Hear Marilyn Monroe’s Acting Teacher, Lee Strasberg, Deliver a Moving Eulogy at Her Funeral (1962)

in Film, Life, Theatre | October 28th, 2016

Good­bye, Nor­ma Jean…

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s star­dom is tru­ly leg­endary. Her image gen­er­ates mil­lions of dol­lars annu­al­ly. From high-end mem­o­ra­bil­ia to lunch­box­es, fridge mag­nets, and oth­er cheap trin­kets, the world still can’t get enough of her, near­ly fifty-five years after her death.

Her act­ing tal­ent was con­sid­er­able, but by and large that is not what she’s cel­e­brat­ed for. Speak­ing at her funer­al, her men­tor Lee Stras­berg, the Artis­tic Direc­tor of the Actors Stu­dio, lament­ed that “the pub­lic who loved her did not have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see her as we did, in many of the roles that fore­shad­owed what she would have become.” In his opin­ion, the movie star’s true des­tiny pegged her to become “one of the finest Amer­i­can stage actress­es of all time.”

Actor Mar­tin Lan­dau remem­bered Mon­roe steel­ing her­self to get up in front of her Actors Stu­dio class­mates for the first time, in a scene from Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie with Mau­reen Sta­ple­ton.

Alas, this is not the sort of Mon­roe moment pos­ter­i­ty pre­serves on a beach tote or sequined t‑shirt.

Strasberg’s mov­ing 1962 eulo­gy, above, acknowl­edged both the 31 inti­mates invit­ed to her final send off, and the crowds out­side the gate. Frank Sina­tra, Ella Fitzger­ald, and Sam­my Davis, Jr. were among the lumi­nar­ies denied entry. Monroe’s for­mer hus­band, base­ball great Joe DiMag­gio banned a whole pan­theon of Hol­ly­wood movers and shak­ers, along with the pub­lic.

“If it was­n’t for them, she’d still be here,” he told her lawyer, Mick­ey Rudin.

Stu­dio execs had lit­tle regard for the actress’ well­be­ing, but Stras­berg was both teacher and father fig­ure, allow­ing her beyond the usu­al pro­fes­sion­al bound­aries to become a de fac­to, if prob­lem­at­ic, mem­ber of the fam­i­ly. As his daugh­ter, Monroe’s friend, actress Susan Stras­berg wrote:

Mar­i­lyn broke all the rules I was expect­ed to fol­low. She was unpre­dictable, but he didn’t yell at her. He con­stant­ly val­i­dat­ed her. With her, Pop was vul­ner­a­ble, pater­nal, per­mis­sive. With me he was imper­son­al, crit­i­cal, for­bid­ding. What was I doing wrong? Why didn’t he give me per­mis­sion to be myself as he did her?”

DiMag­gio had orig­i­nal­ly hoped that poet Carl Sand­burg might be avail­able to orate at Monroe’s funer­al. When Sand­burg declined due to ill health, the sad duty fell to Stras­berg, who turned out to be unique­ly pre­pared to ful­fill this role.

The com­plete text of Lee Strasberg’s eulo­gy for Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe is below, as is a short doc­u­men­tary on her involve­ment with the Actors Stu­dio.

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe was a leg­end.

In her own life­time she cre­at­ed a myth of what a poor girl from a deprived back­ground could attain. For the entire world she became a sym­bol of the eter­nal fem­i­nine.

But I have no words to describe the myth and the leg­end. I did not know this Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe. We gath­ered here today, knew only Mar­i­lyn – a warm human being, impul­sive and shy, sen­si­tive and in fear of rejec­tion, yet ever avid for life and reach­ing out for ful­fill­ment. I will not insult the pri­va­cy of your mem­o­ry of her – a pri­va­cy she sought and trea­sured – by try­ing to describe her whom you knew to you who knew her. In our mem­o­ries of her she remains alive, not only a shad­ow on the screen or a glam­orous per­son­al­i­ty.

For us Mar­i­lyn was a devot­ed and loy­al friend, a col­league con­stant­ly reach­ing for per­fec­tion. We shared her pain and dif­fi­cul­ties and some of her joys. She was a mem­ber of our fam­i­ly. It is dif­fi­cult to accept the fact that her zest for life has been end­ed by this dread­ful acci­dent.

Despite the heights and bril­liance she attained on the screen, she was plan­ning for the future; she was look­ing for­ward to par­tic­i­pat­ing in the many excit­ing things which she planned. In her eyes and in mine her career was just begin­ning.

The dream of her tal­ent, which she had nur­tured as a child, was not a mirage. When she first came to me I was amazed at the star­tling sen­si­tiv­i­ty which she pos­sessed and which had remained fresh and undimmed, strug­gling to express itself despite the life to which she had been sub­ject­ed.

