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.

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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.

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Jim Lehrer’s 16 Rules for Practicing Journalism with Integrity

in Current Affairs, Media, Television | January 27th, 2020

In 1988, stal­wart PBS news anchor, writer, and long­time pres­i­den­tial debate mod­er­a­tor Jim Lehrer was accused of being too soft on the can­di­dates. He snapped back, “If some­body wants to be enter­tained, they ought to go to the cir­cus.” The folksy quote sums up the Tex­an jour­nal­ist’s phi­los­o­phy suc­cinct­ly. The news was a seri­ous busi­ness. But Lehrer, who passed away last Thurs­day, wit­nessed the dis­tinc­tion between polit­i­cal jour­nal­ism and the cir­cus col­lapse, with the spread of cable info­tain­ment, and cor­po­rate dom­i­na­tion of the Inter­net and radio.

Kot­tke remarks that Lehrer seemed “like one of the last of a breed of jour­nal­ist who took seri­ous­ly the integri­ty of inform­ing the Amer­i­can pub­lic about impor­tant events.” He con­tin­u­al­ly refused offers from the major net­works, host­ing PBS’s Mac­Neil-Lehrer New­shour with cohost Robert Mac­Neil until 1995, then his own in-depth news hour until his retire­ment in 2011. “I have an old-fash­ioned view that news is not a com­mod­i­ty,” he said. “News is infor­ma­tion that’s required in a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety… That sounds corny, but I don’t care whether it sounds corny or not. It’s the truth.”

To meet such high stan­dards required a rig­or­ous set of jour­nal­is­tic… well, standards—such as Lehrer was hap­py to list, below, in a 1997 report from the Aspen Insti­tute.

  1. Do noth­ing I can­not defend.*
  2. Do not dis­tort, lie, slant, or hype.
  3. Do not fal­si­fy facts or make up quotes.
  4. Cov­er, write, and present every sto­ry with the care I would want if the sto­ry were about me.*
  5. Assume there is at least one oth­er side or ver­sion to every sto­ry.*
  6. Assume the view­er is as smart and car­ing and good a per­son as I am.*
  7. Assume the same about all peo­ple on whom I report.*
  8. Assume every­one is inno­cent until proven guilty.
  9. Assume per­son­al lives are a pri­vate mat­ter until a legit­i­mate turn in the sto­ry man­dates oth­er­wise.*
  10. Care­ful­ly sep­a­rate opin­ion and analy­sis from straight news sto­ries and clear­ly label them as such.*
  11. Do not use anony­mous sources or blind quotes except on rare and mon­u­men­tal occa­sions. No one should ever be allowed to attack anoth­er anony­mous­ly.*
  12. Do not broad­cast pro­fan­i­ty or the end result of vio­lence unless it is an inte­gral and nec­es­sary part of the sto­ry and/or cru­cial to under­stand­ing the sto­ry.
  13. Acknowl­edge that objec­tiv­i­ty may be impos­si­ble but fair­ness nev­er is.
  14. Jour­nal­ists who are reck­less with facts and rep­u­ta­tions should be dis­ci­plined by their employ­ers.
  15. My view­ers have a right to know what prin­ci­ples guide my work and the process I use in their prac­tice.
  16. I am not in the enter­tain­ment busi­ness.*

In a 2006 Har­vard com­mence­ment address (at the top), Lehrer reduced the list to only the nine rules marked by aster­isks above by Kot­tke, who goes on to explain in short why these guide­lines are so rou­tine­ly cast aside—“this shit takes time! And time is mon­ey.” It’s eas­i­er to patch togeth­er sto­ries in rapid-fire order when you don’t cite or check sources or do inves­tiga­tive report­ing, and face no seri­ous con­se­quences for it.

Lehrer’s adher­ence to pro­fes­sion­al ethics may have been unique in any era, but his atten­tion to detail and obses­sion with access­ing mul­ti­ple points of view came from an old­er media. He “saw him­self as ‘a print/word per­son at heart’ and his pro­gram as a kind of news­pa­per for tele­vi­sion,” writes Robert McFad­den in his New York Times obit­u­ary. He was also “an oasis of civil­i­ty in a news media that thrived on excit­ed head­lines, gotcha ques­tions and noisy con­fronta­tions.”

