The Simpsons Take on Ayn Rand: See the Show’s Satire of The Fountainhead and Objectivist Philosophy

in Comedy, Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Television | June 25th, 2018

Say what you will about the tenets of Objectivism—to take a fan favorite line from a lit­tle film about bowl­ing and white Rus­sians. At least it’s an ethos. As for Ayn Rand’s attempts to real­ize her “absurd phi­los­o­phy” in fic­tion, we can say that she was rather less suc­cess­ful, in aes­thet­ic terms, than lit­er­ary philoso­phers like Albert Camus or Simone de Beau­voir. But that’s a high bar. When it comes to sales fig­ures, her nov­els are, we might say, com­pet­i­tive.

Atlas Shrugged is some­times said to be the sec­ond best-sell­ing book next to the Bible (with a sig­nif­i­cant degree of over­lap between their read­er­ships). The claim is gross­ly hyper­bol­ic. With some­where around 7 mil­lion copies sold, Rand’s most pop­u­lar nov­el falls behind oth­er cap­i­tal­ist clas­sics like Think and Grow Rich. Still, along with The Foun­tain­head and her oth­er osten­si­bly non-fic­tion­al works, Rand sold enough books to make her com­fort­able in life, even if she spent her last years on the dole.

Since her death, Rand’s books have grown in pop­u­lar­i­ty each decade, with a big spike imme­di­ate­ly after the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis. That pop­u­lar­i­ty isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly hard to explain as an appeal to ado­les­cent self­ish­ness and grandios­i­ty, and it has made her works ripe tar­gets for satire—especially since they almost read like self-par­o­dy already. And who bet­ter to take on Rand than The Simp­sons, reli­able pop satirists of great Amer­i­can delu­sions since 1989?

The show’s take on The Foun­tain­head, above, has baby Mag­gie in the role of archi­tect Howard Roark, the book’s genius indi­vid­u­al­ist whose extra­or­di­nary tal­ent is sti­fled by a crit­ic named Ellsworth Toohey (a card­board car­i­ca­ture of British the­o­rist and politi­cian Harold Las­ki). In this ver­sion, Toohey is a vicious preschool teacher in tweed, who insists on edu­cat­ing his charges in banal­i­ty (“medi­oc­rity rules!”) and knocks down Maggie’s block cathe­dral with a snide “wel­come to the real world.”

In response to Toohey’s abuse, Mag­gie deliv­ers a pompous solil­o­quy about her own great­ness, as Rand’s heroes are wont to do. She is again sub­ject­ed to preschool repres­sion in the clip just above—this time not at the hands of a social­ist crit­ic but from the head­mistress of the Ayn Rand School for Tots. The dom­i­neer­ing dis­ci­pli­nar­i­an tells Marge her aim is to “devel­op the bot­tle with­in” and dis­suade her stu­dents from becom­ing “leech­es,” a dig at Rand’s tendency—one sad­ly par­rot­ed by her acolytes—to dehu­man­ize recip­i­ents of social ben­e­fits as par­a­sites.

Read­ers of Roald Dahl will be remind­ed of Matil­da’s Miss Trunch­bull, and the bar­racks-like day­care, its walls lined with Objec­tivist slo­gans, becomes a site for some Great Escape capers. These sly ref­er­ences hint at a deep­er critique—suggesting that the lib­er­tar­i­an phi­los­o­phy of hyper-indi­vid­u­al­ism con­tains the poten­tial for tyran­ny and ter­ror as bru­tal as that of the most dog­mat­i­cal­ly col­lec­tivist of utopi­an schemes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Hitchens Dis­miss­es the Cult of Ayn Rand: There’s No “Need to Have Essays Advo­cat­ing Self­ish­ness Among Human Beings; It Requires No Rein­force­ment”

Flan­nery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand (1960)

When Ayn Rand Col­lect­ed Social Secu­ri­ty & Medicare, After Years of Oppos­ing Ben­e­fit Pro­grams

