The Earliest Known Footage of New Orleans Discovered: See a Mardi Gras Parade in 1898

in Film, History | July 7th, 2022

“Amer­i­ca has only three great cities: New York, San Fran­cis­co, and New Orleans. Every­where else is Cleve­land.” This quo­ta­tion has been repeat­ed for decades — not least, unsur­pris­ing­ly, in New Orleans. I saw and heard it often on my last trip there, and though attri­bu­tions var­ied, most cred­it­ed the remark to either Mark Twain or Ten­nessee Williams. Accord­ing to Quote Inves­ti­ga­tor, no his­tor­i­cal evi­dence points to either man as the line’s orig­i­na­tor, though “the notion that only three cities in the U.S. were com­mend­able or dis­tinc­tive has a very long his­to­ry.”

In 1895, for instance, the then-pop­u­lar come­di­enne Ver­nona Jar­beau said that “there are only three cities in the Unit­ed States that I would care to live in, and one of them is San Fran­cis­co.” But she said it, one should note, to a San Fran­cis­co news­pa­per; who’s to say the crowd-pleas­ing instinct would­n’t have moti­vat­ed a trans­po­si­tion of her pref­er­ence else­where in Amer­i­ca? New Orleans, then in exis­tence for more than half a cen­tu­ry, pos­sessed an even longer-estab­lished dis­tinc­tive­ness. The embell­ished gal­leries of the French Colo­nial build­ings in the 1898 film clip above, iden­ti­fy the city at a glance.

Even more New Orlean­ian, of course, is what’s going on in the street: the city’s sig­na­ture fes­tiv­i­ty, the Mar­di Gras parade. “The film is not only the old­est mov­ing pic­ture of a New Orleans Mar­di Gras; it’s the old­est film of New Orleans,” writes Smithsonian.com’s Jane Reck­er. Recent­ly redis­cov­ered in Ams­ter­dam’s Eye Film­mu­se­um, the two-minute clip shows us — on detail-absorb­ing 68-mil­lime­ter film — that “one float is pineap­ple-themed, with rid­ers wear­ing hats shaped like pieces of pineap­ple and vests resem­bling pineap­ple skin. Anoth­er fea­tures the Rex, the ‘King of the Car­ni­val,’ sit­ting atop a float dec­o­rat­ed with tas­seled globes.”

“Con­tem­po­rary view­ers will sure­ly rec­og­nize the film’s parade as a Mar­di Gras cel­e­bra­tion, though the event fea­tures some dis­tinct dif­fer­ences from the one that takes over the Big Easy’s streets today,” writes Art­net’s Sarah Cas­cone. “There are, for exam­ple, no beads, no bar­ri­cades, no police. Onlook­ers don suits and top hats and para­sols, a far more for­mal approach than that tak­en by 21st-cen­tu­ry rev­el­ers.” Here in the 2020s their rev­el­ry has been inter­rupt­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, and only this year did New Orleans’ Mar­di Gras parade tra­di­tion resume. Per­haps it’s too much to hope that the dress sense of spec­ta­tors 124 years ago will make a come­back as well.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Only Known Footage of Louis Arm­strong in a Record­ing Stu­dio: Watch the Recent­ly Dis­cov­ered Film (1959)

Some Joy for Your Ears: New Orleans Brass Band Plays Life-Affirm­ing Cov­er of Mar­vin Gaye’s “Sex­u­al Heal­ing”

Louis Arm­strong Remem­bers How He Sur­vived the 1918 Flu Epi­dem­ic in New Orleans

When Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man Joined the Grate­ful Dead Onstage for Some Epic Impro­vi­sa­tion­al Jams: Hear a 1993 Record­ing

The Ser­i­al Killer Who Loved Jazz: The Infa­mous Sto­ry of the Axe­man of New Orleans (1919)

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Titanic Survivor Interviews: What It Was Like to Flee the Sinking Luxury Liner

in History | July 7th, 2022

Mil­lvinia Dean, the last sur­viv­ing pas­sen­ger of the RMS Titan­ic, died in 2009. She’d lived a full life of 97 years, but that meant that she’d been only two months old when the famous­ly lux­u­ri­ous and inno­v­a­tive ship hit the ice­berg that sent it to the bot­tom of the Atlantic in the mid­dle of its maid­en voy­age. Despite being human­i­ty’s last direct link to the Titan­ic, she would have retained no mem­o­ry of the ship or its sink­ing. That’s very much not the case with the sur­vivors inter­viewed in the 1970 British Pathé doc­u­men­tary footage above. One of them, Edith Rus­sell, remem­bers the Titan­ic as hav­ing been “so very for­mal.” The “cozi­ness” of oth­er ocean lin­ers, the “get-togeth­er feel­ing — it did­n’t exist.”

A celebri­ty styl­ist and Paris cor­re­spon­dent for Wom­en’s Wear Dai­ly, Rus­sell was trav­el­ing first-class: one state­room for her, and anoth­er for her lug­gage. Not so Gur­shon Cohen, who’d been “sleep­ing six in a bunk” down below. Unlike many of the Titan­ic’s third-class pas­sen­gers, pro­hib­it­ed as they were from enter­ing the upper decks, Cohen man­aged to find a place on a lifeboat (after jump­ing ship first).

