The Enigma Machine: How Alan Turing Helped Break the Unbreakable Nazi Code

in History, Math | January 17th, 2013

In 2001, none oth­er than Sir Mick Jag­ger bought the rights to a nov­el by Robert Har­ris called Enig­ma. The nov­el, a fic­tion­al­ized account of WWII British code­break­ers, then became a fea­ture film, writ­ten by Tom Stop­pard, pro­duced by Sir Mick, and star­ring Mr. Dougray Scott and Ms. Kate Winslett as der­ring-do Bletch­ley Park math­e­mati­cians and crypt­an­a­lysts employed in a race against time and the Nazis to break the fabled Enig­ma code before all hell breaks loose. It all sounds very dra­mat­ic (and I’ve heard the film is enter­tain­ing), but things didn’t hap­pen quite like that. Real­i­ty is nev­er so for­mu­la­ic or so good-look­ing. But the Enig­ma code was bro­ken, and the sto­ry of the code machine and its even­tu­al decryp­tion is fas­ci­nat­ing on its own terms. As Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge “Enig­ma Project Offi­cer” Dr. James Grime says–in the series of videos above and below–it’s a sto­ry of “how math­e­mati­cians can save lives.” Still with me?

Okay, so in the first video above, Dr. Grime gives us a thor­ough tour of the Enig­ma machine (Sir Mick owns one, by the way… but back to the his­to­ry…). Devel­oped by the Ger­mans, it’s a mar­velous encryp­tion method set into a small box that when opened resem­bles lit­tle more than a fan­cy WWII-era type­writer. Oh, but it’s clever, you see, because the Enig­ma machine (the one above belongs to sci­ence writer Simon Singh) trans­lates ordi­nary mes­sages into code through an inge­nious method by which no let­ter in the code ever repeats, mak­ing it almost impos­si­ble to decode in the ordi­nary ways. The machine was quite com­pli­cat­ed for its time; it works by send­ing the char­ac­ters typed by the keys through a series of circuits—first through three rotors like those on a com­bi­na­tion bike lock, but each with 26 places instead of ten.

Now at this point, the machine was noth­ing more than what was avail­able to any bank or busi­ness wish­ing to trans­mit trade secrets. But the Ger­man mil­i­tary machines had an extra lay­er of encod­ing: at the front of their machines was a “plug­board,” some­thing like a small switch­board. This allowed the cod­ing com­ing through the rotors to be rese­quenced for an extra lev­el of scram­bling. In the Ger­man mil­i­tary machines, the total num­ber of pos­si­ble com­bi­na­tions for mes­sage encryp­tions comes to a stag­ger­ing fig­ure in the quadrillions. (The exact num­ber? 158,962,555,217,826,360,000). There’s a lit­tle more to the machine than that, but Dr. Grime can explain it much bet­ter than I.

Of course, the Enig­ma Machine had to have a fatal flaw. Oth­er­wise, no nov­el, no movie, no dra­ma (and maybe no vic­to­ry?). What was it, you ask? Amaz­ing­ly, as you will learn above, the very thing that made the Enig­ma near­ly impos­si­ble to break, its abil­i­ty to encode mes­sages with­out ever repeat­ing a let­ter, also made the code deci­pher­able. But first, Alan Tur­ing had to step in. Sad­ly, Tur­ing is miss­ing from Enig­ma the film. (More sad­ly, he was dis­graced by the coun­try he served, which put him on tri­al for his sex­u­al­i­ty and humil­i­at­ed him to the point of sui­cide). But as Grime shows above, Tur­ing is one of the real heroes of the Enig­ma code sto­ry. Crypt­an­a­lysts ini­tial­ly dis­cov­ered that they could deci­pher ordi­nary words and phras­es (like “Heil Hitler”) in the Enig­ma mes­sages by match­ing them up with strings of ran­dom let­ters that nev­er repeat­ed.

But this was not enough. In order for the Enig­ma code to work for the Ger­mans, each operator—sender and receiver—had to have exact­ly the same set­tings on their rotors and plug­boards. (The mes­sages were trans­mit­ted over radio via Morse code). Each month had its own set­tings, print­ed on code sheets in sol­u­ble ink that eas­i­ly dis­solved in water. If the Allied code­break­ers deci­phered the set­tings, their decryp­tion would be use­less weeks lat­er. Fur­ther­more, the Ger­man navy had a more com­pli­cat­ed method of encod­ing than either the army or air force. The Pol­ish had devel­oped a machine called the Bombe, which could deci­pher army and air force codes, but not navy. What Tur­ing did, along with Gor­don Welch­man, was devel­op his own ver­sion of the Bombe machine, which allowed him to break any ver­sion of the Enig­ma code in under 20 min­utes since it bypassed most of the tedious guess­work and tri­al and error involved in ear­li­er by-hand meth­ods.

This is all very dra­mat­ic stuff, and we haven’t had one celebri­ty step in to dress it up. While I’m cer­tain that Enig­ma the film is a treat, I’m grate­ful to Dr. Grime for his engage­ment with the actu­al code­break­ing meth­ods and real per­son­al­i­ties involved.

A third video of extra footage and out­takes is avail­able here if you’re still hun­gry for more WWII code­break­ing secrets.

via Sci­ence Dump

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian. He recent­ly com­plet­ed a dis­ser­ta­tion on land, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.

