing per­son­al­i­ty beau­ti­ful­ly. Cavett lat­er cred­it­ed Joplin for send­ing so many oth­er major rock stars his way after her first appear­ance on his show in 1968.

“She had done oth­er tele­vi­sion she didn’t like very much,” he remem­bered in 2016 on PBS’s Amer­i­can Mas­ters. “She told peo­ple, ‘it’s okay to do his show, he’s not a drea­ry fig­ure.’” Nei­ther, despite her trag­ic sto­ry, was Janis Joplin. “At once inse­cure yet full of con­vic­tion, opin­ion­at­ed yet con­cerned about offend­ing, fierce yet ten­der­heart­ed,” writes Maria Popo­va at Brain Pick­ings; she was, as mil­lions of Cavett’s view­ers were delight­ed to dis­cov­er, a “com­plex per­son brim­ming with the sort of inner con­tra­dic­tions that make us human.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Janis Joplin’s Break­through Per­for­mance at the Mon­terey Pop Fes­ti­val: “One of the Great Con­cert Per­for­mances of all Time” (1967)

Watch Janis Joplin’s Final Inter­view Reborn as an Ani­mat­ed Car­toon

George Har­ri­son in the Spot­light: The Dick Cavett Show (1971)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Salvador Dalí Strolls onto The Dick Cavett Show with an Anteater, Then Talks About Dreams & Surrealism, the Golden Ratio & More (1970)

in Art, Television | February 20th, 2020

There was a time when you could flip on the TV in the evening, tune in to a major net­work’s late-night talk show, and see Sal­vador Dalí walk­ing an anteater. That time was the ear­ly 1970s, the net­work was ABC, and the talk show’s host was Dick Cavett, who dared to con­verse on cam­era, and at length, with every­one from Ing­mar Bergman and Woody Allen to Nor­man Mail­er and Gore Vidal to David Bowie and Janis Joplin, and John Lennon with Yoko Ono. Whether they went smooth­ly or bumpi­ly, Cavet­t’s con­ver­sa­tions played out like no oth­ers on tele­vi­sion, then or now. Dalí’s March 1970 appear­ance above makes for a case in point: not only does he come on with his anteater, he wastes lit­tle time toss­ing it into the lap of anoth­er of the evening’s guests, silent-film star Lil­lian Gish.

Dalí prais­es anteaters to Cavett as the sole “angel­ic” ani­mal, a qual­i­ty that has some­thing to go with their tongues. He goes on to explain his admi­ra­tion for the math­e­mat­i­cal prop­er­ties of rhi­noc­er­os­es, whose pro­por­tions agree with the “gold­en ratio” he tend­ed to incor­po­rate into his art.

Oth­er sub­jects to arise dur­ing Dalí’s twen­ty min­utes on set include the razor blade and the eye­ball in Un Chien Andalou; the vivid, irra­tional, and “liliputit­ian” images that come to life in the mind “ten min­utes or fif­teen min­utes before you fall [asleep]”; and the artist’s main­te­nance of his famous mus­tache (which he’d pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed, six­teen years before, on The Name’s the Same). At one point Gish asks Dalí if his work has “a mes­sage to give to the peo­ple that we, per­haps, don’t under­stand.” His unhesi­tat­ing reply: “No mes­sage.” Cavett, of course, has a smooth fol­low-up: “Could you invent one?”

In his show’s 1970s prime, Cavett demon­strat­ed an unmatched abil­i­ty to make enter­tain­ment out of dif­fi­cult guests — not by mak­ing fun of them, exact­ly, but by crack­ing jokes that revealed a cer­tain self-aware­ness about the form of the talk show itself. “Am I alone in find­ing you some­what to dif­fi­cult to fol­low in terms of what your the­o­ries are?” he asks Dalí amid all the talk of anteaters and eye­balls, dreams and math­e­mat­ics. And the dif­fi­cul­ty was­n’t just con­cep­tu­al: “Is it my imag­i­na­tion,” Cavett asks lat­er on, “or are you speak­ing a mix­ture of lan­guages?” But Dalí’s delib­er­ate­ly idio­syn­crat­ic Eng­lish, ideas, and per­son­al­i­ty all came of a piece, and at the end of the night Cavett admits his own admi­ra­tion for the artist’s work, even going so far as to request an auto­graph on air. The view­ers of Amer­i­ca must have come away from Dalí’s TV appear­ances with more ques­tions than answers. But for us watch­ing today, one is par­tic­u­lar­ly salient: what on Earth must Satchel Paige have thought of all this?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Q: Sal­vador Dalí, Are You a Crack­pot? A: No, I’m Just Almost Crazy (1969)

When Sal­vador Dali Met Sig­mund Freud, and Changed Freud’s Mind About Sur­re­al­ism (1938)

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound: “No, You Can’t Pour Live Ants All Over Ingrid Bergman!”

