Slavoj Zizek​ Explains What’s Wrong with Online Dating & What Unconventional Technology Can Actually Improve Your Love Life

in Life, Philosophy, Technology | December 1st, 2015

I once read a book by Lar­ry King called How to Talk to Any­one, Any­time, Any­where. Slavoj Zizek might well con­sid­er writ­ing a book of his own called How to Make Intel­lec­tu­al Pro­nounce­ments About Any­thing, Any­time, Any­where. From Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” to polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness to the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion to Star­bucks (and those just among the top­ics we’ve fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) the Sloven­ian philoso­pher-provo­ca­teur has for decades demon­strat­ed a will­ing­ness to expound on the widest pos­si­ble vari­ety of sub­jects, to the point where his career has begun to look like one con­tin­u­ous, free-asso­cia­tive ana­lyt­i­cal mono­logue, which in the Big Think video above reach­es the inevitable sub­ject: your love life.

Per­haps you’ve tried online dat­ing — a prac­tice that, giv­en the increas­ing­ly thor­ough inte­gra­tion of the inter­net and dai­ly life, we’ll prob­a­bly soon just call “dat­ing.” Per­haps you’ve had pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences with it, per­haps you’ve had neg­a­tive ones, and most prob­a­bly you’ve had a mix­ture of both, but how often can you take your mind off the awk­ward fact that you have to first “meet” the oth­er per­son through an elec­tron­ic medi­um, cre­at­ing a ver­sion of your­self to suit that medi­um? Zizek calls this online dat­ing’s prob­lem­at­ic “aspect of self-com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion or self-manip­u­la­tion.”

“When you date online,” he says, “you have to present your­self there in a cer­tain way, putting for­ward cer­tain qual­i­ties. You focus on your idea of how oth­er peo­ple should per­ceive you. But I think that’s not how love func­tions, even at the very sim­ple lev­el. I think the Eng­lish term is ‘endear­ing foibles’ — an ele­men­tary ingre­di­ent in love. You can­not ever fall in love with the per­fect per­son. There must be some tiny small dis­turb­ing ele­ment, and it is only through notic­ing this ele­ment that you say, ‘But in spite of that imper­fec­tion, I love him or her.’ ”

Fair enough. But what to do about it? Zizek thinks that the way for­ward for roman­tic tech­nolo­gies lies not in a less tech­no­log­i­cal approach, but a more tech­no­log­i­cal approach — or at least a stranger tech­no­log­i­cal approach. He imag­ines a world of “ide­al sex­u­al attrac­tion” where “I meet a lady; we are attract­ed to each oth­er; we say all the usu­al stuff — your place, my place, what­ev­er, we meet there. What hap­pens then? She comes with her plas­tic penis, elec­tric dil­do. I come with some hor­ri­ble thing — I saw it, it’s called some­thing like stim­u­lat­ing train­ing unit — it’s basi­cal­ly a plas­tic vagi­na, a hole.”

Dare we exam­ine where this sce­nario goes? The out­come may sur­prise you. They sim­ply insert her elec­tric dil­do into his stim­u­lat­ing train­ing unit, and voilà, “the machines are doing it for us, buzzing in the back­ground, and I’m free to do what­ev­er I want, and she.” With full trib­ute paid to the super­ego by their vul­gar devices, “we have a nice talk; we have tea; we talk about movies. I talk with a lady because we real­ly like each oth­er. And, you know, when I’m pour­ing her tea, or she to me, quite by chance our hands touch. We go on touch­ing. Maybe we even end up in bed. But it’s not the usu­al oppres­sive sex where you wor­ry about per­for­mance. No, all that is tak­en care of by the stu­pid machines. That would be ide­al sex for me today.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Slavoj Žižek Exam­ines the Per­verse Ide­ol­o­gy of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy

Slavoj Žižek Names His Favorite Films from The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

Slavoj Žižek Calls Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness a Form of “Mod­ern Total­i­tar­i­an­ism”

Slavoj Žižek on the Feel-Good Ide­ol­o­gy of Star­bucks

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Classic Blues Songs By John Lee Hooker, B.B. King & Muddy Waters Played on the Gayageum, a Traditional Korean Instrument

in Music | November 30th, 2015

To say that most polit­i­cal dis­cus­sions on social media lack nuance seems tan­ta­mount to point­ing out that most pornog­ra­phy lacks romance. The thrusts, par­ries, and asides of the Face­book com­ment skir­mish and the Twit­ter­fight gen­er­al­ly con­sti­tute per­for­ma­tive acts rather than thought­ful inter­per­son­al engage­ment. It’s more the nature of the medi­um than the fault of the par­tic­i­pants; ever-churn­ing con­tro­ver­sy keeps the machines run­ning. One con­tro­ver­sial sub­ject now trend­ing on a net­work near you is the issue of Cul­tur­al Appropriation—broadly defined as the use of the sym­bols, lan­guage, dress, hair­styles, music, art, and oth­er sig­ni­fiers of one cul­ture by anoth­er.

