1,000,000 Minutes of Newsreel Footage by AP & British Movietone Released on YouTube

in Education, History, Television, YouTube | July 25th, 2015

Both Faulkn­er and the physi­cists may be right: the pas­sage of time is an illu­sion. And yet, for as long as we’ve been keep­ing score, it’s seemed that his­to­ry real­ly exists, in increas­ing­ly dis­tant forms the fur­ther back we look. As Jonathan Crow wrote in a recent post on news ser­vice British Pathé’s release of 85,000 pieces of archival film on YouTube, see­ing doc­u­men­tary evi­dence of just the last cen­tu­ry “real­ly makes the past feel like a for­eign country—the weird hair­styles, the way a city street looked, the breath­tak­ing­ly casu­al sex­ism and racism.” (Of course there’s more than enough rea­son to think future gen­er­a­tions will say the same of us.) British Pathé’s archive seems exhaustive—until you see the lat­est dig­i­tized col­lec­tion on YouTube from AP (Asso­ci­at­ed Press) and British Movi­etone, which spans from 1895 to the present and brings us thou­sands more past tragedies, tri­umphs, and hair­styles

This release of “more than 1 mil­lion min­utes” of news, writes Vari­ety, includes archival footage of “major world events such as the 1906 San Fran­cis­co earth­quake, exclu­sive footage of the bomb­ing of Pearl Har­bor in 1941, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 2001 ter­ror­ist attacks on the U.S.” And so much more, such as the news­reel above, which depicts Berlin in 1945, even­tu­al­ly get­ting around to doc­u­ment­ing the Pots­dam Con­fer­ence (at 3:55), where Churchill, Stal­in, and Tru­man cre­at­ed the 17th par­al­lel in Viet­nam, dic­tat­ed the terms of the Ger­man occu­pa­tion, and planned the com­ing Japan­ese sur­ren­der. No one at the time could have accu­rate­ly fore­seen the his­tor­i­cal rever­ber­a­tions of these actions.

Anoth­er strange, even uncan­ny piece of film shows us the Eng­lish foot­ball team giv­ing the Nazi salute in 1938 at the com­mence­ment of a game against Ger­many. “That’s shock­ing now,” says Alwyn Lind­say, the direc­tor of AP’s inter­na­tion­al archive, “but it wasn’t at the time.” Films like these have become of much more inter­est since The Sun pub­lished pho­tographs of the roy­al family—including a young Queen Eliz­a­beth II and her uncle Prince (lat­er King, then Duke) Edward VIII—giving Nazi salutes in 1933. Though it was not par­tic­u­lar­ly con­tro­ver­sial, and the chil­dren of course had lit­tle idea what it sig­ni­fied, it did turn out that Edward (seen here) was a would-be Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor and remained an unapolo­getic sym­pa­thiz­er.

This huge video trove does­n’t just doc­u­ment the grim his­to­ry of the Sec­ond World War, of course. As you can see in the AP’s intro­duc­to­ry mon­tage at the top of the post, there is “a world of his­to­ry at your fingertips”—from tri­umphant video like Nel­son Man­de­la’s release from prison, above, to the below film of “Crazy 60s Hats in Glo­ri­ous Colour.” And more or less every oth­er major world event, dis­as­ter, dis­cov­ery, or wide­spread trend you might name from the last 120 or so years.

The archive splits into two YouTube chan­nels: AP offers both his­tor­i­cal and up-to-the-minute polit­i­cal, sports, celebri­ty, sci­ence, and “weird and wacky” videos (with “new con­tent every day”). The British Movi­etone chan­nel is sole­ly his­tor­i­cal, with much of its con­tent com­ing from the 1960s (like those hats, and this video of the Bea­t­les receiv­ing their MBE’s, and oth­er “Beat­le­ma­nia scenes.”)

Movi­etone’s one nod to the present takes the form of “The Archivist Presents,” in which a his­to­ri­an offers quirky con­text on some bit of archival footage, like that above of the Kinks get­ting their hair curled. The com­plete­ly uniron­ic lounge music and casu­al­ly sex­ist nar­ra­tion will make you both smile and wince, as do Ray Davies and com­pa­ny when they see their new hair. Most of the films in this mil­lion min­utes of news footage (and count­ing) tend to elic­it either or both of these two emo­tion­al reactions—joy (or amuse­ment) or mild to intense hor­ror, and watch­ing them makes the past they show us feel para­dox­i­cal­ly more strange and more imme­di­ate at once.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: British Pathé Puts Over 85,000 His­tor­i­cal Films on YouTube

New Archive Makes Avail­able 800,000 Pages Doc­u­ment­ing the His­to­ry of Film, Tele­vi­sion & Radio

700 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc. 

