Watch Jeff Beck (RIP) Smash His Guitar: A Classic Scene from Antonioni’s Blowup (1966)

in Film, Music | January 12th, 2023

Note: With the pass­ing of Jeff Beck, we’re bring­ing back a vin­tage post from our archive fea­tur­ing the ear­ly years of the leg­endary gui­tarist. You can read his obit­u­ary here.

Art film and rock and roll have, since the 60s, been soul­mates of a kind, with many an acclaimed direc­tor turn­ing to musi­cians as actors, com­mis­sion­ing rock stars as sound­track artists, and film­ing scenes with bands. Before Nico­las Roeg, Jim Jar­musch, David Lynch, Mar­tin Scors­ese and oth­er rock-lov­ing auteurs did all of the above, there was Michelan­ge­lo Anto­nioni, who bar­reled into the Eng­lish-lan­guage mar­ket, under con­tract with Metro-Gold­wyn-May­er, with a tril­o­gy of films steeped in the sights and sounds of six­ties coun­ter­cul­ture.

Blowup, the first and by far the best of these, though scored by jazz pianist Her­bie Han­cock, promi­nent­ly fea­tured the Yardbirds—with both Jim­my Page and Jeff Beck. In the mem­o­rable scene above, Beck smash­es his gui­tar to bits after his amp goes on the fritz. The Ital­ian direc­tor “envi­sioned a scene sim­i­lar to that of Pete Townshend’s famous rit­u­al of smash­ing his gui­tar on stage,” notes Gui­tar­world’s Jonathan Gra­ham. “Anto­nioni had even asked The Who to appear in the film,” but they refused.

In stepped the Yard­birds, dur­ing a piv­otal moment in their career. The year before, they released mega-hit “For Your Love,” and said good­bye to lead gui­tarist Eric Clap­ton. Beck, his replace­ment, her­ald­ed a much wilder, more exper­i­men­tal phase for the band. Jeff Beck, it seemed, could play any­thing, but what he didn’t do much of onstage is emote. Next to the gui­tar-smash­ing Town­shend or the fire-set­ting Hen­drix (see both below), he was a pret­ty reserved per­former, though no less thrilling to watch for his vir­tu­os­i­ty and style.

But as he tells it, Anto­nioni wouldn’t let the band do their “most excit­ing thing,” a cov­er of “Smoke­stack Light­ning” that “had this incred­i­ble buildup in the mid­dle which was just pow!” That moment would have been the nat­ur­al pre­text for a good gui­tar smash­ing.

Instead, the set piece with the bro­ken amp gives the intro­vert­ed Beck a rea­son to get agi­tat­ed. As Gra­ham describes it, he also played a gui­tar spe­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed as a prop:

Due to issues over pub­lish­ing, the Yard­birds clas­sic “Train Kept A‑Rollin’,” was reworked as “Stroll On” for the per­for­mance, and as the scene involved the destruc­tion of an instru­ment, Beck’s usu­al choice of his icon­ic Esquire or Les Paul was swapped for a cheap, hol­low-body stand-in that he was direct­ed to smash at the song’s con­clu­sion.

The scene is more a tantrum than the orgias­tic onstage freak-out Town­shend would prob­a­bly have deliv­ered. Its chief virtue for Yard­bird’s fans lies not in the fun­ny, out-of-char­ac­ter moment (which SF Gate film crit­ic Mick LaSalle calls “one of the weird­est scenes in the movie”). Rather, it was “the chance,” as one fan tells LaSalle, “in the days before MTV and YouTube, to see the Yard­birds, with Jeff Beck and Jim­my Page.” Anto­nioni had seized the moment. In addi­tion to fir­ing “the open­ing sal­vo of the emerg­ing ‘film gen­er­a­tion,’” as Roger Ebert wrote, he gave con­tem­po­rary fans a rea­son (in addi­tion to explic­it sex and nudi­ty), to go see Blowup again and again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Lost” Pink Floyd Sound­track for Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s Only Amer­i­can Film, Zabriskie Point (1970)

13-Year-Old Jim­my Page Plays Gui­tar on TV in 1957, an Ear­ly Moment in His Spec­tac­u­lar Career