Oth­ers were as phys­i­cal­ly beau­ti­ful as she was, but there was obvi­ous­ly some­thing more in her, some­thing that peo­ple saw and rec­og­nized in her per­for­mances and with which they iden­ti­fied. She had a lumi­nous qual­i­ty – a com­bi­na­tion of wist­ful­ness, radi­ance, yearn­ing – to set her apart and yet make every­one wish to be a part of it, to share in the child­ish naïveté which was so shy and yet so vibrant.

This qual­i­ty was even more evi­dent when she was in the stage. I am tru­ly sor­ry that the pub­lic who loved her did not have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see her as we did, in many of the roles that fore­shad­owed what she would have become. With­out a doubt she would have been one of the real­ly great actress­es of the stage.

Now it is at an end. I hope her death will stir sym­pa­thy and under­stand­ing for a sen­si­tive artist and a woman who brought joy and plea­sure to the world.

I can­not say good­bye. Mar­i­lyn nev­er liked good­byes, but in the pecu­liar way she had of turn­ing things around so that they faced real­i­ty – I will say au revoir. For the coun­try to which she has gone, we must all some­day vis­it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Recounts Her Har­row­ing Expe­ri­ence in a Psy­chi­atric Ward in a 1961 Let­ter

A Look Inside Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Per­son­al Library

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Explains Rel­a­tiv­i­ty to Albert Ein­stein (in a Nico­las Roeg Movie)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Hear Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage (1967)

in Audio Books, Media | October 28th, 2016

mediummassage

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Briefly not­ed: In 1967, Mar­shall McLuhan teamed up with graph­ic design­er Quentin Fiore to write The Medi­um is the Mas­sage, a short 160-page book that offers a con­densed, effec­tive pre­sen­ta­tion of his ideas on the nature of media, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and tech­nol­o­gy. The book was soon accom­pa­nied by an album bear­ing the same name, which Wikipedia describes like this:

An audio record­ing based on the book was made by Colum­bia Records in the late 1960s, pro­duced by John Simon but oth­er­wise keep­ing the same cred­its as the book. The record­ing con­sists of a pas­tiche of state­ments made by McLuhan inter­rupt­ed by oth­er speak­ers, includ­ing peo­ple speak­ing in var­i­ous phona­tions and falset­tos, dis­cor­dant sounds and 1960s inci­den­tal music in what could be con­sid­ered a delib­er­ate attempt to trans­late the dis­con­nect­ed images seen on TV into an audio for­mat, result­ing in the pre­ven­tion of a con­nect­ed stream of con­scious thought. Var­i­ous audio record­ing tech­niques and state­ments are used to illus­trate the rela­tion­ship between spo­ken, lit­er­ary speech and the char­ac­ter­is­tics of elec­tron­ic audio media. McLuhan biog­ra­ph­er Philip Marc­hand called the record­ing “the 1967 equiv­a­lent of a McLuhan video.

One review­er on Ama­zon describes it as “more of a per­for­mance piece than a trea­tise.” And thanks to Spo­ti­fy, you can hear it below, in full. Also find it on YouTube.

The Medi­um is the Mas­sage–yes, it was orig­i­nal­ly spelled that way–will be added to our list: 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­shall McLuhan, W.H. Auden & Buck­min­ster Fuller Debate the Virtues of Mod­ern Tech­nol­o­gy & Media (1971)

Mar­shall McLuhan on the Stu­pid­est Debate in the His­to­ry of Debat­ing (1976)

The Vision­ary Thought of Mar­shall McLuhan, Intro­duced and Demys­ti­fied by Tom Wolfe

McLuhan Said “The Medi­um Is The Mes­sage”; Two Pieces Of Media Decode the Famous Phrase

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What Does Jorge Luis Borges’ “Library of Babel” Look Like? An Accurate Illustration Created with 3D Modeling Software

in Architecture, Computer Science, Literature | October 27th, 2016

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Sketchup ren­der­ings of the Library of Babel. Images cour­tesy of Jamie Zaw­in­s­ki.

Ful­fill­ing the max­im “write what you know,” Argen­tine fab­u­list Jorge Luis Borges penned one of his most extra­or­di­nary and bewil­der­ing sto­ries, “The Library of Babel,” while employed as an assis­tant librar­i­an. Borges, it has been noted—by Borges him­self in his 1970 New York­er essay “Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Notes”—found the work drea­ry and unful­fill­ing: “nine years of sol­id unhap­pi­ness,” as he put it plain­ly. “Some­times in the evening, as I walked the ten blocks to the tram­line, my eyes would be filled with tears.”

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And yet, for all of its tedi­um, his library posi­tion suit­ed his needs as a writer like none oth­er could. “I would do all my library work in the first hour,” he remem­bers, “and then steal away to the base­ment and pass the oth­er five hours in read­ing or writ­ing.” Dur­ing those stolen hours, Borges dreamed up a library the size of the uni­verse, “com­posed of an indef­i­nite and per­haps infi­nite num­ber of hexag­o­nal gal­leries, with vast air shafts between, sur­round­ed by very low rail­ings.” Like so many of the objects and places in Borges’ sto­ries, this fan­tas­tic struc­ture, Esch­er-like, is both vivid­ly described and impos­si­ble to imag­ine.

