Michael Moore’s 13 Rules for Making Documentaries — Really Powerful & Entertaining Documentaries

in Film, Politics | May 7th, 2015

Flickr Com­mons Image by Nico­las Genin

You don’t rile up as many peo­ple as Michael Moore has with­out mas­ter­ing the art of but­ton push­ing. Clint East­wood threat­ened to kill him (alleged­ly). Christo­pher Hitchens, echo­ing the sen­ti­ments of many Iraq war sup­port­ers, called his work “dis­hon­est and dem­a­gog­ic.” And the State Department—opponents of both social­ized health­care and the Cuban government—attempted to dis­cred­it Moore with lies about his film Sicko. Those are some pow­er­ful ene­mies, espe­cial­ly for a “come­di­an and a pop­ulist” whose only weapons are cam­eras, micro­phones, and best­selling top­i­cal rants. On the oth­er hand, Moore inspires mil­lions of reg­u­lar folks. As far back as 2004, a pro­file in The New York­er described the simul­ta­ne­ous­ly angry and jovial doc­u­men­tar­i­an as “a polit­i­cal hero” to mil­lions who “revere” him.

How does a doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er cre­ate such pas­sion? Moore, writes The New York­er, inten­tion­al­ly pro­vokes; but he is also “exquis­ite­ly sen­si­tive to his audience’s mood and response. The harsh­ness of his com­e­dy, the pro­por­tion of com­e­dy to polit­i­cal anger, the flat­tery or mock­ery of the audi­ence, the num­ber and type of swear­words he uses….” All care­ful­ly con­trolled. And all of it adds up to some­thing more than doc­u­men­tary. Moore treats the term almost as a pejo­ra­tive, as he told an audi­ence in his keynote speech at the 2014 Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Festival’s Doc Con­fer­ence. Typ­i­cal doc­u­men­tar­i­ans, Moore said, “sound like a scold. Like you’re Moth­er Supe­ri­or with a wood­en ruler in your hand.”

Some crit­ics of Moore make this very charge against him. Nonethe­less, his abil­i­ty to move peo­ple, both in the­aters and live audi­ences, to tears, peals of laugh­ter, and fits of rage, speaks of much more than humor­less moral­ism. Doc­u­men­tar­i­ans, Moore says in the 13-point “man­i­festo” of his speech, should aspire to more. Hence his first rule, which he derives part­ly from Fight Club. Below it, see abridg­ments of the oth­er twelve guide­lines, and read Moore’s speech in its entire­ty at Indiewire. If he repeats him­self, and he does, a lot, I sup­pose it’s because he feels the point is impor­tant enough to dri­ve home many times:

1. The first rule of doc­u­men­taries is: Don’t make a doc­u­men­tary — make a MOVIE.

…the audi­ence, the peo­ple who’ve worked hard all week — it’s Fri­day night, and they want to go to the movies. They want the lights to go down and be tak­en some­where. They don’t care whether you make them cry, whether you make them laugh, whether you even chal­lenge them to think — but damn it, they don’t want to be lec­tured, they don’t want to see our invis­i­ble wag­ging fin­ger pop­ping out of the screen. They want to be enter­tained.

2. Don’t tell me shit I already know.

Oh, I see — you made the movie because there are so many peo­ple who DON’T know about genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied foods. And you’re right. There are. And they just can’t wait to give up their Sat­ur­day to learn about it

3. The mod­ern doc­u­men­tary sad­ly has mor­phed into what looks like a col­lege lec­ture, the col­lege lec­ture mode of telling a sto­ry.

That has to stop. We have to invent a dif­fer­ent way, a dif­fer­ent kind of mod­el.

4. I don’t like Cas­tor Oil…. Too many of your doc­u­men­taries feel like med­i­cine.

The peo­ple don’t want med­i­cine. If they need med­i­cine, they go to the doc­tor. They don’t want med­i­cine in the movie the­aters. They want Goobers, they want pop­corn, and they want to see a great movie.