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

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

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An Architect Demystifies the Art Deco Design of the Iconic Chrysler Building (1930)

in Architecture, History | January 12th, 2023

The Chrysler Build­ing was once the tallest struc­ture in the world — a hey­day that end­ed up last­ing less than a year. The loss of that glo­ri­ous title owed to the com­ple­tion of the Empire State Build­ing, twelve blocks away, in 1931. But it was all in the spir­it of the game, the Chrysler Build­ing hav­ing itself one-upped its close com­peti­tor 40 Wall Street (then called the Bank of Man­hat­tan Trust Build­ing) by installing a non-func­tion­al spire atop its sig­na­ture crown at the last moment. But how­ev­er much of a tri­umph it rep­re­sent­ed, that moment was poor­ly timed: the very next day would bring the Wall Street Crash of 1929, har­bin­ger of the Great Depres­sion. The sub­se­quent decade would inspire lit­tle pub­lic favor for extrav­a­gant mon­u­ments in the Big Apple.

Yet com­pared to the life of a tow­er, eco­nom­ic cycles are short indeed. By now the Chrysler Build­ing has seen the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca through a fair few ups and downs, only gain­ing appre­ci­a­tion all the while. Removed from its imme­di­ate his­tor­i­cal con­text, we can more keen­ly appre­ci­ate archi­tect William Van Alen’s elab­o­rate yet ele­gant Art Deco design.

In the Archi­tec­tur­al Digest video above, archi­tect Michael Wyet­zn­er takes us on a tour of that design, explain­ing how each of its fea­tures works with the oth­ers to make an endur­ing visu­al impact. Some, like the gleam­ing over­sized radi­a­tor-cap gar­goyles, impress with sheer brazen­ness; oth­ers, like the Native Amer­i­can-derived pat­terns that repeat in var­i­ous loca­tions at var­i­ous scales, take a more prac­ticed eye to iden­ti­fy.

Despite hav­ing been sur­passed in height over and over again, the Chrysler Build­ing remains a sine qua non of under­stand­ing the New York sky­scraper. Hence its appear­ance at the very begin­ning of “Why New York’s Sky­scrap­ers Keep Chang­ing Shape” from The B1M. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured that chan­nel here on Open Cul­ture for its inves­ti­ga­tion of why there are so few sky­scrap­ers in Europe; in New York, how­ev­er, the ambi­tious­ly tall build­ing has become some­thing like a force of nature, tamed only tem­porar­i­ly even by cri­sis or dis­as­ter. Some have used the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic to declare an end of the office build­ing, even the end of the city, and much like ear­ly in the Depres­sion, sky­scrap­ers now under con­struc­tion reflect the pri­or­i­ties of a pre­vi­ous real­i­ty. Yet the 92-year-old Chrysler Build­ing con­tin­ues to inspire us today, and to that extent, we still live in the world that made it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to the Chrysler Build­ing, New York’s Art Deco Mas­ter­piece, by John Malkovich (1994)

New York’s Lost Sky­scraper: The Rise and Fall of the Singer Tow­er

Watch the Build­ing of the Empire State Build­ing in Col­or: The Cre­ation of the Icon­ic 1930s Sky­scraper From Start to Fin­ish

How the World Trade Cen­ter Was Rebuilt: A Visu­al Explo­ration of a 20-Year Project

A Whirl­wind Archi­tec­tur­al Tour of the New York Pub­lic Library — “Hid­den Details” and All

Famous Archi­tects Dress as Their Famous New York City Build­ings (1931)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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Humans First Started Wearing Clothes At Least 300,000 Years Ago, New Research Finds

in Fashion, History | January 11th, 2023

Images cour­tesy of Uni­ver­si­ty of Tue­bin­gen

That peo­ple wore clothes back in the Stone Age will hard­ly come as a sur­prise to any­one who grew up watch­ing The Flint­stones. That show, nev­er whol­ly reliant on estab­lished archae­o­log­i­cal fact, did­n’t get too spe­cif­ic about its time peri­od. But it turns out, based on recent­ly pub­lished dis­cov­er­ies by a team of researchers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tübin­gen, the Senck­en­berg Cen­tre for Human Evo­lu­tion and Palaeoen­vi­ron­ment, and Lei­den Uni­ver­si­ty, that Stone Agers were dress­ing them­selves as ear­ly as 300,000 years ago — over one hun­dred mil­len­nia ear­li­er than pre­vi­ous­ly thought.

“This is sug­gest­ed by cut marks on the metatarsal and pha­lanx of a cave bear dis­cov­ered at the Low­er Pale­olith­ic site of Schönin­gen in Low­er Sax­ony, Ger­many,” says the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tübin­gen’s site. The loca­tion of such marks indi­cate that the bear was not sim­ply butchered but care­ful­ly skinned.

