Sell & Spin: The History of Advertising, Narrated by Dick Cavett (1999)

in Business, Television | April 22nd, 2016

“Accord­ing to a study pub­lished Mon­day by researchers at Duke University’s Cen­ter for Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science, humans expe­ri­ence the most intense feel­ings of hap­pi­ness when press­ing the ‘skip ad’ but­ton before watch­ing a video on the inter­net.” That comes from The Onion, whose satir­i­cal report­ing hits the mark as usu­al. If we know one thing about adver­tis­ing for sure, we know that we don’t like it — or at least we don’t like many of its cur­rent man­i­fes­ta­tions, so much so that we will­ing­ly engage in the arms race of down­load­ing spe­cial pro­grams to block them, which adver­tis­ers soon find a way to defeat, requir­ing us to find new eva­sive tac­tics, which forces adver­tis­es to cut anoth­er path to us, and so on.

How has it come to this? You can learn exact­ly how from Sell & Spin, the 1999 tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary above. “From ancient phras­es etched in stone to today’s cut­ting-edge mul­ti­me­dia com­mer­cials, sell­ing has always meant grab­bing atten­tion,” says its nar­ra­tor, the respect­ed talk-show host Dick Cavett. “The point? Mov­ing the prod­uct. The means? Tap­ping into desire — cre­at­ing need.” From the first known adver­tise­ment, a wine shop’s sign from ancient Baby­lon, to the eve of the high-tech 21st cen­tu­ry, Cavett and a host of adver­tis­ing experts tell the sto­ry of not just how adver­tis­ing became an indus­try in the first place, but how it became the huge, shape-shift­ing indus­try we regard today as both wild­ly cre­ative yet some­how sin­is­ter.

Even the most ad-loathing view­er will rec­og­nize many of the icon­ic exam­ples of this ultra-com­mer­cial art form of the thou­sands this doc­u­men­tary includes: Bur­ma-Shave road­signs, the smoke-blow­ing Camel cig­a­rettes bill­board in Times Square, the Volk­swa­gen Bee­tle tout­ing itself as a “lemon” on a whole mag­a­zine page, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing”; mas­cots from Tony the Tiger to the Marl­boro Man (a sym­bol of free­dom, we hear, for post­war office work­ers shack­led to their desks) to the Taco Bell chi­huahua; and of course Coca-Cola’s “I’d like to teach the world to sing,” whose con­cep­tion the final episode of Mad Men fic­tion­al­ized by putting into the mind of its pro­tag­o­nist, 1960s Madi­son Avenue “cre­ative” Don Drap­er.

That acclaimed recent tele­vi­sion dra­ma both glam­or­ized and crit­i­cized the cul­ture of the 20th-cen­tu­ry adver­tis­ing indus­try, which may have oper­at­ed as cyn­i­cal­ly and oppor­tunis­ti­cal­ly as the busi­ness­es it worked for, but which nev­er­the­less craft­ed some of the most endur­ing words and images in our mod­ern cul­ture. But what of the “mad men” of today, charged with the thank­less (if often remu­ner­a­tive) task of com­ing up with those videos we get such a kick out of click­ing past? Sell & Spin shows us the very begin­ning of their work, tak­ing place on a now-quaint-look­ing cyber­space that had only just moved beyond Bur­ma Shave-sim­ple ban­ner ads.

“Nobody quite knows how to use it effec­tive­ly,” says Jay Chi­at of the inter­net toward the doc­u­men­tary’s end. As the co-founder of Los Ange­les’ for­mi­da­ble Chiat/Day adver­tis­ing indus­try, he knew the mechan­ics of the craft well indeed, more than thor­ough­ly enough to rec­og­nize both the medi­um’s poten­tial and the extent to which nobody had yet tapped it. How we all use the inter­net has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly since Chi­at died in 2002, but his words still ring true. It’s still ear­ly days for inter­net adver­tis­ing, and its mad­dest men (and women) — the ones who ful­ly reject the old indus­try com­mand­ment to “irri­tate your way into peo­ples’ con­scious­ness — have yet to arrive on the scene.