5. The Left is bor­ing.

…we’ve lost our sense of humor and we need to be less bor­ing. We used to be fun­ny. The Left was fun­ny in the 60s, and then we got real­ly too damn seri­ous. I don’t think it did us any good.

6. Why don’t more of your films go after the real vil­lains — and I mean the REAL vil­lains?

Why aren’t you nam­ing names? Why don’t we have more doc­u­men­taries that are going after cor­po­ra­tions by name? Why don’t we have more doc­u­men­taries going after the Koch Broth­ers and nam­ing them by name?

7. I think it’s impor­tant to make your films per­son­al.

I don’t mean to put your­self nec­es­sar­i­ly in the film or in front of the cam­era. Some of you, the cam­era does not like you. Do not go in front of the cam­era. And I would count myself as one of those. … But peo­ple want to hear the voice of a per­son. The vast major­i­ty of these doc­u­men­tary films that have had the most suc­cess are the ones with a per­son­al voice.

8. Point your cam­eras at the cam­eras.

Show the peo­ple why the main­stream media isn’t telling them what is going on.      

9. Books and TV have non­fic­tion fig­ured out. Peo­ple love to watch Stew­art and Col­bert. Why don’t you make films that come from that same spir­it? 

Why would­n’t you want the same huge audi­ence they have? Why is it that the Amer­i­can audi­ence says, I love non­fic­tion books and I love non­fic­tion TV — but there’s no way you’re drag­ging me into a non­fic­tion movie! Yet, they want the truth AND they want to be enter­tained. Yes, repeat after me, they want to be enter­tained!

10. As much as pos­si­ble, try to film only the peo­ple who dis­agree with you.

That is what is real­ly inter­est­ing. We learn so much more by you train­ing your cam­era on the guy from Exxon or Gen­er­al Motors and get­ting him to just blab on.

11. The audi­ence is part of the film.

While you are film­ing a scene for your doc­u­men­tary, are you get­ting mad at what you are see­ing? Are you cry­ing? Are you crack­ing up so much that you are afraid that the micro­phone is going to pick it up? If that is hap­pen­ing while you are film­ing it, then there is a very good chance that’s how the audi­ence is going to respond, too. Trust that. You are the audi­ence, too.

12. Less is more. You already know that one.

Edit. Cut. Make it short­er. Say it with few­er words. Few­er scenes. Don’t think your shit smells like per­fume. It does­n’t.

13. Final­ly… Sound is more impor­tant than pic­ture.

Pay your sound woman or sound man the same as you pay the DP, espe­cial­ly now with doc­u­men­taries. Sound car­ries the sto­ry. It’s true in a fic­tion film, too.

So there you have it aspir­ing film­mak­ers. Should you to wish to gal­va­nize, polar­ize, move, and inspire your audi­ence as you tell them the truth (as you see it), you’d do well to take a few point­ers from Michael Moore. Polit­i­cal differences—and homi­ci­dal urges—aside, even par­tic­u­lar­ly right-lean­ing doc­u­men­tary direc­tors might con­sid­er tak­ing a few pages from Moore’s play­book. A few media per­son­al­i­ties, it seems, already have, at least when it comes to defin­ing their pur­pose. One last time, with feel­ing, for the TL;DR crowd: “Yes, repeat after me, [audi­ences] want to be enter­tained! If you can’t accept that you are an enter­tain­er with your truth, then please get out of the busi­ness.”

via Indiewire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michael Moore Tells Wis­con­sin Teach­ers “Amer­i­ca Isn’t Broke”

Bowl­ing for Columbine: It’s Online and 10 Years Lat­er the School Mas­sacres Con­tin­ue. Have You Had Enough?!