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

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Björk Presents Groundbreaking Experimental Musicians in Modern Minimalists, a 1997 Documentary

in Music, Television | July 25th, 2015

Exper­i­men­tal music, by its very nature, stays out of the main­stream. All styles of music begin as exper­i­ments, but most soon­er or lat­er, in one form or anoth­er, find their way to pop­u­lar accep­tance. But if one liv­ing musi­cian per­son­i­fies the intrigu­ing bor­der­lands between the pop­u­lar and the exper­i­men­tal, Björk does: since at least the 1980s (and, tech­ni­cal­ly, the 1970s), she has steadi­ly put out records that con­sti­tute mas­ter class­es in how to keep push­ing forms for­ward while main­tain­ing a wide fan base, seem­ing­ly giv­ing the lie to John Cage’s dic­tum that mak­ing some­thing 20 per­cent new means a loss of 80 per­cent of the audi­ence.

Cage, an icon of min­i­mal­ist exper­i­men­tal music who still caught the pub­lic ear now and again, does­n’t appear in the BBC’s Mod­ern Min­i­mal­ists [part one, part two], but only because he died in 1992, five years before it aired. But this Björk-host­ed whirl­wind tour through the com­pa­ny of a selec­tion of inno­v­a­tive min­i­mal­ist com­posers of the day actu­al­ly feels, at points, a bit like Cage’s 1960 per­for­mance of Water Walk on I’ve Got a Secret: we not only hear them talk, but we hear their music, see them make it, and get an insight into the way they work and — per­haps most impor­tant­ly — the way they think.

“When I was asked to do this pro­gram,” Björk says in her dis­tinc­tive Ice­landic inflec­tion, “it was very impor­tant for me to intro­duce the peo­ple I think are chang­ing music today.” That ros­ter includes Alas­dair Mal­loy from Scot­land, Mika Vainio from Fin­land, and, most famous­ly, Arvo Pärt from Esto­nia. Björk not only draws out their musi­cal philoso­phies, but responds with a few of her own.

“Peo­ple have moved away from plots and struc­tures, and moved to its com­plete oppo­site, which is tex­tures,” she says over a series of post­mod­ern land­scapes, “A place to live in, or an envi­ron­ment, or a still­ness.” And the role of the musi­cian in that mod­ern real­i­ty? “To take these every­day nois­es that are ugly, and make them beau­ti­ful. By this, they’re doing mag­ic.”

via Net­work Awe­some

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Björk’s 6 Favorite TED Talks, From the Mush­room Death Suit to the Vir­tu­al Choir

Hear the Album Björk Record­ed as an 11-Year-Old: Fea­tures Cov­er Art Pro­vid­ed By Her Mom (1977)

A Young Björk Decon­structs (Phys­i­cal­ly & The­o­ret­i­cal­ly) a Tele­vi­sion in a Delight­ful Retro Video

Björk and Sir David Atten­bor­ough Team Up in a New Doc­u­men­tary About Music and Tech­nol­o­gy

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

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How ABC Television Introduced Rap Music to America in 1981: It’s Painfully Awkward

in Music, Television | July 24th, 2015

Of all the var­i­ous types of pro­fes­sion­al explain­ers out there, none may come across as more clue­less than the tele­vi­sion news reporter faced with a minor­i­ty youth cul­ture and try­ing to account for its existence—one he or she had pre­vi­ous­ly been unaware of. Every descrip­tion gets reduced to the broad­est of judge­ments, easy stereo­types fill in for appre­ci­a­tion. The larg­er the media out­let, the more these ten­den­cies seem to man­i­fest; in fact a string of such sen­su­al­ized reportage put togeth­er seems to con­sti­tute both the rise and the fall of a cor­po­rate news career.

