Andy Warhol’s 15 Minutes: Discover the Postmodern MTV Variety Show That Made Warhol a Star in the Television Age (1985–87)

in Art, Television | December 27th, 2017

“In the future, every­one will be world-famous for 15 min­utes,” said Andy Warhol. Actu­al­ly, no, he didn’t. But Warhol sug­gest­ed to pho­tog­ra­ph­er Nat Finkel­stein that every­one want­ed to be famous, to which Finkel­stein added, “yeah, for 15 min­utes.” It’s a slight­ly dif­fer­ent mean­ing. (The idea first appeared in its well-known form in a 1968 pro­gram for a Warhol exhi­bi­tion in Swe­den.)

Is it true that every­one wants to be famous? It’s cer­tain­ly true that Andy Warhol want­ed to, and for much longer than 15 min­utes. Like the hard­est-work­ing YouTube celebri­ty today, he didn’t wait to be dis­cov­ered but set about mak­ing it hap­pen him­self.

But while he achieved pop art star­dom in the 60s, Warhol tru­ly longed to be on TV, a dream that took a lit­tle longer to mate­ri­al­ize. His first pro­gram, a New York pub­lic-access inter­view show, debuted in 1979, then a sec­ond ver­sion in 1980 (see Richard Berlin inter­view Frank Zap­pa on Andy Warhol’s T.V. in 1983). Over a peri­od of four years, he brought on a host of major celebri­ties, but attract­ed a nec­es­sar­i­ly lim­it­ed audi­ence.

In ’81, Warhol final­ly got a main­stream TV break when he “made his way to NBC,” notes Alexxa Got­thardt, “with a series of spots for Sat­ur­day Night Live…. Warhol’s for­ay into tele­vi­sion allowed him to become even more of a celebri­ty him­self.” His per­sis­tent efforts paid div­i­dends when he joined the nascent 1985 MTV line­up with one of its first non-music-video shows, Andy Warhol’s Fif­teen Min­utes.

As you can see in the pro­mo at the top of the post, the show promised a “ride down­town” and a “ride to the wild side.” It did not dis­ap­point. A sort of post­mod­ern vari­ety show, the pro­gram “put every­body togeth­er,” explains Andy Warhol Muse­um cura­tor Ger­a­lyn Hux­ley, “The high and the low. The rich and the famous. The strug­gling artists and the ris­ing stars.” Just above, you can see Ian McK­ellen recite Shake­speare while garage rock­ers the Flesh­tones play some psy­che­del­ic grooves behind him.

Above, see Deb­bie Har­ry inter­view Court­ney Love, “a flam­boy­ant ris­ing star,” just come from the suc­cess of Sid and Nan­cy.  Fur­ther down, the Ramones bitch about the state of rock and roll in 1987, then play “Bon­zo Goes to Bit­burg,” a scathing response to Ronald Reagan’s dis­turb­ing vis­it to Ger­many on the 40th anniver­sary of V‑E Day. (The song con­tains the line, “You’re a politi­cian don’t become one of Hitler’s chil­dren.”) These are but a tiny sam­pling of the many hun­dreds of artists who traipsed through the sound­stage of Warhol’s show: dozens of peo­ple appeared in a sin­gle episode—as many as 30 guests in some of the lat­er shows.

Run­ning for two years, until his death in 1987, Andy Warhol’s Fif­teen Min­utes intro­duced mil­lions of peo­ple to the artist in just the way he’d always want­ed. “More and more kids were watch­ing MTV,” says his pro­duc­er Vin­cent Fre­mont. “I don’t know if they knew that Andy was a famous artist, but to them he was cer­tain­ly a tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty.” And on TV, Warhol wrote in 1975, a per­son “has all the space any­one could ever want, right there in the tele­vi­sion box.” If you’re Andy Warhol, you also have all the celebri­ty guests any­one could ever want.