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

How to Film Thought: A Close Look at the Masterful Editing of Sherlock, Starring Benedict Cumberbatch

in Film, Television | June 13th, 2018

What has drawn Sher­lock, the BBC tele­vi­sion series star­ring a mod­ern-day ver­sion of Arthur Conan Doyle’s beloved con­sult­ing detec­tive, such great acclaim? Some of it, of course, has to do with the for­mi­da­ble act­ing skills of Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch in the title role. But if you believe Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the video essay­ist the Nerd­writer, much of the genius of this “intox­i­cat­ing­ly inven­tive TV show” lies in the edit­ing.

The plot of each episode runs on how Sher­lock “gets from point A to point B, from prob­lem to solu­tion, mys­tery to clar­i­ty,” and just as Cum­ber­batch must con­vinc­ing­ly por­tray the fig­ur­ing-out process with his per­for­mance, so must the edi­tors with their cuts. Puschak illus­trates Sher­lock’s cre­ative, idea-dense way of doing this with just one sequence of three min­utes and 42 sec­onds. It comes trig­gered by a bout of with­draw­al from cocaine, a choice that stays true to the nature of the char­ac­ter Conan Doyle cre­at­ed, bril­liant but also a drug addict.

Dur­ing this sequence, Sher­lock arrives at just what every good detec­tive sto­ry needs: a rev­e­la­tion, a moment when both he and we see the pieces of infor­ma­tion the sto­ry has pre­vi­ous­ly pre­sent­ed from a new angle, in a way that reveals the cru­cial rela­tion­ship between them. And as essen­tial­ly a cin­e­mat­ic work, Sher­lock lit­er­al­ly shows it from not just one but many new angles, even from per­spec­tives impos­si­ble in real life. As with any well-craft­ed piece of edit­ing, you can only feel this sequence’s pow­er when you watch it, not when you read it described. Puschak takes full advan­tage of his own form, the video essay, to not just show it to us but break it down to its con­stituent ele­ments.

Conan Doyle’s orig­i­nal Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries won their wide and avid read­er­ship by offer­ing a glimpse into the work­ings of an unusu­al mind, mak­ing them leg­i­ble in text. Sher­lock goes a dimen­sion fur­ther by mak­ing them leg­i­ble in image and sound. The rela­tion­ship between the two par­al­lels the rela­tion­ship between the tra­di­tion­al essay and the video essay: the lat­ter, in this case, allows us to fol­low the process of Puschak’s thoughts about Sher­lock not just tex­tu­al­ly but audio­vi­su­al­ly as well. And with his chan­nel’s just hav­ing passed one mil­lion sub­scribers, he seems well on the way to achiev­ing a Sher­lock­ian lev­el of pop­u­lar­i­ty him­self.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load the Com­plete Sher­lock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Mas­ter­piece

Hear the Vin­tage Sher­lock Holmes Radio Dra­ma, Star­ring John Giel­gud, Orson Welles & Ralph Richard­son

The Alche­my of Film Edit­ing, Explored in a New Video Essay That Breaks Down Han­nah and Her Sis­ters, The Empire Strikes Back & Oth­er Films

How Film­mak­ers Tell Their Sto­ries: Three Insight­ful Video Essays Demys­ti­fy the Craft of Edit­ing, Com­po­si­tion & Col­or

How Sein­feld, the Sit­com Famous­ly “About Noth­ing,” Is Like Gus­tave Flaubert’s Nov­els About Noth­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 ( None ) |

David Lynch Made a Disturbing Web Sitcom Called “Rabbits”: It’s Now Used by Psychologists to Induce a Sense of Existential Crisis in Research Subjects

in Film, Television | May 30th, 2018

David Lynch has stayed pro­duc­tive in recent years — putting out an album and reviv­ing Twin Peaks, to name just two projects — but more than a decade has gone by since his last fea­ture film. Still, images from that one, 2006’s Inland Empire, may well linger in the heads of its view­ers to this day. Some of the most haunt­ing sequences that com­pose its three hours include clips of Rab­bits, a tele­vi­sion show about those very crea­tures. Or rather, a tele­vi­sion show about humanoid rab­bits who exchange lines of cryp­tic dia­logue in a shad­owy liv­ing room locat­ed, as the show puts it, “in a name­less city del­uged by a con­tin­u­ous rain” where they live “with a fear­ful mys­tery.”