What­ev­er the dif­fer­ences in their sit­u­a­tions, Rus­sell and Cohen had con­gru­ent mem­o­ries of the dis­as­ter, espe­cial­ly as regards the pop­u­lar notion that the ship’s band con­tin­ued per­form­ing until the bit­ter end. As Rus­sell puts it, “when peo­ple say that music played as the ship went down, that is a ghast­ly, hor­ri­ble lie.”

Eva Hart, inter­viewed in 1993, does recall hear­ing music — specif­i­cal­ly, a ren­di­tion of “Near My God to Thee” — right up until her escape. The vivid images she retained from the lifeboat also includ­ed the ship’s break­ing in half, an event wide­ly denied until it was proven decades there­after. You can hear more sto­ries of how the Titan­ic real­ly went down, as it were, from the 1956 and 1970 BBC inter­views with Kate Gilnagh Man­ning, Maude Louise Slo­combe, and Frank Pren­tice (the lat­ter two of whom were work­ing on the ship) just above. They all remem­ber the incon­gru­ous­ly “slight bump” of the impact, the “dead calm” of the sea, the per­ilous sight of lifeboats dan­gling 70 feet above the water — and the feel­ing of impos­si­bil­i­ty that the “unsink­able” Titan­ic could real­ly have met its end.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Titan­ic Sink in Real Time in a New 2‑Hour, 40 Minute Ani­ma­tion

The Titan­ic: Rare Footage of the Ship Before Dis­as­ter Strikes

How the Titan­ic Sank: James Cameron’s New CGI Ani­ma­tion

Real Inter­views with Peo­ple Who Lived in the 1800s

Watch 85,000 His­toric News­reel Films from British Pathé Free Online (1910–2008)

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Why You Should Read The Handmaid’s Tale: A Timely Animated Introduction

in Books, Current Affairs, Politics | July 6th, 2022

Prophe­cies are real­ly about now. In sci­ence fic­tion it’s always about now. What else could it be about? There is no future. There are many pos­si­bil­i­ties, but we do not know which one we are going to have.

– Mar­garet Atwood

There is no need to explain why Mar­garet Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale has gone from read­ing like a warn­ing of the near-future to an alle­go­ry of the present after the U.S. Supreme Court’s rul­ing in Dobbs v. Jack­son Women’s Health Orga­ni­za­tion. Atwood’s sto­ry revolves around the fic­tion­al Repub­lic of Gilead, which takes over the U.S. after a fer­til­i­ty cri­sis dec­i­mates the pop­u­la­tion. Overnight, the fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian theoc­ra­cy divides women into two broad class­es – Hand­maids: chat­tel who per­form the labor of forced birth through forced con­cep­tion; and the infer­tile who prop up the patri­ar­chal rul­ing class as wives, over­seers, or slave labor in the pol­lut­ed “colonies.”

It’s a bleak tale, a sto­ry far less about hero­ism than the TV series based on the book would have viewers–who haven’t read it–believe. (The 5th sea­son, slat­ed for this July, seems to have been delayed until Sep­tem­ber with­out expla­na­tion.) Why should we read The Hand­maid­’s Tale? Because it is not only a work of dystopi­an futur­ism, but also a nar­ra­tivized account of what has already hap­pened to women around the world through­out his­to­ry to the present. The nov­el is a prism through which to view the ways women have been oppressed through repro­duc­tive slav­ery with­out the sci-fi sce­nario of a pre­cip­i­tous loss of human fer­til­i­ty.

As Atwood has explained, “when I wrote The Hand­maid­’s Tale, noth­ing went into it that had not hap­pened in real life some­where at some time.” Some of the worst offens­es were not well-known. “Female gen­i­tal muti­la­tion was tak­ing place,” says Atwood, “but if I had put it in 1985 [when the nov­el was writ­ten] prob­a­bly peo­ple wouldn’t have known what I was talk­ing about. They do now.” But we can still choose to over­look the infor­ma­tion. “Ignor­ing isn’t the same as igno­rance,” Atwood says in the nov­el, “you have to work at it.” The quote opens the 2018 TED-Ed les­son by Nao­mi Mer­cer above on Atwood’s book, walk­ing us through its sources in his­to­ry.

The Hand­maid­’s Tale, the les­son points out, is an exam­ple of “Spec­u­la­tive Fic­tion,” a form of writ­ing con­cerned with “pos­si­ble futures.” This theme unites both utopi­an and dystopi­an nov­els. Atwood’s books trade in the lat­ter, but any read­er of the genre will tell you how quick­ly a more per­fect fic­tion­al union becomes a night­mare. The Cana­di­an writer has offered this lit­er­ary inevitabil­i­ty as an expla­na­tion for the mul­ti­ple crises of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy:

The real rea­son peo­ple expect so much of Amer­i­ca in mod­ern times is that it set out to be a utopia. That didn’t last very long. Nathaniel Hawthorne nailed it when he said the first thing they did when they got to Amer­i­ca was build a scaf­fold and a prison.

What Atwood does­n’t men­tion, as many crit­ics have point­ed out, are the slave pens and auc­tion hous­es, or the fact that Gilead close­ly resem­bles the slave-hold­ing Amer­i­can South in its theo­crat­ic patri­ar­chal Chris­t­ian hier­ar­chy and ulti­mate con­trol of wom­en’s bod­ies. And yet, the nov­el com­plete­ly side­steps race by hav­ing the Repub­lic of Gilead ship all of the coun­try’s Black peo­ple to the Mid­west (pre­sum­ably for forced labor). They are nev­er heard from again by the read­er.

