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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Watch the New Trailer for Electric Dreams, the Philip K. Dick TV Series, Starring Bryan Cranston, Steve Buscemi & More

in Sci Fi, Television | October 10th, 2017

If you had told crit­ics and film exec­u­tives thir­ty-five years ago that Rid­ley Scott’s Blade Run­ner would be one of the most beloved sci-fi films of all time—that it would tran­scend cult sta­tus to become a near-reli­gious object in sci­ence fic­tion and ani­me filmmaking—you would like­ly have been laughed out of the room. If you had pre­dict­ed that, thir­ty-five years lat­er, it would spawn one of the most spec­tac­u­lar sequels imag­in­able, you might have been met with con­cern for your san­i­ty. The world was just not ready for Blade Run­ner in 1982, just as it was not ready for Philip K. Dick in the 50s when he began his writ­ing career and “couldn’t even pay the late fees on a library book.”

In the fol­low­ing decade, how­ev­er, Dick’s work came into its own. Many years before it pro­vid­ed a near-infal­li­ble source for tech­no­log­i­cal pre­science and exis­ten­tial futur­ism in cin­e­ma, Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep?, the novel­la from which Blade Run­ner adapt­ed its sto­ry, got a Neb­u­la award nom­i­na­tion, one of three Dick received in the 60s. Five years ear­li­er, he won a Hugo award for The Man in the High Cas­tle.

Now, after the suc­cess of that spec­u­la­tive his­tor­i­cal novel’s grim Ama­zon adap­ta­tion, the com­pa­ny has part­nered with Chan­nel 4 and Sony for anoth­er small-screen Dick project—Elec­tric Dreams, co-pro­duced by Bryan Cranston, a long­time fan of the author.

An anthol­o­gy series based on Dick’s sto­ries, Elec­tric Dreams first airs on Chan­nel 4 in the U.K., and will soon move to Ama­zon, where Prime users will be able to stream the whole 10-episode sea­son for free. (If you aren’t a Prime user, you can get a 30-day free tri­al to watch the series, then keep or can­cel the mem­ber­ship.) Elec­tric Dreams reminds us that a cou­ple of phe­nom­e­na from Dick’s hey­day have made a sig­nif­i­cant come­back in recent years. First, imag­i­na­tive, high-con­cept anthol­o­gy shows like Char­lie Brooker’s Black Mir­ror and the Duplass broth­ers’ Room 104 hear­ken back to the suc­cess of The Twi­light Zone and less­er-known shows like Roald Dahl’s Way Out.

Sec­ond­ly, we’ve made a return to the para­noia, social unrest, author­i­tar­i­an­ism, and threats of nuclear war that formed the back­drops of Dick’s vision­ary fables. These are indeed “anx­ious times,” as Cranston says, but he and the show’s oth­er pro­duc­ers instruct­ed the writ­ers to “use the orig­i­nal mate­r­i­al as a spring­board to your own re-imag­in­ing of the story—keep the core… or idea behind it and enhance that and see how that affects not a Cold War peri­od when it was writ­ten, but now. How does it affect the mod­ern-day audi­ence?”

Giv­en the all-star cast and high-dol­lar pro­duc­tion val­ues evi­dent in the trail­er above, we can like­ly expect the same kind of qual­i­ty from Elec­tric Dreams as we have seen in near­ly every Dick adap­ta­tion thus far. And if it doesn’t catch on right away, well, that may be everyone’s loss but those view­ers who rec­og­nize, as Dick him­self rec­og­nized when he saw Blade Run­ner in 1982, that they have expe­ri­enced some­thing tru­ly unique.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

When Roald Dahl Host­ed His Own Creepy TV Show Way Out, a Com­pan­ion to Rod Serling’s Twi­light Zone (1961)

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

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The Famously Controversial “Monty Hall Problem” Explained: A Classic Brain Teaser

in Math, Television | October 3rd, 2017

When the news broke last week of the death of game-show host Mon­ty Hall, even those of us who could­n’t quite put a face to the name felt the ring of recog­ni­tion from the name itself. Hall became famous on the long-run­ning game show Let’s Make a Deal, whose best-known seg­ment “Big Deal of the Day” had him com­mand­ing his play­ers to choose one of three num­bered doors, each of which con­cealed a prize of unknown desir­abil­i­ty. It put not just phras­es like “door num­ber three” into the Eng­lish lex­i­con but con­tributed to the world of stumpers the Mon­ty Hall Prob­lem, the brain-teas­er based on the much-con­test­ed prob­a­bil­i­ty behind which door a con­tes­tant should choose.

Let’s Make a Deal pre­miered in 1963, but only in 1990, when Mar­i­lyn vos Savant wrote one of her Q&A columns about it in Parade mag­a­zine, did the Mon­ty Hall Prob­lem draw seri­ous, frus­trat­ed pub­lic atten­tion.