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Many have tried their hand at visu­al­ly ren­der­ing the Library of Babel, but accord­ing to pro­gram­mer Jamie Zaw­in­s­ki, “past attempts,” writes Carey Dunne at Hyper­al­ler­gic, “aren’t faith­ful to the text,” omit­ting cru­cial struc­tures like the “sleep cham­ber, lava­to­ry, and hall­way” and screw­ing up “the place­ment of the spi­ral stair­way.” You can see Zawinski’s var­i­ous cri­tiques of these sup­posed fail­ures on his blog, JWZ. And you may won­der how it’s even pos­si­ble to con­struct an accu­rate mod­el of a struc­ture that may have no finite bound­aries and whose inter­nal archi­tec­ture the sto­ry itself calls into ques­tion. Nonethe­less, Zaw­in­s­ki has bold­ly giv­en it a try.

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Using the 3D mod­el­ing pro­gram Sketchup, he has designed what he believes to be a mod­el supe­ri­or to the rest, though he admits “I don’t think this is quite right either.” If you’re won­der­ing “Why is he doing this?” Zaw­in­s­ki writes, “you and I have that in com­mon.” The Bor­ge­sian task, like that of the librar­i­an, is an end­less one, pur­sued with scholas­tic rig­or for its own sake rather than for some great reward. And once one enters the labyrinth of his twist­ing designs, there may be no way out but eter­nal­ly through. “The pos­si­bil­i­ty of a man’s find­ing his Vin­di­ca­tion,” writes Borges weari­ly of cer­tain librar­i­ans’ attempts to solve the library’s rid­dles, “or some treach­er­ous vari­a­tion there­of, can be com­put­ed as zero.”

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So Zaw­in­s­ki trudges on. His “wrestling with the details of his ren­der­ing,” writes Dunne, “his obses­sive analy­sis of the word­ing of Borges’ descrip­tion, recalls the library inhab­i­tants’ futile quests to deci­pher the mys­ter­ies of the library.” The programmer’s admirable atten­tion to the physics of the space may at times sound like a rather lead­en way to approach what is essen­tial­ly an elab­o­rate metaphor: “I can’t help but think about the weight and pres­sure of a col­umn of air that high,” he mus­es in his ini­tial explo­rations, “and what is it sit­ting on, and how to route the plumb­ing from all of those toi­lets, and that toi­lets imply diges­tion, so where does the food come from?”

Such ques­tions take him far afield of Borges’ theo-philo­soph­i­cal para­ble: “Is there a sec­tion of the library devot­ed to farm­ing, and met­al­lur­gy?” Nonethe­less, Zawinski’s detailed analy­sis has pro­duced a visu­al­iza­tion of the space like none oth­er, and he admits to “over­think­ing a sub-infi­nite but near­ly bound­less hill of beans.” Borges’ imag­i­nary librar­i­an has aban­doned try­ing to solve the library’s mys­ter­ies. Hum­bled by the fail­ures of those who came before him, he per­sists in the “ele­gant hope” that the library “is unlim­it­ed and cycli­cal… repeat­ed in the same dis­or­der… which, thus repeat­ed, would be an order: the Order.” He wise­ly leaves the ulti­mate meta­phys­i­cal dis­cov­ery, how­ev­er, to “an eter­nal trav­el­er” with infi­nite time on their hands.

You can view Zawinski’s com­men­tary here, and see his designs here. On the bot­tom of this page, he lets you down­load his Sketchup file.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vis­it The Online Library of Babel: New Web Site Turns Borges’ “Library of Babel” Into a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

Jorge Luis Borges Selects 74 Books for Your Per­son­al Library

Jorge Luis Borges’ Favorite Short Sto­ries (Read 7 Free Online)

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

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The 20 CDs Curated by Steve Jobs and Placed on Prototype iPods (2001)

in Music, Technology | October 27th, 2016

On Octo­ber 23, 2001, almost exact­ly 15 years ago, Steve Jobs intro­duced the very first iPod–an mp3 play­er, capa­ble of “putting 1,000 songs in your pock­et” and play­ing cd-qual­i­ty music. A nov­el con­cept back then. A prod­uct we take for grant­ed today.

Above, you can watch Jobs make the first iPod pitch. And below find a list of the 20 cds that came loaded onto iPod pro­to­types giv­en to jour­nal­ists attend­ing the launch event. What bet­ter way for them to demo the gad­get?