All of the above should pre­pare you for what you are about to see in ABC’s 20/20 spe­cial “Rap­pin’ to the Beat” from 1981. Inves­tiga­tive reporter Steve Fox jour­neys into the world of rap music, a form—his con­de­scend­ing co-anchor tells us in a back-hand­ed remark—“so com­pelling, you’ll nev­er miss the fact there’s no melody.” “It’s a music that is all beat,” he says, “strong beat, and talk.” With the tone estab­lished, enter Fox to tell us that Blondie’s “Rap­ture” is the main rea­son rap caught on. It only gets worse. I sup­pose you could blame Deb­bie Har­ry, but she didn’t ask to be the first voice of rap we hear in a 20/20 spe­cial. That deci­sion was the spe­cial purview of “Rap­pin’ to the Beat”’s pro­duc­ers.

But like all archival film and video of emerg­ing cre­ative move­ments, these clips redeem them­selves with footage of the scene’s pio­neers, includ­ing a per­for­mance from a 22-year-old Kur­tis Blow and some ear­ly breakdancing—or, as one NYC Tran­sit cop calls it, a riot. The sec­ond part, above, gives us some insight­ful com­men­tary from NYC radio DJ Pablo Guz­man, folk­lorist John Szwed (who wrote the defin­i­tive biog­ra­phy of Sun Ra), and syn­di­cat­ed rock colum­nist Lisa Robin­son, who reminds us of how “very black and very urban” rap is, then goes on to say, “peo­ple hat­ed rock and roll 15 years ago.”

It’s cer­tain­ly true that 15 years or so after this clum­sy attempt at cap­tur­ing the moment, rap and hip-hop became ubiquitous—at a time when punk rock also hit the sub­urbs. Punk also had its 20/20 moment in the late 70s (above); it sym­bol­ized, the announc­er tells us, “the dread­ful pos­si­bil­i­ty of riot which has always seemed to cling to rock and roll.” Met­al got the Ger­al­do treat­ment in “Heavy Met­al Moms”—the exam­ples abound. Which of them is more banal, con­de­scend­ing, or just painful­ly awk­ward is impos­si­ble to say, but they make fas­ci­nat­ing win­dows onto the medi­a’s con­sis­tent­ly weird­ed-out response to out­siders they can’t ignore. As a coun­ter­point, check out the way Fred Rogers wel­comed to his show a 12-year-old break­dancer or a cou­ple of exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic musi­cians, mak­ing no effort to be cool, knowl­edge­able, or detached, only kind and curi­ous. It’s just my opin­ion, but I always thought TV news need­ed more Mr. Rogers and less.… what­ev­er the jour­nal­is­tic approach in “Rap­pin’ to the Beat” is sup­posed to be.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

Fight For Your Right Revis­it­ed: Adam Yauch’s 2011 Film Com­mem­o­rates the Beast­ie Boys’ Leg­endary Music Video

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

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

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The Evolution of Chuck Jones, the Artist Behind Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck & Other Looney Tunes Legends: A Video Essay

in Animation, Comedy, Comics/Cartoons, Television | July 20th, 2015

Not­ed car­toon per­son­al­i­ty Bugs Bun­ny has war­bled his way through Wag­ner­ian opera, played every defen­sive posi­tion known to base­ball, styled a monster’s hair…is there any­thing that was­cal­ly wab­bit can­not do?

Yes, in fact. Accord­ing to his long time direc­tor, ani­ma­tor Chuck Jones, Bugs could nev­er pick a fight. Unlike his hair trig­ger Looney Tunes col­league, Daffy Duck, the bun­ny had to be pro­voked before enter­ing the fray. That applies whether he’s a box­er, a gang­ster, or imper­son­at­ing the biggest movie stars of his day.

Abid­ing by the strong rules he estab­lished for the char­ac­ters in the Looney Tunes sta­ble was crit­i­cal to his com­ic approach, as Jones explains in the above video essay, a bit of a depar­ture for Tony Zhou’s cel­e­brat­ed cin­e­ma series, Every Frame a Pic­ture. Rather than exam­ine the fram­ing and tim­ing of “one of the all-time mas­ters of visu­al com­e­dy,” this time Zhou delves into the evo­lu­tion of his subject’s artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ties.