So far, so Lynchi­an. Part of the direc­tor’s sig­na­ture atmos­phere aris­es, of course, from the men­ac­ing­ly pre­sent­ed 1950s domes­tic­i­ty and the bizarre appear­ance of human actors wear­ing expres­sion­less rab­bit heads. But just as much has to do with sound: along with an omi­nous score by fre­quent Lynch col­lab­o­ra­tor Ange­lo Badala­men­ti we hear that con­stant del­uge of rain, with occa­sion­al son­ic punc­tu­a­tion from an inex­plic­a­bly timed laugh track. You can binge-watch Rab­bits’ episodes on YouTube, an expe­ri­ence which will give you a fuller sense of why Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia psy­chol­o­gists used it to induce a sense of exis­ten­tial cri­sis in research sub­jects.

Lynch shot Rab­bits in 2002 on dig­i­tal video, a medi­um whose free­dom, com­pared to tra­di­tion­al film, he had recent­ly dis­cov­ered. (When he went on to use it for the whole of Inland Empire, the choice seemed as cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly star­tling, at the time, as any he’d ever made.) The shoots hap­pened at night, on a set built in his back­yard. Its prin­ci­pal cast of Nao­mi Watts, Lau­ra Har­ring, and Scott Cof­fey had all appeared the pre­vi­ous year in Lynch’s crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed Mul­hol­land Dri­ve, which itself began as a prospec­tive tele­vi­sion series. (Even the singer Rebekah del Rio, star of Club Silen­cio, turns up in one episode.) Lynch first “aired” the series on his web site, which must place him among not just the artis­tic but tech­ni­cal pio­neers of the web series form.

But why, exact­ly, did he make it in the first place? “Rab­bits is a sit­com,” writes a con­trib­u­tor called Peek 824545301 at The Arti­fice. “It is not mere­ly par­o­dy or satire; it exists as per­haps the most bizarre and arguably lit­er­al sit­com imag­in­able, though still an oppos­ing force that chal­lenges and defa­mil­iar­izes basic con­cepts.” Abstract­ing the basic ele­ments of the sit­com form while strip­ping them of nar­ra­tive, the show also sig­nals com­e­dy on one lev­el and dark­ness on anoth­er, putting itself “simul­ta­ne­ous­ly in align­ment with sit­u­a­tion come­dies in its essence while also serv­ing as a destruc­tive crit­i­cism.” In this view, Lynch moves from medi­um to medi­um not just as a sin­gu­lar kind of cre­ator but — with his imag­i­na­tion that has some­how come up with even stranger things than this rab­bit sit­com — a sin­gu­lar kind of crit­ic as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Posts His Night­mar­ish Sit­com Rab­bits Online–the Show That Psy­chol­o­gists Use to Induce a Sense of Exis­ten­tial Cri­sis in Research Sub­jects

What Makes a David Lynch Film Lynchi­an: A Video Essay

Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks‘ “Love Theme”

Dum­b­land, David Lynch’s Twist­ed Ani­mat­ed Series (NSFW)

Dis­cov­er David Lynch’s Bizarre & Min­i­mal­ist Com­ic Strip, The Angri­est Dog in the World (1983–1992)

David Lynch’s New ‘Crazy Clown Time’ Video: Intense Psy­chot­ic Back­yard Crazi­ness (NSFW)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 ) |