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

Maurice Sendak’s Bawdy Illustrations For Herman Melville’s Pierre: or, The Ambiguities

in Art, Books, Literature | May 6th, 2015

Mau­rice Sendak—like some few oth­er excep­tion­al children’s authors—also did work for adults, and in at least one case, did adult work, in his illus­tra­tions for a con­tro­ver­sial 1995 edi­tion of Her­man Melville’s Pierre: or, The Ambi­gu­i­ties. The draw­ings are erot­ic, as well as homo­erot­ic, illus­trat­ing the gay sub­text in the nov­el. Sendak may seem like an unlike­ly illus­tra­tor for the Moby Dick author’s work; he was already an unlike­ly Amer­i­can children’s lit­er­ary icon—“Jewish, gay, poor,” he nonethe­less became “a major cul­tur­al influ­ence,” writes blog BLT. As Sendak declared in an inter­view with Bill Moy­ers, he learned to “find a sep­a­rate peace” from his own anx­i­ety not through reli­gious faith but through a “total faith in art.” “My gods,” Sendak told Moy­ers, “are Her­man Melville, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Mozart,” among oth­ers. The author of Pierre fig­ured high­ly in that divine hier­ar­chy.

But Melville, at the time of Pierre’s pub­li­ca­tion, was not loved as a god. Shunned by crit­ics and the read­ing pub­lic after the dev­as­tat­ing recep­tion accord­ed Moby Dick, his self-pro­fessed great­est work, Melville felt fur­ther humil­i­at­ed when his pub­lish­er demand­ed he accept 20 cents on the dol­lar instead of 50 for the next nov­el, Pierre. Crushed, he signed the new con­tract. Then, though he had been sat­is­fied with Pierre, con­sid­er­ing the nov­el fin­ished at the end of 1851, he added 150 pages, much of it a scathing, sar­don­ic indict­ment of the lit­er­ary estab­lish­ment, includ­ing a non-too-sub­tle chap­ter titled “Young Lit­er­a­ture in Amer­i­ca.”

Whether the expan­sion was, as Maria Popo­va sug­gests at Brain Pick­ings, an elo­quent riposte to his crit­ics, or, as Library Jour­nal sug­gests, made at the behest of his pub­lish­ers (unlike­ly) is unclear. Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware pro­fes­sor Her­schel Park­er, the Melville schol­ar who edit­ed the Sendak edi­tion of Pierre, admits, “we had NOT known when the expan­sion start­ed and had not known just why.” Sendak him­self describes Pierre as “a great and inge­nious work of art.” Of the notion that Melville’s addi­tions were “a vin­dic­tive dia­tribe against all his crit­ics” Sendak spec­u­lates, “he might have been mad and hurt—He must have been mad and hurt. But he wouldn’t have spent that much time on a book being just mad and hurt.”

Sendak, a life­long ama­teur Melville schol­ar, knows what he’s talk­ing about. His famil­iar­i­ty with the author is such that his opin­ion was cit­ed approv­ing­ly in the acknowl­edg­ments of a schol­ar­ly edi­tion of Moby Dick. Despite Sendak’s com­ments in defense of Melville’s lat­er addi­tions, his and Park­er’s ver­sion of Pierre attempts to strip them out and restore the nov­el to its ear­li­er form, one Melville called his “Krak­en book.” Sendak appar­ent­ly ini­ti­at­ed the project in order to pub­lish the draw­ings. In them, writes John Bryan in a review for Col­lege Eng­lish, “Pierre is a full-blown ado­les­cent: mus­cu­lar, ecsta­t­ic, des­per­ate, devot­ed, and lone­ly; he is the man-child invin­ci­ble.” The novel’s hero spends much of his time a blue Super­man out­fit, “red cape and all,” so tight “that it is skin itself, con­ceal­ing noth­ing.”