A cave bear’s win­ter coat “con­sists of both long out­er hairs that form an airy pro­tec­tive lay­er and short, dense hairs that pro­vide par­tic­u­lar­ly good insu­la­tion” — mak­ing it a fine win­ter coat for a pre­his­toric human being as well. Such a use of bear skins “is like­ly a key adap­ta­tion of ear­ly humans to the cli­mate in the north,” where win­ters would be dif­fi­cult indeed with­out warm cloth­ing.

Though some res­i­dents of Bedrock did wear furs (made from the prized pelts of the minkasaurus), they seemed not to be essen­tial to sur­vival in that Stone Age equiv­a­lent of Cal­i­for­nia. Jean M. Auel’s The Clan of the Cave Bear proved much more real­is­tic about this sort of thing, though its char­ac­ters live and die between 28,000 and 25,000 BC, the rel­a­tive­ly recent past com­pared to the Low­er Pale­olith­ic from which this par­tic­u­lar cave bear dates. It was also in Schönin­gen that “the world’s old­est spears were dis­cov­ered,” mak­ing it a prime loca­tion from which to under­stand more clear­ly the ways of humans from that dis­tant peri­od. If a foot-pow­ered Stone Age car were one day to be unearthed, it would sure­ly be unearthed there.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed con­tent:

Archae­ol­o­gists Find the Ear­li­est Work of “Abstract Art,” Dat­ing Back 73,000 Years

Hear the World’s Old­est Instru­ment, the “Nean­derthal Flute,” Dat­ing Back Over 43,000 Years

The Ancient Egyp­tians Wore Fash­ion­able Striped Socks, New Pio­neer­ing Imag­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Imag­ing Reveals

How to Wear a Toga the Offi­cial Ancient Roman Way

The Ancient Romans First Com­mit­ted the Sar­to­r­i­al Crime of Wear­ing Socks with San­dals, Archae­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Sug­gests

Get­ting Dressed Over the Cen­turies: 35 Videos Show How Women & Men Put on Clothes Dur­ing Ancient, Medieval & Mod­ern Times

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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A Wooden Artwork That Beautifully Unfolds into a Functional Desk

in Design | January 11th, 2023

Robert van Embric­qs, a design­er based in Ams­ter­dam, has cre­at­ed The Flow Wall Desk–a wood­en dec­o­ra­tion that “trans­forms from a piece of art on the wall into a func­tion­al desk by show­ing off its unique aes­thet­ic.” On his site, he writes:

The Flow Wall Desk acknowl­edges the poten­tial how to com­bine func­tion­al­i­ty with art. This results in cre­at­ing a desk inside one’s indoor envi­ron­ment. And only with one twist, it becomes a true joy to have a sep­a­rate work­ing area when need­ed. It can be sub­scribed as a piece of func­tion­al art that builds on the design track record of trans­for­ma­tions in space. How­ev­er, this one offers a part of the inte­ri­or that shifts with time: a cozy work­space dur­ing the day becomes a com­pact wall hang­ing after being used.

Inspired by recent glob­al events and the longer-term trends that pre­cede them, to devise a state­ment piece that lends dig­ni­ty to the dig­i­tal work­space through craft, warm tex­tures, and durably engi­neered fas­ten­ings. The Flow Wall Desk is adapt­able and with the con­tem­po­rary design ele­ments, it can be used through­out homes, libraries, hotels, and many oth­er inside des­ig­na­tions. Dur­ing the design process, van Embric­qs strove to merge the desk’s exe­cu­tion with its design for­mu­la by cre­at­ing a cohe­sive whole.

Usabil­i­ty demands that an every­day object such as this should be cre­at­ed with a gen­er­al­ized user’s psy­chol­o­gy in mind. Ver­ti­cal ele­ment emerges from the wall like a cater­pil­lar with the help of specif­i­cal­ly placed hinges. These exposed brass hinges estab­lish a visu­al rhythm and ensure that the form can fol­low its func­tion. This led to the notion of a trans­for­ma­tion in form and pur­pose achieved through a sin­gle, sim­ple ges­ture that every­one can famil­iar­ize them­selves with. With a sin­gle turn by hand around its axis, a table­top is cre­at­ed and once in its hor­i­zon­tal posi­tion, the table­top is sup­port­ed by wood­en slats, cre­at­ing a more nat­ur­al look and organ­ic effect that also serves as a screen for more pri­va­cy.