A prob­lem aris­es when we leave the sub­ject broad­ly defined. Pow­er dynam­ics are key, but to con­demn all acts of cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion as theft leaves us in a bind. How do we gen­er­ate cul­ture with­out it? Not all acts of bor­row­ing are equal­ly respect­ful, but with­out them, we could not have had the musi­cal rev­o­lu­tions of rock and roll—with its appro­pri­a­tion of the blues—or of hip-hop, with its appro­pri­a­tion of dis­co, pop, Kung Fu movies, and every­thing else in a DJ’s record and video col­lec­tion. Neg­a­tive and pos­i­tive exam­ples can eas­i­ly get jum­bled togeth­er under these rubrics. To avoid get­ting tan­gled in ana­lyt­i­cal bram­bles, why don’t we turn instead to what I would con­sid­er a pos­i­tive exam­ple of cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion: the pieces you hear in the videos here, inter­pre­ta­tions of blues songs per­formed by musi­cian Luna Lee on a Gayageum, a tra­di­tion­al Kore­an zither-like instru­ment.

We’ve fea­tured Luna’s Gayageum cov­ers before—of Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile” and Ste­vie Ray Vaughan’s take on Hendrix’s “Lit­tle Wing.” Both Hen­drix songs demon­strate the degree to which the rock gui­tarist bor­rowed heav­i­ly from blues idioms. Tra­di­tion­al blues artists them­selves, of course, cre­at­ed and inno­vat­ed through bor­row­ing from each oth­er and from myr­i­ad tra­di­tion­al sources. Are Luna’s blues per­for­mances any dif­fer­ent? She clear­ly demon­strates a love and respect for the source mate­r­i­al, and she plays it with deft­ness and skill, tak­ing plea­sure in musi­cian­ship, not sales­man­ship. Her blues cov­ers don’t seem to have much com­mer­cial appeal, but they great­ly appeal to lis­ten­ers judg­ing by the num­ber of peo­ple her videos reach.

At the top of the post, you can hear her play John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom.” Below it, we have Albert King’s “Born Under a Bad Sign,” and above, B.B. King’s “The Thrill is Gone.”  Low­er down, hear Mud­dy Waters “Rollin’ and Tum­blin’” (first record­ed by Ham­bone Willie New­born) and Elmore James’ “Dust My Broom.” Each inter­pre­ta­tion relies on mul­ti­track recording—Luna is either accom­pa­nied by a gener­ic back­ing track or accom­pa­nies her­self with a rhythm track that she plays over. Her cov­ers of Amer­i­can blues clas­sics on a tra­di­tion­al Kore­an instru­ment bring to the fore the inter­cul­tur­al acces­si­bil­i­ty of the songs and their adapt­abil­i­ty to an instru­men­tal con­text we might also con­sid­er “roots.” But as you can see from Luna’s Youtube chan­nel, she doesn’t only adapt “roots” music. She also cov­ers Radio­head, Frank Sina­tra, Led Zep­pelin, and AC/DC.

It’s like­ly my own bias for the blues—and for more tra­di­tion­al blues in particular—that makes me say so, but I think the cov­ers rep­re­sent­ed here are her most suc­cess­ful. (Whether Messrs Hook­er, King, King, Waters, and James would approve, I can­not say.) There’s some­thing about hear­ing the Gayageum in dia­logue with these songs that feels… well, if not exact­ly authen­tic at least less gim­micky than than a cov­er of One Repub­lic. But ulti­mate­ly, what­ev­er your pref­er­ence, if you can appre­ci­ate Luna’s instru­men­tal skill and devo­tion to her source mate­r­i­al, you’ll find some­thing to love on her page.

She’s not in it for the mon­ey, but like every strug­gling artist, Luna has dreams and bills to pay. To sup­port her work, vis­it her Patre­on page and help con­tribute to her goal of play­ing music full time and hir­ing addi­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tors. In the pitch video below, Luna gives us some of her musi­cal back­ground and explains how she adapt­ed the tra­di­tion­al­ly acoustic Gayageum for more rock­ing con­tem­po­rary tunes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

With Medieval Instru­ments, Band Per­forms Clas­sic Songs by The Bea­t­les, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Metal­li­ca & Deep Pur­ple

Led Zep­pelin, Rolling Stones & The Bea­t­les Played on a 3‑String Elec­tric Moun­tain Dul­cimer

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

When David Lynch Directed a Mini-Season of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japanese Coffee Commercials

in Food & Drink, Television | November 20th, 2015

I recent­ly read Mer­ry White’s Cof­fee Life in Japan, a his­to­ry of the west­’s favorite bev­er­age in the Land of the Ris­ing Sun. As with so many cul­tur­al imports, the Japan­ese first enter­tained a fas­ci­na­tion with cof­fee, then got more seri­ous about drink­ing it, then made an offi­cial place for it in their soci­ety, then got even more seri­ous about not just drink­ing it but arti­sanal­ly prepar­ing and serv­ing it, wind­ing up with an orig­i­nal­ly for­eign but now unmis­tak­ably Japan­ese suite of prod­ucts and asso­ci­at­ed expe­ri­ences. Hav­ing spent a fair bit of time in Japan­ese cafés myself, I can tell you that the coun­try has some damn fine cof­fee.