This tac­tic has seemed irre­spon­si­ble to many crit­ics, as has the show’s side­step­ping through col­or­blind cast­ing, and the wear­ing of red cloaks and white bon­nets in imi­ta­tion of the book and show as a means of protest. “When we rely too heav­i­ly on ‘The Hand­maid­’s Tale,’ which ignores the pres­ence of race and racism,” says activist Ali­cia Sanchez Gill, “it real­ly dehu­man­izes and dis­miss­es our col­lec­tive expe­ri­ences of repro­duc­tive trau­ma.” Atwood’s “pos­si­ble future” pil­lages slav­ery’s past and con­ve­nient­ly gets rid of its descen­dants.

The trau­ma Gill ref­er­ences includes rape and forced birth, as well as the forced ster­il­iza­tions of the eugen­ics move­ment, car­ried out with the impri­matur of the Supreme Court (and con­tin­u­ing in recent cas­es). Kel­li Midg­ley, who found­ed Hand­maids Army DC, offers one expla­na­tion for using The Hand­maid­’s Tale as a protest sym­bol. Though she agrees to leave the cos­tumes at home if asked by orga­niz­ers, she says “we are try­ing to reach a broad­er audi­ence for peo­ple who need this mes­sage. We don’t need to tell Black women that their rights are endan­gered. They always have been.”

Maybe a new mes­sage after Dobbs v. Jack­son Wom­en’s Health Orga­ni­za­tion is that an assault on any­one’s rights threat­ens every­one. Or as Atwood wrote in a Cana­di­an Globe and Mail op-ed in 2018, “depriv­ing women of con­tra­cep­tive infor­ma­tion, repro­duc­tive rights, a liv­ing wage, and pre­na­tal and mater­nal care – as some states in the US want to do – is prac­ti­cal­ly a death sen­tence, and is a con­tra­ven­tion of basic human rights. But Gilead, being total­i­tar­i­an, does not respect uni­ver­sal human rights.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­garet Atwood Releas­es an Unburn­able Edi­tion of The Handmaid’s Tale, to Sup­port Free­dom of Expres­sion

Pret­ty Much Pop #10 Exam­ines Mar­garet Atwood’s Night­mare Vision: The Handmaid’s Tale

Hear Mar­garet Atwood’s Sto­ry “Stone Mat­tress,” Read by Author A. M. Homes 

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

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When Frank Lloyd Wright Designed a Doghouse, His Smallest Architectural Creation (1956)

in Architecture, History | July 6th, 2022

On your first day in archi­tec­ture school, you have to design a dog­house. Hav­ing nev­er set foot inside an archi­tec­ture school, I con­cede that the pre­vi­ous sen­tence may well be false, but you have to admit that it sounds plau­si­ble. As the sim­plest form of shel­ter in com­mon use across the world, the hum­ble dog­house presents to an aspir­ing archi­tect the most basic pos­si­ble test. If you can’t build one, what busi­ness do you have build­ing any­thing else? Yet it was with char­ac­ter­is­tic idio­syn­crasy that Frank Lloyd Wright, that most famous of all Amer­i­can archi­tects, took on the project of a dog­house only toward the end of his long life and career.

Images cour­tesy of the Marin Coun­ty Civic Cen­ter

“ ‘Eddie’s House’ is a dog­house designed gratis by Wright in 1956 to com­ple­ment a Uson­ian-style house he built on com­mis­sion for Robert and Glo­ria Berg­er between 1950 and 1951, in the Marin Coun­ty town of San Ansel­mo, Cal­i­for­nia,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Sarah Rose Sharp. The com­mis­sion, such as it was, came from the Berg­ers’ twelve-year-old son Jim. “I would appre­ci­ate it if you would design me a dog­house, which would be easy to build, but would go with our house,” he wrote to Wright, spec­i­fy­ing Eddie’s dimen­sions and offer­ing com­pen­sa­tion in the form of his paper-route mon­ey.

“A house for Eddie is an oppor­tu­ni­ty,” replied the archi­tect, and the fol­low­ing year — after fin­ish­ing up the pre­vi­ous project that had delayed him, the Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um — he sent Jim a lit­er­al back-of-the-enve­lope dia­gram. As explained in the brief video from Marin Coun­ty’s Youtube chan­nel above, that was stan­dard Wright prac­tice: the archi­tec­t’s rough draw­ings were then con­vert­ed into prop­er plans by his staff at Tal­iesin. “I want­ed it to be easy,” says the grown-up Berg­er. “It was­n’t. It was a night­mare, so my dad built it.” And as for Eddie, he nev­er actu­al­ly slept in it.