The Very First Film of J.G. Ballard’s Crash, Starring Ballard Himself (1971)

in Film, Literature, Television | January 14th, 2013

The Collins Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary defines “Bal­lar­dian” as “resem­bling or sug­ges­tive of the con­di­tions described in J. G. Bal­lard’s nov­els and sto­ries, espe­cial­ly dystopi­an moder­ni­ty, bleak man-made land­scapes and the psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of tech­no­log­i­cal, social or envi­ron­men­tal devel­op­ments.” You’ll find no more dis­tilled dose of the Bal­lar­dian than in Bal­lard’s book The Atroc­i­ty Exhi­bi­tion, a 1969 exper­i­men­tal nov­el, or col­lec­tion of frag­ments, or what’s been called a col­lec­tion of “con­densed nov­els.” Sub­ject to an obscen­i­ty tri­al in the Unit­ed States and the sub­se­quent pulp­ing of near­ly a whole print run, the book has earned a per­ma­nent place in the canon of con­tro­ver­sial lit­er­a­ture. Its twelfth chap­ter, “Crash!”, even pro­vid­ed the seed for a Bal­lard nov­el to come: 1973’s Crash, a sto­ry of sym­phorophil­ia which David Cro­nen­berg adapt­ed into a film 23 years lat­er. The movie, in its turn, stoked a furor in the Unit­ed King­dom, cul­mi­nat­ing in a Dai­ly Mail cam­paign to ban it. But as far as film­ing mate­r­i­al born of Bal­lard’s fas­ci­na­tion with the inter­sec­tion of auto wrecks and sex­u­al­i­ty, Cro­nen­berg did­n’t get there first.

Susan Emer­ling and Zoe Beloff drew from Crash the nov­el to make the still-unre­leased Night­mare Angel in 1986, but fif­teen years before that, Harley Coke­liss turned “Crash!” the chap­ter into Crash! the short film (also known as The Atroc­i­ty Exhi­bi­tion). Cast­ing Bal­lard him­self in the star­ring role and Gabrielle Drake (sis­ter of singer-song­writer Nick Drake) oppo­site, Coke­liss crafts a vision almost oppres­sive­ly of the sev­en­ties: the pro­tag­o­nist’s wide, striped shirt col­lar dom­i­nates his even wider jack­et col­lar below the grim vis­age he wears while ensconced in the suit of armor that is his hulk­ing Amer­i­can vehi­cle. “I think the key image of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry is the man in the motor car,” Bal­lard says in voiceover. “Have we reached a point now in the sev­en­ties where we only make sense in terms of these huge tech­no­log­i­cal sys­tems? I think so myself, and that it is the vital job of the writer to try to ana­lyze and under­stand the huge sig­nif­i­cance of this met­al­lized dream.” If this Bal­lar­dian vision res­onates with you, see also Simon Sel­l­ars’ thor­ough essay on the film at fan site Bal­lar­dian.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Sci-Fi Author J.G. Bal­lard Pre­dicts the Rise of Social Media (1977)

Hear Five JG Bal­lard Sto­ries Pre­sent­ed as Radio Dra­mas

J.G. Ballard’s Exper­i­men­tal Text Col­lages: His 1958 For­ay into Avant-Garde Lit­er­a­ture

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.

The Best of Open Culture 2012: Free Music, Film, Books, Life Advice & More

in Art, e-books, Film, Literature, Music | January 1st, 2013

Anoth­er year gone by. Anoth­er 1200+ cul­tur­al blog posts in the books. Which ones did you like best? We let the data decide. Below, you’ll find the 17 that struck a chord with you.
Free Art Books from The Guggen­heim and The Met: Way back in Jan­u­ary, the Guggen­heim made 65 art cat­a­logues avail­able online, all free of charge. The cat­a­logues offer an intel­lec­tu­al and visu­al intro­duc­tion to the work of Calder, Munch, Bacon, and Kandin­sky, among oth­ers. Then, months lat­er, The Met fol­lowed suit and launched Met­Pub­li­ca­tions, a por­tal that now makes avail­able 370 out-of-print art titles, includ­ing works on Ver­meer, da Vin­ci, Degas and more.

The Best Ani­mat­ed Films of All Time, Accord­ing to Ter­ry Gilliam: Ter­ry Gilliam knows some­thing about ani­ma­tion. For years, he pro­duced won­der­ful ani­ma­tions for Mon­ty Python (watch his cutout ani­ma­tion primer here), cre­at­ing the open­ing cred­its and dis­tinc­tive buffers that linked togeth­er the off­beat com­e­dy sketch­es. Giv­en these bona fides, you don’t want to miss Gilliam’s list, The 10 Best Ani­mat­ed Films of All Time.

The Hig­gs Boson, AKA the God Par­ti­cle, Explained with Ani­ma­tion: Hands down, it was the biggest sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery of the year. But what is the Hig­gs Boson exact­ly? Are you still not sure? Phd Comics explains the con­cept with ani­ma­tion.

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son: Here’s anoth­er great dis­cov­ery — the long lost gui­tar solo by George Har­ri­son from my favorite Bea­t­les’ song, “Here Comes the Sun.” In this clip, George Mar­tin (Bea­t­les’ pro­duc­er) and Dhani Har­ri­son (the gui­tarist’s son) bring the for­got­ten solo back to life. When you’re done tak­ing this sen­ti­men­tal jour­ney, also see anoth­er favorite of mine: gui­tarist Randy Bach­man demys­ti­fy­ing the open­ing chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’.