The hor­i­zon­tal work sur­face is com­fort­able yet func­tion­al due to its depth and width for the seat­ed user and mak­ing it per­fect for typ­ing and hand­writ­ing. Final­ly, a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty is cre­at­ed for a tem­po­rary work sur­face and ergonom­i­cal­ly adjustable desk in a sun­ny cor­ner which invites the user to fold that desk away when work is over.

With the fin­ished design appear­ance, more sus­tain­able mate­r­i­al devel­op­ments are being exam­ined and ana­lyzed for pro­duc­tion. And when it comes to func­tion­al­i­ty, each part of the Flow Wall desk has been specif­i­cal­ly engi­neered with­out los­ing the appeal to attract, just like a fold­ing mag­ic trick with a well-kept secret.

You can pur­chase your own Flow Wall desk (for about $2850) via Robert’s web­shop here. And find more of his work on Insta­gram here.

via Colos­sal

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

Behold the Elab­o­rate Writ­ing Desks of 18th Cen­tu­ry Aris­to­crats

Who Wrote at Stand­ing Desks? Kierkegaard, Dick­ens and Ernest Hem­ing­way Too

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The Oldest Known Sentence Written in an Alphabet Has Been Found on a Head-Lice Comb (Circa 1700 BC)

in History | January 10th, 2023

Image by Daf­na Gaz­it, Israel Antiq­ui­ties Author­i­ty

I don’t recall any of my ele­men­tary-school class­mates look­ing for­ward to head-lice inspec­tion day. But had archae­o­log­i­cal progress been a few decades more advanced at the time, the teach­ers might have turned it into a major his­to­ry les­son. For it was on a comb, designed to remove head lice, that researchers in south­ern Israel recent­ly found the old­est known sen­tence writ­ten in an alpha­bet. Invent­ed around 1800 BC, that Canaan­ite alpha­bet “was stan­dard­ized by the Phoeni­cians in ancient Lebanon,” writes the Guardian’s Ian Sam­ple, lat­er becom­ing “the foun­da­tion for ancient Greek, Latin and most mod­ern lan­guages in Europe today.”

The comb itself, dat­ed to around 1700 BC, bears a sim­ple Canaan­ite mes­sage: “May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.” As Sam­ple notes, “ancient combs were made from wood, bone and ivory, but the lat­ter would have been expen­sive, import­ed lux­u­ries. There were no ele­phants in Canaan at the time.”

Despite its small size, then, this comb must have been a big-tick­et item. The New York Times’ Oliv­er Whang writes that these facts have already inspired a new set of ques­tions, many of them not strict­ly lin­guis­tic in nature: “Where was the ivory comb inscribed? Who inscribed it? What pur­pose did the inscrip­tion serve?”

As our lice-com­bat­ing tech­nol­o­gy has evolved over the mil­len­nia, so have our alpha­bets. From the Canaan­ite script “the alpha­bet con­tin­ued to evolve, from Phoeni­cian to Old Hebrew to Old Ara­ma­ic to Ancient Greek to Latin, becom­ing the basis for today’s mod­ern Eng­lish char­ac­ters.” And that was­n’t its only path: Korea, where I live, has a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent alpha­bet of its own, but one that caught on for the same rea­sons as its dis­tant cousins else­where in the world. The key is sim­plic­i­ty, as against old­er writ­ing sys­tems in which one char­ac­ter rep­re­sent­ed one word or syl­la­ble: “Match­ing one let­ter to one sound made writ­ing and read­ing far eas­i­er to learn,” Whang writes. Not that some stu­dents, even today, would­n’t sub­mit to the lice comb rather than prac­tice their ABCs.

via Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed con­tent:

How to Write in Cuneiform, the Old­est Writ­ing Sys­tem in the World: A Short, Charm­ing Intro­duc­tion

The Evo­lu­tion of the Alpha­bet: A Col­or­ful Flow­chart, Cov­er­ing 3,800 Years, Takes You From Ancient Egypt to Today

How Writ­ing Has Spread Across the World, from 3000 BC to This Year: An Ani­mat­ed Map

The Atlas of Endan­gered Alpha­bets: A Free Online Atlas That Helps Pre­serve Writ­ing Sys­tems That May Soon Dis­ap­pear

An Ancient Egypt­ian Home­work Assign­ment from 1800 Years Ago: Some Things Are Tru­ly Time­less

What the Roset­ta Stone Actu­al­ly Says

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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An Introduction to Hokusai’s Great Wave, One of the Most Recognizable Artworks in the World

in Art, Travel | January 10th, 2023

You need not be a stu­dent of Japan­ese Ukiyo‑e wood­block prints to rec­og­nize artist Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai’s Under the Wave Off Kana­gawa — or the Great Wave, as it has come to be known.