Like all good direc­tors, Jones learned from his actors–in this case, ani­mat­ed, and not all of them his babies. Bugs and Daffy were the brain­chil­dren of the great Tex Avery. Friz Fre­leng cre­at­ed Yosemite Sam and everyone’s favorite stut­ter­ing pig, Porky.

Jones teased out the desires that became the pri­ma­ry engines for those char­ac­ters’ phys­i­cal­i­ty as well as their behav­ior. Daffy comes off as an unhinged lunatic in his ear­ly appear­ances. His com­ic poten­tial grew once Jones reframed him as a con­niv­er who’d do any­thing in pur­suit of wealth and glo­ry.

Once the char­ac­ters’ moti­va­tions were clear, Jones could mess around with the ol’ one-two punch. It’s a clas­sic com­ic struc­ture, where­in real­i­ty wreaks hav­oc on the audience’s expec­ta­tions about how things should unfold. Then again, a child can tell you what dri­ves Jones’ cre­ation, the pas­sion­ate French skunk, Pepé Le Pew, as well as how those amorous ambi­tions of his are like­ly to work out. Fun­ny! Depend­ably so!

Zhou also draws atten­tion to the evo­lu­tion of the char­ac­ters’ expres­sions, from the antic to the eco­nom­i­cal. John Belushi was not the only com­ic genius to under­stand the pow­er of a raised eye­brow.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Chuck Jones’ 9 Rules For Draw­ing Road Run­ner Car­toons, or How to Cre­ate a Min­i­mal­ist Mas­ter­piece

How to Draw Bugs Bun­ny: A Primer by Leg­endary Ani­ma­tor Chuck Jones

The Strange Day When Bugs Bun­ny Saved the Life of Mel Blanc

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Experimental Post-Punk Band Xiu Xiu Plays the Music from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

in Music, Television | July 17th, 2015

Fans of Twin Peaks, the ear­ly-1990s tele­vi­sion series co-cre­at­ed and in large part direct­ed by David Lynch, have had a lot to get excit­ed about recent­ly. Most promi­nent­ly, we’ve heard a lot of will-he-or-won’t-he talk about whether Lynch will par­tic­i­pate in the show’s much-dis­cussed 21st-cen­tu­ry reboot. That has no doubt stoked pub­lic inter­est in Twin Peaks (avail­able on Hulu here), which in some sense has nev­er real­ly died away, even though it went off the air 24 years ago (and by all accounts got pret­ty lack­lus­ter in its sec­ond sea­son); some of us, while we wait for the new series, have even engaged in all man­ner of Twin Peaks-themed writ­ing, art, and even music projects.

Many Aus­tralian Twin Peaks fans, while they wait for the new series, made it over to Queens­land’s Gallery of Mod­ern Art ear­li­er this year for the exhi­bi­tion David Lynch: Between Two Worlds. If they went on April 18th, they saw exper­i­men­tal post-punk band Xiu Xiu per­form their own inter­pre­ta­tion of the Twin Peaks score. “The music of Twin Peaks is every­thing that we aspire to as musi­cians and is every­thing that we want to lis­ten to as music fans,” says Xiu Xiu leader Jamie Stew­art. “It is roman­tic, it is ter­ri­fy­ing, it is beau­ti­ful, it is unnerv­ing­ly sex­u­al. The idea of hold­ing the ‘puri­ty’ of the 1950s up to the cold light of a vio­lent moon and expos­ing the skull beneath the frozen, wor­ried smile has been a stun­ning influ­ence on us.”

Xiu Xiu, since Stew­art formed it in San Jose in 2002, has steadi­ly gained a rep­u­ta­tion as, in the words of Vice, “the weird­est band you know.” Part of that has to do with the for­mal adven­tur­ous­ness of their music itself, and part to do with their invari­ably dis­turb­ing music videos. No won­der, then, that they would feel such an affin­i­ty with David Lynch, no stranger to get­ting called “weird” by audi­ences and the mak­er of some unset­tling music and music videos him­self. Giv­en the poten­tial over­lap in their fol­low­ings, and giv­en that nobody seems to know how many pro­duc­tion deci­sions the new Twin Peaks has yet made, per­haps some­one can check and see whether Xiu Xiu might have the time to record its score?