The list comes from Nobuyu­ki Hayashi, a Japan­ese reporter, who was there that day. If you know some­thing about Jobs’ musi­cal tastes, you’ll see that he had a strong hand in the cura­tion:

h/t Eli

via Dar­ing Fire­ball

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn Cal­lig­ra­phy from Lloyd Reynolds, the Teacher of Steve Jobs’ Own Famous­ly Inspir­ing Cal­lig­ra­phy Teacher

Con­for­mi­ty Isn’t a Recipe for Excel­lence: Wis­dom from George Car­lin & Steve Jobs (NSFW)

Steve Jobs on Life: “Stay Hun­gry, Stay Fool­ish”

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Alfred Hitchcock Presents Ghost Stories for Kids (1962)

in Audio Books | October 27th, 2016

hitchcock-ghost

“Now of course, the best way to lis­ten to ghost sto­ries is with the lights out,” says the inim­itable Alfred Hitch­cock, as he intro­duces his 1962 vinyl release Alfred Hitch­cock Presents: Ghost Sto­ries for Young Peo­ple. “There is noth­ing like a dark room to attract ghosts and you may like to have some of our mutu­al friends come and lis­ten with you.”

Just in time for Hal­loween, we are shin­ing a flick­er­ing light on this album, released once before on CD and now on Spo­ti­fy. (You can also find it on YouTube.) It will either take lis­ten­ers back to when they were kids, or fright­en a new gen­er­a­tion of young ones for the first time.

Though Hitchcock’s films toyed with spir­its-—Rebec­ca and Ver­ti­go among them-—he nev­er real­ly made straight up mon­ster movies or ghost sto­ries. (Psy­cho and The Birds are the clos­est he ever got.) But once he became a tele­vi­sion host and per­son­al­i­ty in the 1950s, his mis­chie­vous char­ac­ter and his macabre voice made him a nat­ur­al to present all sorts of ghoul­ish antholo­gies, result­ing in numer­ous paper­backs and hard­backs, most of which he had lit­tle to do with but sim­ply bore his name as a stamp of fright­en­ing author­i­ty.

And even before that, Hitch­cock was putting his name to short sus­pense sto­ry col­lec­tions, and a mys­tery mag­a­zine that was start­ed in 1956 and con­tin­ues to this day. We talk about him as one of the best film direc­tors of all time, but he was also a one-man sus­pense and ter­ror indus­try in his day, a can­ny cre­ator who knew the worth of licens­ing his name.

Of the six sto­ries here, the two giv­en writer’s cred­it are “Jim­my Takes Van­ish­ing Lessons” by Wal­ter R. Brooks (a chil­dren’s author who cre­at­ed the talk­ing horse char­ac­ter Mr. Ed) and “The Open Win­dow” by Edwar­dian writer Saki.

Judg­ing from the YouTube com­ments for the crack­ly record­ing post­ed there, these sto­ries have haunt­ed these lis­ten­ers since their child­hood. Kids these days might pre­fer a dish of creep­y­pas­ta, but there’s no deny­ing the pow­er of a voice, creepy music, and sud­den sound effects, all deliv­ered by way of headphones…with the lights off.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Issues of “Weird Tales” (1923–1954): The Pio­neer­ing Pulp Hor­ror Mag­a­zine Fea­tures Orig­i­nal Sto­ries by Love­craft, Brad­bury & Many More

Stephen King’s Top 10 All-Time Favorite Books

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho (1960)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Green Day Fan Joins Band On Stage, Takes Over on Guitar, and Acts Like He’s Been There Many Times Before

in Music | October 27th, 2016

At a Green Day con­cert in Chica­go, a fan held up a sign, “I can play every song on Dook­ie.” So Bil­lie Joe Arm­strong let him pop on stage to play “When I Come Around.” And the fan did­n’t dis­ap­point, from the moment he climbed on the amp and kicked things off, to his stage dive back into the crowd. The footage was record­ed on Octo­ber 23rd. Enjoy.

h/t Robin — via SFGate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kei­th Moon, Drum­mer of The Who, Pass­es Out at 1973 Con­cert; 19-Year-Old Fan Takes Over

Blind Gui­tarist Lives Out Dream at U2 Show

Bob Geld­of Talks About the Great­est Day of His Life, Step­ping on the Stage of Live Aid, in a Short Doc by Errol Mor­ris

A Paul Simon Feelin’-Very-Groovy Moment

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What Happens When Blade Runner & A Scanner Darkly Get Remade with an Artificial Neural Network

in Film, Sci Fi, Technology | October 27th, 2016

Philip K. Dick, titling the 1968 nov­el that would pro­vide the basis for Blade Run­ner, asked whether androids dream of elec­tric sheep. But what goes on in the “mind” of an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence designed specif­i­cal­ly to watch movies? Ter­ence Broad, a com­put­ing researcher at Gold­smiths, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, took on a form of that ques­tion for his mas­ter’s dis­ser­ta­tion, using “arti­fi­cial neur­al net­works to recon­struct films — by train­ing them to recon­struct indi­vid­ual frames from films, and then get­ting them to recon­struct every frame in a giv­en film and rese­quenc­ing it.”