Lehrer under­stood that civil­i­ty is mean­ing­less in the absence of truth, or of kind­ness and humil­i­ty. His long­time cohost’s list of jour­nal­is­tic guide­lines also appears in the Aspen Insti­tute report. “The val­ues which Jim Lehrer and I observed,” Mac­Neil writes, “he con­tin­ues to observe.” Jour­nal­ism is a seri­ous business—“behave with civility”—but “remem­ber that jour­nal­ists are no more impor­tant to soci­ety than peo­ple in oth­er pro­fes­sions. Avoid macho pos­tur­ing and arro­gant dis­play.”

Read more about Lehrer’s list of guide­lines at Kot­tke.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jour­nal­ism Under Siege: A Free Course from Stan­ford Explores the Imper­iled Free­dom of the Press

Jour­nal­is­tic Ethics: A Free Online Course from UCLA 

Han­nah Arendt Explains How Pro­pa­gan­da Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Moral­i­ty: Insights from The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism

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

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Monty Python’s Terry Jones (RIP) Was a Comedian, But Also a Medieval Historian: Get to Know His Other Side

in Comedy, History, Television | January 24th, 2020

Mon­ty Python’s sur­re­al, slap­stick par­o­dies of his­to­ry, reli­gion, med­i­cine, phi­los­o­phy, and law depend­ed on a com­pe­tent grasp of these sub­jects, and most of the troupe’s mem­bers, four of whom met at Oxford and Cam­bridge, went on to demon­strate their schol­ar­ly acu­men out­side of com­e­dy, with books, guest lec­tures, pro­fes­sor­ships, and seri­ous tele­vi­sion shows.

Michael Palin even became pres­i­dent of the Roy­al Geo­graph­i­cal Soci­ety for a few years. And Palin’s one­time Oxford pal and ear­ly writ­ing part­ner Ter­ry Jones—who passed away at 77 on Jan­u­ary 21 after a long strug­gle with degen­er­a­tive aphasia—didn’t do so bad­ly for him­self either, becom­ing a respect­ed schol­ar of Medieval his­to­ry and an author­i­ta­tive pop­u­lar writer on dozens of oth­er sub­jects.

Indeed, as the Pythons did through­out their aca­d­e­m­ic and comedic careers, Jones com­bined his inter­ests as often as he could, either bring­ing his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge to absur­dist com­e­dy or bring­ing humor to the study of his­to­ry. Jones wrote and direct­ed the pseu­do-his­tor­i­cal spoofs Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail and Life of Bri­an, and in 2004 he won an Emmy for his tele­vi­sion pro­gram Ter­ry Jones’ Medieval Lives, an enter­tain­ing, infor­ma­tive series that incor­po­rates sketch com­e­dy-style reen­act­ments and Ter­ry Gilliam-like ani­ma­tions.

In the pro­gram, Jones debunks pop­u­lar ideas about sev­er­al stock medieval Euro­pean char­ac­ters famil­iar to us all, while he vis­its his­tor­i­cal sites and sits down to chat with experts. These char­ac­ters include The Peas­ant, The Damsel, The Min­strel, The Monk, and The Knights. The series became a pop­u­lar book in 2007, itself a cul­mi­na­tion of decades of work. Jones first book, Chaucer’s Knight: The Por­trait of a Medieval Mer­ce­nary came out in 1980. There, notes Matthew Rozsa at Salon:

[Jones] argued that the con­cept of Geof­frey Chaucer’s knight as the epit­o­me of Chris­t­ian chival­ry ignored an ugli­er truth: That the Knight was a mer­ce­nary who worked for author­i­tar­i­ans that bru­tal­ly oppressed ordi­nary peo­ple (an argu­ment not dis­sim­i­lar to the scene in which a peas­ant argues for democ­ra­cy in The Holy Grail).

In 2003, Jones col­lab­o­rat­ed with sev­er­al his­to­ri­ans on Who Mur­dered Chaucer? A spec­u­la­tive study of the peri­od in which many of the fig­ures he lat­er sur­veyed in his show and book emerged as dis­tinc­tive types. As in his work with Mon­ty Python, he didn’t only apply his con­trar­i­an­ism to medieval his­to­ry. He also called the Renais­sance “over­rat­ed” and “con­ser­v­a­tive,” and in his 2006 BBC One series Ter­ry Jones’ Bar­bar­ians, he described the peri­od we think of as the fall of Rome in pos­i­tive terms, call­ing the city’s so-called “Sack” in 410 an inven­tion of pro­pa­gan­da.