“Behind one door is a car; behind the oth­ers, goats,” went the ques­tion, set­ting up a Let’s Make a Deal-like sce­nario. “You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens anoth­er door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, ‘Do you want to pick door No. 2?’ Is it to your advan­tage to switch your choice?” Yes, replied the unhesi­tat­ing Savant and her Guin­ness World Record-set­ting IQ, you should switch. “The first door has a 1/3 chance of win­ning, but the sec­ond door has a 2/3 chance.”

This log­ic, which you can see bro­ken down by Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley sta­tis­tics pro­fes­sor Lisa Gold­berg in the Num­ber­phile video at the top of the post, drew about 10,000 let­ters of dis­agree­ment in total, many from aca­d­e­mics at respectable insti­tu­tions. Michael Sher­mer received a sim­i­lar­ly vehe­ment response when he addressed the issue in Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can eigh­teen years lat­er. “At the begin­ning of the game you have a 1/3rd chance of pick­ing the car and a 2/3rds chance of pick­ing a goat,” he explained. “Switch­ing doors is bad only if you ini­tial­ly chose the car, which hap­pens only 1/3rd of the time. Switch­ing doors is good if you ini­tial­ly chose a goat, which hap­pens 2/3rds of the time.” Thus the odds of win­ning by switch­ing becomes two out of three, dou­ble those of not switch­ing.

Use­ful advice, pre­sum­ing you’d pre­fer a Brick­lin SV‑1 or an Opel Man­ta to a goat, and that the host opens one of the uns­e­lect­ed doors every time with­out fail, which Hall did­n’t actu­al­ly do. When he did open it, he lat­er explained, the con­tes­tants made the same assump­tion many of Savant and Sher­mer’s com­plainants did: “They’d think the odds on their door had now gone up to 1 in 2, so they hat­ed to give up the door no mat­ter how much mon­ey I offered. By open­ing that door we were apply­ing pres­sure.” Ulti­mate­ly, “if the host is required to open a door all the time and offer you a switch, then you should take the switch. But if he has the choice whether to allow a switch or not, beware. Caveat emp­tor. It all depends on his mood” — a rare con­sid­er­a­tion in any­thing relat­ed to math­e­mat­ics, but when deal­ing with the Mon­ty Hall prob­lem, one ignores at one’s per­il the words of Mon­ty Hall.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Are You One of the 2% Who Can Solve “Einstein’s Rid­dle”?

Can You Solve These Ani­mat­ed Brain Teasers from TED-Ed?

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on US Game Show I’ve Got a Secret (1960)

A Young Hunter S. Thomp­son Appears on the Clas­sic TV Game Show, To Tell the Truth (1967)

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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Hugh Hefner (RIP) Defends “the Playboy Philosophy” to William F. Buckley, 1966

in Life, Philosophy, Politics, Television | September 28th, 2017

“Mr. Hefn­er’s mag­a­zine is most wide­ly known for its total expo­sure of the human female,” says William F. Buck­ley, intro­duc­ing the guest on this 1966 broad­cast of his talk show Fir­ing Line. “Though of course oth­er things hap­pen in its pages.” Not long before, pub­lish­er and plea­sure empire-builder Hugh Hefn­er’s Play­boy mag­a­zine ran a series of arti­cles on “the Play­boy phi­los­o­phy,” a set of obser­va­tions of and propo­si­tions about human sex­u­al­i­ty that pro­vid­ed these men fod­der for their tele­vised debate. Hefn­er stands against reli­gious­ly man­dat­ed, chasti­ty-cen­tered codes of sex­u­al moral­i­ty; Buck­ley demands to know how Hefn­er earned the qual­i­fi­ca­tions to issue new codes of his own. Describ­ing the Play­boy phi­los­o­phy as “sort of a hedo­nis­tic util­i­tar­i­an­ism,” Buck­ley tries simul­ta­ne­ous­ly to under­stand and demol­ish these 20th-cen­tu­ry revi­sions of the rules of sex.

“The Play­boy founder is no match for the Catholic who snipes him at will with ‘moral’ bul­lets,” writes the poster of the video. “The acer­bic, dry Buck­ley is on attack mode with a con­ser­v­a­tive audi­ence, in moral pan­ic, behind him. The Catholic had the era of con­ser­vatism behind him. [ … ] In the 21st cen­tu­ry though, Buck­ley would have a hard­er time defend­ing moral­i­ty with Hefn­er.” One won­ders how Buck­ley and Hefn­er, were they still alive today, might revis­it this debate in 2017. (Buck­ley died in 2008, and Hefn­er passed away yes­ter­day at the age of 91.) Times have cer­tain­ly changed, but I sus­pect Buck­ley would raise the same core objec­tion to Hefn­er’s argu­ment that loos­en­ing the old stric­tures on sex leads, per­haps coun­ter­in­tu­itive­ly, to more sat­is­fied, more monog­a­mous pair­ings: “How in the hell do you know?” Though this and cer­tain oth­er of Buck­ley’s ques­tions occa­sion­al­ly wrong-foot Hefn­er, the faith­ful can rest assured that he keeps enough cool to fire up his sig­na­ture pipe on cam­era.