Bib­liokept com­pares the illus­tra­tions to William Blake. They also con­tain ref­er­ences to Goya and oth­er artists who explored the grotesque, as well as the mor­bid, trans­gres­sive sex­u­al­i­ty of the Pre-Raphaelite painters. “Nowhere else in the his­to­ry of Melville illus­tra­tion,” writes John Bryan, “do we find such open­ings into the latent sex­u­al­i­ty of Melville’s prose.” Brain Pick­ings describes the draw­ings as “the most sex­u­al­ly expres­sive of any of his work, fea­tur­ing 27 dis­cernible nip­ples and 11 male ‘pack­ages’…. Bold, unapolo­getic, and incred­i­bly sen­su­al, the illus­tra­tions are also sub­tly sub­ver­sive in their treat­ment of gen­der iden­ti­ty and stereo­types.”

See many more of these hero­ic and sen­su­al illus­tra­tions at Brain Pick­ings. “The Krak­en Edi­tion”—as Sendak’s Pierre is called—can be had in rather pricey hard­cov­er or used, and appar­ent­ly now out of print, paper­back.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Only Draw­ing from Mau­rice Sendak’s Short-Lived Attempt to Illus­trate The Hob­bit

Mau­rice Sendak’s Emo­tion­al Last Inter­view with NPR’s Ter­ry Gross, Ani­mat­ed by Christoph Nie­mann

An Ani­mat­ed Christ­mas Fable by Mau­rice Sendak (1977)

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

Do Not Track: Interactive Film Series Reveals the Personal Information You’re Giving Away on the Web

in Google, Life, Technology, Web/Tech | May 1st, 2015

If Face­book knows every­thing about you, it’s because you hand­ed it the keys to your king­dom.  You post­ed a pho­to, liked a favorite child­hood TV show, and will­ing­ly vol­un­teered your birth­day. In oth­er words, you hand­ed it all the data it needs to annoy you with tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing.

(In my case, it’s an ancient secret that helped a mid­dle aged mom shave 5 inch­es off her waist­line. Let me save you a click: acai berries.)

Film­mak­er Brett Gay­lor (a “lefty Cana­di­an dad who reads sci­ence fic­tion) seeks to set the record straight regard­ing the web economy’s impact on per­son­al pri­va­cy.

Watch­ing his inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary web series, Do Not Track, you’ll inevitably arrive at a cross­roads where you must decide whether or not to share your per­son­al infor­ma­tion. No big­gie, right? It’s what hap­pens every time you con­sent to “log in with Face­book.”

Every time you choose this con­ve­nience, you’re allow­ing Google and oth­er big time track­ers to stick a har­poon (aka cook­ie) in your side. Swim all you want, lit­tle fishy. You’re not exact­ly get­ting away, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you’re logged in with a mobile device with a com­pul­sion to reveal your where­abouts.

You say you have noth­ing to hide? Bul­ly for you! What you may not have con­sid­ered is the impact your dig­i­tal easy-breezi­ness has on friends. Your net­work. And vice ver­sa. Tag away!

In this are­na, every “like”—from an acquaintance’s recent­ly launched organ­ic skin­care line to Star Trek—helps track­ers build a sur­pris­ing­ly accu­rate por­trait, one that can be used to deter­mine how insur­able you are, how wor­thy of a loan. Gen­der and age aren’t the only fac­tors that mat­ter here. So does your demon­strat­ed extra­ver­sion, your degree of open­ness.

(Ha ha, and you thought it cost you noth­ing to “like” that acquaintance’s smelly straw­ber­ry-scent­ed mois­tur­iz­er!)

To get the most out of Do Not Track, you’ll want to sup­ply its pro­duc­ers with your email address on your first vis­it. It’s a lit­tle counter-intu­itive, giv­en the sub­ject mat­ter, but doing so will pro­vide you with a unique con­fig­u­ra­tion that promis­es to lift the veil on what the track­ers know about you.

What does it say about me that I couldn’t get my Face­book log-in to work? How dis­ap­point­ing that this fail­ure meant I would be view­ing results tai­lored to Episode 3’s star, Ger­man jour­nal­ist Richard Gut­jahr?