18 Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Works: From Pla­to and Shake­speare, to Kaf­ka, Hem­ing­way and Calvi­no: Over the years we have fea­tured lit­er­ary works that have been won­der­ful­ly re-imag­ined by ani­ma­tors. Rather than leav­ing these won­drous works buried in the archives, we brought them back and put them all on dis­play. And what bet­ter place to start than with a foun­da­tion­al text — Plato’s Repub­lic.

Ray Brad­bury Offers 12 Essen­tial Writ­ing Tips and Explains Why Lit­er­a­ture Saves Civ­i­liza­tion: In June, we lost Ray Brad­bury, who now joins Isaac Asi­mov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Hein­lein, and Philip K. Dick in the pan­theon of sci­ence fic­tion. In this post, we revis­it two moments when Brad­bury offered his per­son­al thoughts on the art and pur­pose of writ­ing — some­thing he con­tem­plat­ed dur­ing the 74 years that sep­a­rat­ed his first sto­ry from the last.

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Speak­ing of sci­ence fic­tion, we brought you a roundup of some of the great Sci­ence Fic­tion, Fan­ta­sy and Dystopi­an clas­sics avail­able on the web in audio, video and text for­mats. They include Orwell’s 1984, Hux­ley’s Brave New World, Asi­mov’s Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy, C.S. Lewis’ Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia, many sto­ries by Philip K. Dick and Neil Gaiman, and much more. Find more great works in our col­lec­tions of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

This is Your Brain in Love: Scenes from the Stan­ford Love Com­pe­ti­tion: Can one per­son expe­ri­ence love more deeply than anoth­er? That’s what Stan­ford researchers and film­mak­er Brent Hoff set out to under­stand when they host­ed the 1st Annu­al Love Com­pe­ti­tion. Sev­en con­tes­tants, rang­ing from 10 to 75 years of age, took part. And they each spent five min­utes in an fMRI machine. It’s to hard watch this short film and not shed a hap­py tear.

Rare 1959 Audio: Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’: In April of 1959–five years before her death at the age of 39 from lupus–Flannery O’Connor ven­tured away from her seclud­ed fam­i­ly farm in Milledgeville, Geor­gia, to give a read­ing at Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty. She read one of her most famous and unset­tling sto­ries, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” The audio is one of two known record­ings of the author read­ing that sto­ry.

33 Free Oscar Win­ning Films Avail­able on the Web: On the eve of the 2012 Acad­e­my Awards, we scout­ed around the web and found 33 Oscar-win­ning (or nom­i­nat­ed) films from pre­vi­ous years. The list includes many short films, but also some long ones, like Sergei Bondarchuk’s epic ver­sion of War & Peace. Sit back, enjoy, and don’t for­get our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online, where you’ll find many great noir films, west­erns, clas­sics, doc­u­men­taries and more.

The Sto­ry Of Men­stru­a­tion: Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946: Stay­ing with movies for a sec­ond, we also showed you a very dif­fer­ent mid-1940s Dis­ney pro­duc­tion – The Sto­ry of Men­stru­a­tion. Made in the 1940s, an esti­mat­ed 105 mil­lion stu­dents watched the film in sex ed class­es across the US.

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web: We spent some time track­ing down 23 free sto­ries and essays pub­lished by David Fos­ter Wal­lace between 1989 and 2011, most­ly in major U.S. pub­li­ca­tions like The New York­er, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review. Enjoy, and don’t miss our oth­er col­lec­tions of free writ­ings by Philip K. Dick and Neil Gaiman.

Every­thing I Know: 42 Hours of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Vision­ary Lec­tures Free Online (1975): In Jan­u­ary 1975, Buck­min­ster Fuller sat down to deliv­er the twelve lec­tures that make up Every­thing I Know, all cap­tured on video and enhanced with the most excit­ing blue­screen tech­nol­o­gy of the day. The lec­ture series is now online and free to enjoy, so please do so.

10 Great Per­for­mances From 10 Leg­endary Jazz Artists: Djan­go, Miles, Monk, Coltrane & More: It’s pret­ty much what the title says. Great per­for­mances by some of our great­est jazz artists. It starts with Bil­lie Hol­i­day singing “Strange Fruit.”

Sig­mund Freud Speaks: The Only Known Record­ing of His Voice, 1938: On Decem­ber 7, 1938, a British radio crew vis­it­ed Sig­mund Freud at his newhome at Hamp­stead, North Lon­don. He was 81 years old and suf­fer­ing from incur­able jaw can­cer. Every word was an agony to speak. The record­ing is the only known audio record­ing of Freud, the founder of psy­cho­analy­sis and one of the tow­er­ing intel­lec­tu­al fig­ures of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Also see: Sig­mund Freud’s Home Movies: A Rare Glimpse of His Pri­vate Life.

Ser­i­al Entre­pre­neur Damon Horowitz Says “Quit Your Tech Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Human­i­ties”: Phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor and “ser­i­al entre­pre­neur” Damon Horowitz explains why he left a high­ly-paid tech career, in which he sought the keys to arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, to pur­sue a Ph.D. in Phi­los­o­phy at Stan­ford. Read­ers will also enjoy The Illus­trat­ed Guide to a Ph.D.