But what about its cher­ry pie? Only one man could take that case: FBI Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er, the main char­ac­ter of David Lynch’s ground­break­ing­ly strange ABC tele­vi­sion dra­ma Twin Peaks. A great many Japan­ese peo­ple love cof­fee, but no small num­ber also love David Lynch.

And so, when the oppor­tu­ni­ty arose to take simul­ta­ne­ous advan­tage of local enthu­si­asm for bev­er­age and film­mak­er alike, Geor­gia Cof­fee seized it, work­ing in the robust tra­di­tion of Japan­ese adver­tise­ments star­ring Amer­i­can celebri­ties to reunite mem­bers of Twin Peaks’ cast, recon­struct the fic­tion­al town of Twin Peaks itself, and have Lynch direct a new mini-mini-mini-sea­son of the show, each episode a forty-sec­ond Geor­gia Cof­fee com­mer­cial.

The first episode, “Mys­tery of G,” finds Coop­er in the Twin Peaks Sher­if­f’s Depart­ment, enlist­ed in the search for a miss­ing Japan­ese woman named Asa­mi. He and Asami’s hus­band exam­ine the first piece of evi­dence: an origa­mi crane with a G on it. The sec­ond, “Lost,” intro­duces two more inscrutable arti­facts: a pho­to of Asa­mi beside a rare road­ster, and a mount­ed deer’s head. The lat­ter leads him to Big Ed’s Gas Farm, where in the third episode, “Cher­ry Pie,” he spots the car and, on its pas­sen­ger seat, a mys­te­ri­ous wedge of red bil­liard balls (which, of course, reminds him of his favorite dessert). The fourth, “The Res­cue,” clos­es the case in the woods, where Coop­er finds Asa­mi, trapped and back­wards-talk­ing, in — where else? — the red-cur­tained room of the extra-dimen­sion­al Black Lodge.

Every step of the solu­tion to this mys­tery requires a cup of Geor­gia Cof­fee — or, rather, a can of Geor­gia Cof­fee, Geor­gia being one of the best-known vari­eties of that vend­ing machine-ready cat­e­go­ry of bev­er­age. The west may nev­er have gone in for canned cof­fee, but Japan drinks it in enor­mous quan­ti­ties. What bet­ter way to adver­tise a Japan­ese inter­pre­ta­tion of cof­fee in the ear­ly 1990s, then, than with a Japan­ese inter­pre­ta­tion of Twin Peaks? Alas, the high­er-ups at Geor­gia Cof­fee did­n’t ulti­mate­ly think that way, giv­ing the axe to the planned sec­ond series of Twin Peaks com­mer­cials. Maybe that’s for the best since, as for the actu­al taste of Geor­gia Cof­fee — well, I’ve had damn fin­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Japan­ese Movie Posters of 10 David Lynch Films

Cof­fee is for Peo­ple, Not Robots: The New Ad for David Lynch’s Line of Organ­ic Cof­fee

David Lynch’s Unlike­ly Com­mer­cial for a Home Preg­nan­cy Test (1997)

David Lynch’s Per­fume Ads Based on the Works of Hem­ing­way, F. Scott Fitzger­ald & D.H. Lawrence

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Get to Know Socrates, Camus, Kierkegaard & Other Great Philosophers with the BBC’s Intelligent Radio Show, In Our Time

in Philosophy, Podcasts, Radio | November 19th, 2015

When writer, politi­cian, and BBC radio and tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty Melvyn Bragg began his long-run­ning radio pro­gram In Our Time, which brings aca­d­e­mics togeth­er to dis­cuss phi­los­o­phy, his­to­ry, sci­ence, reli­gion, and cul­ture, he didn’t think the show would last very long: “Six months,” he told The Scots­man in 2009, “but I’ll have a go.” Now, sev­en­teen years after the show began in 1998, In Our Time is going strong, with mil­lions of lis­ten­ers from around the world who tune in on the radio, or down­load the In Our Time pod­cast. Though it’s easy to despair when faced with the onslaught of mass media devot­ed to triv­i­al­i­ty and sen­sa­tion­al­ism, Bragg has shown there’s still a siz­able audi­ence that cares about thought­ful engage­ment with mat­ters of import, and in par­tic­u­lar that cares about phi­los­o­phy.

Though the sub­ject takes a beat­ing these days, espe­cial­ly in unfa­vor­able com­par­isons to the hard sci­ences, the con­cerns artic­u­lat­ed by philoso­phers over the cen­turies still inform our views of ethics, lan­guage, pol­i­tics, and human exis­tence writ large. In Our Time’s phi­los­o­phy pro­grams fol­low the same for­mat as the show’s oth­er top­ics—in Bragg’s words, he gets “three absolute­ly top-class aca­d­e­mics to dis­cuss one sub­ject and explore as deeply as time allow[s].” In this case, the “sub­ject,” is often a prop­er name, like Simone Weil, David Hume, Albert Camus, Simone de Beau­voir or Socrates.