Sell & Spin will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the First Com­mer­cial Ever Shown on Amer­i­can TV, 1941

Eisen­how­er Answers Amer­i­ca: The First Polit­i­cal Adver­tise­ments on Amer­i­can TV (1952)

Before Mad Men: Famil­iar and For­got­ten Ads from 1950s to 1980s Now Online

The Mad Men Read­ing List: 25 Reveal­ing Books Read by the Char­ac­ters on the Show

Dig­i­tal Archive of Vin­tage Tele­vi­sion Com­mer­cials

David Ogilvy’s 1982 Memo “How to Write” Offers 10 Pieces of Time­less Advice

A Gallery of Mad Magazine’s Rol­lick­ing Fake Adver­tise­ments from the 1960s

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch the First Episode of Vinyl: Mick Jagger & Martin Scorsese’s Series on the 1970s Music Scene

in Music, Television | April 8th, 2016

A quick note: HBO recent­ly pre­miered Vinyl, which takes a Good­fel­las-style look at the seedy 1970s rock music and record-mak­ing scene. Here’s a quick snap­shot of what the show’s all about:

Cre­at­ed by Mick Jag­ger & Mar­tin Scors­ese & Rich Cohen and Ter­ence Win­ter, this new dra­ma series is set in 1970s New York. A ride through the sex- and drug-addled music busi­ness at the dawn of punk, dis­co, and hip-hop, the show is seen through the eyes of a record label pres­i­dent, Richie Fines­tra, played by Bob­by Can­navale, who is try­ing to save his com­pa­ny and his soul with­out destroy­ing every­one in his path. Addi­tion­al series reg­u­lars include Olivia Wilde, Ray Romano, Ato Essan­doh, Max Casel­la, P.J. Byrne, J.C. MacKen­zie, Bir­gitte Hjort Sørensen, Juno Tem­ple, Jack Quaid, James Jag­ger and Paul Ben-Vic­tor. Scors­ese, Jag­ger and Win­ter exec­u­tive pro­duce along with Vic­to­ria Pear­man, Rick Yorn, Emma Till­inger Koskoff, John Melfi, Allen Coul­ter and George Mas­tras. Win­ter serves as showrun­ner. The 10-episode first sea­son debuts Feb­ru­ary 14th.

The first pilot episode–directly by Scors­ese himself–is cur­rent­ly stream­ing free on HBO’s web­site. It runs two good hours. And if you want to watch the remain­ing episodes on the cheap, you can start a month­long free tri­al of HBO NOW. Just look for the “Start Your Free Month” but­ton at the top of HBO’s site.

Note: The video up top is only a trail­er for Episode 1. To watch the com­plete episode, click here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting: Now Free on YouTube

in Art, How to Learn for Free, Television | April 5th, 2016

Last year, we let you know that the first sea­son of The Joy of Paint­ing, the pub­lic-tele­vi­sion paint-along show host­ed by the neat­ly permed and per­sis­tent­ly reas­sur­ing Bob Ross, had appeared free to watch online.

Pro­duced by WNVC in Falls Church, Vir­ginia, that sea­son aired in 1983, and had some rough edges — the audi­ble move­ments and mur­murs of the crew in the back­ground, the nat­u­ral­ly impro­vi­sa­tion­al Ross’ occa­sion­al stum­ble over one of his script­ed lines — that would get thor­ough­ly smoothed away as the pro­gram rapid­ly became an inter­na­tion­al TV insti­tu­tion, a process you can wit­ness again for your­self now that Bob Ross’ Youtube chan­nel has made avail­able all 31 sea­sons free online.

Sea­son Two

“Bob Ross died in 1995 at 52 after a bat­tle with lym­phoma,” writes the New York Times’ Fos­ter Kamer, “but his cul­tur­al lega­cy has grown in his absence. He was around to wit­ness the begin­nings of his own cult sta­tus. In the ear­ly ’90s, he was big in Japan. And MTV, cater­ing to the Gen X pen­chant for irony, ran a series of pro­mo­tion­al adver­tise­ments that fea­tured him.”

Gen Xers across Amer­i­ca would sure­ly all have caught glimpses of Ross — and more impor­tant­ly, heard a few of his mes­mer­iz­ing­ly deliv­ered words — dur­ing late-night or mid­day chan­nel-surf­ing ses­sions, but now, thanks to the increas­ing avail­abil­i­ty of The Joy of Paint­ing’s archives on-demand and online, it’s made new fans even of those born after Ross had already depart­ed.