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed in 1973): Deliv­ered at Har­vard in ’73, Leonard Bernstein’s lec­ture series, “The Unan­swered Ques­tion,” cov­ered a lot of ter­rain, touch­ing on poet­ry, lin­guis­tics, phi­los­o­phy and physics. But the focus inevitably comes back to music — to how music works, or to the under­ly­ing gram­mar of music. The mas­ter­ful lec­tures run over 11 hours. They’re added to our col­lec­tion of 650 Free Online Cours­es. You can also find Borges’ lec­tures at Har­vard here.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry:  When it came to giv­ing advice to writ­ers, Kurt Von­negut was nev­er dull. He once tried to warn peo­ple away from using semi­colons by char­ac­ter­iz­ing them as “trans­ves­tite her­maph­ro­dites rep­re­sent­ing absolute­ly noth­ing.” In this brief video, Von­negut offers eight tips on how to write a short sto­ry.

Free Online Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es & MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties: A Com­plete List:  We gath­ered a list of 200 free mas­sive open online cours­es (MOOCs) offered by lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties. Most of these free cours­es offer “cer­tifi­cates” or “state­ments of com­ple­tion.” Many new cours­es start in Jan­u­ary 2013. So be sure to check it out. Also don’t miss our oth­er new resource col­lec­tion: 200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & Beyond.

David Bowie’s First American Fan Letter And His Evolving Views of the U.S. (1967–1997)

in Music | December 20th, 2012

David Bowie’s rela­tion­ship with Amer­i­ca has typ­i­fied the outsider’s view: an ambiva­lence rang­ing from fas­ci­na­tion to fear that he expressed in a reply to his first let­ter from a U.S. fan in 1967 (click to read in large for­mat). The fan, intre­pid 14-year-old San­dra Dodd, had got­ten her hands on an advance copy of Bowie’s first album and writ­ten him to praise his work and offer to start a fan club for him state­side. Bowie’s response is very inter­est­ing. We’ve writ­ten before about his rise from obscure R&B and folk singer to Zig­gy Star­dust, which required him to shake off a nat­ur­al shy­ness to inhab­it his break­out per­sona. In the let­ter, the 20-year-old Bowie ini­tial­ly comes off as a naïve, slight­ly self-involved young pop singer. Then, after answer­ing the usu­al fan queries—what’s his real name, birth­day, height—he turns to the sub­ject of the U.S., a coun­try he had yet to vis­it. Bowie writes:

I hope one day to get to Amer­i­ca. My man­ag­er tells me lots about it as he has been there many times with oth­er acts he man­ages. I was watch­ing an old film on TV the oth­er night called “No Down Pay­ment” a great film, but rather depress­ing if it is a true reflec­tion of The Amer­i­can Way Of Life. How­ev­er, short­ly after that they showed a doc­u­men­tary about Robert Frost the Amer­i­can poet, filmed main­ly at his home in Ver­mont, and that evened the score. I am sure that that is near­er the real Amer­i­ca.

Draw­ing his impres­sions from movies, Bowie ref­er­ences two views. The first, Mar­tin Ritt’s 1957 No Down Pay­ment, is full of the banal­i­ty and melo­dra­ma we’ve come to expect from Mad Men, mak­ing inci­sive cri­tiques of mid-50s cul­tur­al prob­lems sim­mer­ing under the sur­face of the sub­urbs like alco­holism, racism, and infi­deli­ty. As one fan writes, the film depict­ed what “no one want­ed to see… a soiled Amer­i­can Dream,” or what Bowie cap­i­tal­izes as “The Amer­i­can Way Of Life.”

The oth­er view Bowie takes of the States comes from a film on Robert Frost—most like­ly 1963’s Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quar­rel With the World. Lit­tle won­der this film “evened the score” for the lyri­cal young song­writer, who choos­es in his let­ter to believe it rep­re­sents the “real Amer­i­ca,” a sen­ti­ment he would not hold for long.

Flash for­ward to 1984, and Bowie is an inter­na­tion­al pop star. Most fans would argue his best work was far behind him, but the 80s saw him break out into more main­stream film roles in The Ele­phant Man and Labyrinth that kept him at the fore­front of Amer­i­can pop cul­ture. His sound­track work was mem­o­rable as well, although the track below “This is Not Amer­i­ca,” writ­ten with Pat Methe­ny for The Fal­con and the Snow­man doesn’t get much atten­tion these days. Bowie’s impres­sion­is­tic lyrics–which Methe­ny called “pro­found and meaningful”–show him in mourn­ing for the coun­try that puz­zled his younger self:

A lit­tle piece of you
The lit­tle peace in me
Will die
For this is not Amer­i­ca

Blos­som fails to bloom
This sea­son
Promise not to stare
Too long
For this is not a mir­a­cle

And again, move for­ward to 1997, thir­ty years after Bowie’s let­ter above, and we find him in a jaun­diced mood in “I’m Afraid of Amer­i­cans” from his album Earth­ling (the song orig­i­nal­ly appeared on what may be one of the most cyn­i­cal films ever made, Show­girls). Bowie explained the gen­e­sis of the song in a press release:

I’m Afraid of Amer­i­cans’ was writ­ten by myself and Eno. It’s not as tru­ly hos­tile about Amer­i­cans as say “Born in the USA”: it’s mere­ly sar­don­ic. I was trav­el­ing in Java when the first McDon­alds went up: it was like, “for fuck­’s sake.” The inva­sion by any homog­e­nized cul­ture is so depress­ing, the erec­tion of anoth­er Dis­ney World in, say, Umbria, Italy, more so. It stran­gles the indige­nous cul­ture and nar­rows expres­sion of life.