Jones’ work as a pop­u­lar his­to­ri­an, polit­i­cal writer, and come­di­an “is not the full extent of [his] oeu­vre,” writes Rozsa, “but it is enough to help us fath­om the mag­ni­tude of the loss suf­fered on Tues­day night.” His lega­cy “was to try to make us more intel­li­gent, more well-edu­cat­ed, more thought­ful. He also strove, of course, to make us have fun.” Python fans know this side of Jones well. Get to know him as a pas­sion­ate inter­preter of his­to­ry in Ter­ry Jones’ Medieval Lives, which you can watch on YouTube here.

For an aca­d­e­m­ic study of Jones’ medieval work, see the col­lec­tion: The Medieval Python The Pur­po­sive and Provoca­tive Work of Ter­ry Jones.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry & Lega­cy of Magna Car­ta Explained in Ani­mat­ed Videos by Mon­ty Python’s Ter­ry Jones

John Cleese Revis­its His 20 Years as an Ivy League Pro­fes­sor in His New Book, Pro­fes­sor at Large: The Cor­nell Years

Mon­ty Python’s Eric Idle Breaks Down His Most Icon­ic Char­ac­ters

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

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Actor Margaret Colin (VEEP, Independence Day) Joins Pretty Much Pop #28 to Take On the Trope of the Alpha Female

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television, Theatre | January 23rd, 2020

What’s the deal with images of pow­er­ful women in media? The trope of the tough-as-nails boss-lady who may or may not have a heart of gold has evolved a lot over the years, but it’s dif­fi­cult to por­tray such a char­ac­ter unob­jec­tion­ably, prob­a­bly due to those all-too-famil­iar dou­ble stan­dards about want­i­ng women in author­i­ty (or, say, run­ning for office) to be assertive but not astrin­gent.

Mar­garet was the female lead in major films includ­ing Inde­pen­dence Day and The Dev­il’s Own, is a main­stay on Broad­way, and has appeared on TV in many roles includ­ing the moth­er of the Gos­sip Girl and as an unscrupu­lous news­cast­er on the final sea­sons of VEEP. Her height and voice have made her a good fit for dom­i­nant-lady roles, and she leads Mark, Eri­ca, and Bri­an through a quick, instruc­tive tour through her work with male direc­tors (e.g. in a pre-Mur­phy-Brown Dianne Eng­lish sit-com), play­ing the lead in three Life­time Net­work movies, on Broad­way as Jack­ie, and oppo­site Har­ri­son Ford, Al Paci­no, Melanie Grif­fith, Michael Shan­non, Wal­lace Shawn, and oth­ers.

Giv­en the lim­i­ta­tions of short-form sto­ry­telling in film, maybe some use of stereo­types is just nec­es­sary to get the gist of a char­ac­ter out quick­ly, but actors can load their per­for­mances with unseen back­sto­ry. We hear about the actor’s role in estab­lish­ing a char­ac­ter vs. the vision of the film­mak­ers or show-run­ners. Also, the rel­a­tive con­ser­vatism of film vs. stage vs. TV in grant­i­ng women cre­ative con­trol, the “fem­i­nine voice,” why women always appar­ent­ly have to trip in movies when chased, and more.

A few resources to get you think­ing about this top­ic:

Some­one’s post­ed a tape of Carousel fea­tur­ing Eri­ca and Mar­garet.

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.

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Fellini’s Fantastic TV Commercials for Barilla, Campari & More: The Italian Filmmaker Was Born 100 Years Ago Today

in Film, Television | January 20th, 2020

To help cel­e­brate the 100th anniver­sary of the birth of the great Ital­ian film­mak­er Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, we present a series of lyri­cal tele­vi­sion adver­tise­ments made dur­ing the final decade of his life.

In 1984, when he was 64 years old, Felli­ni agreed to make a minia­ture film fea­tur­ing Cam­pari, the famous Ital­ian apéri­tif. The result, Oh, che bel pae­sag­gio! (“Oh, what a beau­ti­ful land­scape!”), shown above, fea­tures a man and a woman seat­ed across from one anoth­er on a long-dis­tance train.

The man (played by Vic­tor Polet­ti) smiles, but the woman (Sil­via Dion­i­sio) averts her eyes, star­ing sul­len­ly out the win­dow and pick­ing up a remote con­trol to switch the scenery. She grows increas­ing­ly exas­per­at­ed as a sequence of desert and medieval land­scapes pass by. Still smil­ing, the man takes the remote con­trol, clicks it, and the beau­ti­ful Cam­po di Mira­coli (“Field of Mir­a­cles”) of Pisa appears in the win­dow, embell­ished by a tow­er­ing bot­tle of Cam­pari.