Sea­son Three

The show always made it easy for its view­ers to paint as they watched, with Ross always tak­ing the time to run down the short list of required tools, mak­ing tire­less­ly sure to empha­size that under no cir­cum­stances should they buy nylon brush­es or clean those brush­es with tur­pen­tine. As the pro­duc­tion val­ues increased, so did the num­ber of col­ors on the palette, though they nev­er expand­ed too far beyond the core set, which The Joy of Paint­ing die-hards can rat­tle off like a mantra, of Bright Red, Phtha­lo Blue, Mid­night Black, Alizarin Crim­son, Cad­mi­um Yel­low, Van Dyke Brown, Tita­ni­um White, Sap Green — and, as Ross him­self might say, the “almighty” can­vas-cov­er­ing Mag­ic White, the foun­da­tion of the “wet-on-wet” tech­nique he learned from men­tor, and lat­er bit­ter rival, Bill Alexan­der.

Sea­son Four

The New York Times arti­cle quotes Annette Kowal­s­ki, a one­time stu­dent of Ross who now helps run the Bob Ross, Inc. empire, on the host’s endur­ing appeal as a teacher: “If you lis­ten close­ly to Bob’s pro­grams, he nev­er says ‘I’m going to teach you this. He nev­er assumes that he knows more than you do. He says: ‘We’ll learn this togeth­er.’ And I think — even though peo­ple don’t real­ize it — I think that’s what his big turn-on is.” But it almost goes with­out say­ing that not every­one fas­ci­nat­ed by the show, and maybe not even most peo­ple fas­ci­nat­ed by the show, actu­al­ly have any desire to paint them­selves.

Sea­son Five

So why do they still tune in, on what­ev­er plat­form they might tune in on, and in such large num­bers? The key must have some­thing to do with Ross’ oft-repeat­ed reminders to his view­ers that, when it comes to the land­scapes on their own can­vas­es, “this is your world, your cre­ation,” and in your world, “there are no set, firm rules — you find what works for you, and that’s what you do.” On The Joy of Paint­ing, Ross cre­at­ed a world, or per­haps a real­i­ty, of his own, one where “any­body can paint; all you need is a dream in your heart and a lit­tle prac­tice,” where “there are no mis­takes, just hap­py acci­dents” (plen­ti­ful­ly inhab­it­ed, of course, by “hap­py lit­tle trees”), and one which many found they enjoyed liv­ing in, brush in hand or not, even if only for 26 min­utes at a time.

Sea­son Six

We will con­tin­u­ing adding sea­sons to this list as they become avail­able.

Sea­son Sev­en

Sea­son Eight

Sea­son Nine

Sea­son Ten

Sea­son 11

Sea­son 12

Sea­son 13

Sea­son 14

Sea­son 15

Sea­son 16

Sea­son 17

Sea­son 18

Sea­son 19

Sea­son 20

Sea­son 21

Sea­son 22

Sea­son 23

Sea­son 24

Sea­son 25

Sea­son 26

Sea­son 27

Sea­son 28

Sea­son 29

Sea­son 30

Sea­son 31

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing Is Now Free Online: Watch Sea­son 1

Icon­ic Artists at Work: Watch Rare Videos of Picas­so, Matisse, Kandin­sky, Renoir, Mon­et and More

Watch Picas­so Cre­ate Entire Paint­ings in Mag­nif­i­cent Time-Lapse Film (1956)

Picas­so Paint­ing on Glass

Jack­son Pol­lock 51: Short Film Cap­tures the Painter Cre­at­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ist Art

Aston­ish­ing Film of Arthrit­ic Impres­sion­ist Painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1915)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

How to Send an E‑mail: A 1984 British Television Broadcast Explains This “Simple” Process

in Technology, Television | March 23rd, 2016

Ear­li­er this month, the world got news of the death of a man whose name many of us had nev­er heard but whose act of inno­va­tion shaped what we do every day. “When his­to­ri­ans of the future study the ways infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy affect­ed people’s lives in the late 20th cen­tu­ry,” said his Econ­o­mist obit­u­ary, “they will sure­ly recog­nise e‑mail as one of the most pro­found. Today, about 2.5m e‑mails are sent every sec­ond. The first e‑mail of all, though” — to be pre­cise, “the first mes­sage between ter­mi­nals attached to sep­a­rate CPUs, albeit that these two com­put­ers stood side-by-side in the same room” — “was sent 45 years ago by Ray Tom­lin­son.”