The Berg­ers’ gold­en retriev­er “cer­tain­ly wouldn’t be the first of Wright’s clients to be dis­ap­point­ed by some of the architect’s short­com­ings,” writes Sharp. “Appar­ent­ly, as with many of Wright’s designs, the roof to Eddie’s House leaked.” Nev­er­the­less, it’s become a beloved addi­tion to the Wright canon since Berg­er rebuilt it for Michael Min­er’s Roman­za: A Frank Lloyd Wright Doc­u­men­tary and sub­se­quent­ly donat­ed it to the coun­ty. To this day, the repli­ca of Wright’s small­est work remains on dis­play inside his largest one: the Marin Civic Cen­ter, a slight­ly lat­er and much more ambi­tious build­ing, but one not entire­ly lack­ing in fam­i­ly resem­blance to Eddie’s House.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed con­tent:

12 Famous Frank Lloyd Wright Hous­es Offer Vir­tu­al Tours: Hol­ly­hock House, Tal­iesin West, Falling­wa­ter & More

Build Wood­en Mod­els of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Great Build­ing: The Guggen­heim, Uni­ty Tem­ple, John­son Wax Head­quar­ters & More

How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Son Invent­ed Lin­coln Logs, “America’s Nation­al Toy” (1916)

The Mod­ernist Gas Sta­tions of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe

Steve Mar­tin Per­forms Stand-Up Com­e­dy for Dogs (1973)

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Watch the Hugely-Ambitious Soviet Film Adaptation of War and Peace Free Online (1966–67)

in Film | July 5th, 2022

On the ques­tion of whether nov­els can suc­cess­ful­ly be turned into films, the cinephile jury remains out. In the best cas­es a film­mak­er takes a lit­er­ary work and rein­vents it almost entire­ly in accor­dance with his own vision, which usu­al­ly requires a book of mod­est or unre­al­ized ambi­tions. This method would­n’t do, in oth­er words, for War and Peace. Yet Tol­stoy’s epic nov­el, whose sheer his­tor­i­cal, dra­mat­ic, and philo­soph­i­cal scope has made it one of the most acclaimed works in the his­to­ry of lit­er­a­ture, has been adapt­ed over and over again: for radio, for the stage, as a 22-minute Yes song, and at least four times for the screen.

The first War and Peace film, direct­ed by and star­ring the pio­neer­ing Russ­ian film­mak­er Vladimir Gardin, appeared in 1915. Japan­ese activist film­mak­er Fumio Kamei came out with his own ver­sion just over three decades lat­er. Only in the nine­teen-fifties, with large-scale lit­er­ary adap­ta­tion still in vogue, did the mighty hand of Hol­ly­wood take up the book. The project went back to 1941, when pro­duc­er Alexan­der Kor­da tried to put it togeth­er under the direc­tion of Orson Welles, fresh off Cit­i­zen Kane.

For bet­ter or worse, Welles’ ver­sion would sure­ly have proven more mem­o­rable than the one that opened in 1956: King Vidor’s War and Peace expe­di­ent­ly hacked out great swathes of Tol­stoy’s nov­el, result­ing in a lush but essen­tial­ly unfaith­ful adap­ta­tion. This was still ear­ly in the Cold War, a strug­gle con­duct­ed through the amass­ing of soft pow­er as well as hard. “It is a mat­ter of hon­or for the Sovi­et cin­e­ma indus­try,” declared an open let­ter pub­lished in dthe Sovi­et press, “to pro­duce a pic­ture which will sur­pass the Amer­i­can-Ital­ian one in its artis­tic mer­it and authen­tic­i­ty.”

The gears of the Sovi­et Min­istry of Cul­ture were already turn­ing to get a supe­ri­or War and Peace film into pro­duc­tion — supe­ri­or in scale, but far supe­ri­or in feal­ty to Tol­stoy’s words. This put a for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge in front of Sergei Bon­darchuk, who was select­ed as its direc­tor and who, like Gardin before him, even­tu­al­ly cast him­self in the star­ring role of Count Pyotr “Pierre” Kir­illovich Bezukhov. As a pro­duc­tion of Mos­film, nation­al stu­dio of the Sovi­et Union, War and Peace could mar­shal an unheard-of vol­ume of resources to put ear­ly nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Rus­sia onscreen. Its fur­ni­ture, fix­tures, and oth­er objects came from more than forty muse­ums, and its thou­sands of uni­forms and pieces of mil­i­tary hard­ware from the Napoleon­ic Wars were recre­at­ed by hand.

The most expen­sive pro­duc­tion ever made in the Sovi­et Union, War and Peace was also rumored to be the most expen­sive pro­duc­tion in the his­to­ry of world cin­e­ma to date. With a total run­time exceed­ing sev­en hours, it was released in four parts through­out 1966 an 1967. Now, thanks to Mos­film’s Youtube chan­nel, you can watch them all free on Youtube. 55 years lat­er, its pro­duc­tion val­ues still radi­ate from each and every frame, some­thing you can appre­ci­ate even if you know noth­ing more of War and Peace than that — as a non-Russ­ian film­mak­er of com­par­a­tive­ly mod­est pro­duc­tion sen­si­bil­i­ties once said — it’s about Rus­sia.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Why Should We Read Tolstoy’s War and Peace (and Fin­ish It)? A TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion Makes the Case

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Leo Tol­stoy, and How His Great Nov­els Can Increase Your Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence

The Art of Leo Tol­stoy: See His Draw­ings in the War & Peace Man­u­script & Oth­er Lit­er­ary Texts

Free: Watch Bat­tle­ship Potemkin and Oth­er Films by Sergei Eisen­stein, the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Sovi­et Film­mak­er

Free Online: Watch Stalk­er, Mir­ror, and Oth­er Mas­ter­works by Sovi­et Auteur Andrei Tarkovsky

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

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Mama Cass and John Denver Sing a Lovely Duet of “Leaving On a Jet Plane” (1972)

in Music, Politics | July 5th, 2022

My issue is that it’s all very well to sit back and com­plain but when it’s your coun­try you have a respon­si­bil­i­ty. — Cass Elliot

What could be more heav­en­ly than Cass Elliot of The Mamas & The Papas and singer-song­writer John Den­ver har­mo­niz­ing on Denver’s “Leav­ing on a Jet Plane,” a tune many con­ceived of as a protest to the Viet­nam War, owing large­ly to folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary’s cov­er ver­sion.