Buckminster Fuller Appears on the Los Angeles New Age Cable TV Shows, Psychic Phenomena and Quest Four (1979–82)

in Television | May 28th, 2018

Has the world ever known a more com­pelling­ly eccen­tric cul­tur­al out­let than the fringes of Los Ange­les tele­vi­sion in the 1970s and 80s? For the most part a realm of false prophets, unhinged crack­pots, des­per­ate pitch­men, and Cal Wor­thing­ton, its air­waves also occa­sion­al­ly car­ried the thoughts of impor­tant minds. Take, for instance, the appear­ances on the pub­lic-access cable pro­grams Psy­chic Phe­nom­e­na: The World Beyond and Quest Four: The Fourth Dimen­sion of none oth­er than pro­lif­ic archi­tect-the­o­rist-inven­tor Buck­min­ster Fuller. You can watch both togeth­er, and there­by get an overview of the then already octo­ge­nar­i­an Fuller’s life and ideas in a fair­ly unusu­al con­text, in the videos of the Youtube playlist above.

On both pro­grams, the first of which aired in 1979 and the sec­ond in 1983, Fuller sits across from Damien Simp­son. The founder of an orga­ni­za­tion called the Uni­ver­sal Mind Sci­ence Church, Simp­son seems to have spent his life as some­thing of a seek­er. After time in the sem­i­nary, he lived for a peri­od in a monastery under a vow of silence.

In the years after start­ing his own church, he host­ed new-age tele­vi­sion and radio pro­grams whose guest lists includ­ed, accord­ing to his bio, every­one from Elis­a­beth Kübler-Ross to Den­nis Weaver. But Simp­son clear­ly con­sid­ered Fuller the catch to beat them all, more than once liken­ing him­self to “a kid in a can­dy store” as he rev­els in his chance to con­verse with the man who thought up the geo­des­ic dome and much else besides.

Born in the 19th cen­tu­ry, usu­al­ly dressed in a suit and tie, and con­stant­ly work­ing on the devel­op­ment and appli­ca­tion of ultra-prac­ti­cal ideas, Fuller hard­ly pro­ject­ed the image of a 70s new-ager. Yet he and the audi­ences of shows like Psy­chic Phe­nom­e­na and Quest Four shared more than a few habits of mind. Fuller, for instance, insist­ed on always con­sid­er­ing the world as not a col­lec­tion of nations but one whole sys­tem (one he mem­o­rably labeled “Space­ship Earth”), an exam­ple of “holis­tic think­ing” in the truest sense. He also believed, as he spells out in these inter­views, that human­i­ty faces an exis­ten­tial “final exam­i­na­tion,” a test of our col­lec­tive intel­lect and will to deter­mine whether we can bring about an era — quite lit­er­al­ly, a new age — of peace. It will demand much of us, he tells Simp­son and and his view­ers all across Los Ange­les, not least our naiveté: “Dare to be naive. That’s the only way you’ll ever learn any­thing.”

via Ubuweb

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Three-Minute Intro­duc­tion to Buck­min­ster Fuller, One of the 20th Century’s Most Pro­duc­tive Design Vision­ar­ies

Every­thing I Know: 42 Hours of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Vision­ary Lec­tures Free Online (1975)

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Buck­min­ster Fuller Tell Studs Terkel All About “the Geo­des­ic Life”

Bet­ter Liv­ing Through Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Utopi­an Designs: Revis­it the Dymax­ion Car, House, and Map

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 ( None ) |

Muhammad Ali & Sly Stone Get Into a Heated Debate on Racism & Reparations on The Mike Douglas Show (1974)

in Politics, Television | May 18th, 2018

Ah, the 70s… an Amer­i­can pres­i­dent was impeached for crim­i­nal activ­i­ty; a con­gress­man, Wayne Hays, resigned for sleep­ing with his sec­re­tary, after divorc­ing his wife to mar­ry a dif­fer­ent sec­re­tary; anoth­er con­gress­man, Bud Shuster—who described Hays as “the mean­est man in the house”—called for an inves­ti­ga­tion of Water­gate spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor Archibald Cox, after Cox was fired by the soon-to-be impeached pres­i­dent… ‘twas a dif­fer­ent time, chil­dren, a sim­pler time….