The cul­tur­al homog­e­niza­tion that so depressed the young Bowie in No Down Pay­ment is now a glob­al phe­nom­e­non, and the well-trav­eled, world­ly Bowie seems to har­bor few illu­sions when he sings:

John­ny’s in Amer­i­ca
No tricks at the wheel
No one needs any­one
They don’t even just pre­tend

In the award-win­ning video, Trent Reznor plays a Travis Bick­le-like fig­ure, a men­ac­ing crea­ture of alien­ation and unpro­voked, ran­dom vio­lence and Bowie a para­noid out­sider run­ning from what he per­ceives as cit­i­zens attack­ing each oth­er on every street­corner. Stripped of the 50s veneer, it’s a coun­try where peo­ple “don’t even pre­tend”; the vio­lence and mis­an­thropy are now on full dis­play. It’s a view of Amer­i­ca that hasn’t dimmed since the mid-nineties. It’s sim­ply moved out of the city and spilled out into the once self-con­tained sub­urbs. These three arti­facts show Bowie’s evo­lu­tion in rela­tion to a coun­try that he hoped to find the best in, that near­ly always embraced him, and that came to freak him out and piss him off in lat­er years.

via Let­ters of Note

Josh Jones is a writer and schol­ar cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion on land­scape, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.

Jean-Paul Sartre Writes a Script for John Huston’s Film on Freud (1958)

in Film, Philosophy | December 17th, 2012

In 1958, leg­endary direc­tor John Hus­ton decid­ed to make a film about the life of Sig­mund Freud. Hav­ing met Jean-Paul Sarte in 1952 dur­ing the film­ing of Moulin Rouge, Hus­ton felt the philoso­pher would be the ide­al per­son to script the Freud film, since Sartre knew Freud’s work so well and since Hus­ton sur­mised that he would have “an objec­tive and log­i­cal approach.” Despite Sartre’s obvi­ous tal­ents, this still seems like an odd choice on its face, giv­en the spe­cif­ic demands of screen­writ­ing ver­sus philo­soph­i­cal or lit­er­ary work. But Sartre had some expe­ri­ence writ­ing for the screen by that time—like most lit­er­ary screen­writ­ers, he’d most­ly done it for the mon­ey and dis­avowed most of this work in hindsight–and he loved the movies and respect­ed Hus­ton. The direc­tor and the exis­ten­tial­ist philoso­pher also had very sim­i­lar views of their bio­graph­i­cal sub­ject:

Iron­i­cal­ly both Sartre and Hus­ton con­sid­ered them­selves anti-Freud for large­ly the same rea­son: Sartre because as a Com­mu­nist he believed the role of the psy­cho­an­a­lyst was lim­it­ed and of lit­tle social impor­tance.  For his part Hus­ton felt that psy­cho­analy­sis was an indul­gence for bored house wives and the prob­lem chil­dren of the rich while the “movers and shak­ers”’ were too busy for it and those that most need­ed it could­n’t afford it.

Hus­ton and Sartre’s treat­ment of Freud promised to be crit­i­cal, but the part­ner­ship soon soured due to Sartre’s inabil­i­ty to keep his script at fea­ture length. First, he deliv­ered a mod­est 95-page treat­ment. This, how­ev­er, became a 300-page draft in 1959 that Hus­ton cal­cu­lat­ed would pro­duce an unac­cept­able five-hour-long film (see an image from Sartre’s draft screen­play below, and click it to read it in a larg­er for­mat).

When Hus­ton and Sartre met in per­son in Gal­way to find a way to cut the screen­play down to a rea­son­able length, their work­ing rela­tion­ship was less than cor­dial. In Huston’s rec­ol­lec­tion, Sartre nev­er stopped talk­ing long enough for any­one else to get a word in. The direc­tor also remem­bered that Sartre was “as ugly as a human being can be.” Sartre’s remem­brance is hard­ly more flat­ter­ing of Hus­ton, if some­what more com­ic; he described the direc­tor in a let­ter to his wife Simone de Beau­voir as a pre­ten­tious, thought­less char­ac­ter.…

…in moments of child­ish van­i­ty, when he puts on a red din­ner jack­et or rides a horse (not very well) or counts his paint­ings or tells work­men what to do. Impos­si­ble to hold his atten­tion five min­utes: he can no longer work, he runs away from think­ing.

After their Gal­way meet­ing, dur­ing which Hus­ton tried and failed to hyp­no­tize Sartre, the philoso­pher attempt­ed anoth­er revi­sion, but this time, he sent Hus­ton an even longer draft, for an eight-hour film. At this point, Hus­ton gave up on Sartre and sal­vaged what he could, even­tu­al­ly enlist­ing the help of Ger­man screen­writer Wolf­gang Rein­hardt to fin­ish the script. Hus­ton final­ly made his Freud film, released in 1962 as Freud: The Secret Pas­sion, with Mont­gomery Clift as the doc­tor (see the trail­er for the film above).

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Sartre had his name removed from the final film. For a fuller account of the meet­ing of Hus­ton and Sartre, see the sec­ond chap­ter of Eliz­a­beth Roudinesco’s Phi­los­o­phy in Tur­bu­lent Times, where you’ll find oth­er fas­ci­nat­ing details like Sartre’s desire to cast Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe as Anna O and Huston’s bemuse­ment at Sartre’s den­tal hygiene.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Annie Leibovitz, Photographer of Icons and Iconic Photographer, Profiled on American Masters

in Photography, Television | December 14th, 2012

One must take care, when writ­ing about well-con­nect­ed cul­tur­al fig­ures, not to abuse the word icon­ic. But when one writes about the pho­tog­ra­ph­er Annie Lei­bovitz, one almost has to abuse it. Here we have a woman who took two of the most mem­o­rable pho­tos of John Lennon, col­lab­o­rat­ed (to the extent pos­si­ble) with Hunter S. Thomp­son, went on tour with the Rolling Stones, fol­lowed Richard Nixon out of the White House the last time he left it, con­vinced Whoopi Gold­berg to get into a bath­tub of milk, and loved Susan Son­tag. This whole post could­n’t pos­si­bly con­tain a com­plete list of her pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al involve­ment with the, yes, icons of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry pop­u­lar cul­ture. Her por­traits of them became icons them­selves, which, in turn, made Lei­bovitz her­self icon­ic. For a visu­al­ly rich sense of the scope of her life and career, look no fur­ther than the doc­u­men­tary above, Life Through a Lens.