The show just as often tack­les philo­soph­i­cal move­ments like Skep­ti­cism, Neo­pla­ton­ism, or The Frank­furt School, that aren’t asso­ci­at­ed with only one thinker; like­wise, Bragg and his guests have devot­ed their dis­cus­sions to long­stand­ing philo­soph­i­cal prob­lems, like the exis­tence of Free Will, and his­tor­i­cal devel­op­ments, like the Con­ti­nen­tal-Ana­lyt­ic Split in West­ern phi­los­o­phy.

Though there is cer­tain­ly no short­age of high qual­i­ty resources for peo­ple who wish to learn more about philosophy—such as the many free cours­es, pod­casts, and lec­tures we’ve fea­tured on this site—few are as imme­di­ate­ly acces­si­ble as In Our Time’s phi­los­o­phy dis­cus­sions. Bragg describes his prepa­ra­tion for each show as “swotting”—or cram­ming. He’s not an expert, but he’s knowl­edge­able enough to ask per­ti­nent ques­tions of his guests, who then go on to edu­cate him, and the lis­ten­ers, for the almost hour-long con­ver­sa­tion. Hear how well the approach works in the In Our Time phi­los­o­phy pro­grams fea­tured here. At the top, Bragg dis­cuss­es the phi­los­o­phy and activism of Bertrand Rus­sell with aca­d­e­m­ic philoso­phers A.C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, and Hilary Greaves. Below that, he talks Kierkegaard with Jonathan Ree, Clare Carlisle, and John Lip­pitt. Just above, hear Bragg dis­cuss Jean-Paul Sartre with Jonathan Rée, Bene­dict O’Dono­hoe, and Christi­na How­ells. Final­ly, below, hear his con­ver­sa­tion on Karl Marx with Antho­ny Grayling, Fran­cis Wheen, and Sted­man Jones.

These four exam­ples are but a small sam­pling of the many com­pelling In Our Time phi­los­o­phy dis­cus­sions. Explore, stream, and down­load dozens more at the BBC Radio 4 site or hear them on Youtube and iTunes here. And if any these con­ver­sa­tions whet your appetite for more, then head over to our expan­sive archive of Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, and Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 197 Pod­casts (With More to Come)

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps Pod­cast, Now at 239 Episodes, Expands into East­ern Phi­los­o­phy

Phi­los­o­phize This!: The Pop­u­lar, Enter­tain­ing Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast from an Uncon­ven­tion­al Teacher

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

Three Historic Performances at Paris’ Le Bataclan: The Velvet Underground (1972), Genesis with Peter Gabriel (1973) & Jeff Buckley (1995)

in Music | November 16th, 2015

After every ter­ri­ble tragedy in the West, we expect celebri­ties to weigh in. And they do, with com­ments insight­ful and heart­felt, appalling and boor­ish, per­func­to­ry and banal. Often, the larg­er the pub­lic pro­file, the more self-serv­ing the sound­bite. One take in par­tic­u­lar has pro­voked sneers and ridicule: Bono—who paid respects with his band at music venue Le Bat­a­clan—told an inter­view­er, “this is the first direct hit on music we’ve had in this so-called War on Ter­ror.” Twit­terati, the Com­men­tari­at, and, well, folks, did not take kind­ly to the state­ment, with many point­ing out an ear­li­er “hit on music” in Feb­ru­ary and accus­ing U2’s front­man of mak­ing the mon­strous attacks on the Paris music venue about him­self.

One can under­stand the sen­ti­ment, with­out excus­ing the ver­biage. Le Bataclan—scene of what has right­ly been called a “blood­bath”—has occu­pied a sig­nif­i­cant place in pop music his­to­ry since it start­ed book­ing rock bands in the 1970s; and it has host­ed famous musi­cians and singers—like Edith Piaf—since its open­ing in 1864. It does not min­i­mize the tremen­dous pain of the hor­rif­ic mur­der of 89 Eagles of Death Met­al fans this past Fri­day to say that the assault has also deeply dis­turbed musi­cians and music fans world­wide.

Grief leads us to remem­brance, and we can memo­ri­al­ize le Bat­a­clan (named after the French operetta Ba-ta-clan) for its long his­to­ry before last Fri­day’s hor­ror. One of the most his­toric con­certs there occurred in 1972, when John Cale reunit­ed with his for­mer Vel­vet Under­ground band­mates Lou Reed and Nico for acoustic ren­di­tions of “Hero­in,” “The Black Angel’s Death Song,” and “Femme Fatale.” We cov­ered that con­cert in a pre­vi­ous post. See it again at the top of this one. The fol­low­ing year, a band at the height of its career—or the first phase of it anyway—graced le Bataclan’s stage before going on to blow minds at London’s Shep­per­ton Stu­dios. Just above, see the Peter Gabriel-front­ed Gen­e­sis play “The Musi­cal Box,” “Supper’s Ready,” “Return of the Giant Hog­weed,” and “The Knife.”