Like Leonar­do da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, it’s been repro­duced on all man­ner of improb­a­ble items and sub­ject­ed to lib­er­al reimag­in­ing — some­thing Sarah Urist Green, describes in the above episode of her series The Art Assign­ment as “numer­ous crimes against this image per­pe­trat­ed across the inter­net.”

Such repur­pos­ing is the ulti­mate com­pli­ment.

The Great Wave is so graph­i­cal­ly indeli­ble, any­one who co-opts it can expect it to do a lot of heavy lift­ing.

For those who both­er look­ing close­ly enough to take in the three boat­loads of fish­er­men strug­gling to escape with their lives, it’s also nar­ra­tive­ly grip­ping, a ter­ri­fy­ing wood­block still from an eas­i­ly imag­ined dis­as­ter film.

It’s also an homage to Mount Fuji, one of a series of 36.

Thou­sands of prints were pro­duced in the ear­ly 1830s for the domes­tic tourist trade. Vis­i­tors to Mount Fuji snapped these sou­venirs up for about the same price as a bowl of noo­dle soup.

Green, a cura­tor and edu­ca­tor, points out how the water-obsessed Hoku­sai bor­rowed ele­ments from both the Rin­pa school and West­ern real­ism for the Great Wave. The lat­ter can be seen in the use of lin­ear per­spec­tive, a low hori­zon line, and Pruss­ian blue.

An 1867 posthu­mous show­ing at the Inter­na­tion­al Exhi­bi­tion in Paris turned such notable artists as Claude Mon­et, Edgar Degas, Mary Cas­satt, and Hen­ri de Toulouse-Lautrec into major Ukiyo‑e fans.

With­out them, this icon­ic plung­ing break­er might nev­er have spilled over onto our dorm room walls, our show­er cur­tains, our yoga mats, t‑shirts, Doc Martens, street art, and tat­toos.

Hell, there’s even a Lego set and an offi­cial San­rio char­ac­ters greet­ing card show­ing Hel­lo Kit­ty non­cha­lant­ly surf­ing the crest in a two piece bathing suit, more inter­est­ed in dis­port­ing her­self than con­sid­er­ing the sort of extreme ocean­ic events we can expect more of, owing to cli­mate change.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Ghosts and Mon­sters of Hoku­sai: See the Famed Wood­block Artist’s Fear­some & Amus­ing Visions of Strange Appari­tions

Thir­ty-Six Views of Mount Fuji: A Deluxe New Art Book Presents Hokusai’s Mas­ter­piece, Includ­ing The Great Wave Off Kana­gawa

The Evo­lu­tion of The Great Wave off Kana­gawa: See Four Ver­sions That Hoku­sai Paint­ed Over Near­ly 40 Years

View 103 Dis­cov­ered Draw­ings by Famed Japan­ese Wood­cut Artist Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai

Down­load 215,000 Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Mas­ters Span­ning the Tradition’s 350-Year His­to­ry

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch Cher Play All the Major Parts in a 12-Minute Remake of West Side Story (1978)

in Gender, Music, Television, Theatre | January 9th, 2023

Cher, the monony­mous God­dess of Pop, gift­ed the small screens of the 70s with a lot of over-the-top glam­our.

Her work eth­ic, comedic flair and unapolo­getic embrace of camp helped her stand out from the crowd, con­fer­ring the fame she had longed for since child­hood, when she com­man­deered her 5th grade class­mates for an unof­fi­cial, and, from the sounds of it, all-female pro­duc­tion of Okla­homa, cov­er­ing the male roles her­self when the boys declined to par­tic­i­pate.

Some twen­ty years lat­er, she was a house­hold name — one that was no longer append­ed to that of ex-hus­band Son­ny Bono, co-host of the pop­u­lar epony­mous vari­ety hour in which they sang, hammed their way through goofy skits, and bust­ed each other’s chops to the delight of the live stu­dio audi­ence.

The 1978 tele­vi­sion event Cher…special found her bring­ing many of those same tal­ents to bear, along with coun­try star Dol­ly Par­ton, rock­er Rod Stew­art, out­ré glam band, The Tubes, and the crowd-pleas­ing array of span­gled, skin-bar­ing Bob Mack­ie designs that defined her look.