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recre­at­ed in an Adorable Paper Ani­ma­tion

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

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

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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See Flannery O’Connor’s Story “The Displaced Person” Adapted to a Film Starring a Young Samuel L. Jackson (1977)

in Film, Literature, Television | June 19th, 2015

There are strong peo­ple qui­et­ly will­ing to do “what needs to be done” for the pub­lic good, and then there are those who enjoy insin­u­at­ing that they are that sort of per­son, usu­al­ly as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for their self-serv­ing, fre­quent­ly racist or xeno­pho­bic actions. When the lat­ter reach­es for the Bible as back up, look out!

No one ever had more fun with this mon­strous type than the writer Flan­nery O’Connor, a devout Catholic with a knack for wrap­ping her char­ac­ters’ foul pur­pos­es in the “stink­ing mad shad­ow of Jesus.”

In her longest sto­ry “The Dis­placed Per­son,” the boor­ish, Bible-thump­ing Mrs. Short­ley is not the only bad­die. The refined Mrs. McIn­tyre, wid­owed mis­tress of the dairy oper­a­tion that employs the Short­leys and a cou­ple of African-Amer­i­can farmhands, is just as quick to indict those with whom she imag­ines her­self at cross-pur­pos­es.

Trans­fer them to the small screen, and every actress over 40 would be clam­or­ing for the chance to sink her teeth into one or the oth­er.

In 1977, PBS hired play­wright Hor­ton Foote to adapt “The Dis­placed Per­son” for “The Amer­i­can Short Sto­ry,” and the roles of Short­ley and McIn­tyre went to Shirley Stol­er and Irene Worth, both excel­lent.

(See above…it’s always so much more amus­ing to play one of the vil­lains than the hard­work­ing, uncom­plain­ing, tit­u­lar char­ac­ter, here a Pol­ish refugee from WWII.)

The audio qual­i­ty is not the great­est, but stick with it to see Samuel L. Jack­son, not quite 30, as the younger of the two farmhands.

O’Connor buffs will be inter­est­ed to know that Andalu­sia, the writer’s own Geor­gia farm, served as the loca­tion for this hour-long project. (No need to rent a pea­cock!)

Despite the state­ly pro­duc­tion val­ues that were de rigeur for qual­i­ty view­ing of the peri­od, the sto­ry retains the unmis­tak­able tang of O’Connor—it’s a bit­ter, com­ic brew.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent

Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘Some Aspects of the Grotesque in South­ern Fic­tion’ (c. 1960)

Rare 1959 Audio: Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’

Flan­nery O’Connor’s Satir­i­cal Car­toons: 1942–1945

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Free: Read 9 Travel Books Online by Monty Python’s Michael Palin

in Television, Travel | June 18th, 2015


Image cour­tesy of Chipps
Most of us come to Michael Palin through his work as a com­ic actor (in the role of dead par­rot sales­man or oth­er­wise), but at this point almost as many know him sec­ond as a found­ing mem­ber of Mon­ty Python, and first as an affa­ble glo­be­trot­ter. That part of his career began in 1988, when he host­ed the Earth-cir­cum­nav­i­gat­ing BBC trav­el series Around the World in 80 Days. (See an episode here.) Its suc­cess has led him, over the sub­se­quent 27 years, onto fur­ther (and far­ther-flung) tele­vised jour­neys: from the North Pole to the South, around the Pacif­ic Rim, in the adven­tur­ous foot­steps of Ernest Hem­ing­way, across the Sahara, up the Himalayas, across the “new” cen­tral and east­ern Europe, around the world again, and most recent­ly through Brazil.

Not con­tent to set a high water­mark for trav­el tele­vi­sion, Palin has also writ­ten a com­pan­ion book for each series, lav­ish­ly col­lect­ing maps, pic­tures, and his own trav­el diaries. Those last reveal a more nuanced side of “the nicest chap in Britain,” whose famous­ly easy­go­ing, def­er­en­tial, and unsur­pris­ing­ly good-humored per­sona place him so well to deal with the world’s stag­ger­ing vari­ety of peo­ple, places, and incon­ve­niences. “I can sum­mon up noth­ing but res­ig­na­tion at the thought of cook­ing with the locals all morn­ing, then hav­ing to lis­ten to music and songs I don’t under­stand for the rest of the after­noon,” he writes after wak­ing up on yet anoth­er island, in an entry excerpt­ed in last year’s Trav­el­ling to Work, the lat­est pub­lished vol­ume of his life’s diaries. “And, worst of all, hav­ing to look as if I’m enjoy­ing it.”