Too many oth­ers to name have played le Bat­a­clan through the years—from Prince (who jammed out Zeppelin’s “Whole Lot­ta Love”) to Oasis. Per­haps one of the most mov­ing per­for­mances the venue host­ed came from Jeff Buck­ley in 1995, whose con­cert there was released as a live album the fol­low­ing year. Buck­ley sang his med­ley of Edith Piaf’s “Je N’en Con­nais Pas La Fin/Hymne A L’Amour” (above)—in hind­sight an espe­cial­ly poignant ren­di­tion two years before his untime­ly death. “By the time Buck­ley switch­es over to French,” writes All­mu­sic, “the crowd erupts at the end of every phrase, catch­ing him off guard with their enthu­si­asm.” He end­ed the show with the near­ly 10-minute ver­sion of Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah” below, a song he became known for and that serves as well as any oth­er as a trib­ute to le Bat­a­clan in these dark days of mourn­ing, war, and ret­ri­bu­tion. “Love is not a vic­to­ry march,” sings Buck­ley, his voice crack­ing, “It’s a cold and it’s a bro­ken Hal­lelu­jah.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Gen­e­sis (from the Peter Gabriel Era) Per­form in a Glo­ri­ous, 1973 Restored Con­cert Film

Lou Reed, John Cale & Nico Reunite, Play Acoustic Vel­vet Under­ground Songs on French TV, 1972

Édith Piaf’s Mov­ing Per­for­mance of ‘La Vie en Rose’ on French TV, 1954

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

NASCAR Meets the Paranormal in Terry Gilliam’s Short Film, The Legend of Hallowdega

in Film, Sports | November 13th, 2015

I think we here at Open Cul­ture can freely own up to a defi­cien­cy in our con­tent: despite its out­sized pres­ence in Amer­i­can cul­ture, we’ve real­ly neglect­ed to post much about NASCAR. Luck­i­ly, film direc­tor, ani­ma­tor, and Mon­ty Python mem­ber Ter­ry Gilliam has giv­en us rea­son to change our ways by shoot­ing a short film at Alaba­ma’s Tal­lade­ga Super­speed­way, one of the best-known venues for NASCAR races. But The Leg­end of Hal­lowde­ga, made to pro­mote some­thing called AMP Ener­gy Juice, tells not a straight (or rather, con­stant­ly left-turn­ing) sto­ry about rac­ing, but adds anoth­er lay­er of intrigue: the para­nor­mal.

That might sound like a ran­dom con­cep­tu­al mashup, but a lit­tle bit of research reveals Tal­lade­ga as a reg­u­lar Over­look Hotel, what with its his­to­ry of mys­te­ri­ous com­pul­sions, freak injuries and deaths, and unex­plained acts of sab­o­tage. (Some even chalk all this up to a curse placed on the Tal­lade­ga’s val­ley by its orig­i­nal Native Amer­i­can inhab­i­tants, dri­ven out for their col­lab­o­ra­tion with Andrew Jack­son.) Enter tat­tooed, Fu-Manchu’d, bead-fes­tooned ghost hunter Kiyash Mon­sef, here to answer the ques­tion, “What is the truth? And what is truer that the truth?” — the words of the kha­ki-wrapped host of World of the Unex­plained, the fic­ti­tious, high­ly sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic, and not espe­cial­ly com­pe­tent tele­vi­sion show that frames The Leg­end of Hal­lowde­ga’s sto­ry.

Noth­ing in the first few min­utes of the film gives it away as a Ter­ry Gilliam project, but as soon as it enters Mon­se­f’s elab­o­rate yet makeshift, thor­ough­ly ana­log lair — locat­ed under­neath Tal­lade­ga itself — the famous­ly imag­i­na­tive direc­tor starts mak­ing his touch appar­ent. We could eas­i­ly dis­miss David Arquet­te’s per­for­mance as Mon­sef as over-the-top, but to many of us, he sure­ly comes off as no more unfa­mil­iar than some of the locals pro­vid­ing their own tes­ti­mo­ny about the curse in the inter­view seg­ments. Where has the oft-lament­ed “old, weird Amer­i­ca” gone? In (the Amer­i­can-born but British-nat­u­ral­ized and thus suf­fi­cient­ly dis­tanced) Ter­ry Gilliam’s eyes, it lives on, espe­cial­ly in places like Tal­lade­ga.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ter­ry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions: A 1974 How-To Guide

Ter­ry Gilliam’s Lost Ani­ma­tions from Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail Are Now Online

Watch Ter­ry Gilliam’s Ani­mat­ed Short, The Christ­mas Card (1968)

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hear the Writing of French Theorists Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard & Roland Barthes Sung by Poet Kenneth Goldsmith

in Comedy, Philosophy | November 10th, 2015

Jacques Der­ri­da, Jean Bau­drillard, Roland Barthes… to my fresh­man ears, the names of these French the­o­rists sound­ed like pass­words to an occult world of strange and for­bid­ding ideas. I start­ed col­lege in the mid-90s, when Eng­lish depart­ments glee­ful­ly claimed post­struc­tural­ism as their birthright. Aca­d­e­m­ic cam­paigns against the fuzzy log­ic of these thinkers had not yet gath­ered much steam, though con­ser­v­a­tive cul­ture war­riors were already on the warpath against post­mod­ernism. Very short­ly after my intro­duc­tion to French post­struc­tural­ist thought, ana­lyt­i­cal pos­i­tivists launched for­mi­da­ble cam­paigns to ban­ish crit­i­cal the­o­ry to the mar­gins.