Fif­teen years after that qui­et­ly his­to­ry-mak­ing trans­mis­sion, e‑mail had evolved to the point that it had become a sub­ject in the news. This 1984 seg­ment of the Thames Tele­vi­sion com­put­er show Data­base shows how one ear­ly-adopt­ing cou­ple, Pat and Julian Green of north Lon­don, com­mu­ni­cate with the world by con­nect­ing their com­put­er to, of all things, the tele­phone line. “It’s sim­ple, real­ly,” says Julian, unplug­ging a British Tele­com cable from one sock­et and plug­ging it into a modem, plug­ging a dif­fer­ent wire from the modem into the first sock­et, switch­ing on the modem, and then hand-dial­ing the num­ber of a “main com­put­er” — with his rotary phone. “Extreme­ly sim­ple,” he reit­er­ates.

What can they do on Micronet, their ser­vice provider, once con­nect­ed? They might read the news, have a look at “reviews of the soft­ware that’s cur­rent­ly avail­able” and even down­load some of it, or use the fea­ture that Pat (in addi­tion to her use of the com­put­er for “keep­ing house­hold records, such as what I have in the freez­er, and people’s tele­phone num­bers and address­es,” as well as “a word proces­sor for my let­ters, which always come out per­fect now”) describes as most excit­ing of all: “the mail­box where I write to oth­er peo­ple.” We see how she can use this new elec­tron­ic mail to ask her doc­tor to refill a pre­scrip­tion, and even to send a mes­sage to the Data­base stu­dio.

All this must have intrigued the view­ers of the day, who, if they had their own com­put­ers at the ready, could even “down­load” soft­ware straight from the broad­cast by record­ing the tone that plays over the show’s end cred­its. (As long as their com­put­ers were BBC Micros, that is, at least in this par­tic­u­lar episode.) The past 32 years have seen enthu­si­asm for new tech­nol­o­gy spread all across the world, turn­ing us all, in some sense, into Pat and Julian Greens. Today we mar­vel at all what we can do with our smart­phones, devices that would’ve seemed mag­i­cal in 1984, but in three decades from now, even our cur­rent tech­no­log­i­cal lives will sure­ly look quaint­er than any­thing in the Data­base archives.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Inter­net Imag­ined in 1969

From the Annals of Opti­mism: The News­pa­per Indus­try in 1981 Imag­ines its Dig­i­tal Future

Where Is Tech­nol­o­gy Tak­ing Us?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Peter Sellers Recites The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” in the Style of Shakespeare’s Richard III

in Comedy, Music, Television | March 23rd, 2016

“Now is the win­ter of our dis­con­tent….” If you know noth­ing else of Shakespeare’s Richard III, you’ll know this famous open­ing line, and it’s like­ly many of us know it through Lau­rence Olivier’s per­for­mance of Richard as a “melo­dra­mat­ic bad­die” in the famous 1955 film. If not, take a look at the clip below to famil­iar­ize your­self with Olivier’s dis­tinc­tive man­ner­isms and speech. The ref­er­ence may large­ly be lost these days, but in 1965, at the very height of The Bea­t­les’ fame, Olivier’s per­for­mance was still fresh in the minds of the TV view­ing pub­lic. And the mer­cu­r­ial Eng­lish come­di­an Peter Sell­ers put it to good use in a Bea­t­les-trib­ute vari­ety pro­gram called The Music of Lennon and McCart­ney that aired in the UK. In the clip above, Sell­ers recites the lyrics to “A Hard Day’s Night” in char­ac­ter as Olivier’s dandy­ish Richard.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Sell­ers and the Bea­t­les had hit it off right away when they were intro­duced by George Mar­tin, and as we showed you in a recent post, the come­di­an milked their lyrics for more mate­r­i­al, read­ing “She Loves You,” in a vari­ety of accents. Sell­ers’ ren­di­tion of “A Hard Day’s Night” was hard­ly the first Shake­speare­an turn for the band.