See a com­plete list of the five episodes that aired between 1985 and 1987—full of stars, ris­ing stars, and scores of fas­ci­nat­ing unknowns—at Warholstars.org.

via Art­sy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Hosts Frank Zap­pa on His Cable TV Show, and Lat­er Recalls, “I Hat­ed Him More Than Ever” After the Show

Andy Warhol’s Brief Moment of Pro­fes­sion­al Wrestling Fame (1985)

The Case for Andy Warhol in Three Min­utes

The Big Ideas Behind Andy Warhol’s Art, and How They Can Help Us Build a Bet­ter World

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

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See Ridley Scott’s 1973 Bread Commercial—Voted England’s Favorite Advertisement of All Time

in Film, Television | December 14th, 2017

I have often thought that eat­ing some real­ly seri­ous brown bread is a bit like push­ing a bike up a very steep hill, a hill called “health.” So what a sur­prise to find that in 2006 a poll of 1,000 Britons vot­ed this 1973 ad for Hov­is bread as the Favorite British Com­mer­cial of All Time. And none oth­er than Rid­ley Scott direct­ed it. Indeed, this sto­ry of a young lad deliv­er­ing bread by bicy­cle up a steep cob­ble­stone min­ing-town street is laced through with nos­tal­gia and a sen­ti­men­tal use of Dvorak’s “New World” Sym­pho­ny. (So beloved is it that Brits often request the clas­si­cal work on radio as “the Hov­is music.”)

Before Rid­ley Scott became a block­buster film direc­tor, he cut his teeth by direct­ing episod­ic tele­vi­sion in the UK, and then form­ing an adver­tis­ing pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny with his broth­er Tony called RSA Films (Rid­ley Scott Asso­ciates). Accord­ing to Scott, he was involved in the pro­duc­tion of rough­ly 2,700 com­mer­cials over the company’s 10 years.

This icon­ic ad was one of sev­er­al he direct­ed that year for Hov­is, but this is the one that stuck. It might be the sim­plic­i­ty of the ad, the Sisyphean strug­gle of its young pro­tag­o­nist (who at least gets to eas­i­ly ride home), or any num­ber of fac­tors, but it would be a stretch to real­ly see the auteur in this film. If any­thing, it’s rem­i­nis­cent of his kitchen sink meets French New Wave short film from 1965, “Boy and Bicy­cle,” which is inter­est­ing more as an odd­i­ty and a star­ring vehi­cle for his broth­er than a great film.

The Inde­pen­dent tracked down the boy in the Hov­is ad, Carl Bar­low, who was 13 at the time, but is now 57 and a retired fire­fight­er.

“It was pure fate that I got the part as the Hov­is boy. I was down to the last three, and it turned out that one of the two boys could­n’t ride a bike, and the oth­er would­n’t cut his hair into the pud­ding bowl style — it was the Sev­en­ties after all. As the only boy who could ride a bike and would cut his hair, I got the part.”

This year, as part of an ad cam­paign for Evans Bicy­cles, Mr. Bar­low made his way to the top of the hill one more time, with the help of an elec­tric bike:

The orig­i­nal com­mer­cial is not Rid­ley Scott’s most famous one. That would go to his Apple Mac­in­tosh “1984” ad that screened dur­ing the Super Bowl. This list shows a few more that Scott direct­ed, into the 1990s.

Final­ly, an icon­ic com­mer­cial invites par­o­dy, and, in fact, cher­ished come­di­ans The Two Ron­nies made fun of the Hov­is ad in this brief skit from 1978.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rid­ley Scott Walks You Through His Favorite Scene from Blade Run­ner

Rid­ley Scott Talks About Mak­ing Apple’s Land­mark “1984” Com­mer­cial, Aired on Super Bowl Sun­day in 1984

How Rid­ley Scott Turned Footage From the Begin­ning of The Shin­ing Into the End of Blade Run­ner

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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

in Comedy, Literature, Television | November 17th, 2017

“A show about noth­ing”: peo­ple have described Sein­feld that way for decades, but cre­ators Jer­ry Sein­feld and Lar­ry David did­n’t set out to cre­ate any­thing of the kind. In fact, with Sein­feld him­self already estab­lished as a stand-up come­di­an, they orig­i­nal­ly pitched to NBC a show about how a com­ic finds mate­r­i­al in his day-to-day life. But in its 43rd episode, when the series had become a major cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non, Sein­feld’s char­ac­ter and Jason Alexan­der’s George Costan­za (whom David based on him­self) pitch a show to tele­vi­sion exec­u­tives where “noth­ing hap­pens,” and fans seized upon the truth about Sein­feld they saw reflect­ed in that joke.