The back­lash against obscu­ran­tist the­o­ry made a good case, with pub­lic sham­ings like the “Sokal Hoax” and Phi­los­o­phy and Lit­er­a­ture’s Bad Writ­ing Con­test. Such dis­plays made the work of many Euro­pean philoso­phers and their adher­ents seem indeed—as Noam Chom­sky said of Der­ri­da, Slavoj Žižek, and Jacques Lacan—like so much vac­u­ous “pos­tur­ing.” But as potent as these cri­tiques may be, I’ve nev­er cared much for them; they seem to miss the point of more cre­ative kinds of the­o­ry, which is not, I think (as phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor Eric Schwitzgebel alleges) “intel­lec­tu­al author­i­tar­i­an­ism and cow­ardice,” but instead an explorato­ry attempt to expand the rigid bound­aries of lan­guage and cog­ni­tion, and to enact the mean­der­ings of dis­cur­sive thought in prose that cap­tures its “errantry” (to take a term from Mar­tini­quan poet, nov­el­ist, and aca­d­e­m­ic Edouard Glis­sant.)

In any case, the debate was not new at all, but only a lat­er iter­a­tion of the old Continental/Analytic divide that has long pit­ted expo­nents of Anglo­phone clar­i­ty against the some­times awk­ward prose of thinkers like Kant and Hegel. And I hap­pen to think that Kant, Hegel, and, yes, even lat­er Con­ti­nen­tals like Derrida—despite the delib­er­ate obscu­ri­ty of their writing—are inter­est­ing thinkers who deserve to be read. They even deserve to be sung, bad­ly, by poets—namely by con­cep­tu­al poet Ken­neth Gold­smith, who is also found­ing edi­tor of Ubuweb, senior edi­tor of PennSound, and one­time host of a radio show on glo­ri­ous­ly weird, free-form radio sta­tion WFMU.

With his nat­ty sense of style and seri­ous appre­ci­a­tion for absur­di­ty, Gold­smith has sung to lis­ten­ers the work of Wal­ter Ben­jamin, Lud­wig Wittgen­stein, and Sig­mund Freud; he has giv­en us an avant-garde musi­cal ren­di­tion of Har­ry Pot­ter; and he has turned selec­tions of Theodor Adorno’s grim Min­i­ma Moralia into 80s hard­core punk. Now, we bring you more of Goldsmith’s musi­cal inter­ven­tions: his goof­ball singing of Der­ri­da over an icy min­i­mal­ist com­po­si­tion by Anton Webern (top); of Bau­drillard over a lounge-pop instru­men­tal by Fran­cis Lai (mid­dle); and of Roland Barthes over the All­man Broth­ers (above).

As an added bonus, if you can call it that, hear Gold­smith war­ble Marx­ist the­o­rist Fred­er­ic Jame­son over Coltrane, just above. Do these ridicu­lous musi­cal exer­cis­es make these thinkers any eas­i­er to digest? I doubt it. But they do seem to say to the many haters of crit­i­cal the­o­ry and post­mod­ern French phi­los­o­phy, “hey, light­en up, will ya?”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Slams Žižek and Lacan: Emp­ty ‘Pos­tur­ing’

John Sear­le on Fou­cault and the Obscu­ran­tism in French Phi­los­o­phy

The The­o­ry of Wal­ter Ben­jamin, Lud­wig Wittgen­stein & Sig­mund Freud Sung by Ken­neth Gold­smith

30 Min­utes of Har­ry Pot­ter Sung in an Avant-Garde Fash­ion by UbuWeb’s Ken­neth Gold­smith

Theodor Adorno’s Crit­i­cal The­o­ry Text Min­i­ma Moralia Sung as Hard­core Punk Songs

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

How Cultured Are You? Test Your Knowledge With Cultural Quizzes from 1958

in Art, Education, History, Literature | October 20th, 2015

Do you con­sid­er your­self well-edu­cat­ed? Cul­tured, even? By whose stan­dards?

We may super­fi­cial­ly assume these terms name immutable qual­i­ties, but they are in any analy­sis depen­dent on where and when we hap­pen to be sit­u­at­ed in his­to­ry. The most sophis­ti­cat­ed of Medieval doctors—a title then clos­er to the Euro­pean “docent” than our gen­er­al use of Dr.—would appear pro­found­ly igno­rant to us; and we, with our painful­ly inad­e­quate grasp of church Latin, Aris­totelian­ism, and arcane the­o­log­i­cal argu­ments, would appear pro­found­ly igno­rant to him.