Well, at any rate, they sure wore fun­ny suits back then, eh? Those lapels…. But just like today, pol­i­tics mixed freely with sports and enter­tain­ment in con­tro­ver­sial and tele­vi­su­al ways. Box­ers got rat­ings, singers got rat­ings, politi­cians like “mean­est man in the house” Wayne Hays got rat­ings, even before his sex scan­dal, when he appeared on TV with box­ers and singers—appeared, that is, on The Mike Dou­glas Show in 1974 with Muham­mad Ali and Sly Stone. Actor and activist Theodore Bikel was there too, though you might blink and miss him in the fra­cas just above.

First, Hays offers some banal opin­ions on the sub­ject of cam­paign financ­ing, anoth­er one of those bygone 70s issues. But when Dou­glas pos­es the ques­tion to Ali of whether or not he’d ever run for office, things pick up, to say the least. Ali refus­es to play the enter­tain­er. He launch­es flur­ry after flur­ry of jabs at white Amer­i­ca, and at Hays, who does his best to stay upright under the onslaught. “Ali is unyield­ing,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “intense and bril­liant.”

Ali takes on a seri­ous ques­tion fac­ing Black nation­al­ists of the 60s and 70s, from the Pan­thers to the Nation of Islam, whose views Ali embraced at the time, along with, per­haps, some of their ugly anti-Semi­tism. (The fol­low­ing year he con­vert­ed to Sun­ni Islam, and lat­er became a Sufi.) Should Black activists par­tic­i­pate in the oppres­sive sys­tems of the U.S. gov­ern­ment? Can any­one do good from inside the halls of impe­ri­al­ist pow­er?

Hays makes an inte­gra­tionist case, and cham­pi­ons Black lead­ers like con­gress­woman Bar­bara Jor­dan. Ali is relent­less­ly com­bat­ive, call­ing for repa­ra­tions. Sly slides in to clar­i­fy and paci­fy, play­ing medi­a­tor and ref­er­ee. Dou­glas gets off the applause line, “isn’t it time we all tried to live togeth­er.” Ali refus­es to gloss over racism and eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty. No peace, he says in effect, with­out jus­tice. Aren’t we glad, forty-four years lat­er, that we’ve ironed all this out? See the full show here for much more heavy­weight com­men­tary from Ali and some­times fuzzy coun­ter­point from Sly. They go back and forth with Dou­glas for ten min­utes before Hays and Bikel join.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Muham­mad Ali, This Is Your Life!”: Cel­e­brate Ali’s Life & Times with This Touch­ing 1978 TV Trib­ute

Muham­mad Ali Gives a Dra­mat­ic Read­ing of His Poem on the Atti­ca Prison Upris­ing

James Bald­win Bests William F. Buck­ley in 1965 Debate at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

How the Sounds You Hear in Movies Are Really Made: Discover the Magic of “Foley Artists”

in Film, Television | May 17th, 2018

Have you ever worked as an “extra” on a film or tele­vi­sion shoot, one of the anony­mous many some­where in the back­ground while the main char­ac­ters advance the sto­ry up front? If so, you know that to be seen but not heard onscreen requires doing exact­ly that. Even though a crowd­ed par­ty scene, for instance, real­ly does sound like a crowd­ed par­ty scene in the final prod­uct, the shoot hap­pens in some­thing close to silence. Only the stars speak, and indeed make any sound at all; every­one else just mimes their live­ly con­ver­sa­tions. Sound design­ers add the crowd noise lat­er, after the shoot, just like they add music, foot­steps, doors open­ing and clos­ing, crack­ling of fires and the whip­ping of winds, and pret­ty much every oth­er sound you hear besides speech.