In the video essay above, Evan Puschak, known as the Nerd­writer, fig­ures out why. It’s a cul­tur­al and intel­lec­tu­al jour­ney that takes him back to the 19th-cen­tu­ry nov­els of Gus­tave Flaubert. “Flaubert was a pio­neer of lit­er­ary real­ism, in large part respon­si­ble for rais­ing the sta­tus of the nov­el to that of a high art,” says Puschak.

In 1852, Flaubert wrote a let­ter describ­ing his ambi­tion to write “a book about noth­ing, a book depen­dent on noth­ing exter­nal, which would be held togeth­er by the inter­nal strength of its style.” Instead of want­i­ng to “string you along with mul­ti­ple sus­pense-height­en­ing nar­ra­tive devel­op­ments,” in Puschak’s view, “he wants to bring you into the text itself, to look there for the care­ful­ly con­struct­ed mean­ings that he’s built for you.”

And so, in their own way, do Sein­feld and David in the sit­com that became and remains so beloved in large part with its numer­ous depar­tures from the tra­di­tions the form had estab­lished over the past forty years. “It was­n’t until Sein­feld that the con­ven­tions of the sit­com were decon­struct­ed ful­ly, when all forms of uni­ty, famil­ial and espe­cial­ly roman­tic, were whole­heart­ed­ly aban­doned. For Sein­feld, these addi­tion­al ele­ments were just so much fluff,” dis­trac­tions from telling a sto­ry “held togeth­er by the inter­nal strength of its com­e­dy.” The crit­ic James Wood, quot­ed in this video, once wrote that “nov­el­ists should thank Flaubert the way poets thank spring: it real­ly all begins with him.” By the same token, two epochs exist for the writ­ers of sit­coms: before Sein­feld and after. Not bad for a show about noth­ing — or not about noth­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jacques Der­ri­da on Sein­feld: “Decon­struc­tion Doesn’t Pro­duce Any Sit­com”

What’s the Deal with Pop Tarts? Jer­ry Sein­feld Explains How to Write a Joke

Watch a New, “Orig­i­nal” Episode of Sein­feld Per­formed Live on Stage

Sein­feld & Noth­ing­ness: A Super­cut of the Show’s Emp­ti­est Moments

Sein­feld, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Ricky Ger­vais Dis­sect the Craft of Com­e­dy (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.

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The Philosophy of Rick and Morty: What Everyone’s New Favorite Cartoon Has in Common with Albert Camus

in Comics/Cartoons, Philosophy, Television | November 2nd, 2017

“Nobody exists on pur­pose, nobody belongs any­where, every­body’s gonna die.” So, in one episode of Rick and Morty, says the four­teen-year-old Morty Smith, one of the show’s tit­u­lar co-pro­tag­o­nists. With the oth­er, a mad sci­en­tist by the name of Rick Sanchez, who also hap­pens to be Morty’s grand­fa­ther, he con­sti­tutes the ani­mat­ed team that has enter­tained thou­sands and thou­sands of view­ers — and made insa­tiable fans of seem­ing­ly all of them — over the past four years. To those few who haven’t yet seen the show, it may just look like a sil­ly car­toon, but the true fans under­stand that under­neath all of the mem­o­rable gags and quotable lines lies an unusu­al philo­soph­i­cal depth.

“The human desire to ful­fill some spe­cial exis­ten­tial pur­pose has exist­ed through­out his­to­ry,” says video essay­ist Will Schoder in his analy­sis of the phi­los­o­phy of Rick and Morty. But the tit­u­lar duo’s adven­tures through all pos­si­ble real­i­ties of the “mul­ti­verse” ensure that they expe­ri­ence first­hand the utter mean­ing­less­ness of each indi­vid­ual real­i­ty.

When Morty breaks that bleak-sound­ing news to his sis­ter Sum­mer with the now oft-quot­ed line above, he actu­al­ly deliv­ers a “com­fort­ing mes­sage”: once you con­front the ran­dom­ness of the uni­verse, as Rick and Morty con­stant­ly do, “the only option is to find impor­tance in the stuff right in front of you,” and their adven­tures show that “friends, fam­i­ly, and doing what we enjoy are far more impor­tant than any unsolv­able ques­tions about exis­tence.”