More shock­ing than any of Mackie’s cre­ations or the Musi­cal Bat­tle to Save Cher’s Soul, a set piece where­in Par­ton and a gospel choir endeav­or to coax the diva from a kinky dis­co hellscape, is the star’s 12-and-a-half minute solo ver­sion of West Side Sto­ry, above.

This is no mere med­ley. Cher puts the big pot in the lit­tle, don­ning mul­ti­ple wigs, a fac­sim­i­le of the chaste white par­ty dress Natal­ie Wood wore to the dance at the gym, and flats (!) to embody Tony, Maria, Ani­ta, Bernar­do and var­i­ous Jets, sans irony.

Some of Stephen Sond­heim’s award-win­ning songs have been trans­posed to a dif­fer­ent key to accom­mo­date Cher’s con­tral­to, and when they haven’t, her famous voice is stretched a bit thin.

Vocal­ly, she makes a more con­vinc­ing Jet than she does the ingenue, Maria.

(Speak­ing of which, let’s not for­get that that’s ghost singer Marni Nixon, not Wood, as Maria on the 1961 film’s sound­track…)

Why West Side Sto­ry?

Why not God­spell or Jesus Christ Super­star? Wouldn’t those fit bet­ter the­mat­i­cal­ly with the por­tion of the spe­cial that has Dol­ly and a white-robed cho­rus bat­tling the denizens of Satan’s sexy playpen?

Two words:

1. Vari­ety. That’s what Cher was ped­dling in the 70s.

2. Nos­tal­gia. As Cher recalls in On the Dance Floor: Spin­ning Out on Screen:

I remem­ber danc­ing around my liv­ing room to West Side Sto­ry (1961). I would sing all the parts and dance every sin­gle dance, when there was no one else around.

That admis­sion helps us reframe the cringe fac­tor. Before ye cast the first stone, think: hast thou nev­er stood before a mir­ror singing into a hair­brush?

And if, by some chance, you’re unfa­mil­iar with West Side Sto­ry’s drama­tis per­son­ae and plot, don’t look to Cher for clar­i­fi­ca­tion.

Instead, we refer you to Romeo and Juli­et, and for some mod­ern con­text touch­ing on green screens, gen­der­flu­id­i­ty, and the col­or-con­scious cast­ing of the 2021 remake, the below episode of Chris Frank’s snarky Bad Music Video The­ater.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Amer­i­cans” and Oth­er Songs on 1975 Vari­ety Show

Leonard Bern­stein Awk­ward­ly Turns the Screws on Tenor Jose Car­reras While Record­ing West Side Sto­ry (1984)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Visit the “Cat Islands” of Japan, Where Felines Outnumber Humans

in Nature, Travel | January 9th, 2023

The world has heard much about the aging and shrink­ing of Japan­ese soci­ety, a process that has cre­at­ed ghost towns like those we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. But how­ev­er seri­ous­ly Japan’s pop­u­la­tion may be con­tract­ing, its love of cats abides undi­min­ished. Hence the replace­ment of peo­ple by felines — effec­tive­ly, any­way — on the island of Aoshi­ma, vis­it­ed in the CBS Sun­day Morn­ing seg­ment above. “Here, cats out­num­ber humans more than ten to one,” says cor­re­spon­dent Seth Doane. Its “tiny fish­ing vil­lage once had a pop­u­la­tion of 800 peo­ple, but the sar­dine fish­eries deplet­ed, jobs moved to cities, and human res­i­dents left the island.”

Such is the way, it seems, of any post-indus­tri­al soci­ety — but as always, Japan has ways of set­ting itself apart. On Aoshi­ma, Doane says, “the big moment of the day is when the tourist boat shows up. It’s 45 min­utes of bliss for all involved,” includ­ing the cat-lovers bear­ing treats as well as all the peck­ish ani­mals await­ing them at the dock. But Aoshi­ma is only one of ten such “cat islands” around Japan. The much larg­er (but still small) Tashiro­ji­ma boasts not just over 100 res­i­dent cats, but also Neko-jin­ja (猫神社), lit­er­al­ly “Cat Shrine,” one of a host of such feline-ded­i­cat­ed reli­gious sites in the island’s Miya­gi Pre­fec­ture.