“Neur­al net­works” sounds like a term straight out of one of Dick­’s influ­en­tial sci­ence-fic­tion nov­els, but you’ve almost cer­tain­ly heard quite a bit about them in recent years of real life. A neur­al net­work, in the words of neu­ro­com­put­er pio­neer Dr. Robert Hecht-Nielsen, “is a com­put­ing sys­tem made up of a num­ber of sim­ple, high­ly inter­con­nect­ed pro­cess­ing ele­ments, which process infor­ma­tion by their dynam­ic state response to exter­nal inputs.” These sys­tems, in oth­er words, imi­tate the prob­lem-solv­ing meth­ods of the human brain as we cur­rent­ly under­stand them, and can, when pro­vid­ed with suit­able data, “learn” from it.

One thinks less of the Repli­cants, Blade Run­ner’s lethal­ly engi­neered super­hu­mans, than of Num­ber 5, the arti­fi­cial­ly intel­li­gent robot star of Short Cir­cuit (co-designed, inci­den­tal­ly, by Blade Run­ner’s “visu­al futur­ist” Syd Mead), with his con­stant demands for “input.” When it came out in the mid-1980s, that goofy com­e­dy once looked like by far the more suc­cess­ful film, but over the inter­ven­ing three decades Rid­ley Scot­t’s one-time bomb has become per­haps the most respect­ed work of its kind. “The first ever film remade by a neur­al net­work had to be Blade Run­ner,” Ter­ence Broad told Vox, point­ing in his expla­na­tion of his project to the movie’s pre­scient treat­ment of the theme “that the task of deter­min­ing what is and isn’t human is becom­ing increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult, with the ever-increas­ing tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments.”

Dick, as his gen­er­a­tions of read­ers know, had deep con­cerns about the dif­fer­ence between the real and the unre­al, and how human beings can ever tell one from the oth­er. He tack­led that issue again, from a very dif­fer­ent angle, in his 1977 nov­el A Scan­ner Dark­ly. Richard Lin­klater turned that book into a movie almost thir­ty years lat­er, one which Broad also fed as input into his neur­al net­work, which then attempt­ed to recon­struct it. Though still the­mat­i­cal­ly appro­pri­ate, its col­or­ful roto­scoped ani­ma­tion posed more of a chal­lenge, and “the results are less tem­po­ral­ly coher­ent than the Blade Run­ner mod­el.” But “on the oth­er hand, the images are incred­i­bly unusu­al and com­plex, once again pro­duc­ing video with a rich unpre­dictabil­i­ty.”

At the top of the post, you can watch Broad­’s Blade Run­ner-trained neur­al net­work recon­struct Blade Run­ner’s trail­er, and below that his A Scan­ner Dark­ly-trained neur­al net­work recon­struct A Scan­ner Dark­ly’s trail­er. Curios­i­ty demand­ed, of course, that Broad let a neur­al net­work trained to watch one film have a go at recon­struct­ing the oth­er, and just above we have the A Scan­ner Dark­ly-trained neur­al net­work’s recon­struc­tion of Blade Run­ner. He’s also giv­en Scot­t’s famous 1984-themed Super Bowl Apple ad and God­frey Reg­gio’s Koy­aanisqat­si the neur­al-net­work treat­ment. We read so often, these days, about arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence’s grow­ing abil­i­ty to out-think, out-work, and one day even out-cre­ate us. What on Earth, the Philip K. Dicks of our day must won­der, will the neur­al net­works come up with when they can final­ly out-watch us?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Rid­ley Scott’s Blade Run­ner Made of 12,597 Water­col­or Paint­ings

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

Rid­ley Scott Talks About Mak­ing Apple’s Land­mark “1984” Com­mer­cial, Aired 30 Years Ago on Super Bowl Sun­day

Watch Sun­spring, the Sci-Fi Film Writ­ten with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, Star­ring Thomas Mid­dled­itch (Sil­i­con Val­ley)

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Pro­gram Tries to Write a Bea­t­les Song: Lis­ten to “Daddy’s Car”

Two Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Chat­bots Talk to Each Oth­er & Get Into a Deep Philo­soph­i­cal Con­ver­sa­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. 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.

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How Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai Perfected the Cinematic Action Scene: A New Video Essay

in Film | October 26th, 2016

Jonathan Lethem knows a thing or two about sto­ry­telling as well as about caped com­ic-book char­ac­ters, and on a recent pod­cast appear­ance he accused films about the lat­ter of an inabil­i­ty to do the for­mer: “I think one of the least sat­is­fy­ing film gen­res I’ve ever encoun­tered is the con­tem­po­rary super­hero movie, which just seems to me kind of dead on arrival. I can’t even get into the hair-split­ting about, ‘Oh, but there are three or four good ones.’ I just don’t see any life there.” How can such big pro­duc­tions filled with so much action play out so life­less­ly on the screen? Per­haps the work of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, known in his day as the “Emper­or” of Japan­ese film, can show us the answer.