What does it mean to be cul­tured? Is it the acqui­si­tion of most­ly use­less cul­tur­al cap­i­tal for its own sake, or of a set of codes that helps us nav­i­gate the world suc­cess­ful­ly? In an attempt to address these fraught ques­tions, Ash­ley Mon­tagu, a stu­dent of huge­ly influ­en­tial Ger­man-born anthro­pol­o­gist Franz Boas, wrote The Cul­tured Man in 1958. Rebec­ca Onion at Slate describes the book as con­tain­ing “quizzes for 50 cat­e­gories of knowl­edge in the arts and sci­ences, with 30 ques­tions each.” In the page above, we have the first 22 ques­tions of Montagu’s “Art” quiz (with the answers here).

You’ll prob­a­bly notice right away that while most of the ques­tions have def­i­nite, unam­bigu­ous answers, oth­ers like “Define art,” seem patent­ly unan­swer­able in all but the most gen­er­al and unsat­is­fac­to­ry ways. Mon­tagu defines art in one suc­cinct sen­tence: “Art is the mak­ing or doing of things that have form and beauty”—which strikes me as ane­mic, though func­tion­al enough.

Mon­tagu intend­ed his book to test not only knowl­edge of cul­tur­al facts, but also of “atti­tudes”: a per­son “con­sid­ered ‘cul­tured,’” writes Onion, “would not just be able to read­i­ly sum­mon facts, but also to access humane feel­ings, which would nec­es­sar­i­ly come about after con­tact with cul­ture.” Many admin­is­tra­tors of “culture”—curators, art his­to­ri­ans, lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sors, etc—would agree with the premise: ide­al­ly, the more cul­tur­al knowl­edge we acquire, the more empa­thy and under­stand­ing of oth­er peo­ples and cul­tures we should man­i­fest. Whether this rou­tine­ly occurs in prac­tice is anoth­er mat­ter. For Mon­tagu, Onion remarks, a “cul­tured man” is “curi­ous, unprej­u­diced, ratio­nal, and eth­i­cal.”

Giv­en Montagu’s enlight­ened philo­soph­i­cal bent, we can char­i­ta­bly ascribe lan­guage in his book that itself seems prej­u­diced to our view­ing this arti­fact from a dis­tance of almost sev­en­ty years in the future. We might also find that many of his ques­tions push us to exam­ine our 21st cen­tu­ry bias­es more care­ful­ly. His approach may remind us of friv­o­lous inter­net diver­sions or the stan­dard­ized tests we’ve grown to think of as the pre­cise oppo­site of live­ly, crit­i­cal­ly-engaged edu­ca­tion­al tools. Yet Mon­tagu intend­ed his quizzes to be “both dynam­ic and con­struc­tive,” to alert read­ers to areas of igno­rance and encour­age them to fill gaps in their cul­tur­al knowl­edge. Many of his answers offer ref­er­ences for fur­ther study. “No one grows who stands still,” he wrote.

To see more of Montagu’s quiz questions—such as those above from the “Cul­ture His­to­ry” cat­e­go­ry (get the answers here)—and find out how you stack up against the cul­tured elite of the 50s, head over to Rebec­ca Onion’s post at Slate.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Watch Har­vard Stu­dents Fail the Lit­er­a­cy Test Louisiana Used to Sup­press the Black Vote in 1964

Her­mann Rorschach’s Orig­i­nal Rorschach Test: What Do You See? (1921)

Take the 146-Ques­tion Knowl­edge Test Thomas Edi­son Gave to Prospec­tive Employ­ees (1921)

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

What Is Déjà Vu? Michio Kaku Wonders If It’s Triggered by Parallel Universes

in Physics, Psychology, Science | October 19th, 2015

I’ve spent the past week on a road trip across Amer­i­ca, and, dur­ing it, expe­ri­enced per­haps my most intense case of déjà vu ever. Rolling into Mem­phis for the first time in my life, I walked into the lob­by of the hotel at which I’d reserved a room for the night and imme­di­ate­ly felt, in every fiber of my being, that I’d walked into that lob­by before. But I then real­ized exact­ly why: it fol­lowed the same floor plan, to the last detail — the same front desk, the same busi­ness cen­ter com­put­ers, the same café with the same chalk­board ask­ing me to “Try Our Clas­sic Oat­meal” — of the one I’d vis­it­ed the pre­vi­ous day in Okla­homa City.

Should we chalk this up to gener­ic Amer­i­can place­mak­ing at its most effi­cient, or can we find a more inter­est­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non at work? Michio Kaku, though best known for his work with physics, has some ideas of his own about what we expe­ri­ence when we expe­ri­ence déjà vu. “There is a the­o­ry,” says Kaku in the Big Think video above,“that déjà vu sim­ply elic­its frag­ments of mem­o­ries that we have stored in our brain, mem­o­ries that can be elicit­ed by mov­ing into an envi­ron­ment that resem­bles some­thing that we’ve already expe­ri­enced.”