Schoder, also the author of a video essay on Rick and Morty co-cre­ator Dan Har­mon’s mytho­log­i­cal sto­ry­telling tech­nique as well as one we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured about David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s cri­tique of post­mod­ernism, makes the clear philo­soph­i­cal con­nec­tion to Albert Camus. The philoso­pher and author of The Stranger wrote and thought a great deal about the “con­tra­dic­tion between humans’ desire to find mean­ing in life and the mean­ing­less­ness of the uni­verse,” and the absur­di­ty that results, a notion the car­toon has dra­ma­tized over and over again, with an ever-height­en­ing absur­di­ty. We must, like Sisy­phus eter­nal­ly push­ing his rock uphill, rec­og­nize the true nature of our sit­u­a­tion yet defi­ant­ly con­tin­ue “to explore and search for mean­ing.” Morty, as any fan well knows, offers Sum­mer anoth­er solu­tion to her despair: “Come watch TV.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Camus: The Mad­ness of Sin­cer­i­ty — 1997 Doc­u­men­tary Revis­its the Philosopher’s Life & Work

David Fos­ter Wal­lace on What’s Wrong with Post­mod­ernism: A Video Essay

The Phi­los­o­phy of The Matrix: From Pla­to and Descartes, to East­ern Phi­los­o­phy

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

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.

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The Colors of Mister Rogers’ Hand-Knit Sweaters from 1979 to 2001: A Visual Graph Created with Data Science

in Computer Science, Data, K-12, Life, Television | October 27th, 2017

Writer Owen Phillips may be a sol­id data ana­lyst, but I sus­pect he’s not much of a knit­ter.

The soft­ware he used to run a sci­en­tif­ic analy­sis of 22 years worth of Fred Rogers’ sweaters ulti­mate­ly reduces the beloved children’s tele­vi­sion host’s homey zip-front cardi­gans to a slick graph­ic of col­or­ful bars.

A knit­ter would no doubt pri­or­i­tize oth­er types of pat­terns — stitch num­bers, wool weight, cable variations…the sort of infor­ma­tion Mis­ter Rogers’ moth­er, Nan­cy, would have had at her fin­ger­tips.

As Mis­ter Rogers reveals in the sto­ry of his sweaters, his mom was the knit­ter behind many of the on-air sweaters Phillips crunched with R code. Whether their sub­tly shift­ing palette reflects an adven­tur­ous spir­it on the part of the mak­er or the recipient’s evolv­ing taste is not for us to know.

After Mrs. Rogers’ death, pro­duc­ers had to resort to buy­ing sim­i­lar mod­els. Many of her orig­i­nals had worn through or been donat­ed to char­i­ty events.

“Not an easy chal­lenge in the 80’s and 90s,” Mar­gy Whit­mer, a pro­duc­er of Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood told Rewire. “It cer­tain­ly wasn’t in style! But we found a com­pa­ny who made cot­ton ones that were sim­i­lar, so we bought a bunch and dyed them.”

(A moment of silent grat­i­tude that no one tried to shoe­horn Fred Rogers into a Cos­by Show sweater…)

It would be inter­est­ing to see what Phillips’ code could do with faulty view­er mem­o­ries.

His input for the Mis­ter Rogers’ Cardi­gans of Many Col­ors project was a chart on super fan Tim Lybarger’s Neigh­bor­hood Archive detail­ing the hue of every sweater Mis­ter Rogers changed into on-cam­era from 1979 to 2001.

With­out sam­ples of the actu­al sweaters, Lybarger’s col­or chart could only be approx­i­mate, but unlike view­ers’ fad­ing mem­o­ries, it’s root­ed in his own visu­al obser­va­tions of dis­tinct episodes. Aging fans tend to jet­ti­son Rogers’ spec­tral real­i­ty in favor of a sin­gle shade, the bright red in which he greet­ed Wicked Witch of the West Mar­garet Hamil­ton in 1975, say, or the pleas­ant mouse-col­ored num­ber he sport­ed for a 1985 break­danc­ing ses­sion with a vis­it­ing 12-year-old.