“Would­n’t scenes that dis­play the pin­na­cle of phys­i­cal­i­ty work bet­ter,” asks video essay­ist Lewis Bond over images of the Avengers bat­tling tow­er­ing mon­sters in the cen­ters of major cities, Spi­der-Man swing­ing huge arcs through some kind of smoke-and-spark fac­to­ry, and Bat­man beat­ing up Super­man, “if they also con­veyed an emo­tion­al inten­si­ty to match this? Action and emo­tion need not be sep­a­rat­ed by a chasm as they so often are, and this is where the great­ness of Sev­en Samu­rai lies.” He shows us in “Dra­ma Through Action,” a study of how Kuro­sawa’s best-known pic­ture deliv­ers its action with impact, which appeared ear­li­er this month on Chan­nel Criswell, pre­vi­ous­ly the source of video essays on such mas­ters of cin­e­ma as Yasu­jirō Ozu and Andrei Tarkovsky.

Bond points to sev­er­al dif­fer­ent fac­tors that make the action in Kuro­sawa’s 1954 epic adven­ture of the Sen­goku era, despite its tech­no­log­i­cal impov­er­ish­ment com­pared to the super­hero block­busters of the 21st cen­tu­ry, feel so much more mean­ing­ful. A focus less on the action itself and the pro­tag­o­nists per­form­ing it than on the con­se­quences of that action mean­ing that “death car­ries sig­nif­i­cance.” A “sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness” and clear por­tray­al of “the char­ac­ters’ short-term objec­tives” means that the audi­ence can fol­low, and thus feel, their suc­cess­es and fail­ures. A clear estab­lish­ment of geog­ra­phy enables view­ers to place the com­bat­ants, and them­selves, on the bat­tle­field. A spar­ing use of cut­ting and slow motion keeps emo­tion­al­ly charged moments charged.

These and oth­er tech­niques skill­ful­ly employed by Kuro­sawa and his col­lab­o­ra­tors ensure that, in Sev­en Samu­rai, “every moment of action com­mu­ni­cates a sense of urgency” — exact­ly the qual­i­ty lacked, in oth­er words, by the expen­sive and furi­ous yet strange­ly dull super­hero spec­ta­cles of today. “To me, Sev­en Samu­rai is still the most for­ward-think­ing piece of cin­e­ma ever cre­at­ed,” says Bond. “What it did for the way action is pho­tographed can still be seen today. And when it isn’t seen, it prob­a­bly should be.” Take heed, young direc­tors slat­ed to take on the next wave of super­hero-fran­chise cin­e­mat­ic reboots: to make your entries stand out, you have only to learn from the Emper­or.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Used Move­ment to Tell His Sto­ries: A Video Essay

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films

The Geo­met­ric Beau­ty of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Wes Anderson’s Films

The Dark Knight: Anato­my of a Flawed Action Scene

What Makes Yasu­jirō Ozu a Great Film­mak­er? New Video Essay Explains His Long-Admired Cin­e­mat­ic Style

Watch a Video Essay on the Poet­ic Har­mo­ny of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Film­mak­ing, Then View His Major Films Free Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. 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.

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Spike Jonze’s Stop Motion Film Hauntingly Animates Paris’ Famed Shakespeare and Company Bookstore

in Animation, Books | October 26th, 2016

Since his break­out ear­ly days direct­ing com­mer­cials and music videos for the likes of Fat­boy Slim, Weez­er, Daft Punk, and the Breed­ers, Spike Jonze has honed a quirky visu­al sen­si­bil­i­ty that trans­lat­ed almost seam­less­ly to fea­ture film. But even at his quirki­est, Jonze hasn’t been about quirk for quirk’s sake. His characters—highly emo­tion­al robots, dog-head­ed men with bro­ken legs, tor­ment­ed pup­peteers, enthu­si­as­tic ama­teur dance troops—are under­dogs, weirdos, fig­ures on the fringes who make us ques­tion what it means to be peo­ple: to be lone­ly, in love, cre­ative­ly obsessed, and emo­tion­al­ly scram­bled.…

There is a para­dox inher­ent in Jonze’s films and videos. Their odd­ball plots and char­ac­ters cut through the cyn­i­cal veneer of cool that keeps us from ask­ing hard ques­tions about our emo­tion­al lives, but they do so in styl­is­tic exer­cis­es that in some cas­es them­selves become emblems of pop-cul­ture cool. Not so the short film “Mourir auprès de toi” (“To Die by Your Side”), which takes its title from one of the most aching­ly heart­break­ing of Smiths’ songs. This is a love sto­ry for the book­ish and the crafty, set in Paris’ famed Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny book­store and fea­tur­ing ani­mat­ed book cov­ers made from embroi­dered felt cutouts.