This 2008 pro­duc­tion comes from the PBS-dis­trib­uted Amer­i­can Mas­ters tele­vi­sion series, which we fea­tured on Tues­day. Direct­ed by Lei­bovitz’s own sis­ter and there­fore pos­sessed of the unusu­al famil­ial insight you’d expect, Life Through a Lens also includes a great many of the hard-to-inter­view lumi­nar­ies with­out which no pro­file of this pho­tog­ra­ph­er could be com­plete. We hear from Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger, Jann Wen­ner, Hillary Clin­ton, Glo­ria Steinem, Pat­ti Smith, Mick Jag­ger, Kei­th Richards, Bette Midler, Yoko Ono, and George Clooney, to name but a few of her admir­ers who’ve held their own at the busi­ness end of her cam­era. In the four years since this doc­u­men­tary, Lei­bovitz’s pho­tographs — now of 21st-cen­tu­ry celebri­ties like Miley Cyrus, Sasha Baron Cohen, Lady Gaga, Rihan­na, and LeBron James —  have con­tin­ued to impress in the pages of Vogue and Van­i­ty Fair. When­ev­er some­one ris­es toward icon­ic sta­tus, Annie Lei­bovitz’s visu­al imag­i­na­tion can’t be far behind.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch PBS’ Amer­i­can Mas­ters Doc­u­men­taries (Includ­ing Scorsese’s Homage to Kazan) Free Online

Alfred Stieglitz: The Elo­quent Eye, a Reveal­ing Look at “The Father of Mod­ern Pho­tog­ra­phy”

1972 Diane Arbus Doc­u­men­tary Inter­views Those Who Knew the Amer­i­can Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Best

Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son and the Deci­sive Moment

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Watch as Alberto Giacometti Paints and Pursues the Elusive “Apparition” (1965)

in Art | November 29th, 2012

The Swiss artist Alber­to Gia­comet­ti is most often remem­bered for his famous­ly thin, elon­gat­ed sculp­tures of the human form. But Gia­comet­ti was a sim­i­lar­ly bril­liant and orig­i­nal draughts­man who main­tained that draw­ing was the cen­tral skill of an artist. “One must stick exclu­sive­ly to draw­ing,” he once said. “If one dom­i­nates draw­ing even a lit­tle bit then every­thing else becomes pos­si­ble.”

Gia­comet­ti the draughts­man had a dis­tinc­tive way of rework­ing a line, of going over it again and again as if he were sculpt­ing in plas­ter. “When I make my draw­ings,” Gia­comet­ti said, “the path traced by my pen­cil on the sheet of paper is, to some extent, anal­o­gous to the ges­ture of a man grop­ing his way in the dark­ness.” The result­ing tan­gle of lines give his draw­ings a spe­cial vibran­cy, a sense of motion and depth on the two-dimen­sion­al plane.

In this excerpt from the 1966 film Alber­to Gia­comet­ti by the Swiss pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ernst Schei­deg­ger, we watch as Gia­comet­ti paints the foun­da­tion­al lines of a por­trait at his stu­dio in Mont­par­nasse. The footage was prob­a­bly shot in 1965, the last year of Gia­comet­ti’s life. The artist report­ed­ly saw the film not long before his death on Jan­u­ary 11, 1966. Watch­ing the film, we get a sense of Gia­comet­ti’s care for geom­e­try as he draws orga­ni­za­tion­al lines to work out the pro­por­tions. Gia­comet­ti would often leave these inter­sect­ing ver­ti­cal, hor­i­zon­tal and diag­o­nal lines–which would emerge organ­i­cal­ly as he went along–in his fin­ished works.

In the Ger­man nar­ra­tion, the speak­er describes Gia­comet­ti’s almost mys­ti­cal sense of the process: A face appears on the can­vas which is his own face but also that of anoth­er, dis­tant per­son who will appear out of the depth if only you reach out for him. But as you do reach out the per­son recedes, remain­ing just beyond your grasp. “The appari­tion,” Gia­comet­ti once said: “Some­times I think I can trap it, but then I lose it again and must begin once more.”

Spe­cial thanks to Matthias Rasch­er for his lin­guis­tic help.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Footage of Picas­so and Jack­son Pol­lock Paint­ing … Through Glass

Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Caught in the Act of Cre­ation, 1926

Khan Academy Releases New App for iPhone & iPod Touch, Giving You Mobile Access to 3600 Videos

in Education, iPhone, K-12 | November 26th, 2012

Non-prof­it Khan Acad­e­my, an orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to “pro­vid­ing a free world-class edu­ca­tion for any­one any­where,” does so pri­mar­i­ly through online video cours­es and lec­tures. The over 3600 videos are free and access is open to any­one (any­where), allow­ing K‑12 stu­dents to study math, sci­ence, com­put­er sci­ence, finance & eco­nom­ics, human­i­ties, and test prep. The orga­ni­za­tion was found­ed in 2006 by MIT and Har­vard grad Salman Khan, who began by tutor­ing rel­a­tives and friends in Bangladesh while he worked as a hedge fund ana­lyst in the States. His videos became so in-demand that he decid­ed to quit his job and dis­trib­ute them full-time, fund­ed by dona­tions from indi­vid­u­als and major donors like the Bill and Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion.