For those who’d rather code than purl, Phillips shares MrRogers.R, the pro­gram he used to scrape the Neigh­bor­hood Archive for Mis­ter Rogers dai­ly sweater col­ors.

Then have a look at Rogers’ sweaters as ren­dered by Phillips’ fel­low data geek, Alan Joyce, who tin­kered with Phillips’ code to pro­duce a gra­di­ent image.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

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

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her cur­rent project is The­ater of the Apes Sub-Adult Division’s fast approach­ing pro­duc­tion of Ani­mal Farm at the Tank in New York City.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How Saxophones Are Made: Two Short Films (Including One by Sesame Street) Take You Inside Saxophone Factories

in Music, Television | October 23rd, 2017


Many of us, hand­ed a sax­o­phone, would­n’t have the first clue about how to play it prop­er­ly, and almost none of us would have any idea at all about how to make one. Then again, those of us of a cer­tain gen­er­a­tion might feel an old mem­o­ry com­ing back to the sur­face: had­n’t we once wit­nessed the inner work­ings of a sax­o­phone fac­to­ry? We did if we ever hap­pened to catch the clas­sic 1980 Sesame Street short above which shows the sax­o­phone-mak­ing process in its entire­ty, begin­ning with flat sheets of met­al and end­ing up, two min­utes lat­er, with jazz­i­ly playable instru­ments — just like the one we’ve heard impro­vis­ing to the action onscreen the whole time.

Gold­en-age Sesame Street always did well with reveal­ing how things were made in a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly mes­mer­iz­ing way, as also seen around the same time in an even more wide­ly remem­bered two min­utes in a cray­on fac­to­ry. Both it and the sax­o­phone work­shop, though they use plen­ty of tech­nol­o­gy, look like quaint­ly, even charm­ing­ly labor-inten­sive oper­a­tions today: in almost every step shown, we see not just a machine or tool but the human (or at least a part of the human) oper­at­ing it.

And it turns out, the art of sax­o­phone-mak­ing has­n’t changed as much in the sub­se­quent decades as we might imag­ine. The Bet­ter Sax video above shows in a bit more detail what actu­al­ly hap­pens inside a mod­ern sax­o­phone fac­to­ry, name­ly that of wood­wind and brass instru­ment mak­er Hen­ri Selmer Paris, whose sax­o­phones have been played by Char­lie Park­er, John Coltrane, Paul Desmond, Son­ny Rollins and Cole­man Hawkins. And while some of the equip­ment clear­ly grew more advanced in the years since the Sesame Street short, the over­all process remains clear­ly rec­og­niz­able, as does the con­cen­tra­tion evi­dent in the actions and on the faces of all the skilled work­ers involved, albeit on a much larg­er scale. The day when we can 3D-print our own sax­o­phones at home — the cul­mi­na­tion of the indus­tri­al evo­lu­tion­ary process glimpsed in two dif­fer­ent stages in these videos — will come, but it cer­tain­ly has­n’t come yet.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Nina Simone Sing the Black Pride Anthem, “To Be Young, Gift­ed and Black,” on Sesame Street (1972)

Watch Her­bie Han­cock Rock Out on an Ear­ly Syn­the­siz­er on Sesame Street (1983)

Watch Jazzy Spies: 1969 Psy­che­del­ic Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion, Fea­tur­ing Grace Slick, Teach­es Kids to Count

Learn How Crayons Are Made, Cour­tesy of 1980s Videos by Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers

Glass: The Oscar-Win­ning “Per­fect Short Doc­u­men­tary” on Dutch Glass­mak­ing (1958)

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.

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

in Business, Film, Television | October 19th, 2017

Ing­mar Bergman is usu­al­ly remem­bered for the intense­ly seri­ous nature of his films. Death, anguish, the absence of God–his themes can be pret­ty gloomy. So it might come as a sur­prise to learn that Bergman once direct­ed a series of rather sil­ly soap com­mer­cials.