Co-writ­ten and with a look inspired by design­er Olympia Le-Tan, the short is “an absolute­ly beau­ti­ful stop-motion ani­ma­tion for book-lovers that’s part This Is Where We Live, part Going West, part cre­ative mag­ic only Spike Jonze can bring.” So writes Maria Popo­va at The Atlantic, sum­ma­riz­ing the ups and downs of the plot and allud­ing to a “hap­pi­ly-ever-after end­ing” that “comes only after an appro­pri­ate­ly dark and grim twist.”

Watch “To Die by Your Side” at the top of the post, then, just above, see a short behind-the-scenes teas­er video. “You just start with what the feel­ing is,” Jonze told Now­ness in an inter­view, “Me and Olympia both want­ed to make a love sto­ry.… It evolved nat­u­ral­ly and it all just start­ed with the feel­ing. From there you enter­tain your­self with ideas that excite you.” The quote explains why Jonze’s films and videos—for all their visu­al inven­tive­ness and imag­i­na­tive whimsy—nearly always stay ground­ed in can­did emo­tion­al real­ism. How­ev­er far and wide Jonze’ cin­e­mat­ic and nar­ra­tive  imag­i­na­tion takes us, his films always start with the feel­ing.

“Mourir auprès de toi” (“To Die by Your Side”) first appeared on our site in Octo­ber, 2011.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spike Jonze and Beast­ie Boys, Togeth­er Again

Spike Jonze’s Imag­i­na­tive TV Ads

Col­lab­o­ra­tions: Spike Jonze, Yo-Yo Ma, and Lil Buck

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

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Wabi-Sabi: A Short Film on the Beauty of Traditional Japan

in Art | October 26th, 2016

We’ve fea­tured the work of Span­ish film­mak­er Cristóbal Vila before: His short film “Inspi­ra­tions” cel­e­brat­ed the math­e­mat­i­cal art of M.C. Esch­er. “Falling­wa­ter” ani­mat­ed one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s finest cre­ations. And “Nature by Num­bers” showed us geo­met­ri­cal and math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­las found in nature.

Today, we bring you Vila’s lat­est “Wabi-Sabi: A Hand­ful of Mem­o­ries from Tra­di­tion­al Japan.” As he notes on his site, the ani­ma­tion cap­tures the “aspects that inter­est me the most about tra­di­tion­al Japan,” fea­tur­ing “scenes inspired by nature, gar­dens, archi­tec­ture, inte­ri­or scenes, etc.” And it attempts to “cre­ate a calm and bal­anced atmos­phere through the use of light, com­po­si­tion, mate­ri­als, move­ment… and the choice of the motifs them­selves.”

Above, you can watch “Wabi-Sabi,” a Japan­ese term that refers to “the [aes­thet­ic] beau­ty of the imper­ma­nent, the imper­fect, the rus­tic, and the melan­choly,” as explains The School of Life video below. If you’re entranced by Vila’s short film, also watch the “Mak­ing of” video (mid­dle).

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:

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling­wa­ter Ani­mat­ed

Inspi­ra­tions: A Short Film Cel­e­brat­ing the Math­e­mat­i­cal Art of M.C. Esch­er

Nature by Num­bers: Short Film Cap­tures the Geo­met­ri­cal & Math­e­mat­i­cal For­mu­las That Reveal Them­selves in Nature

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Odd Vintage Postcards Document the Propaganda Against Women’s Rights 100 Years Ago

in Gender, History, Politics | October 25th, 2016

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The vicious, vit­ri­olic imagery and rhetoric of this elec­tion sea­son can seem over­whelm­ing, but as even casu­al stu­dents of his­to­ry will know, it isn’t any­thing new. Each time his­toric social change occurs, reac­tionary counter-move­ments resort to threats, appeals to fear, and demean­ing caricatures—whether it’s anti-Recon­struc­tion pro­pa­gan­da of the 19th cen­tu­ry, anti-Civ­il Rights cam­paigns 100 years lat­er, or anti-LGBT rights efforts today.

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At the turn of the cen­tu­ry, the women’s suf­frage move­ment faced sig­nif­i­cant lev­els of abuse and resis­tance. One pho­to­graph has cir­cu­lat­ed, for exam­ple, of a suf­frage activist lying in the street as police beat her. (The woman in the pho­to is not Susan B. Antho­ny, as many claim, but a British suf­frag­ist named Ada Wright, beat­en on “Black Fri­day” in 1910.) It’s an arrest­ing image that cap­tures just how vio­lent­ly men of the day fought against the move­ment for wom­en’s suf­frage. [It’s also worth not­ing, as many have: the ear­ly suf­frage move­ment cam­paigned only for white women’s right to vote, and some­times active­ly resist­ed civ­il rights for African-Amer­i­cans.]