The pre­vi­ous year, they appeared in anoth­er vari­ety tele­vi­sion spe­cial called Around the Bea­t­les, “pro­duced con­cur­rent­ly,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “while A Hard Day’s Night was being shot.” (Around the Bea­t­les was direct­ed by pro­duc­er and man­ag­er Jack Good, a “Shake­speare fan,” who also, it turns out, con­vinced rock­a­bil­ly star Gene Vin­cent to dress up like Richard III.) In this ear­li­er pro­gram, the band—always good sports about this kind of thing—dressed up in Shake­speare­an garb and staged a rau­cous per­for­mance of a scene from A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in 4 Dif­fer­ent Accents: Dr. Strangelove, Cock­ney, Irish & Upper Crust

The Bea­t­les Sat­ur­day Morn­ing Car­toon Show: The Com­plete 1965–1969 Series

The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs: William Shat­ner, Bill Cos­by, Tiny Tim, Sean Con­nery & Your Excel­lent Picks

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Julia Child Marathon: 201 Episodes of “The French Chef” Streaming Free (for a Limited Time)

in Food & Drink, Television | March 16th, 2016

julia child

Had to give you a quick heads up on this:

Twitch.tv is launch­ing a new Food Chan­nel. And it’s get­ting things going with a marathon stream­ing of all 201 episodes of Julia Child’s now leg­endary TV series “The French Chef.”

Today, Twitch Cre­ative is cel­e­brat­ing the joy of cook­ing with the launch of a brand new chan­nel ded­i­cat­ed to all things food! Twitch.tv/Food will show­case cook­ing con­tent 24/7 on Twitch Cre­ative, and we’re kick­ing things off with an almighty marathon of all 201 episodes of Julia Child’s clas­sic PBS cook­ing show, The French Chef.

If you click here, you can jump into the marathon view­ing here. Twitch has more info on the marathon here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Metafil­ter

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Who’s Out There?: Orson Welles Narrates a Documentary Asking Whether There’s Extraterrestrial Life in the Universe (1975)

in Science, Television | March 14th, 2016

Does intel­li­gent life exist else­where in the uni­verse? The ques­tion has cap­ti­vat­ed humankind for cen­turies upon cen­turies; long before the X‑Files pop­u­lar­ized the dec­la­ra­tion, we’ve want­ed to believe. But this curios­i­ty-dri­ven desire goes hand-in-hand with mor­tal fear: what if intel­li­gent life does exist else­where in the uni­verse, and it decides to come to Earth and exter­mi­nate us? Turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry sci-fi mas­ter H.G. Wells tapped into that emo­tion­al cur­rent with The War of the Worlds; forty years lat­er, Orson Welles tapped it deep­er still with his adap­ta­tion of Wells’ nov­el, “a cer­tain noto­ri­ous radio broad­cast which some of you may remem­ber.”

That’s how Welles puts it from the nar­ra­tor’s seat of Who’s Out There?, a half-hour tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast in 1971. “It starts off strong with its Doc­tor Who-esque cred­its sequence,” writes io9’s Katharine Tren­da­cos­ta. “Then Welles talks about becom­ing friends with H.G. Wells after his infa­mous War of the Worlds radio play. Then they inter­view peo­ple who had been scared by the broad­cast. It gets bare­ly more nor­mal as it goes on. Once Carl Sagan showed up, my head explod­ed.”

I lis­tened to Welles’ War of the Worlds over and over again on tape as a kid, but by that time it had already passed into the realm of his­tor­i­cal arti­fact. When Who’s Out There? debuted, how­ev­er, that infa­mous Hal­loween broad­cast had aired less than 35 years before (Who’s Out There? itself, by com­par­i­son, aired 45 years ago), so the fright it caused remained in liv­ing mem­o­ry. Even more recent­ly, David Bowie had cap­i­tal­ized artis­ti­cal­ly on a new wave of out­er-space fas­ci­na­tion with “Space Odd­i­ty” in 1969 and, more direct­ly, “Life on Mars?” two years lat­er.