The year was 1951. Bergman was 33 years old. The Swedish film indus­try, his main source of income, had just gone on strike to protest high gov­ern­ment tax­es on enter­tain­ment. With two ex-wives, five chil­dren, a new wife and a sixth child on the way, Bergman need­ed to find anoth­er way to make mon­ey.

A solu­tion pre­sent­ed itself when he was asked to cre­ate a series of com­mer­cials for a new anti-bac­te­r­i­al soap called Bris (“Breeze,” in Eng­lish). Bergman threw him­self into the project. He lat­er recalled:

Orig­i­nal­ly, I accept­ed the Bris com­mer­cials in order to save the lives of my self and my fam­i­lies. But that was real­ly sec­ondary. The pri­ma­ry rea­son I want­ed to make the com­mer­cials was that I was giv­en free rein with mon­ey and I could do exact­ly what I want­ed with the pro­duc­t’s mes­sage. Any­how, I have always found it dif­fi­cult to feel resent­ment when indus­try comes rush­ing toward cul­ture, check in hand.

Bergman enlist­ed his favorite cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er at that time, Gun­nar Fis­ch­er, and togeth­er they made nine minia­ture films, each a lit­tle more than one minute long, to be screened in movie the­aters over the next three years. Bergman used the oppor­tu­ni­ty to exper­i­ment with visu­al and nar­ra­tive form.

Many of the styl­is­tic devices and motifs that would even­tu­al­ly fig­ure into his mas­ter­pieces can be spot­ted in the com­mer­cials: mir­rors, dou­bles, the tele­scop­ing in or out of a sto­ry-with­in-a-sto­ry. You don’t need to under­stand Swedish to rec­og­nize the mark of the mas­ter.

In the win­dow above we fea­ture Episode 1, “Bris Soap,” which is per­haps the most basic of the com­mer­cials. They become pro­gres­sive­ly more imag­i­na­tive as the series moves along:

  • Episode 2, Ten­nis Girl: An inno­cent game of ten­nis sets the stage for an epic bat­tle between good (Bris soap) and evil (bac­te­ria). Can you guess which side wins?
  • Episode 3, Gus­ta­vian: Bad hygiene in the 17th cen­tu­ry court of King Gus­tav III. Plen­ty of fop­pish­ness, but no Bris.
  • Episode 4, Oper­a­tion: “Per­haps the most intrigu­ing of the com­mer­cials,” writes Swedish film schol­ar Fredrik Gustafs­son. “In this one Bergman is decon­struct­ing the whole busi­ness of film­mak­ing, using all the tricks of his dis­pos­al to trick and treat us.”
  • Episode 5, The Mag­ic Show: Anoth­er bat­tle between good and evil, this time in minia­ture.
  • Episode 6, The Inven­tor: A man hero­ical­ly invents anti-bac­te­r­i­al soap, only to awak­en and real­ize it was all a dream. (And any­way, the mak­ers of Bris had already done it.)
  • Episode 7, The Rebus: Bergman uses mon­tage to cre­ate a game of “rebus,” a heraldic rid­dle (non ver­bis, sed rebus: “not by words but by things”), to piece togeth­er the slo­gan, “Bris kills the bacteria–no bac­te­ria, no smell.”
  • Episode 8, Three-Dimen­sion­al: Bergman thought 3‑D films were “ridicu­lous­ly stu­pid,” and in this episode he takes a few play­ful jabs.
  • Episode 9, The Princess and the Swine­herd: In this rein­ven­tion of Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­son­’s “The Swine­herd,” a 15-year-old Bibi Ander­s­son, who went on to star in many of Bergman’s great­est films, makes her screen debut as a beau­ti­ful princess who promis­es a swine­herd 100 kiss­es in exchange for a bar of soap. Not a bad deal for the swine­herd.