“The Mag­ic of Mak­ing Sound,” the Great Big Sto­ry video above, reveals the work of Foley artists, some of the most lit­tle-known crafts­men in the enter­tain­ment indus­try. We usu­al­ly think of real­ism as a pri­mar­i­ly visu­al qual­i­ty, prais­ing some­thing that “looks real” almost as often as we com­plain about what “looks fake,” but much of what makes dra­mat­ic action onscreen feel real hap­pens on a com­plete­ly unseen lev­el.

Foley artists (named for ear­ly sound-effects design­er Jack Foley) cre­ate all the inci­den­tal sounds you’d expect to hear in real life, so if and only if they do their work well, nobody in the audi­ence will notice it. (Min­i­mal Foley work, com­bined with dia­logue dubbed in a stu­dio instead of record­ed dur­ing the shoot, con­tributes great­ly to the “dream­like” qual­i­ty of some old­er films, espe­cial­ly from Europe and Asia.)

The Great Big Sto­ry video, along with the short pro­file of vet­er­an Hol­ly­wood Foley artist Gary Heck­er just above, show mas­ters of the trade employ­ing a vari­ety of its tools: bags of corn starch for snow, gloves with paper­clips taped to the fin­ger­tips for dog paws, and for that inevitable (if implau­si­ble) schwing of a sword being unsheathed, a kitchen spat­u­la. Just like visu­als, sound requires a cer­tain degree of not just imag­i­na­tion but exag­ger­a­tion to achieve that “larg­er than life” feel­ing. Still, the Foley craft has its ori­gins in noth­ing more grand than the sounds made by hand to accom­pa­ny radio dra­mas in the 1920s. The pro­fes­sion may have moved on from the coconut-shell horse hooves of near­ly a cen­tu­ry ago — these videos show the cur­rent indus­try stan­dard, a jer­ry-rigged look­ing device made of plunger cups — but most of its equip­ment has remained reli­ably unchanged. How many oth­er kinds of film-and-tele­vi­sion tech­ni­cians can say the same?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Sound Effects on 1930s Radio Shows Were Made: An Inside Look

Hear 9 Hours of Hans Zim­mer Sound­tracks: Dunkirk, Inter­stel­lar, Incep­tion, The Dark Knight & Much More

Why Mar­vel and Oth­er Hol­ly­wood Films Have Such Bland Music: Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Per­ils of the “Temp Score”

240 Hours of Relax­ing, Sleep-Induc­ing Sounds from Sci-Fi Video Games: From Blade Run­ner to Star Wars

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 ( 5 ) |

Mister Rogers Accepts a Lifetime Achievement Award, and Helps You Thank Everyone Who Has Made a Difference in Your Life

in K-12, Life, Religion, Television | May 14th, 2018

Tele­vi­sion host and children’s advo­cate Fred Rogers was also an ordained Pres­by­ter­ian min­is­ter, for whom spir­i­tu­al reflec­tion was as nat­ur­al and nec­es­sary a part of dai­ly life as his veg­e­tar­i­an­ism and morn­ing swims.

His qui­et per­son­al prac­tice could take a turn for the pub­lic and inter­ac­tive, as he demon­strat­ed from the podi­um at the Day­time Emmy Awards in 1997, above.

Accept­ing a Life­time Achieve­ment Award, he refrained from run­ning through the stan­dard laun­dry list of thanks. Instead he invit­ed the audi­ence to join him in spend­ing 10 sec­onds think­ing of the peo­ple who “have loved us into being.”

He then turned his atten­tion to his wrist­watch as hun­dreds of glam­orous­ly attired talk show hosts and soap stars thought of the teach­ers, rel­a­tives, and oth­er influ­en­tial adults whose ten­der care, and per­haps rig­or­ous expec­ta­tions, helped shape them.

(Play along from home at the 2:15 mark.)

Ten sec­onds may not seem like much, but con­sid­er how often we deploy emo­jis and “likes” in place of sit­ting with oth­ers’ feel­ings and our own.