While there is a healthy amount of skep­ti­cism about the effi­ca­cy of Khan’s meth­ods, there’s no short­age of demand for the kind of instruc­tion he offers to stu­dents all over the world. To fur­ther meet that demand, Khan Acad­e­my has just released an app for iPhone and iPod Touch. Unlike the app released this past March for the iPad, the iPhone ver­sion does not allow inter­ac­tiv­i­ty. Users can view videos but can­not, as with the iPad app, down­load playlists, read sub­ti­tles, and log progress, mak­ing this ver­sion “more for con­sump­tion rather than full inter­ac­tion.” Nev­er­the­less, and whether crit­ics like it or not, this rep­re­sents a fur­ther step for dis­tance learn­ing, as edu­ca­tion increas­ing­ly moves out of the class­room and into the hand­held devices of net­works of stu­dents no longer restrict­ed by geog­ra­phy or phys­i­cal mobil­i­ty.

The app has been added to our brand-spank­ing new col­lec­tion: 200 Free K‑12 Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Web Sites, Apps & More

Via Makeuse­of

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

After a Tour of Slavoj Žižek’s Pad, You’ll Never See Interior Design in the Same Way

in Life, Philosophy | November 15th, 2012

How to react to celebri­ty aca­d­e­m­ic Slavoj Žižek? You could see him as a wild-eyed vision­ary and grow infat­u­at­ed with his pow­er­ful-sound­ing ideas about pow­er, vio­lence, cin­e­ma, psy­cho­analy­sis, and per­ver­sion. Or you could see him as a Pied Piper for delu­sion­al grad­u­ate stu­dents and grow enraged at his per­pet­u­a­tion of fash­ion­able non­sense. But you’d do best, I would argue, to take him sim­ply as a source of enter­tain­ment. How could you do oth­er­wise, watch­ing the above clip from Astra Tay­lor’s doc­u­men­tary Žižek! (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Open Cul­ture here)? In these three min­utes, the sweat­ing Sub­lime Object of Ide­ol­o­gy author gives us a tour of his pad, spend­ing much time and excite­ment on his kitchen repur­posed as a clos­et: clothes and sheets in the cup­boards, socks in the draw­ers. “I am a nar­cis­sist. I keep every­thing,” he pro­nounces, hav­ing moved onto the shelves and shelves of his own work, from the pam­phlets of his “dis­si­dent days” to his lat­est books in Japan­ese trans­la­tion.

But it’s his poster of Josef Stal­in that real­ly draws your atten­tion — just as Žižek meant it to. If he did­n’t, he would­n’t have hung it in his entry­way, mak­ing it the first sight every guest gets of his home. Here he describes it not as a procla­ma­tion of Stal­in­ism, exact­ly, but as — in line with every­thing else he does — a provo­ca­tion. “This is just for peo­ple who come to be shocked and hope­ful­ly to get out,” he explains. “My big wor­ry is not to be ignored, but to be accept­ed. Of course, it’s not that I’m sim­ply a Stal­in­ist. That would be crazy, taste­less, and so on. But obvi­ous­ly there is some­thing in it that it’s not sim­ply a joke. When I say the only change is that the left appro­pri­ates fas­cism and so on, it’s not a cheap joke. The point is to avoid the trap of stan­dard lib­er­al oppo­si­tions: free­dom ver­sus total­i­tar­i­an order, and so on, to reha­bil­i­tate notions of dis­ci­pline, col­lec­tive order, sub­or­di­na­tion, sac­ri­fice, all that. I don’t think this is inher­ent­ly fas­cist.”

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed con­tent:

Žižek!: 2005 Doc­u­men­tary Reveals the “Aca­d­e­m­ic Rock Star” and “Mon­ster” of a Man

Exam­ined Life Drops Aca­d­e­m­ic Celebri­ties Into the Real World (2008)

Der­ri­da: A 2002 Doc­u­men­tary on the Abstract Philoso­pher and the Every­day Man

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Bertrand Russell and F.C. Copleston Debate the Existence of God, 1948

in Philosophy, Religion | November 14th, 2012

On Jan­u­ary 28, 1948 the British philoso­phers F.C. Cople­ston and Bertrand Rus­sell squared off on BBC radio for a debate on the exis­tence of God. Cople­ston was a Jesuit priest who believed in God. Rus­sell main­tained that while he was tech­ni­cal­ly agnos­tic on the exis­tence of the Judeo-Chris­t­ian God–just as he was tech­ni­cal­ly agnos­tic on the exis­tence of the Greek gods Zeus and Poseidon–he was for all intents and pur­pos­es an athe­ist.