Maybe some vot­er reg­is­tra­tion added to the mix?

Before break­ing into their duet on the late night TV musi­cal vari­ety show The Mid­night Spe­cial, Den­ver invit­ed Mama Cass to share a few words on her efforts to get out the vote in a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion year:

I’ve been trav­el­ing around the coun­try for the past year or so, talk­ing on a lot of col­lege cam­pus­es and try­ing to find out exact­ly what peo­ple are think­ing, and the thing that’s impressed me the most is, there is still in this coun­try, believe it or not, after all the talk, a tremen­dous amount of apa­thy on the part of peo­ple who maybe don’t like the way things are going and maybe want to change it, but don’t do any­thing about it, y’know?

It was August 19, 1972. The war in Viet­nam and the upcom­ing con­test between Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon and his Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger George McGov­ern were the top sto­ries. June’s Water­gate break in was a mount­ing con­cern.

Ear­li­er in the day, the New York Times report­ed that “Sen­a­tor George McGov­ern expects (South Viet­namese) Pres­i­dent Nguyễn Văn Thiệu and his “cohorts” to flee Saigon into exile and a Com­mu­nist-dom­i­nat­ed coali­tion to take con­trol of South Viet­nam if Mr. McGov­ern is elect­ed Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States on Nov. 7.”

Cass Elliot, a McGov­ern sup­port­er, had become much more vocal about her polit­i­cal activism fol­low­ing the 1968 break up of The Mamas & The Papas, as in this inter­view with Rolling Stone:

I think every­body who has a brain should get involved in pol­i­tics.  Work­ing with­in. Not crit­i­ciz­ing it from the out­side.  Become an active par­tic­i­pant, no mat­ter how fee­ble you think the effort is.  I saw in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­ven­tion in Chica­go that there were more peo­ple inter­est­ed in what I was inter­est­ed in than I believed pos­si­ble.  It made me want to work.  It made me feel my opin­ion and ideas were not futile, that there would be room in an orga­nized move­ment of pol­i­tics for me to voice myself. 

She remained diplo­mat­ic on the Mid­night Spe­cial, telling view­ers that “I don’t think it’s so impor­tant who you vote for, you vote for who you believe in, but the impor­tant thing is to vote,” though it’s hard to imag­ine that any­one tun­ing in from home would mis­take her for a Nixon gal.

Ear­li­er in the year she had ush­ered at the Four For McGov­ern fundrais­ing con­cert at the LA Forum, was in the audi­ence at Madi­son Square War­ren Beatty’s Togeth­er for McGov­ern con­cert Gar­den, and attend­ed a par­ty Amer­i­cans Abroad for McGov­ern held in Lon­don.

Short­ly after the elec­tion (SPOILER: Her man lost), dur­ing an appear­ance on The Mike Dou­glas Show, above, she inti­mat­ed that she might be open to a career shift:

 I think I would like to be a Sen­a­tor or some­thing in twen­ty years.  I don’t think I real­ly know enough yet. I’m just 30 now and I would­n’t even be eli­gi­ble to run for office for anoth­er five years.  But I have a lot of feel­ings about things.  I know the way I would like to see things for this coun­try and in my trav­els, when I talk to peo­ple, every­body wants pret­ty much the same thing:  peace, enough jobs, no pover­ty and good edu­ca­tion.  And I’ve learned a lot.  It’s fun­ny.  So many peo­ple in show busi­ness go into pol­i­tics, and I used to say ‘What the heck do they know about it?’  But when you trav­el around, you real­ly do get to feel–not to be cliche–the pulse of the coun­try and what peo­ple want.  I’m con­cerned and it’s not good to be uncon­cerned and just sit there.

Lis­ten­ing to her dis­cuss Water­gate dur­ing her final vis­it to The Mike Dou­glas Show, short­ly before her 1974 death, real­ly makes us wish she was still here with us.

What we wouldn’t give to hear this out­spo­ken polit­i­cal observer’s take on the sit­u­a­tion our coun­try now finds itself in, espe­cial­ly with anoth­er five decades of expe­ri­ence under her belt.

Per­haps there’s an alter­nate uni­verse in which Cass Elliot is Pres­i­dent.