“In just one minute,” writes Tul­lio Kezich in Fed­eri­co Felli­ni: His Life and Work, “Felli­ni gives us a chap­ter of the sto­ry of the bat­tle between men and women, and makes ref­er­ence to the neu­ro­sis of TV, insin­u­ates that we’re dis­parag­ing the mirac­u­lous gifts of nature and his­to­ry, and offers the hope that there might be a screen that will bring the joy back. The lit­tle tale is as quick as a train and has a remark­ably light touch.”

Also in 1984, Felli­ni made a com­mer­cial titled Alta Soci­eta (“High Soci­ety”) for Bar­il­la riga­toni pas­ta (above). As with the Cam­pari com­mer­cial, Felli­ni wrote the script him­self and col­lab­o­rat­ed with cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Ennio Guarnieri and musi­cal direc­tor Nico­la Pio­vani. The cou­ple in the restau­rant were played by Gre­ta Vaian and Mau­r­izio Mau­ri. The Bar­il­la spot is per­haps the least inspired of Fellini’s com­mer­cials. Bet­ter things were yet to come.

In 1991 Felli­ni made a series of three com­mer­cials for the Bank of Rome called Che Brutte Not­ti or “The Bad Nights.” “These com­mer­cials, aired the fol­low­ing year,” writes Peter Bon­danel­la in The Films of Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, “are par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing, since they find their inspi­ra­tion in var­i­ous dreams Felli­ni had sketched out in his dream note­books dur­ing his career.”

In the episode above, titled “The Pic­nic Lunch Dream,” the clas­sic damsel-in-dis­tress sce­nario is turned upside down when a man (played by Pao­lo Vil­lag­gio) finds him­self trapped on the rail­road tracks with a train bear­ing down on him while the beau­ti­ful woman he was din­ing with (Anna Falchi) climbs out of reach and taunts him. But it’s all a dream, which the man tells to his psy­cho­an­a­lyst (Fer­nan­do Rey). The ana­lyst inter­prets the dream and assures the man that his nights will be rest­ful if he puts his mon­ey in the Ban­co di Roma.

The oth­er com­mer­cials (watch here) are called “The Tun­nel Dream” and “The Dream of the Lion in the Cel­lar.” (You can watch Rober­to Di Vito’s short, untrans­lat­ed film of Felli­ni and his crew work­ing on the project here.)

The bank com­mer­cials were the last films Felli­ni ever made. He died a year after they aired, at age 73. In Kezich’s view, the deeply per­son­al and imag­i­na­tive ads amount to Fellini’s last tes­ta­ment, a brief but won­drous return to form. “In Fed­eri­co’s life,” he writes, “these three com­mer­cial spots are a kind of Indi­an sum­mer, the gold­en autumn of a patri­arch of cin­e­ma who, for a moment, holds again the reins of cre­ation.”

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!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2012.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fellini’s Three Bank of Rome Com­mer­cials, the Last Thing He Did Behind a Cam­era (1992)

Watch All of the Com­mer­cials That David Lynch Has Direct­ed: A Big 30-Minute Com­pi­la­tion

Wim Wen­ders Cre­ates Ads to Sell Beer (Stel­la Artois), Pas­ta (Bar­il­la), and More Beer (Car­ling)

Ing­mar Bergman’s 1950s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

All of Wes Anderson’s Cin­e­mat­ic Com­mer­cials: Watch His Spots for Pra­da, Amer­i­can Express, H&M & More

 

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Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #27 Discusses the Impact and Aesthetics of Star Wars

in Film, Pretty Much Pop, Sci Fi, Television | January 16th, 2020

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is PMP-For-the-Love-of-Star-Wars-400-x-800.jpg

Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt grasp the low-hang­ing fruit in pop cul­ture to talk about Star Wars: The unique place that these films have in the brains of peo­ple of a cer­tain age, how we grap­pled with the pre­quels, and why we feel the need to fill in and argue about the details.

We pri­mar­i­ly focus on the two most recent ema­na­tions of this beast, The Man­dalo­ri­an and Rise of Sky­walk­er. We talk alien and droid aes­thet­ics (how much cute­ness is too much?), sto­ry­telling for kids vs. adults reliv­ing their child­hood, pac­ing, plot­ting, cast­ing, whether celebri­ty appear­ances ruin the Star Wars mood, cre­ation by an auteur vs. a com­mit­tee, and what we’d like to see next.