Of all the things Fred Rogers was cel­e­brat­ed for, the time he allot­ted to mak­ing oth­ers feel heard and appre­ci­at­ed may be the great­est.

Fif­teen years after his death, the Inter­net ensures that he will con­tin­ue to inspire us to be kinder, try hard­er, lis­ten bet­ter.

That effect should quadru­ple when Mor­gan Neville’s Mis­ter Rogers doc­u­men­tary, Won’t You Be My Neigh­bor? is released next month.

Anoth­er sweet Emmy moment comes at the top, when the hon­oree smooches his wife, Joanne Rogers, before head­ing off to join pre­sen­ter Tim Rob­bins at the podi­um. Described in Esquire as “hearty and almost whoop­ing in (her) forth­right­ness,” the stal­wart Mrs. Rogers appeared in a hand­ful of episodes, but nev­er played the sort of high­ly vis­i­ble role Mrs. Claus inhab­it­ed with­in her husband’s pub­lic realm.

The full text of Mis­ter Rogers’ Life­time Achieve­ment Award award speech is below:

So many peo­ple have helped me to come here to this night.  Some of you are here, some are far away and some are even in Heav­en.  All of us have spe­cial ones who loved us into being.  Would you just take, along with me, 10 sec­onds to think of the peo­ple who have helped you become who you are, those who cared about you and want­ed what was best for you in life.  10 sec­onds, I’ll watch the time. Whomev­er you’ve been think­ing about, how pleased they must be to know the dif­fer­ence you feel they have made.  You know they’re kind of peo­ple tele­vi­sion does well to offer our world.  Spe­cial thanks to my fam­i­ly, my friends, and my co-work­ers in Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing and Fam­i­ly Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and to this Acad­e­my for encour­ag­ing me, allow­ing me, all these years to be your neigh­bor.  May God be with you.  Thank you very much.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a Marathon Stream­ing of All 856 Episodes of Mis­ter Rogers Neigh­bor­hood, and the Mov­ing Trail­er for the New Doc­u­men­tary, Won’t You Be My Neigh­bor?

Mis­ter Rogers Turns Kids On to Jazz with Help of a Young Wyn­ton Marsalis and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends (1986)

Mis­ter Rogers, Sesame Street & Jim Hen­son Intro­duce Kids to the Syn­the­siz­er with the Help of Her­bie Han­cock, Thomas Dol­by & Bruce Haack

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC this Wednes­day, May 16, for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Listen to an Archive of Recordings by Delia Derbyshire, the Electronic Music Pioneer & Composer of the Dr. Who Theme Song

in Music, Television | April 18th, 2018

Delia Der­byshire, com­pos­er of the Dr. Who theme song and musi­cal pio­neer, has not quite become a house­hold name, but read­ers of this site sure­ly know who she is, as well should every stu­dent of avant garde, elec­tron­ic, and exper­i­men­tal pop music. Along with oth­er often unsung female elec­tron­ic com­posers of the 60s and beyond—like fel­low BBC Radio­phon­ic Work­shop doyenne, Daphne Oram—Derbyshire brought the ear­ly elec­tron­ic tech­niques of musique con­crete and tape manip­u­la­tion to a wider audi­ence, who most­ly had no idea where the sounds they heard came from.

As part of the unit respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing the sounds of British tele­vi­sion, Derbyshire’s unusu­al instincts took her to places no com­pos­er had ever ven­tured before. In her sound work for a doc­u­men­tary called The World About Us, on the Tuareg peo­ple of the Sahara, she “used her voice for the sound of the [camels’] hooves,” writes her one­time col­league Bri­an Hodg­son at The Guardian, “cut up into an obbli­ga­to rhythm. And she added a thin, high elec­tron­ic sound using vir­tu­al­ly all the fil­ters and oscil­la­tors in the work­shop.” As Der­byshire recalls it:

My most beau­ti­ful sound at the time was a tat­ty BBC lamp­shade. It was the wrong colour, but it had a beau­ti­ful ring­ing sound to it. I hit the lamp­shade, record­ed that, fad­ed it up into the ring­ing part with­out the per­cus­sive start. I… recon­struct­ed the sound of the workshop’s famous 12 oscil­la­tors to give it a whoosh­ing sound. So the camels rode off into the sun­set with my voice in their hooves and a green lamp­shade on their backs.