Whether Japan’s atti­tude toward cats amounts to wor­ship remains a mat­ter of debate. But the fact remains that cats have proven to be the sal­va­tion of more places in Japan than a few of its islands: take Tama (lit­er­al­ly “ball,” but the Japan­ese equiv­a­lent of “Kit­ty”), a cal­i­co whose assump­tion of the posi­tion of “sta­tion mas­ter” brought a train stop in Wakaya­ma Pre­fec­ture back from the brink of clo­sure. In the old days, Japan­ese cats did the dirty work of killing rodents that would oth­er­wise infest fish­ing boats and destroy silk­worm farms; today, their ances­tors drum up tourism. The Japan­ese may love cats with an enthu­si­asm unknown in the rest of the world, but clear­ly they still expect them to earn their keep.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Cats in Japan­ese Wood­block Prints: How Japan’s Favorite Ani­mals Came to Star in Its Pop­u­lar Art

Insane­ly Cute Cat Com­mer­cials from Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, Hayao Miyazaki’s Leg­endary Ani­ma­tion Shop

Japan­ese Researcher Sleeps in the Same Loca­tion as Her Cat for 24 Con­sec­u­tive Nights!

Two Cats Keep Try­ing to Get Into a Japan­ese Art Muse­um … and Keep Get­ting Turned Away: Meet the Thwart­ed Felines, Ken-chan and Go-chan

In 1183, a Chi­nese Poet Describes Being Domes­ti­cat­ed by His Own Cats

Dis­cov­er the Ghost Towns of Japan — Where Scare­crows Replace Peo­ple, and a Man Lives in an Aban­doned Ele­men­tary School Gym

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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How to Watch Hundreds of Free Movies on YouTube

in Film | January 6th, 2023

We lived in the age of movie the­aters, then we lived in the age of home video, and now we live in the age of stream­ing. Like every peri­od in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma, ours has its advan­tages and its dis­ad­van­tages. The qua­si-reli­gios­i­ty of the cinephile view­ing expe­ri­ence is, arguably, not as well served by click­ing on a Youtube video as it is by attend­ing a screen­ing at a grand revival house. But on the whole, we do have the advan­tage of access, when­ev­er and wher­ev­er we like, to a great many films that most of us may have been whol­ly unable to see just a cou­ple of decades ago — and often, we can watch them for free.

That said, these are still rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly days for on-demand view­ing, and find­ing out just where to do it isn’t as easy as it could be. That’s why we’ve round­ed up this col­lec­tion of Youtube chan­nels with free movies, which togeth­er con­sti­tute one big meta-col­lec­tion of hun­dreds of films. Among them are numer­ous black-and-white clas­sics, of course, but also crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed pic­tures by inter­na­tion­al auteurs, rather less crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed (but nonethe­less enjoy­able) cult favorites, doc­u­men­taries on a wide vari­ety of sub­jects, and even twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry Hol­ly­wood releas­es.

Which films you can watch will vary, unfor­tu­nate­ly, depend­ing on which part of the world you hap­pen to be watch­ing them in. But no mat­ter your loca­tion, you should eas­i­ly be able to find more than a few worth­while selec­tions on all these chan­nels. One under-appre­ci­at­ed aspect of our stream­ing age is that, though the num­ber of choic­es may some­times over­whelm, it’s nev­er been eas­i­er to give a movie a chance. One click may, after all, trans­port you into a pic­ture that changes the way you expe­ri­ence cin­e­ma itself — and if it does­n’t, well, at least the price was right.

If you know of oth­er YouTube chan­nels that legit­i­mate­ly host films online, please add them to the com­ments sec­tion below.

And, for more films, be sure to explore our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Relat­ed Con­tent 

60 Free Film Noir Movies

Watch 3,000+ Films Free Online from the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Watch 30+ Excep­tion­al Short Films for Free in The New Yorker’s Online Screen­ing Room

Watch More Than 400 Clas­sic Kore­an Films Free Online Thanks to the Kore­an Film Archive

Watch 70 Movies in HD from Famed Russ­ian Stu­dio Mos­film: Clas­sic Films, Beloved Come­dies, Tarkovsky, Kuro­sawa & More

Kino Lor­ber Puts Online 50 Free Films: Watch Clas­sics by Jean-Luc Godard, Derek Jar­man, Tai­ka Wait­i­ti & Oth­er Major Film­mak­ers

Cha­rade, the Best Hitch­cock Film Hitch­cock Nev­er Made: Stars Cary Grant & Audrey Hep­burn

Watch Free Cult Films by Stan­ley Kubrick, Fritz Lang, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi & More on the New Kino Cult Stream­ing Ser­vice