We had enough to say about this that we did­n’t need to draw on online arti­cles, but here’s a sam­pling of what we looked at any­way:

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. In this case, it’s all just more Star Wars talk, cov­er­ing droid body dys­mor­phia and human­iza­tion, the cycle of embod­i­ment via action fig­ures and re-pre­sen­ta­tion on the screen, tragedy in Star Wars vs. Watch­men, mak­ing up for racism in Star Wars through sym­pa­thet­ic por­tray­als of Sand Per­son cul­ture, watch­ing par­tic­u­lar scenes many times, clown bik­er troop­ers, and more. Don’t miss it!

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.

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The First & Last Time Mister Rogers Sang “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” (1968–2001)

in K-12, Life, Television | January 13th, 2020

Mr. Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood, the icon­ic tele­vi­sion series that ran from 1968 to 2001, is a major child­hood touch­stone for so many.

Raise your hand if you have a Pavlov­ian response to the famil­iar open­ing seg­ment, in which Fred Rogers opens the front door to his hum­ble liv­ing room set, heads to the clos­et, singing, to exchange his jack­et for a com­fy cardi­gan sweater, and then sits on a wood­en deacon’s bench to swap out his street shoes for a pair of can­vas sneak­ers.

As per the show’s web­site, this rou­tine was a promise of sorts to view­ers:

I care about you, no mat­ter who you are and no mat­ter what you can or can­not do… Let’s spend this time togeth­er. We’ll build a rela­tion­ship and talk and imag­ine and sing about things that mat­ter to you.

Fans of all ages—some too young to have caught the show in its orig­i­nal run—have post­ed over 28,000 grate­ful, emo­tion­al com­ments on the video, above, which teams the open­ing seg­ment of the first episode, Feb­ru­ary 19, 1968, with that of the last episode, August 31, 2001.

The biggest change seems to be the move from black-and-white to col­or.

Oth­er­wise, the tweaks are decid­ed­ly minor.

The wood­en doors are replaced with sim­i­lar mod­els sport­ing cast iron hinges.

The win­dow seat gets some pil­lows.

The shut­ters give way to cafe cur­tains, open to reveal a bit of stu­dio foliage.

A fish tank is installed near the traf­fic light that sig­naled the start of every episode.

The clos­et fills with bright sweaters, many hand knit by Mr. Rogers’ mom—at some point, these tran­si­tioned from but­tons to zip­pers, which were eas­i­er to manip­u­late and were qui­eter near his body mic.

(Once, Mr. Rogers but­toned his sweater wrong, but opt­ed not to reshoot. Cast mem­ber David “Mr. McFeely” Newell recalled that his friend saw the on-cam­era boo boo as an oppor­tu­ni­ty “to show chil­dren that peo­ple make mis­takes.”)

There are the framed trol­ley prints and Pic­ture Pic­ture, as con­stant and unfash­ion­able as the braid­ed rug and Bicen­ten­ni­al rock­ing chairs that were a fea­ture of my grand­par­ents’ house.

It’s such a good feel­ing, a very good feel­ing, to see how loy­al Rogers and his pro­duc­ers were to these famil­iar ele­ments through­out the decades.

Brace your­self, friends.

Mr. Rogers was kind of over these open­ers.

As his wife, Joanne Rogers, told The New York Times in 2001, a few months before the final episode aired:

He does­n’t miss the show. I think he miss­es the Neigh­bor­hood of Make-Believe because he enjoyed work­ing with peo­ple around him. He real­ly loves all of them, and he’ll keep in touch. But he did not enjoy what he called ‘inte­ri­ors,’ the begin­ning and end­ings of the pro­grams. He had got­ten where he had real­ly dread­ed it so.

It wasn’t so much the repet­i­tive nature of the greet­ing as the need to put on make­up and con­tact lens­es, a telegenic con­sid­er­a­tion that didn’t fac­tor in to the old black-and-white days. Mr Rogers said that he would have pre­ferred pre­sent­ing him­self to the camera—and to the neigh­bors watch­ing at home—exactly as he did to his friends and neigh­bors in real life.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mr. Rogers’ Nine Rules for Speak­ing to Chil­dren (1977)

When Fred Rogers and Fran­cois Clem­mons Broke Down Race Bar­ri­ers on a His­toric Episode of Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood (1969)

Mr. Rogers Takes Break­danc­ing Lessons from a 12-Year-Old (1985)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 3 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates New York, The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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