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As you can see from the sam­ple anti-suf­frage post­cards here—dating from the late 19th to ear­ly 20th cen­turies— pro­pa­gan­da against the women’s vote tend­ed to fall into three broad cat­e­gories: Dis­turbing­ly vio­lent wish-ful­fill­ment involv­ing tor­ture and phys­i­cal silenc­ing; char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of suf­frag­ists as angry, bit­ter old maids, hatch­et-wield­ing har­ri­dans, or dom­i­neer­ing, shrewish wives and neglect­ful moth­ers; and, cor­re­spond­ing­ly, depic­tions of neglect­ed chil­dren, and hus­bands por­trayed as saint­ly vic­tims, emas­cu­lat­ed by threats to tra­di­tion­al gen­der roles, and men­aced by the sug­ges­tion that they may have to care for their chil­dren for even one day out of the year!

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These post­cards come from the col­lec­tion of Cather­ine Pal­czews­ki, pro­fes­sor of women’s and gen­der stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North­ern Iowa. She has been col­lect­ing these images, from both the U.S. and Britain, for 15 years. On her web­site, Pal­czews­ki quotes George Miller’s com­ment that post­cards like these “offer a vivid chron­i­cle of Amer­i­can polit­i­cal val­ues and tastes.” Pal­czews­ki describes these par­tic­u­lar images as “a fas­ci­nat­ing inter­sec­tion [that] occurred between advo­ca­cy for and against woman suf­frage, images of women (and men), and post­cards. Best esti­mates are that approx­i­mate­ly 4,500 post­cards were pro­duced with a suf­frage theme.”

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As she notes in the quote above, the post­cards print­ed dur­ing this peri­od did not all oppose women’s suf­frage. “Suf­frage advo­cates,” writes Pal­czews­ki, “rec­og­nized the util­i­ty of the post­card as a pro­pa­gan­da device” as well. Pro-suf­frage post­cards tend­ed to serve a doc­u­men­tary pur­pose, with “real-pho­to images of the suf­frage parades, ver­bal mes­sages iden­ti­fy­ing the states that had approved suf­frage, or quo­ta­tions in sup­port of extend­ing the vote to women.” For all their attempts at pre­sent­ing a seri­ous, infor­ma­tive coun­ter­weight to incen­di­ary anti-suf­frage images like those you see here, suf­frage activists often found that they could not con­trol the nar­ra­tive.

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As Lisa Tick­n­er writes in The Spec­ta­cle of Women: Imagery of the Suf­frage Cam­paign 1907–1914, post­card pro­duc­ers with­out a clear agen­da often used pho­tos and illus­tra­tions of suf­frag­ists to rep­re­sent “top­i­cal or humor­ous types” and “almost inci­den­tal­ly” under­cut advo­cates’ attempts to present their cause in a news­wor­thy light. The image of the suf­fragette as a triv­ial fig­ure of fun per­sist­ed into the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry (as we see in Gly­nis Johns’ com­i­cal­ly neglect­ful Winifred Banks in Walt Disney’s 1964 Mary Pop­pins adap­ta­tion).

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Palczewski’s site offers a brief his­to­ry of the “Gold­en Age” (1893–1918) of polit­i­cal post­cards and orga­nizes the col­lec­tion into cat­e­gories. One vari­ety we might find par­tic­u­lar­ly charm­ing for its use of cats and kit­tens actu­al­ly has a pret­ty sin­is­ter ori­gin in the so-called “Cat-and-Mouse Act” in the UK. Jailed suf­frag­ists had begun to stage hunger strikes, and jour­nal­ists pro­voked pub­lic out­cry by por­tray­ing force-feed­ing by the gov­ern­ment as a form of tor­ture. Instead, strik­ing activists were released when they became weak. “If a woman died after being released,” Pal­czews­ki explains, “then the gov­ern­ment could claim it was not to blame.” When a freed activist regained her strength, she would be rear­rest­ed. “On Novem­ber 29, 1917,” Pal­czews­ki writes, “the US gov­ern­ment announced it plans to use Britain’s cat and mouse approach.”

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You can see many more his­tor­i­cal pro- and anti-suf­frage post­cards at Palczewski’s web­site, and you are free to use them for non-com­mer­cial pur­pos­es pro­vid­ed you attribute the source. You are also free, of course, to draw your own com­par­isons to today’s hyper­bol­ic and often vio­lent­ly misog­y­nist pro­pa­gan­da cam­paigns.

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via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load All 239 Issues of Land­mark UK Fem­i­nist Mag­a­zine Spare Rib Free Online

11 Essen­tial Fem­i­nist Books: A New Read­ing List by The New York Pub­lic Library

Down­load Images From Rad Amer­i­can Women A‑Z: A New Pic­ture Book on the His­to­ry of Fem­i­nism

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

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