But wait! “Is it ever pos­si­ble on any scale,” he then tan­ta­liz­ing­ly asks, “to per­haps flip between dif­fer­ent uni­vers­es?” And does déjà vu tell us any­thing about our posi­tion in those uni­vers­es, giv­ing us signs of the oth­ers even as we reside in just one? Kaku quotes an anal­o­gy first made by physi­cist Steven Wein­berg which frames the notion of a “mul­ti­verse” in terms of our vibrat­ing atoms and the fre­quen­cy of a radio’s sig­nal: “If you’re inside your liv­ing room lis­ten­ing to BBC radio, that radio is tuned to one fre­quen­cy. But in your liv­ing room there are all fre­quen­cies: radio Cuba, radio Moscow, the Top 40 rock sta­tions. All these radio fre­quen­cies are vibrat­ing inside your liv­ing room, but your radio is only tuned to one fre­quen­cy.” And some­times, for what­ev­er rea­son, we hear two sig­nals on our radio at once.

Giv­en that, then, maybe we feel déjà vu when the atoms of which we con­sist “no longer vibrate in uni­son with these oth­er uni­vers­es,” when “we have decou­pled from them, we have deco­hered from them.” It may relieve you to know there won’t be an exam on all this. While Kaku ulti­mate­ly grants that “déjà vu is prob­a­bly sim­ply a frag­ment of our brain elic­it­ing mem­o­ries and frag­ments of pre­vi­ous sit­u­a­tions,” you may get a kick out of putting his mul­ti­verse idea in con­text with some more tra­di­tion­al expla­na­tions, such as the ones writ­ten about in venues no less depend­able than Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can and Smith­son­ian. But in any case, I beg you, Mar­riott Court­yard hotels: change up your designs once in a while.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philip K. Dick The­o­rizes The Matrix in 1977, Declares That We Live in “A Com­put­er-Pro­grammed Real­i­ty”

Free Online Physics Cours­es

Michio Kaku Explains the Physics Behind Absolute­ly Every­thing

Michio Kaku: We’re Born Sci­en­tists But Switch to Invest­ment Bank­ing (and More Cul­ture Around the Web)

Michio Kaku Schools a Moon Land­ing-Con­spir­a­cy Believ­er on His Sci­ence Fan­tas­tic Pod­cast

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Worlds of Hitchcock & Kubrick Collide in a Surreal Mashup, The Red Drum Getaway

in Film | October 18th, 2015

If you read Open Cul­ture even casu­al­ly, you know we love Alfred Hitch­cock, Stan­ley Kubrick, and videos that make us see film in a new way. It only makes sense, then, that we’d jump right on Adrien Deza­lay, Emmanuel Delabaere, and Simon Philippe’s The Red Drum Get­away, which mash­es Hitch­cock and Kubrick up into a four-minute shot of dis­tilled cin­e­mat­ic col­li­sion. “Jim­my was hav­ing a rather beau­ti­ful day,” reads the video’s prepara­to­ry descrip­tion, “until he bumped into Jack and things got weird.”

“Jim­my” refers, of course, to Jim­my Stew­art as seen in the work of Alfred Hitch­cock. “Jack” refers to Jack Nichol­son seen in the work of Stan­ley Kubrick — which, of course, means Jack Nichol­son of The Shin­ing. Strange enough, you might think, that those two would ever encounter each oth­er, but what might hap­pen if the gang of droogs from A Clock­work Orange also turned up? Or if poor mild-man­nered Jim­my found him­self at the aris­to­crat­ic, NSFW fetish par­ty from Eyes Wide Shut?

When an auteur suc­cess­ful­ly taps into our sub­con­scious minds, as Hitch­cock and Kubrick so often did, we describe their work, in a com­pli­men­ta­ry sense, as “dream­like.” But art that feels like a dream can also feed mate­r­i­al to our night­mares, and as The Red Drum Get­away more close­ly inter­twines these two dis­parate cin­e­mat­ic worlds as it goes, it begins to resem­ble the most har­row­ing filmic freak­outs any of us have ever endured. It makes a per­fect set­ting for Jack, who, as we know, has already gone insane due to his own alco­holism and the goad­ing of the spir­its who haunt the Over­look Hotel. And as for Jim­my, sure­ly Ver­ti­go put him through enough of the sur­re­al to pre­pare him for the psy­che­del­ic end of 2001.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Two Gen­tle­men of Lebows­ki: What If The Bard Wrote The Big Lebows­ki?

Dark Side of the Rain­bow: Pink Floyd Meets The Wiz­ard of Oz in One of the Ear­li­est Mash-Ups

Watch Steven Soderbergh’s Cre­ative Mashup of Hitch­cock and Gus Van Sant’s Psy­cho Films

Dis­cov­er the Life & Work of Stan­ley Kubrick in a Sweep­ing Three-Hour Video Essay

Alfred Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

Sal­vador Dalí Cre­ates a Dream Sequence for Spell­bound, Hitchcock’s Psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic Thriller

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.