If you haven’t yet reg­is­tered to vote, now would be a great time to do so. It may not be too late to par­tic­i­pate in your state’s pri­ma­ry elec­tions. You know that’s what Cass would have want­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Tom Jones Per­forms “Long Time Gone” with Cros­by, Stills, Nash & Young–and Blows the Band & Audi­ence Away (1969)

Joni Mitchell Sings an Aching­ly Pret­ty Ver­sion of “Both Sides Now” on the Mama Cass TV Show (1969)

Janis Joplin & Tom Jones Bring the House Down in an Unlike­ly Duet of “Raise Your Hand” (1969)

- 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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The Timeline of World War II (Month by Month) Told With Scenes Made from Dozens of WWII Movies

in Film, History | July 4th, 2022

We all learned a bit about the Sec­ond World War in school, or per­haps more than a bit. But for a great many of us, what we know of that peri­od of his­to­ry comes less from teach­ers and text­books than it does from movies. World War II as a cin­e­mat­ic genre has exist­ed since the ear­ly years of World War II itself, and at this point it has pro­duced so many films that not even the most avid his­tor­i­cal­ly-mind­ed cinephile could watch them all. Many such pic­tures, of course, take enor­mous lib­er­ties with their source mate­r­i­al. But if you con­cen­trate on just the most accu­rate parts of the most acclaimed movies about World War II, you can piece togeth­er a rea­son­ably truth­ful por­tray­al of its events.

Such is the premise, at any rate, of the video above, “Time­line of WW2 in Films.” Cre­at­ed by Youtu­ber Salokin, it arranges clips from dozens of films released over the past half-cen­tu­ry — Pat­ton, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Bat­tle of Britain, Dunkirk — in his­tor­i­cal order.

Open­ing with footage from Roman Polan­ski’s The Pianist refer­ring to the inva­sion of Poland in Sep­tem­ber 1939, it goes on to cov­er that year by draw­ing from the depic­tion of Sovi­et-Japan­ese bor­der con­flicts like the Bat­tles of Khalkhin Go and Nomon­han in Kang Je-gyu’s My Way, then from the depic­tion of the tit­u­lar fights on the Kare­lian Isth­mus in Pekka Parikka’s The Win­ter War.

As Kore­an and Finnish pro­duc­tions, respec­tive­ly, My Way and The Win­ter War offer per­spec­tives on World War II dif­fer­ent from the Amer­i­can one tak­en by Hol­ly­wood movies — Hol­ly­wood hav­ing once been the only motion-pic­ture indus­try with the resources to re-cre­ate the war in a con­vinc­ing man­ner. But the devel­op­ment of glob­al film pro­duc­tion in recent decades has also giv­en rise to wide­ly seen World War II movies from coun­tries like Aus­tralia, Ger­many, Den­mark, and Rus­sia, to name a few coun­tries whose films appear in this video. Not all of them agree per­fect­ly with his­to­ry as taught in the Unit­ed States, but then, Amer­i­can World War II movie enthu­si­asts have unre­solv­able con­flicts of their own: do you pre­fer Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan, for instance, or The Thin Red Line?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Inno­v­a­tive Film Visu­al­izes the Destruc­tion of World War II: Now Avail­able in 7 Lan­guages

Watch World War II Rage Across Europe in a 7 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1939 to 1945

Watch Footage of the Allies Rolling Through a Defeat­ed Ger­man Town in April, 1945: Restored & Col­orized with AI

Time Trav­el Back to Tokyo After World War II, and See the City in Remark­ably High-Qual­i­ty 1940s Video

Jean-Luc Godard’s Breath­less: How World War II Changed Cin­e­ma & Helped Cre­ate the French New Wave

Quentin Tarantino’s World War II Read­ing List

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The Young Punk Rockers The Linda Lindas Play a Tiny Desk Concert Gig (at the Public Library)

in Music | July 1st, 2022

The last we checked in with teenage girl pow­er-punk band The Lin­da Lin­das, they were tear­ing up the Los Ange­les Pub­lic Library (Cypress Park branch) with their lock­down-hit “Racist, Sex­ist Boy.” After eleven-year-old drum­mer Mila de Garza recount­ed the xeno­pho­bic encounter that led to the song, the band unleashed some true noisy angst befit­ting a group twice their age. It was the song of rage we need­ed at the time, the clip went viral, and they soon got a record deal. Along the way, they’ve appeared in Amy Poehler’s doc­u­men­tary, con­tributed to a track by Best Coast, opened for Biki­ni Kill, played Jim­my Kim­mel Live, and received acco­lades from Thurston Moore and Tom Morel­lo of Rage Against the Machine.

Just over a year lat­er, and The Lin­da Lin­das are back in the library as part of NPR’s Tiny Desk con­cert series. Usu­al­ly Tiny Desk gigs fea­tures an artist play­ing in the very cramped offices of the radio sta­tion, but as things are still not 100% safe, The Lin­da Lin­das opt­ed for the place they know well, this time play­ing at the Los Ange­les Cen­tral Library branch.

This band is no one-off. The de Garza sis­ters, along with their cousin Eloise Wong and friend Bela Salazar, formed in 2018 and have been play­ing ever since. Com­pare the step up in con­fi­dence and band inter­play on this new­er ver­sion of “Racist, Sex­ist Boy,” with which they close the set.

Before that The Lin­da Lin­das per­form songs from their new album Grow­ing Up, includ­ing the pop­py Span­ish bal­lad “Cuán­tas Veces”, the pop-punk “Talk­ing to Myself,” and the title track. The band’s lyrics are hon­est, absent pre­ten­sion, and while many of the con­cerns are uni­ver­sal, the album is def­i­nite­ly born out of COVID-era anx­i­ety. If you’re won­der­ing how these years are affect­ing those com­ing of age at this time, the album is essen­tial.

And, hey kids, there’s still avail­able (not on the live playlist but as a sin­gle on band­camp) “Nino,” a har­mo­ny-filled ode to their pet cat.

By the way, there aren’t many oth­er rock bands play­ing in libraries, but we did find one while search­ing the inter­tubes: it’s The Clash’s Mick Jones play­ing a solo elec­tric set of his hits. It’s just one more reminder to sup­port your local library—you nev­er know who might turn up.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Riot Grrrl Move­ment Cre­at­ed a Rev­o­lu­tion in Rock & Punk

Fear of a Female Plan­et: Kim Gor­don (Son­ic Youth) on Why Rus­sia and the US Need a Pussy Riot

Judy!: 1993 Judith But­ler Fanzine Gives Us An Irrev­er­ent Punk-Rock Take on the Post-Struc­tural­ist Gen­der The­o­rist

Watch 450 NPR Tiny Desk Con­certs: Inti­mate Per­for­mances from The Pix­ies, Adele, Wilco, Yo-Yo Ma & Many More

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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Sir Ben Kingsley Reads a Letter Written by Gandhi to Hitler (in the Voice of Mahatma Gandhi)

in History, Letters | July 1st, 2022

Sev­er­al years before Indi­an inde­pen­dence as World War loomed, Mahat­ma Gand­hi found he had lit­tle sway in inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics even as he built his move­ment at home. The phi­los­o­phy of satya­gra­ha did not sound noble to the British in 1939, for exam­ple, when the Indi­an leader wrote a let­ter exhort­ing them to let the Ger­mans take their coun­try, their homes, and even their lives rather than fight back. That same year, he wrote to Hitler, address­ing him as “Dear Friend” and writ­ing, “It is quite clear that you are today the one per­son in the world who can pre­vent a war which may reduce human­i­ty to a sav­age state.”

Gand­hi’s first 1939 let­ter to Hitler implies that the Führer was the only world leader who want­ed such a war. The Indi­an leader ful­ly under­stood the stakes. “My sym­pa­thies are all with the Jews,” he’d writ­ten in a 1938 arti­cle. “If there ever could be a jus­ti­fi­able war, in the name of and for human­i­ty, war against Ger­many to pre­vent the wan­ton per­se­cu­tion of a whole race would be com­plete­ly jus­ti­fied.” Still, he con­clud­ed, “I do not believe in any war.” He stuck to his prin­ci­ples even after Ger­many’s inva­sion of Poland in 1939.

“Not deterred by the out­break of war,” Alexan­der LaCasse writes at the Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, “Gand­hi wrote to Hitler a sec­ond time.” Just above, you can see Sir Ben Kings­ley read that let­ter, in char­ac­ter as Gand­hi and per­haps sound­ing much like Gand­hi did when read­ing his let­ters aloud. Gand­hi “took cor­re­spon­dence very seri­ous­ly,” Nick Owen writes, and he “wrote — and was writ­ten to by — almost any­one.” In this much longer let­ter from 1940, Gand­hi extols the prac­ti­cal virtues of non-vio­lence and attempts some moral rea­son­ing:

If not the British, some oth­er pow­er will cer­tain­ly improve upon your method and beat you with your own weapon. You are leav­ing no lega­cy to your peo­ple of which they would feel proud. They can­not take pride in a recital of a cru­el deed, how­ev­er skill­ful­ly planned. I, there­fore, appeal to you in the name of human­i­ty to stop the war.

“There is no evi­dence to sug­gest Hitler ever respond­ed to,” or even read, “either of Gand­hi’s let­ters,” writes LaCasse. And maybe lit­tle evi­dence that Gand­hi expect­ed a response. “I am aware that your view of life regards such spo­li­a­tions as vir­tu­ous acts,” he writes. “But we have been taught from child­hood to regard them as acts degrad­ing human­i­ty.” He con­tin­ues to pro­fess Hitler a friend, writ­ing “I own no foes. My busi­ness in life has been for the past 33 years to enlist the friend­ship of the whole of human­i­ty.”

Before his death in 1948, Gand­hi called the Holo­caust “the great­est crime of our time.” Accord­ing to a biog­ra­ph­er, he also added, “the Jews should have offered them­selves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown them­selves into the sea from cliffs. It would have aroused the world and the peo­ple of Ger­many.” Had he sug­gest­ed this in a let­ter to Europe’s Jews, it is unlike­ly they would have been per­suad­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Jung Psy­cho­an­a­lyzes Hitler: “He’s the Uncon­scious of 78 Mil­lion Ger­mans.” “With­out the Ger­man Peo­ple He’d Be Noth­ing” (1938)

When Mahat­ma Gand­hi Met Char­lie Chap­lin (1931)

Mahat­ma Gandhi’s List of the 7 Social Sins; or Tips on How to Avoid Liv­ing the Bad Life

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

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Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro Is Getting Adapted for the Stage by The Royal Shakespeare Company & Jim Henson’s Creature Shop

in Animation, Film, Theatre | July 1st, 2022

The films of Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li have won immense world­wide acclaim, in large part because they so ful­ly inhab­it their medi­um. Their char­ac­ters, their sto­ries, their worlds: all can come ful­ly to life only in ani­ma­tion. Still, it’s true that some of their mate­r­i­al did orig­i­nate in oth­er forms. The pre-Ghi­b­li break­out fea­ture Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind, for instance, began as a com­ic book writ­ten and drawn by Miyaza­ki (who at first laid down the con­di­tion that it not be adapt­ed for the screen). Four years lat­er, by the time of My Neigh­bor Totoro, the nature of Ghi­b­li’s visions had become insep­a­ra­ble from that of ani­ma­tion itself.

Now, almost three and a half decades after Totoro’s orig­i­nal release, the pro­duc­tion of a stage ver­sion is well under­way. Play­bill’s Raven Brun­ner reports that the show “will open in Lon­don’s West End at The Bar­bi­can the­atre for a 15-week engage­ment Octo­ber 8‑January 21, 2023.

The pro­duc­tion will be pre­sent­ed by the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny and exec­u­tive pro­duc­er Joe Hisaishi.” Japan’s most famous film com­pos­er, Hisaishi scored Totoro as well as all of Miyaza­k­i’s oth­er Ghi­b­li films so far, includ­ing Por­co Rosso, Princess Mononoke, and Spir­it­ed Away (itself adapt­ed for the stage in Japan ear­li­er this year).

As you can see in the video just above, the RSC pro­duc­tion of Totoro also involves Jim Hen­son’s Crea­ture Shop. “The pup­pets being built at Crea­ture Shop are based on designs cre­at­ed by Basil Twist, one of the UK’s most inno­v­a­tive pup­peteers,” writes Dead­line’s Baz Bamigboye, and they’ll be sup­ple­ment­ed by the work of anoth­er mas­ter, “Mervyn Mil­lar, of Britain’s cut­ting-edge Sig­nif­i­cant Object pup­pet stu­dio.” Even such an assem­bly of pup­pet-mak­ing exper­tise will find it a for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge to re-cre­ate the denizens of the enchant­ed coun­try­side in which Totoro’s young pro­tag­o­nists find them­selves — to say noth­ing of the tit­u­lar wood spir­it him­self, with all his mass, mis­chief, and over­all benev­o­lence. As for how they’re rig­ging up the cat bus, Ghi­b­li fans will have to wait until next year to find out.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Films of Hayao Miyaza­ki Cel­e­brat­ed in a Glo­ri­ous Con­cert Arranged by Film Com­pos­er Joe Hisaishi

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Pro­duc­er Toshio Suzu­ki Teach­es You How to Draw Totoro in Two Min­utes

Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets in Vin­tage Primer From 1969

Build Your Own Minia­ture Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice & More

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Tan­ta­liz­ing Con­cept Art for Its New Theme Park, Open­ing in Japan in 2022

Hayao Miyaza­ki, The Mind of a Mas­ter: A Thought­ful Video Essay Reveals the Dri­ving Forces Behind the Animator’s Incred­i­ble Body of Work

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Take Graphic Design Courses to Launch Your Career as a Graphic Designer, Video Game Designer, UI Designer & More

in Design, Online Courses | June 30th, 2022

What can you do with graph­ic design skills? More and more, it seems, as emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies dri­ve new apps, soft­ware, and games. New design chal­lenges are every­where, from human-machine inter­faces, to 3D mod­el­ing in video games and ani­mat­ed films, to re-imag­in­ing clas­sic designs in print and on screen. In addi­tion to tra­di­tion­al jobs like art direc­tor, graph­ic design­er, pro­duc­tion artist, and ani­ma­tor, the past few years have seen a sharp rise in demand for User Expe­ri­ence (UX) and User Inter­face (UI) design­ers, roles that require a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent cre­ative and tech­ni­cal skill sets.

You could get a four-year degree in design to work in one of these fields, or you could take a Cours­era Spe­cial­iza­tion and be one step clos­er. Cours­era has met the demand for new job skills and tech edu­ca­tion by part­ner­ing with top arts insti­tu­tions and uni­ver­si­ties to offer online cours­es at low cost. All of these cours­es grant cer­tifi­cates that show poten­tial employ­ers you’re ready to put your learn­ing to use. If careers in art and con­tem­po­rary design, graph­ic design, web user expe­ri­ence and inter­face design, or video game design appeal to you, you can learn those skills in the five cer­tifi­cate-grant­i­ng Spe­cial­iza­tion pro­grams below.

Graph­ic design­ers can choose to be as spe­cial­ized or gen­er­al­ized as they like, but as in all cre­ative fields, they need a thor­ough under­stand­ing of the basics. A Cours­era Spe­cial­iza­tion is a series of cours­es intend­ed to lead stu­dents to mas­tery, build­ing on the his­to­ry and foun­da­tions of the field. You can enroll for free and try out any of the Spe­cial­iza­tions for 7 days. After that, you’ll be charged between $39-$49 per month until you com­plete the cours­es in a Spe­cial­iza­tion. (Finan­cial aid is avail­able).

The excit­ing Spe­cial­iza­tions from CALARTS and the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art will bring you many steps clos­er to a new career, or maybe even a new per­son­al pas­sion project.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Unveils a Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing & E‑Commerce Cer­tifi­cate: 7 Cours­es Will Help Pre­pare Stu­dents for an Entry-Lev­el Job in 6 Months       

Google & Cours­era Launch Career Cer­tifi­cates That Pre­pare Stu­dents for Jobs in 6 Months: Data Ana­lyt­ics, Project Man­age­ment and UX Design

Become a Project Man­ag­er With­out a Col­lege Degree with Google’s Project Man­age­ment Cer­tifi­cate

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

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