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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 David Letterman’s Complete Interview with Volodymyr Zelenskyy

in Current Affairs, Television | January 6th, 2023

In a spe­cial episode of My Next Guest Needs No Intro­duc­tion with David Let­ter­man, the icon­ic TV host trav­eled to Kyiv to inter­view Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skyy. The con­ver­sa­tion took place in a pro­tect­ed sub­way sta­tion, in front of a small live audi­ence. About Zelen­skyy, Let­ter­man said: “When you first learn about the guy, it seems impos­si­ble to not find him appeal­ing, and his sto­ry to be astound­ing. You just don’t see actions and deeds like this, peo­ple behav­ing like this, on the right side of things.” Above, thanks to Net­flix, you can watch the inter­view in its entire­ty.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent

The Mak­ing of Mod­ern Ukraine: A Free Online Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, Fea­tur­ing 23 Lec­tures

How Volodymyr Zelen­skyy Went from Play­ing a Pres­i­dent on a Com­e­dy TV Show to Very Real Life

How Ukraine’s Works of Art Are Being Saved in Wartime–Using the Lessons of World War II

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How to Make Ancient Mesopotamian Beer: See the 4,000-Year-Old Brewing Method Put to the Test

in Food & Drink, History | January 5th, 2023

The philoso­pher Giambat­tista Vico had quite a few ideas, but we remem­ber him for one above all: Verum esse ipsum fac­tum, often short­ened to the prin­ci­ple of verum fac­tum. It means, in essence, that we under­stand what we make. In accor­dance with verum fac­tum, then, if you want to under­stand, say, ancient Mesopotami­an beer, you should make some ancient Mesopotami­an beer your­self. Such is the path tak­en in the video above by Max Miller, host of the Youtube series Tast­ing His­to­ry.

We pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Tast­ing His­to­ry here on Open Cul­ture for its humor­ous and as-faith­ful-as-pos­si­ble re-cre­ations of dish­es from the past, includ­ing peri­ods as recent as the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry and as dis­tant as the dawn of civ­i­liza­tion. No mat­ter the era, human­i­ty has always been eat­ing and drink­ing — and, just as soon as the nec­es­sary tech­nol­o­gy became avail­able, get­ting drunk. That we were doing it 4,000 years ago is evi­denced by the recipe Miller fol­lows in his quest to re-cre­ate Mesopotami­an beer, for which even the research proves to be no sim­ple mat­ter.

In fact, he begins with not a recipe at all, but a hymn to Ninkasi, the Sumer­ian god­dess of beer. But this holy text con­sti­tutes only a start­ing point: Miller goes on to con­sult not just oth­er infor­ma­tion pre­served on archae­o­log­i­cal arti­facts, but at least one expert in the field. The result­ing beer-mak­ing pro­ce­dure isn’t with­out its ambi­gu­i­ty, but you can cer­tain­ly try it at home. You can try it at home if you’ve got about a week to do so, that is; even ancient beer need­ed to fer­ment. (If you’re any­thing like Miller, you’ll use the wait­ing time to research more about Mesopotami­an soci­ety and the sig­nif­i­cant place of beer with­in it.)

How does the final prod­uct taste? Miller describes it as not car­bon­at­ed but “effer­ves­cent,” with a “nut­ti­ness” to its fla­vor: “I’m get­ting, like, a lit­tle bit of a car­damom.” (Mod­erns who pre­fer a sweet­er beer will want to add date syrup.) Per­haps it would go well with a Baby­lon­ian lamb stew, or one of the oth­er ancient dish­es Miller has re-cre­at­ed on Tast­ing His­to­ry. Such a meal would pro­vide a fine occa­sion to test the prin­ci­ple of verum fac­tum — or an even fin­er way to test the Sumer­ian proverb “He who does not know beer, does not know what is good.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the Old­est Beer Recipe in His­to­ry From Ancient Sume­ria, 1800 B.C.

Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor Cooks 4000-Year-Old Recipes from Ancient Mesopotamia, and Lets You See How They Turned Out

Watch a 4000-Year Old Baby­lon­ian Recipe for Stew, Found on a Cuneiform Tablet, Get Cooked by Researchers from Yale & Har­vard

5,000-Year-Old Chi­nese Beer Recipe Gets Recre­at­ed by Stan­ford Stu­dents

Beer Archae­ol­o­gy: Yes, It’s a Thing

Tast­ing His­to­ry: A Hit YouTube Series Shows How to Cook the Foods of Ancient Greece & Rome, Medieval Europe, and Oth­er Places & Peri­ods

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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