To learn more about Bergman’s soap com­mer­cials you can watch a 2009 report by Slate film crit­ic Dana Stevens here. (Note the video requires a flash play­er.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mir­rors of Ing­mar Bergman, Nar­rat­ed with the Poet­ry of Sylvia Plath

Ing­mar Bergman Vis­its The Dick Cavett Show, 1971

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

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The Existential Philosophy of Cowboy Bebop, the Cult Japanese Anime Series, Explored in a Thoughtful Video Essay

in Animation, Philosophy, Television | October 11th, 2017

Super Dimen­sion Fortress Macross, Mobile Suit Gun­dam Wing, Neon Gen­e­sis Evan­ge­lion — these are the kind of titles that might ring a bell even if you have no par­tic­u­lar inter­est in futur­is­tic Japan­ese ani­mat­ed tele­vi­sion shows. But how about Cow­boy Bebop? That evoca­tive­ly West­ern name itself, not an awk­ward Eng­lish trans­la­tion of a Japan­ese title but Eng­lish in the orig­i­nal, hints that the series stands apart from all the dimen­sion fortress­es, mobile suits, and neon gene­ses out there. And indeed, when it first aired in 1997, view­ers the world over took quick note of the dis­tinc­tive sen­si­bil­i­ty of its sto­ries of a ship­ful of boun­ty hunters drift­ing through out­er space in the year 2071.

“On paper, Cow­boy Bebop, the leg­endary cult ani­me series from Shinichirō Watan­abe” — recent­ly direc­tor of one of Blade Run­ner 2049’s short pre­quels — “reads like some­thing John Wayne, Elmore Leonard, and Philip K. Dick came up with dur­ing a wild, all-night whiskey ben­der.” So writes the Atlantic’s Alex Suskind in a piece on the show’s last­ing lega­cy. “Every­one speaks like they’re back­ground extras in Chi­na­town. The show ulti­mate­ly fea­tures so many cross-rang­ing influ­ences and nods to oth­er famous works it’s almost impos­si­ble to keep track. It’s Ser­gio Leone in a space­suit. It’s Butch Cas­sidy and the Sun­dance Kid with auto­mat­ic weapons.”

And yet Cow­boy Bebop remains, thor­ough­ly, a work of Japan­ese imag­i­na­tion, and like many of the most respect­ed of the form, it has seri­ous philo­soph­i­cal incli­na­tions. Chan­nel Criswell cre­ator Lewis Bond exam­ines those in “The Mean­ing of Noth­ing,” his video essay on the series. “Can we as humans find some­thing in noth­ing, find pur­pose beyond sur­vival?” Bond asks. “These onto­log­i­cal thoughts that plague us make up the same exis­ten­tial drift our char­ac­ters repeat­ed­ly find them­selves in, and it’s what is most sig­nif­i­cant to the jour­ney of Cow­boy Bebop.” He looks past the cool­er-than-cool style, snap­py dia­logue, wit­ty gags, and rich, unex­pect­ed mix­ture of aes­thet­ic influ­ences to which fans have thrilled to find “a meta­phys­i­cal expres­sion of how peo­ple over­come their lives, par­tic­u­lar­ly the lin­ger­ing grief that comes with them.”

Tak­en as a whole, the show resolves into a pre­sen­ta­tion of life as “less of a lin­ear path towards a goal, more of a haze that we must ven­ture through with­out any guid­ance, because the sad real­i­ty of Bebop’s sto­ry is that our cast of char­ac­ters are lost in the cos­mos with­out any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for why they live, oth­er than to exist.” The series came to a famous­ly ambigu­ous end after 26 episodes, but this past sum­mer we heard that it may return, reboot­ed as a live-action series. What­ev­er its medi­um, the world of Cow­boy Bebop — with its space­craft, its inter­plan­e­tary cops and rob­bers, and its super­in­tel­li­gent cor­gi — amounts to noth­ing less than the human con­di­tion, a place we have no choice but to revis­it. Might as well do it in style.

The com­plete Cow­boy Bebop series can be bought on blu-ray, or if you’re a sub­scriber, you can watch the episodes on Hulu.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the New Ani­me Pre­quel to Blade Run­ner 2049, by Famed Japan­ese Ani­ma­tor Shinichi­ro Watan­abe

The Phi­los­o­phy, Sto­ry­telling & Visu­al Cre­ativ­i­ty of Ghost in the Shell, the Acclaimed Ani­me Film, Explained in Video Essays

How the Films of Hayao Miyaza­ki Work Their Ani­mat­ed Mag­ic, Explained in 4 Video Essays

Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions: The Ori­gins of Ani­me (1917–1931)

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.

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