But these books also reveal that most of the time, Palin real­ly is enjoy­ing it. His insa­tiable curios­i­ty (not to men­tion his inex­orable pro­duc­tion sched­ule) dri­ves him con­tin­u­ous­ly ahead, a curios­i­ty in which you, too can share now that he’s made all these books free to read online at palinstravels.co.uk. Click on the links/titles below, and then look for the prompts that say “Dis­cov­er the Series Here” and, below that, “Start Read­ing the Book.”

And if you make a free account at the site, it will even allow you to you keep vir­tu­al “book­marks” in as many of the books as you like, guar­an­tee­ing that you won’t get lost amidst this wealth of trav­el con­tent. But if you choose to fol­low Pal­in’s exam­ple and actu­al­ly get out there into every cor­ner of the world, well, no such anti-lost­ness guar­an­tees exist — but as every fan of Pal­in’s Trav­els knows, those very com­pli­ca­tions make it worth­while. As least you won’t have a five-man crew trail­ing behind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Trains and the Brits Who Love Them: Mon­ty Python’s Michael Palin on Great Rail­way Jour­neys

Michael Palin’s Tour of the Best Loved Mon­ty Python Sketch Loca­tions

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Rare Video: Georges Bataille Talks About Literature & Evil in His Only TV Interview (1958)

in Literature, Philosophy, Television | May 26th, 2015

“Where oth­er trans­gres­sive fig­ures of the past have most­ly been tamed,” wrote Josh Jones in a post here last year, “[Georges] Bataille, I sub­mit, is still quite dan­ger­ous.” You can get a sense of that in the doc­u­men­tary fea­tured there, À perte de vue, which intro­duces the trans­gres­sive French intel­lec­tu­al’s life and thought, which from the 1920s to the 1960s pro­duced books like The Solar Anus, The Hatred of Poet­ry, and The Tears of Eros, all part of a body of work that cap­ti­vat­ed the likes of Susan Son­tag, Michel Fou­cault, and Jacques Der­ri­da.

At the top of this post, you can enjoy anoth­er, straighter shot of Bataille through his 1958 appear­ance oppo­site inter­view­er Pierre Dumayet — the only tele­vi­sion inter­view he ever did. The occa­sion: the pub­li­ca­tion of his book Lit­er­a­ture and Evil, a title that, Bataille says, refers to “two oppo­site kinds of evil: the first one is relat­ed to the neces­si­ty of human activ­i­ty going well and hav­ing the desired results, and the oth­er con­sists of delib­er­ate­ly vio­lat­ing some fun­da­men­tal taboos — like, for exam­ple, the taboo against mur­der, or against some sex­u­al pos­si­bil­i­ties.”

Bataille’s fans expect from him a cer­tain amount of taboo vio­la­tion, though exe­cut­ed in a spe­cif­ic lit­er­ary form — not just prose, but the dis­tinc­tive sort of prose, whether spo­ken or writ­ten, brought to per­fec­tion by mid­cen­tu­ry French intel­lec­tu­als. In this ten-minute clip, Bataille elab­o­rates on his con­vic­tion that we can’t sep­a­rate lit­er­a­ture from evil: if the for­mer stays away from the lat­ter, “it rapid­ly becomes bor­ing.” He also gets into a dis­cus­sion of Baude­laire, Kaf­ka (“both of them knew they were on the side of evil”), Shake­speare, the impor­tance of eroti­cism and child­ish­ness in lit­er­a­ture, and the inher­ent­ly anti-work nature of writ­ing. How­ev­er rel­e­vant you find Bataille’s ideas today, you have to give the man this: he nev­er gets bor­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Georges Bataille: An Intro­duc­tion to The Rad­i­cal Philosopher’s Life & Thought Through Film and eTexts

Michel Fou­cault – Beyond Good and Evil: 1993 Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Theorist’s Con­tro­ver­sial Life and Phi­los­o­phy

Exten­sive Archive of Avant-Garde & Mod­ernist Mag­a­zines (1890–1939) Now Avail­able Online

Jacques Lacan’s Con­fronta­tion with a Young Rebel: Clas­sic Moment, 1972

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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