Note: This post first appeared on our site back in 2012. We brought it back today for obvi­ous rea­sons, and updat­ed it to reflect Hefn­er’s pass­ing. Since 2012, a huge archive of “Fir­ing Line” episodes have been put online. Get more on that here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

375+ Episodes of William F. Buckley’s Fir­ing Line Now Online: Fea­tures Talks with Chom­sky, Borges, Ker­ouac, Gins­berg & More

Yeah, Baby! Deep Pur­ple Gets Sha­gadel­ic on Play­boy After Dark

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

Jack Ker­ouac Meets William F. Buck­ley (1968)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Sex Pistols Make a Scandalous Appearance on the Bill Grundy Show & Introduce Punk Rock to the Startled Masses (1976)

in Music, Television | September 19th, 2017

The brain­less­ness and hypocrisy of tele­vi­sion has long been a source of fun and social com­men­tary in punk rock—from Black Flag’s “TV Par­ty” (“I don’t even both­er to use my brain any­more”) to the Dead Kennedys’ “M.T.V. –Get Off the Air” (“… feed­ing you end­less dos­es / of sug­ar-coat­ed mind­less garbage”). It’s fit­ting then that one of the sem­i­nal moments in punk his­to­ry hap­pened on tele­vi­sion, orches­trat­ed by Sex Pis­tols man­ag­er and arch provo­ca­teur Mal­colm McLaren, who knew as well as any­one how to manip­u­late the media. The noto­ri­ous Bill Grundy inter­view, which you can watch—likely not for the first or even sec­ond time—above, rock­et­ed the Sex Pis­tols to nation­al infamy overnight, sim­ply because of a few swear words and some slight­ly rude behav­ior.

Though the U.S. does its damn­d­est to keep up these days, no one in 1976 could match the out­rage machin­ery of the UK press. As rock pho­tog­ra­ph­er and man­ag­er Leee Black Childers put it in the oral his­to­ry of punk, Please Kill Me, the tabloids “can work the pop­u­lace into a fren­zy.” McLaren goes on record to say, “I knew the Bill Grundy show was going to cre­ate a huge scan­dal. I gen­uine­ly believed it would be his­to­ry in the mak­ing.” We might expect him to take cred­it after the fact, but in any case, it worked: the day after the band’s appear­ance on the Grundy-host­ed Today show on Thames Tele­vi­sion, every tabloid paper fea­tured them on the front page. The Dai­ly Mir­ror pro­vid­ed the title of Julien Temple’s 2000 doc­u­men­tary with their clever head­line, “The Filth and the Fury.”

Even in 2008, a sur­vey showed the Grundy inter­view as the most request­ed clip in UK tele­vi­sion his­to­ry. With all this hype, you might be dis­ap­point­ed if you’re one of the few who hasn’t seen it. Though f‑bombs on TV can still cause a minor stir, a few mum­bled curse words will hard­ly gar­ner the kind of pub­lic­i­ty they did forty years ago. McLaren claims punk rock began that day on the Today show, and that’s true, at least, for the view­ing pub­lic who would have been treat­ed to an appear­ance from Queen if Fred­die Mer­cury hadn’t devel­oped a crip­pling toothache. Instead, they were intro­duced to Paul Cook in a Vivi­enne West­wood naked breasts t‑shirt, and Glen Mat­lock, Steve Jones, and John­ny Rot­ten toss­ing insults at Grundy, who egged them on, hit on the teenage Siouxsie Sioux, part of the band’s entourage, and may have been drunk, though he denied it.

It may be one of the least wit­ty exchanges in tele­vi­sion his­to­ry, and that’s say­ing a lot. But for all the pearl-clutch­ing over the band’s cru­di­ty, it’s maybe Grundy who comes off look­ing the worse. More inter­est­ing than the inter­view itself is the hyper­bol­ic fall­out, as well as what hap­pened imme­di­ate­ly after­ward. The sta­tion was flood­ed with com­plaints, and for some rea­son, its tele­phone sys­tem rerout­ed unan­swered calls to the green room, where the band and their fol­low­ers had decamped. “A pro­duc­er on the pro­gramme ignored instruc­tions to remain in the room,” notes Jon Ben­nett at Team Rock. “The result? The group start­ed answer­ing the phones and dish­ing out even more abuse. How this evad­ed the press at the time remains a mys­tery.” Indeed. It’s doubt­ful McLaren could have planned it, but the image evokes the sneer of every punk who has ever spit on the pious insis­tence that TV spoon­feed its view­ers mid­dle-class deco­rum with their adver­tis­ing, sports, wish-ful­fill­ing fan­tasies, and info­tain­ment.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Sex Pis­tols’ Very Last Con­cert (San Fran­cis­co, 1978)

The Sex Pis­tols’ 1976 Man­ches­ter “Gig That Changed the World,” and the Day the Punk Era Began

The Sex Pis­tols Play in Dal­las’ Long­horn Ball­room; Next Show Is Mer­le Hag­gard (1978)

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

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