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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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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