“Life on Mars?” acts as more or less the ani­mat­ing ques­tion of this doc­u­men­tary, which both exam­ines the then-cur­rent evi­dence for such a phe­nom­e­non, on the Red Plan­et or else­where, and pon­ders why we so often assume that vis­i­tors from out­er space will come with malev­o­lent inten­tions. (Welles won­ders aloud if it has to do with our hav­ing named Mars after the Roman god of war, and I sup­pose he has a point.) Still, our curios­i­ty has­n’t gone away, as evi­denced by Exo­Mars, the joint mis­sion of the Euro­pean Space Agency and the Russ­ian Fed­er­al Space Agency which today launch­es probes out to search for, yes, life on mars. If who­ev­er’s out there won’t come to us, well then, we’ll just have to go to them.

Find more doc­u­men­taries in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via io9

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles Meets H.G. Wells in 1940: The Leg­ends Dis­cuss War of the Worlds, Cit­i­zen Kane, and WWII

Leonard Nimoy Nar­rates Short Film About NASA’s Dawn: A Voy­age to the Ori­gins of the Solar Sys­tem

The Great Leonard Nimoy Reads H.G. Wells’ Sem­i­nal Sci-Fi Nov­el The War of the Worlds

Carl Jung’s Fas­ci­nat­ing 1957 Let­ter on UFOs

Free NASA eBook The­o­rizes How We Will Com­mu­ni­cate with Aliens

Future Shock: Orson Welles Nar­rates a 1972 Film About the Per­ils of Tech­no­log­i­cal Change

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

American History: An Off-Kilter 1992 Student Film from South Park Creator Trey Parker

in Animation, Film, History, Television | March 4th, 2016

Here’s a lit­tle exer­cise:

Spend five min­utes record­ing your­self recap­ping every­thing you know about Japan­ese his­to­ry.

(Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies majors and Japan­ese cit­i­zens, please sit this one out.)

Most of us will wind up with a pas­tiche that’s heavy on pop cul­ture and rel­a­tive­ly recent events. The aver­age Japan­ese school­child should have no dif­fi­cul­ty iden­ti­fy­ing the glar­ing holes and fac­tu­al errors in our nar­ra­tives.

If this idea amus­es you, you’ll like­ly enjoy Amer­i­can His­to­ry, above, South Park cre­ator Trey Park­er’s ear­ly ani­mat­ed short, a 1993 Stu­dent Acad­e­my Award sil­ver medal­ist.

Parker’s Japan­ese-born Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado class­mate, Junichi Nishimu­ra, pro­vid­ed the nar­ra­tion, begin­ning with Christo­pher Colum­bus in 1492 and end­ing with the “Japan bash­ing” 41st pres­i­dent, George H.W. Bush. High­lights along the way include the Salem Witch Tri­als, the Boston Tea Par­ty, the assas­si­na­tions of Pres­i­dents Lin­coln and Kennedy, Leave It to Beaver, and that time Bush barfed at a state din­ner host­ed by Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter Kiichi Miyaza­wa.

He also remem­bers the Alamo, prov­ing one Red­dit wag’s hypoth­e­sis: If there’s one thing peo­ple remem­ber about the Alamo, it is to remem­ber the Alamo…

And then….

Park­er and anoth­er class­mate, Chris Graves, his soon-to-be DP on Can­ni­bal: The Musi­cal, ani­mat­ed the results using the most rudi­men­ta­ry of paper cut outs. It’s easy to spot the fledg­ling South Park style, as well as Python ani­ma­tor Ter­ry Gilliam’s influ­ence. This may be Amer­i­can his­to­ry, but the anony­mous top hat­ted hordes bear an awful­ly close resem­blance to South Park’s res­i­dent Cana­di­ans, Ter­rance and Phillip.

If the pho­net­ic spellings of non-native speak­er Nishimura’s pro­nun­ci­a­tion makes you uncom­fort­able, it’s worth not­ing that he not only worked as an ani­ma­tor on South Park, but also rep­re­sent­ed his coun­try by play­ing “Pres­i­dent” Hiro­hi­to on the extreme­ly fun­ny (and NSFW) “Chin­pokomon” episode.

Amer­i­can His­to­ry will be added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion,

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Zen Wis­dom of Alan Watts Ani­mat­ed by the Cre­ators of South Park, Trey Park­er and Matt Stone

John Green’s Crash Course in U.S. His­to­ry: From Colo­nial­ism to Oba­ma in 47 Videos

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Read her most recent dra­ma-in-real com­ic on Nar­ra­tive­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

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