What the col­or of the lamp­shade had to do with the sound, only Der­byshire could know for sure. But it clear­ly had a psy­cho­log­i­cal impact on the way she heard it. “I sup­pose in a way,” she said, “I was exper­i­ment­ing in psy­cho-acoustics.”

This was an immer­sive expe­ri­ence for her, and for every­one who heard the results, no mat­ter whether they could iden­ti­fy what it was they were hear­ing. Derbyshire’s sound design rev­o­lu­tion­ized the indus­try, but we can­not over­look her extracur­ric­u­lar work—experimental sound col­lages and musi­cal pieces made with sev­er­al close col­lab­o­ra­tors, includ­ing Hodg­son, which sound remark­ably ahead of their time.

In 1964, Der­byshire col­lab­o­rat­ed with poet and drama­tist Bar­ry Bermange on The Dreams, a work that showed her, Hodg­son writes, “at her ele­gant best.” The two put togeth­er a col­lage, with peo­ple describ­ing their dreams in snip­pets of cut-up mono­logues, backed by a puls­ing, throb­bing, buzzing, hum­ming omi­nous score. (Lis­ten to “Run­ning” fur­ther up.) In 1966, she worked with David Bowie’s favorite per­former Antho­ny New­ley on “Moogles Bloogles,” above, which Ubuweb calls “an unre­leased perv-pop clas­sic in the 1966 nov­el­ty vein.” She was not privy to what the song would become. “I’d writ­ten this beau­ti­ful inno­cent tune,” she said, “all sen­si­tive love and inno­cence, and he made it into a dirty old rain­coat song. But he was real­ly chuffed!”

In the late six­ties, Der­byshire joined Hodg­son and bass play­er David Vorhaus to form White Noise, an exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic pop project whose “Love With­out Sound” you can hear at the top of the post (behind scenes from Jean Cocteau’s Orphée.) In 1972, Der­byshire teamed with Hodg­son and Don Harp­er, all “moon­light­ing from day jobs” at the BBC, for an album called Elec­troson­ic, a “haunt­ing batch of spare elec­tron­ic tracks.” Just above, hear “Liq­uid Ener­gy (Bub­bling Rhythm)” from that col­lec­tion.

These tracks rep­re­sent just a frac­tion of the Der­byshire music avail­able at Ubuweb’s Delia Der­byshire library, includ­ing a com­pi­la­tion of Radio­phon­ic Work­shop sound­track pieces like “Envi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies,” above, from 1969, as well as an audio doc­u­men­tary on her work made in 2010. Soon after her ear­ly 70s musi­cal exper­i­ments, Der­byshire retired from music to work as a radio oper­a­tor and in an art gallery and book­shop, dis­gust­ed with the state of con­tem­po­rary sound. But in her last few years, she had the plea­sure of watch­ing a new gen­er­a­tion dis­cov­er her work. As Hodg­son writes in his touch­ing eulo­gy, “the tech­nol­o­gy she had left behind was final­ly catch­ing up to her vision.”

Hear more record­ing at Ubuweb’s Delia Der­byshire library.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Doc­u­men­taries Intro­duce Delia Der­byshire, the Pio­neer in Elec­tron­ic Music

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry of How Delia Der­byshire Cre­at­ed the Orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who Theme

Meet Delia Der­byshire, the Dr. Who Com­pos­er Who Almost Turned The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” Into Ear­ly Elec­tron­i­ca

Watch “Bells of Atlantis,” an Exper­i­men­tal Film with Ear­ly Elec­tron­ic Music Fea­tur­ing Anaïs Nin (1952)

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

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

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