Alfred Hitch­cock Talks with Dick Cavett About Sab­o­tage, For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent & Lax­a­tives (1972)

Sal­vador Dalí Reveals the Secrets of His Trade­mark Mous­tache (1954)

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

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Moral Philosophy on TV? Pretty Much Pop #32 Judges The Good Place

in Philosophy, Pretty Much Pop, Television | February 20th, 2020

Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt dis­cuss Michael Schur’s NBC TV show. Is it good? (Yes, or we would­n’t be cov­er­ing it?) Is it actu­al­ly a sit-com? Does it effec­tive­ly teach phi­los­o­phy? What did hav­ing actu­al philoso­phers on the staff (after sea­son one) con­tribute, and was that enough? We talk TV finales, the dra­mat­ic impact of the show’s con­vo­lut­ed struc­ture, the puz­zle of heav­en being death, and more.

Here are a few arti­cles to get you warmed up:

If you like the show, you should also check out The Offi­cial Good Place Pod­cast, espe­cial­ly the inter­views with Schur him­self. There are also sup­ple­men­tary edu­ca­tion­al videos with pro­fes­sor Todd May like this one on exis­ten­tial­ism.

A few clips: What’s the deal with the “Jere­my Bearimy” time mea­sure­ment? The Trol­ley Prob­lem, meet­ing Hypa­tia, finale clip with Arvo Part’s “Spiegel Im Spiegel.”

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear 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 or start with the first episode.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Daphne Oram Created the BBC’s First-Ever Piece of Electronic Music (1957)

in History, Music, Television | February 7th, 2020

To the ques­tion of who cre­at­ed elec­tron­ic music, there can be no one answer. The for­m’s emer­gence took decades, begin­ning with the ear­li­est elec­tron­ic instru­ments in the late 19th cen­tu­ry, devel­op­ing toward the first music pro­duced sole­ly from elec­tron­ic sources in the ear­ly 1950s, and arriv­ing at such artis­tic des­ti­na­tions as Wendy Car­los’ 1968 album Switched-On Bach. Dri­ving this evo­lu­tion­ary process were artists of a vari­ety of nation­al­i­ties and musi­cal sen­si­bil­i­ties, a group includ­ing sev­er­al espe­cial­ly unig­nor­able fig­ures. Take, for instance, Daphne Oram, the com­pos­er and co-founder of BBC’s sto­ried Radio­phon­ic Work­shop who cre­at­ed the very first piece of elec­tron­ic music ever com­mis­sioned by the net­work.

Oram com­posed that music in 1957, the year before the estab­lish­ment of the Radio­phon­ic Work­shop. She did it to score a BBC pro­duc­tion of Jean Girau­doux’s play Amphit­ry­on 38, using an elec­tron­ic sine wave oscil­la­tor, a tape recorder, and a few fil­ters — a syn­the­siz­er, in oth­er words, of her own cre­ation.

Expe­ri­ence had posi­tioned her well to design and com­pose with such a device and the process­es it demand­ed: she grew up study­ing the piano, organ, and com­po­si­tion, and as a teenag­er she’d tak­en a job as a stu­dio engi­neer at the BBC, an envi­ron­ment that gave her access to all the lat­est tech­nolo­gies for cre­at­ing and record­ing sound. Despite hav­ing reject­ed Still Point, an acoustic-elec­tron­ic piece she com­posed for turnta­bles, five micro­phones, and a “dou­ble orches­tra,” the BBC aired Amphit­ry­on 38 with her score full of “sounds unlike any ever heard before.”

That’s how Oram’s music is described in the 1950s tele­vi­sion clip above, a vis­it to the “coun­try stu­dio in Kent” where, “unlike the tra­di­tion­al com­pos­er, she uses no musi­cal instru­ments and no musi­cians.” And indeed, “she needs no con­cert hall or opera house to put on a per­for­mance: she can do it on a tape recorder.” As out­landish as Oram’s set­up might have looked to BBC view­ers at home back then, the nar­ra­tor informs them that “already, elec­tron­ic music is being used in films, tele­vi­sion, and the the­ater,” and that some peo­ple even think her col­lages of unnat­ur­al sounds will be “the music of the future.” Vin­di­cat­ing that notion is the odd famil­iar­i­ty every elec­tron­ic musi­cian today will feel when they watch Oram at work among the devices of her stu­dio, sur­round­ed as they them­selves hap­pi­ly are by those devices’ tech­no­log­i­cal descen­dants.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via reak­tor­play­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Four Women Who Pio­neered Elec­tron­ic Music: Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliv­eros

Hear a 20 Hour Playlist Fea­tur­ing Record­ings by Elec­tron­ic Music Pio­neer Pauline Oliv­eros (RIP)

Two Doc­u­men­taries Intro­duce Delia Der­byshire, the Pio­neer in Elec­tron­ic Music

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

Hear Elec­tron­ic Lady­land, a Mix­tape Fea­tur­ing 55 Tracks from 35 Pio­neer­ing Women in Elec­tron­ic Music

Hear Glenn Gould Sing the Praise of the Moog Syn­the­siz­er and Wendy Car­los’ Switched-On Bach, the “Record of the Decade” (1968)

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast