“Glory to the Conquerors of the Universe!”: Propaganda Posters from the Soviet Space Race (1958–1963)

in Art, Design, History | August 28th, 2013

conquer space

Walk­ing around L.A. just yes­ter­day, I noticed new ban­ners embla­zoned with illus­tra­tions tout­ing sub­way sta­tions now under con­struc­tion. In bold, bright col­ors, they deliv­er clear, ambi­tious imagery of a bright future ahead: ded­i­cat­ed builders, focused stu­dents, noble work­ing com­muters, surg­ing trains. Why, I thought, those look a bit like Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da! I had no polit­i­cal com­par­isons in mind, only aes­thet­ic ones, and this Retro­naut post shows off many per­fect exam­ples of the Cold War-era Russ­ian posters the Los Ange­les Metro’s brought to my mind. They cap­ture the imag­i­na­tion by exud­ing even more intense sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, edu­ca­tion­al, and social opti­mism — and doing so in even more visu­al detail — than I’d remem­bered.

And boy, speak­ing of ambi­tion: “From student’s mod­els to space­ships!” “To the Sun! To the stars!” “Glo­ry to the con­querors of the uni­verse!” Chil­dren inclined to accept these glo­ri­ous slo­gans and the rap­tur­ous imagery they accom­pa­ny could not pos­si­bly fail to believe that, thor­ough­ly edu­cat­ed by their coun­try, their gen­er­a­tion would go on to ush­er in a new galaxy-span­ning order of peace, pros­per­i­ty, and social­ism. Yet we in the rest of the world now know of the bore­dom, cyn­i­cism, and oppres­sion that attend­ed many Sovi­et cit­i­zens’ every­day lives. A Cold War-spe­cial­ist col­lege his­to­ry pro­fes­sor of mine liked to tell a sto­ry about a trip to Moscow he took in the six­ties, on which he kept see­ing ado­les­cents with noth­ing more pro­duc­tive to do than open­ly chug­ging vod­ka on street cor­ners.  Yet, see­ing posters like these, you sim­ply want to believe, just like I want to believe in the exten­sion of Los Ange­les’ sub­way — which, at times, seems about as plau­si­ble as the con­quer­ing of out­er space.

“From student’s mod­els to space­ships!”

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“Glo­ry to the work­ers of Sovi­et sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy!”

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“I am hap­py — this is my work join­ing the work of my repub­lic”

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“In the 20th cen­tu­ry the rock­ets race to the stars”

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Vis­it Retro­naut for many more space pro­pa­gan­da posters from the Sovi­et era.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“First Orbit”: Cel­e­brat­ing 50th Anniver­sary of Yuri Gagaran’s Space Flight

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

How to Spot a Com­mu­nist Using Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism: A 1955 Man­u­al from the U.S. Mil­i­tary

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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John Lennon’s Raw, Soul-Baring Vocals From the Beatles’ ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ (1969)

in Music | August 28th, 2013

“When you’re drown­ing,” John Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1970, “you don’t say, ‘I would be incred­i­bly pleased if some­one would have the fore­sight to notice me drown­ing and come and help me.’  You just scream.”

“Don’t Let Me Down” is Lennon’s anguished scream to his lover, Yoko Ono. When he and the Bea­t­les record­ed the song dur­ing the Let It Be ses­sions in late Jan­u­ary of 1969, Lennon asked Ringo Starr to hit the cym­bal very hard at the begin­ning, to “give me the courage to come scream­ing in.”

The Bea­t­les were in the process of break­ing apart when Lennon wrote the song. It was a dark time in my ways, and he was becom­ing more and more depen­dent upon Ono for per­son­al and cre­ative sup­port. As Paul McCart­ney told writer Bar­ry Miles in Many Years From Now:

It was a very tense peri­od: John was with Yoko and had esca­lat­ed to hero­in and all the accom­pa­ny­ing para­noias and he was putting him­self out on a limb. I think that as much as it excit­ed and amused him, at the same time it secret­ly ter­ri­fied him. So ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ was a gen­uine plea, ‘Don’t let me down, please, what­ev­er you do. I’m out on this limb, I know I’m doing all this stuff, just don’t let me down.’ It was say­ing to Yoko, ‘I’m real­ly step­ping out of line on this one. I’m real­ly let­ting my vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty be seen, so you must not let me down.’ I think it was a gen­uine cry for help.

You can get a strong sense of Lennon’s anguish and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty when you lis­ten to the iso­lat­ed vocal track above. And for the full arrange­ment, includ­ing Star­r’s cym­bal-crash near the begin­ning and Bil­ly Pre­ston’s bril­liant elec­tric piano play­ing, see below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mick Jag­ger Tells the Sto­ry Behind ‘Gimme Shel­ter’ and Mer­ry Clayton’s Haunt­ing Back­ground Vocals

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

Kurt Cobain’s Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track From ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it,’ 1991

The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig Filmed in Jan­u­ary 1969

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T.S. Eliot’s Radical Poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Read by Anthony Hopkins and Eliot Himself

in Literature, Poetry | August 28th, 2013

T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” con­tains some of the most unfor­get­table images in mod­ern poet­ry: the “pair of ragged claws / Scut­tling across the floors of silent seas”; the yel­low fog that “rubs its back upon the win­dow panes”; the evening “spread out against the sky / Like a patient ether­ized upon a table.” The poem’s sud­den jux­ta­po­si­tions dis­rupt­ed and dis­man­tled the staid poet­ic con­ven­tions of its time. Like his beloved meta­phys­i­cal mod­el John Donne, Eliot pushed the resources of lit­er­ary lan­guage to their out­er extremes, while still main­tain­ing a respect­ful rela­tion­ship with tra­di­tion­al form, deploy­ing Shake­speare­an pen­tame­ter lines whose music is decep­tive, since they are the vehi­cles of such strange, neu­rot­ic con­tent.

“Prufrock,” first pub­lished in 1915 in Poet­ry magazine—at the insti­ga­tion of lit­er­ary impre­sario Ezra Pound—caused a shock at its first appear­ance. Stu­dents today are apt to remem­ber it as a bewil­der­ing swirl of references—to Dante, the Bible, Shakespeare—and as sar­don­ic com­men­tary on what Eliot saw as the pro­found­ly ener­vat­ed and impo­tent con­di­tion of mod­ern man (and of him­self). It is a daunt­ing study, to be sure, but the poem’s first read­ers and crit­ics tend­ed to dis­miss it as either shock­ing­ly anar­chic or triv­ial and mean­der­ing.

By 1947, “Prufrock” was rec­og­nized as a mod­ernist clas­sic, and Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty record­ed Eliot read­ing the poem (above). His thin voice may not car­ry the weight of the poem’s dense allu­sive grandeur, so we have Antho­ny Hop­kins at the top of the post read­ing “Prufrock” as well. Hop­kins seems to rush through the poem a bit, cap­tur­ing, per­haps, the ner­vous ener­gy of its title character’s psy­chic anguish.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

T.S. Eliot Reads His Mod­ernist Mas­ter­pieces “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Ezra Pound’s Fiery 1939 Read­ing of His Ear­ly Poem, ‘Ses­ti­na: Altaforte’

Lis­ten to T.S. Eliot Recite His Late Mas­ter­piece, the Four Quar­tets

Find works by Eliot in our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books

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

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Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon Turned Into a Radio Play

in Music, Radio | August 28th, 2013

We told you all about it last Fri­day. The BBC planned to air a radio play writ­ten by Sir Tom Stop­pard based on The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floy­d’s clas­sic album released 40 years ago. The play aired Mon­day night, and if you missed it, you have a few scant days to stream the pro­duc­tion for free online. Don’t dil­ly-dal­ly. You can start lis­ten­ing to Dark­side now and be sure not to miss the trip­py ani­mat­ed visu­als that accom­pa­ny the audio. It’s also avail­able on Spo­ti­fy for free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Brave New World for Free: Dra­ma­tized Ver­sion Read by Aldous Hux­ley

Isaac Asimov’s Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sic, The Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy, Dra­ma­tized for Radio (1973)

A Radio Play Based on Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. Com­ing Mon­day. Watch the Trail­er

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

in Archives, Film, History, Internet Archive, Media, Radio, Television | August 27th, 2013

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Click images for larg­er ver­sions

Film buffs and schol­ars have a new cache at their fin­ger­tips. The Media His­to­ry Dig­i­tal Library has made hun­dreds of thou­sands of pages of film and broad­cast­ing his­to­ry avail­able in a search­able dig­i­tal archive they’ve called Lantern, an open access, inter­ac­tive library.

With help from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin, Madi­son Depart­ment of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Arts, MHDL made their entire col­lec­tion of Busi­ness Screen, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, Pho­to­play and Vari­ety—among oth­er magazines—available for text search­es for the first time.

In 2011 a group of film schol­ars devel­oped MHDL, an updat­ed resource for his­to­ri­ans used to read­ing through micro­film archives of cin­e­ma and broad­cast jour­nals. At the time, their archive was a gold­mine, pulling togeth­er the boun­ty of print­ed mate­r­i­al chron­i­cling the film indus­try. Now they’ve made it bet­ter, with more refined search, fil­ter­ing and sort­ing tools. Plus you can down­load images and texts.

It may have been a rite of pas­sage for film stu­dents to sequester them­selves in a dark library car­rel and scroll through micro­fiche reels of Mov­ing Pic­ture World, an influ­en­tial trade jour­nal until 1927, but Lantern brings ven­er­a­ble movie mag­a­zines dat­ing up to the ear­ly ’70s into the light of day where any­one can access the images and arti­cles of major trade and fan mag­a­zines, free of charge.

An ear­ly on-set chat rag, Film Fun, a mag­a­zine about “the hap­py side of the movies,” brought read­ers “inti­mate gos­sip of the pro­fes­sion told by the actors and actress­es ‘between the reels.’” The images are gor­geous.

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In the twen­ties a new ama­teur movie mak­ing indus­try thrived, with equip­ment and even tour pack­ages avail­able for buffs who want­ed to tour exot­ic locales like Cuba with cam­eras and learn to shoot and pre­serve 16 mm motion pic­tures. A boom in DIY film mag­a­zines like Ama­teur Movie Mak­ers tar­get­ed the ear­ly adopters.

amateurmoviemake12amat_0048

And lest we think that pulp celebri­ty mags like Peo­ple and Us are low­er brow than those of yes­ter­year, we should think again. I’m not sure about you, but I’m not sure four-times-mar­ried Bette Davis makes the best love advice colum­nist. But appar­ent­ly Pho­to­play mag­a­zine did.

photoplay122phot_0588

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Three Great Films Star­ring Char­lie Chap­lin, the True Icon of Silent Com­e­dy

How Brew­ster Kahle and the Inter­net Archive Will Pre­serve the Infi­nite Infor­ma­tion on the Web

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Vis­it her web­site and fol­low her on Twit­ter.

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Elton John Sings His Classic Hit ‘Your Song’ Through the Years

in Music | August 27th, 2013

In this video we hear and see the evo­lu­tion of Elton John’s voice and his often out­landish stage pres­ence as he sings his break­through hit, “Your Song,” through his long career.

John wrote the love song with lyri­cist  Bernie Taupin. He once said of their long-time col­lab­o­ra­tion, “I’m just a pur­vey­or of Bernie’s feel­ings, Bernie’s thoughts.” “Your Song” was includ­ed on John’s 1970 sec­ond album, Elton John, and was released as the B‑side to the gospel-influ­enced “Take Me to the Pilot.” Disc jock­eys pre­ferred “Your Song,” so it was switched to the A‑side. The song even­tu­al­ly rose to num­ber eight on the Bill­board Hot 100 and num­ber 7 on the UK Sin­gles Chart.

In addi­tion to record sales, the well-craft­ed song also earned John and Taupin the respect of their peers. “I remem­ber hear­ing Elton John’s ‘Your Song,’ ” said John Lennon in his 1975 Rolling Stone inter­view, “heard it in Amer­i­ca, and I remem­ber think­ing, ‘Great, that’s the first new thing that’s hap­pened since we (The Bea­t­les) hap­pened.’ It was a step for­ward.”

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!

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What Books Do Writers Teach?: Zadie Smith and Gary Shteyngart’s Syllabi from Columbia University

in Literature, Writing | August 27th, 2013

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Many, if not, most writ­ers teach—whether lit­er­a­ture, com­po­si­tion, or cre­ative writing—and exam­in­ing what those writ­ers teach is an espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing exer­cise because it gives us insight not only into what they read, but also what they read close­ly and care­ful­ly, again and again, in order to inform their own work and demon­strate the craft as they know it to stu­dents. Let’s take two case stud­ies: exem­plars of con­tem­po­rary lit­er­ary fic­tion, both of whom teach at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. I’ll leave it to you to draw your own con­clu­sions about what their syl­labi show us about their process.

First up, we have Zadie Smith, author of White Teeth and, most recent­ly, NW: A Nov­el. In 2009, Smith lent her lit­er­ary sen­si­bil­i­ties to the teach­ing of a week­ly fic­tion sem­i­nar called “Sense and Sen­si­bil­i­ty,” for which we have the full book­list of 15 titles she assigned to stu­dents. See the list below and make of it what you will:

Brief Inter­views with Hideous Men, David Fos­ter Wal­lace
Catholics, Bri­an Moore
The Com­plete Sto­ries, Franz Kaf­ka
Crash, J.G. Bal­lard
An Exper­i­ment in Love, Hilary Man­tel
Mod­ern Crit­i­cism and The­o­ry: A Read­er, David Lodge
The Screw­tape Let­ters, C.S. Lewis
My Loose Thread, Den­nis Coop­er
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
The Los­er, Thomas Bern­hard
The Book of Daniel, E.L. Doc­torow
A Room with a View, E.M. Forster
Read­er’s Block, David Mark­son
Pnin, Vladimir Nabokov
The Qui­et Amer­i­can, Gra­ham Greene

Smith’s list trends some­what sur­pris­ing­ly white male. She includes not a few “writer’s writers”—Kafka, J.G. Bal­lard, and of course, Nabokov, who also turns up as a favorite for anoth­er Russ­ian expat writer and author of Absur­dis­tan, Gary Shteyn­gart. In a Barnes and Noble author pro­file, Shteyn­gart lists two of Nabokov’s books—Pnin and Loli­ta—among his ten all-time favorites. Also on his list are Saul Bellow’s Her­zog and Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Com­plaint. All three authors appear in a 2013 Colum­bia course Shteyn­gart teach­es called “The Hys­ter­i­cal Male,” a class specif­i­cal­ly designed, it seems, to exam­ine the neu­ro­sis of the white (or Jew­ish) male writer. With char­ac­ter­is­tic dark humor, he describes his course thus:

The 20th Cen­tu­ry has been a com­plete dis­as­ter and the 21st cen­tu­ry will like­ly be even worse. In response to the hope­less­ness of the human con­di­tion in gen­er­al, and the prospects for the North Amer­i­can and British male in par­tic­u­lar, the con­tem­po­rary male nov­el­ist has been howl­ing angri­ly for quite some time. This course will exam­ine some of the results, from Roth’s Port­noy and Bellow’s Her­zog to Mar­tin Amis’s John Self, tak­ing side trips into the unre­li­able insan­i­ty of Nabokov’s Charles Kin­bote, the mud­dled senil­i­ty of Morde­cai Richler’s Bar­ney Panof­sky and the some­what qui­eter des­per­a­tion of David Gates’s Jerni­gan. We will exam­ine the strate­gies behind first-per­son hys­te­ria and con­trast with the alter­nate third- and first-per­son meshugas of Bruce Wagner’s I’ll Let You Go. What gives vital­i­ty to the male hys­ter­i­cal hero? How should humor be bal­anced with pathos? Why are so many pro­tag­o­nists (and authors) of Jew­ish or Anglo extrac­tion? How have ear­ly male hys­ter­ics giv­en rise to the “hys­ter­i­cal real­ism” as out­lined by crit­ic James Wood? Is the shout­ing, sweaty male the per­fect rep­re­sen­ta­tion of our dis­as­trous times, or is a dose of sane intro­spec­tion need­ed to make sense of the world around us? How does the change from ear­ly to late hys­ter­i­cal nov­els reflect our progress from an entire­ly male-dom­i­nat­ed world to a most­ly male-dom­i­nat­ed one? Do we still need to be read­ing this stuff? 

I would haz­ard to guess that Shteyn­gart’s answer to the last ques­tion is “yes.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus: How to Teach Seri­ous Lit­er­a­ture with Light­weight Books

Don­ald Barthelme’s Syl­labus High­lights 81 Books Essen­tial for a Lit­er­ary Edu­ca­tion

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Lit­er­a­ture Syl­labus Asks Stu­dents to Read 32 Great Works, Cov­er­ing 6000 Pages

The Book Trail­er as Self-Par­o­dy: Stars Gary Shteyn­gart with James Fran­co Cameo

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

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Watch Family Planning, Walt Disney’s 1967 Sex Ed Production, Starring Donald Duck

in Animation, History | August 27th, 2013

In 1951, Carl Djeras­si, a chemist work­ing in an obscure lab in Mex­i­co City, cre­at­ed the first prog­es­terone pill. Lit­tle did he know that, a decade lat­er, 1.2 mil­lion women would be “on the Pill” in Amer­i­ca, exer­cis­ing unprece­dent­ed con­trol over their repro­duc­tive rights. By 1967, that num­ber would reach 12.5 mil­lion women world­wide.

It was for­tu­itous tim­ing, see­ing that the post-war glob­al pop­u­la­tion was start­ing to surge. It took 125 years (1800–1925) for the glob­al pop­u­la­tion to move from one bil­lion to two bil­lion (see his­tor­i­cal chart), but only 35 years (1925–1960) for that num­ber to reach three bil­lion. Non-prof­its like the Pop­u­la­tion Coun­cil were found­ed to think through emerg­ing pop­u­la­tion ques­tions, and by the mid-1960s, they began pub­lish­ing a peer-reviewed jour­nal called Stud­ies in Fam­i­ly Plan­ning and also work­ing with Walt Dis­ney to pro­duce a 10-minute edu­ca­tion­al car­toon. You can watch Fam­i­ly Plan­ning above.

Even­tu­al­ly trans­lat­ed into 25 lan­guages, the film avoids any­thing sex­u­al­ly explic­it. The fam­i­ly plan­ning advice is vague at best and, per­verse­ly but not sur­pris­ing­ly, only male char­ac­ters get a real voice in the pro­duc­tion. But lest you think that Dis­ney was break­ing any real ground here, let me remind you of its more dar­ing for­ay into sex-ed films two decades pri­or. That’s when it pro­duced The Sto­ry of Men­stru­a­tion (1946), a more sub­stan­tive film shown to 105 mil­lion stu­dents across the US.

You can find Fam­i­ly Plan­ning and The Sto­ry of Men­stru­a­tion housed in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

No Women Need Apply: A Dis­heart­en­ing 1938 Rejec­tion Let­ter from Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made

Don­ald Duck Wants You to Pay Your Tax­es (1943)

Walt Dis­ney Presents the Super Car­toon Cam­era (1957)

 

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The Tale of the Fox: Watch Ladislas Starevich’s Animation of Goethe’s Great German Folktale (1937)

in Animation, Film | August 27th, 2013

Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe — the very name bespeaks lit­er­ary mas­tery of the widest range. Not only did this best-known of all eigh­teenth- and — nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Ger­man writ­ers reach into poet­ry, the nov­el, the mem­oir, auto­bi­og­ra­phy, crit­i­cism, sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, and even pol­i­tics, but he did a bit of inter­pre­ta­tion of clas­sic folk­tales as well. The Faust and Sor­rows of Young Werther author wrote a par­tic­u­lar­ly last­ing ren­di­tion of the adven­tures of Rey­nard the Fox, a trick­ster from medieval Euro­pean myth. Had Goethe him­self lived into the 20th cen­tu­ry to expe­ri­ence the gold­en age of pup­pet ani­ma­tion, I feel cer­tain his artis­tic man­date would have com­pelled him to film a ver­sion of The Tale of the Fox. Alas, the lit­er­ary leg­end passed away in 1832, leav­ing the job, near­ly a cen­tu­ry lat­er, to Russ­ian ani­ma­tor Ladis­las Stare­vich (also spelled Wla­dys­law Starewicz).

Hav­ing pio­neered the form of pup­pet ani­ma­tion with his 1912 film The Beau­ti­ful Lukani­da, Stare­vich remains well-known among ani­ma­tion enthu­si­asts for shoot­ing his pic­tures with ani­mals play­ing the pro­tag­o­nists, or bugs, or seem­ing­ly what­ev­er he hap­pened to have at hand. The Tale of the Fox, by con­trast, pre­sent­ed him with a com­par­a­tive­ly vast set of resources. Pro­duced in Paris over eigh­teen months in 1929 and 1930, the 65-minute ani­mat­ed fea­ture, Stare­vich’s first and only the sixth ever made in the world at the time, tells the sto­ry of Rey­nard the Fox’s attempts to live his life of tom­fool­ery even as the lion king of this ani­mal king­dom strug­gles to bring him to jus­tice. When, sev­en years after com­plet­ing pho­tog­ra­phy, the film still lacked music, Ger­many’s Nation­al Social­ist gov­ern­ment, no doubt swollen with their ver­sion of Teu­ton­ic pride at see­ing an adap­ta­tion of an adap­ta­tion penned by a Ger­man icon, pro­vid­ed a score and arranged for a Berlin pre­miere. But try not to think about that. Con­cen­trate instead on the ani­ma­tion style used here by Stare­vich which, though he shot in stop-motion and used pup­pets, sure­ly resem­bles no stop-motion ani­ma­tion or pup­pet show you’ve ever seen.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Beau­ti­ful­ly-Craft­ed Russ­ian Ani­ma­tions of Chekhov’s Clas­sic Children’s Sto­ry “Kash­tan­ka”

18 Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Works: From Pla­to and Shake­speare, to Kaf­ka, Hem­ing­way and Gaiman

Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta, Ani­mat­ed in Two Min­utes

The Mas­cot, Pio­neer­ing Stop Ani­ma­tion from Wla­dys­law Starow­icz

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch an Animation of Shaun Tan’s All-Ages Picture Book The Lost Thing

in Animation, Books, K-12, Life | August 26th, 2013

What would you do if you crossed paths with a jin­gling lost thing whose oven-shaped body, crus­ta­ceous claws, and fleshy ten­ta­cles would seem right at home in Hierony­mus Bosch’s Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights?

Scream? Run? Release your bow­els?

The anony­mous nar­ra­tor of The Lost Thing, a fif­teen-minute ani­ma­tion born of Shaun Tan’s all-ages pic­ture book, attempts, instead, to iden­ti­fy it empir­i­cal­ly through care­ful obser­va­tion, cal­i­brat­ed mea­sure­ment, and con­trolled exper­i­men­ta­tion. When the sci­en­tif­ic approach fails, he assumes respon­si­bil­i­ty for his strange find, lead­ing it through a clank­ing, grimy land­scape where san­i­ta­tion crews deflate beach balls with pointy sticks after the joy­less hol­i­day crowds are dismissed—a vision of steam­punk in defeat.

We’re loathe to hit you with any more spoil­ers. Suf­fice it to say that this is a fine exam­ple of inno­v­a­tive­ly adapt­ed source mate­r­i­al, and that even­tu­al­ly our sto­ic hero—voiced by British-born Aus­tralian com­ic Tim Minchin—and his charge arrive in a land­scape that should cause the inhab­i­tants of the Island of Mis­fit Toys to stop moon­ing over San­ta.

You will find The Lost Thing list­ed in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a Whim­si­cal Ani­ma­tion of Ita­lo Calvino’s Short Sto­ry “The Dis­tance of the Moon”

Watch Ani­ma­tions of Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ries “The Hap­py Prince” and “The Self­ish Giant”

Hard­er Than It Looks: How to Make a Great Stop Motion Ani­ma­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day picks all man­ner of jet­sam off the curbs of her Brook­lyn neigh­bor­hood. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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John Searle Makes A Forceful Case for Studying Consciousness, Where Everything Else Begins

in Philosophy, TED Talks | August 26th, 2013

Con­scious­ness is the sin­gle most impor­tant aspect of our lives, says philoso­pher John Sear­le. Why? “It’s a nec­es­sary con­di­tion on any­thing being impor­tant in our lives,” he says. “If you care about sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, music, art — what­ev­er — it’s no good if you are a zom­bie or in a coma.”

Sear­le is one of today’s pre­em­i­nent philoso­phers of mind. Author of the famous “Chi­nese Room” argu­ment against the pos­si­bil­i­ty of true arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, Sear­le has been a per­sis­tent thorn in the side of those who would reduce con­scious­ness to com­pu­ta­tion, or con­flate it with behav­ior. Despite its intrin­si­cal­ly sub­jec­tive nature, con­scious­ness is an irre­ducible bio­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non, he says, “as much sub­ject to sci­en­tif­ic analy­sis as any oth­er phe­nom­e­non in biol­o­gy, or for that mat­ter the rest of sci­ence.”

Sear­le made his remarks at the May 3 TEDx con­fer­ence at CERN — the Euro­pean Orga­ni­za­tion for Nuclear Research — near Gene­va, Switzer­land. The video above gives a thought-pro­vok­ing overview of his basic con­clu­sions about con­scious­ness, but to delve deep­er into Sear­le’s phi­los­o­phy of mind — and also his phi­los­o­phy of lan­guage and soci­ety — see our ear­li­er post about his online Berke­ley lec­tures: “Phi­los­o­phy with John Sear­le: Three Free Cours­es.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

John Sear­le on Fou­cault and the Obscu­ran­tism in French Phi­los­o­phy

What Do Most Philoso­phers Believe? A Wide-Rang­ing Sur­vey Project Gives Us Some Idea

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

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