The famous debate is divid­ed into two parts: meta­phys­i­cal and moral. In the meta­phys­i­cal part, which is pre­sent­ed here, Cople­ston espous­es what is known as the cos­mo­log­i­cal argu­ment for the exis­tence of God. Ele­ments of the cos­mo­log­i­cal argu­ment go back at least as far as Pla­to and Aris­to­tle, who held that the uni­verse required a “prime mover” out­side of itself. The ver­sion embraced by Cople­ston is derived from one of Thomas Aquinas’ five ways to prove the exis­tence of God. In his Sum­ma The­o­log­i­ca, Aquinas writes:

The third way is tak­en from pos­si­bil­i­ty and neces­si­ty and runs thus. We find in nature things that are pos­si­ble to be and not pos­si­ble to be, since they are found to be gen­er­at­ed and cor­rupt­ed. But it is impos­si­ble for these always to exist, for that which can not-be at some time is not. There­fore, if every­thing can not-be, then at one time there was noth­ing in exis­tence, because that which does not exist begins to exist only through some­thing already exist­ing. There­fore if at one time noth­ing was in exis­tence, it would have been impos­si­ble for any­thing to have begun to exist; and thus now noth­ing would be in existence–which is absurd. There­fore, not all beings are mere­ly pos­si­ble, but there must exist some­thing the exis­tence of which is nec­es­sary. But every nec­es­sary thing has its neces­si­ty caused by anoth­er, or not. Now it is impos­si­ble to go on to infin­i­ty in nec­es­sary things which have their neces­si­ty caused by anoth­er, as has already been proved in regard to effi­cient caus­es. There­fore, we can­not but admit the exis­tence of some being hav­ing of itself its own neces­si­ty, and not receiv­ing it from anoth­er, but rather caus­ing in oth­ers their neces­si­ty. This all men speak of as God.

Cople­ston adopts Got­tfried Wil­helm Leib­niz’s Prin­ci­ple of Suf­fi­cient Rea­son as a cor­ner­stone of his argu­ment. In his 1714 essay “The Prin­ci­ples of Nature and Grace, Based on Rea­son,” Leib­niz asserts that noth­ing can exist with­out a suf­fi­cient rea­son, includ­ing the Uni­verse. “This suf­fi­cient rea­son for the exis­tence of the Uni­verse can­not be found in the series of con­tin­gent things,” writes Leib­niz. “The suf­fi­cient rea­son, there­fore, which needs not fur­ther rea­son, must be out­side of this series of con­tin­gent things and is found in a sub­stance which…is a nec­es­sary being bear­ing the rea­son for its exis­tence with­in itself; oth­er­wise we should not yet have a suf­fi­cient rea­son with which to stop. This final rea­son for things is called God.”

Rus­sell takes excep­tion to Cople­ston’s use of Leib­niz’s con­cept of a nec­es­sary being. The term “nec­es­sary,” he argues, can only be applied to ana­lyt­ic propo­si­tions–propo­si­tions which are derived log­i­cal­ly and which would be self-con­tra­dic­to­ry to deny. An ana­lyt­ic propo­si­tion would fall under Leib­niz’s cat­e­go­ry of “truths of rea­son,” or a pri­ori truths. Yet Cople­ston admits his argu­ment is based on a pos­te­ri­ori grounds, or what Leib­niz called “truths of fact.” Rus­sell first poked holes in Leib­niz’s ver­sion of the cos­mo­log­i­cal argu­ment near­ly half a cen­tu­ry before his debate with Cople­ston. In A Crit­i­cal Expo­si­tion of the Phi­los­o­phy of Leib­niz, pub­lished in 1900, Rus­sell says of the cos­mo­log­i­cal argu­ment:

It has a for­mal vice, in that it starts from finite exis­tence as its datum, and admit­ting this to be con­tin­gent, it pro­ceeds to infer an exis­tent which is not con­tin­gent. But as the pre­miss is con­tin­gent, the con­clu­sion also must be con­tin­gent. This is only to be avoid­ed by point­ing out that the argu­ment is ana­lyt­ic, that it pro­ceeds from a com­plex propo­si­tion to one which is log­i­cal­ly pre­sup­posed in it, and that nec­es­sary truths may be involved in those that are con­tin­gent. But such a pro­ce­dure is not prop­er­ly a proof of the pre­sup­po­si­tion. If a judge­ment A pre­sup­pos­es anoth­er B, then, no doubt, if A is true, B is true. But it is impos­si­ble that there should be valid grounds for admit­ting A, which are not also grounds for admit­ting B. In Euclid, for exam­ple, if you admit the propo­si­tions, you must admit the axioms; but it would be absurd to give this as a rea­son for admit­ting the axioms.

Per­haps the most mem­o­rable moment of the debate on the cos­mo­log­i­cal argu­ment comes near the end, when Rus­sell crit­i­cizes Cople­ston’s asser­tion that because every­thing con­tained with­in the Uni­verse is con­tin­gent, the Uni­verse as a whole must also be con­tin­gent. “I can illus­trate what seems to me your fal­la­cy,” says Rus­sell. “Every man who exists has a moth­er, and it seems to me your argu­ment is that there­fore the human race must have a moth­er, but obvi­ous­ly the human race has­n’t a mother–that’s a dif­fer­ent log­i­cal sphere.” For Rus­sell it was enough to accept that the Uni­verse sim­ply exists. Or as David Hume points out in his Dia­logues Con­cern­ing Nat­ur­al Reli­gion, if there must be a nec­es­sar­i­ly exis­tent being, why can’t it be the Uni­verse as a whole?

The audio ver­sion of the debate above is abridged. To read a tran­script of the entire debate, click here to open the text in a new win­dow.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Face to Face with Bertrand Rus­sell: ‘Love is Wise, Hatred is Fool­ish’

Three Pas­sions of Bertrand Rus­sell (and a Col­lec­tion of Free Texts)