(Your pro­file… says that your age is 42 and your gen­der is male. But the real gold mine is your Face­book data over time. By ana­lyz­ing the at least 129 things you have liked on Face­book, we have used our advanced algo­rithm tech­niques to assess your per­son­al­i­ty and have found you scored high­est in Open­ness which indi­cates you are cre­ative, imag­i­na­tive, and adven­tur­ous. Our per­son­al­i­ty eval­u­a­tion sys­tem uses Psy­cho-demo­graph­ic trait pre­dic­tions pow­ered by the Apply Mag­ic Sauce API devel­oped at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge Psy­cho­met­rics Cen­tre.)

I think the take­away is that I am not too on top of my pri­va­cy set­tings. And why would I be? I’m an extro­vert with noth­ing to hide, except my spend­ing habits, brows­ing his­to­ry, race, age, mar­i­tal sta­tus…

Should we take a tip from our high school brethren, who evade the scruti­ny of col­lege admis­sions coun­selors by adopt­ing some ridicu­lous, evoca­tive pseu­do­nym? Expect upcom­ing episodes of Do Not Track to help us nav­i­gate these and oth­er dig­i­tal issues.

Tune in to Do Not Track here. You can find episodes 1, 2 and 3 cur­rent­ly online. Episodes 4–6 will roll out between May 12 and June 9.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Internet’s Own Boy: New Doc­u­men­tary About Aaron Swartz Now Free Online

A Threat to Inter­net Free­dom: Film­mak­er Bri­an Knap­pen­berg­er Explains Why Net Neu­tral­i­ty Mat­ters

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

Ayun Hal­l­i­day an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine invites you to look into her very soul @AyunHalliday

An Animated Ray Bradbury Explains Why It Takes Being a “Dedicated Madman” to Be a Writer

in Creativity, Literature | April 28th, 2015

The good folks at Blank on Blank have been breath­ing new life into long-lost record­ed inter­views with cul­tur­al icons by turn­ing them into ani­mat­ed shorts. In the past, they have made films fea­tur­ing the likes of Janis Joplin, David Fos­ter Wal­lace, Jim Mor­ri­son and Dave Brubeck. For their most recent release, they do Ray Brad­bury, the beloved sci-fi author and mono­rail enthu­si­ast. You can watch it above.

In 2012, Lisa Potts found a cas­sette tape wedged behind a dress­er. It con­tained an inter­view she did with Brad­bury back in 1972 when she was a stu­dent jour­nal­ist. Potts and fel­low stu­dent Chadd Coates talked to the author in the back of a car while they were mak­ing their way from Bradbury’s West L.A. home to Chap­man Col­lege in Orange Coun­ty where he was slat­ed to give a lec­ture.

In the inter­view, Brad­bury expounds on a wide range of top­ics – from the impor­tance of friends – “That’s what friends are, the peo­ple who share your crazy out­look and pro­tect you from the world” – to his fear of dri­ving – “The whole activ­i­ty is stu­pid.”

But the area where he seems to get the most pas­sion­ate is, not sur­pris­ing­ly, about the act of cre­at­ing. Accord­ing to Brad­bury, you don’t need a fan­cy, over­priced MFA to write. He nev­er went to col­lege after all. His school was his local pub­lic library. What you real­ly need to be a writer is an obses­sive love of writ­ing, friends who are will­ing to nour­ish your obses­sion and a will­ing­ness to be a lit­tle crazy.

I am a ded­i­cat­ed mad­man, and that becomes its own train­ing. If you can’t resist, if the type­writer is like can­dy to you, you train your­self for a life­time. Every sin­gle day of your life, some wild new thing to be done. You write to please your­self. You write for the joy of writ­ing. Then your pub­lic reads you and it begins to gath­er around your sell­ing a pota­to peel­er in an alley, you know. The enthu­si­asm, the joy itself draws me. So that means every day of my life I’ve writ­ten. When the joy stops, I’ll stop writ­ing.

For any­one sweat­ing blood in a cof­fee shop over a stub­born screen­play or nov­el, lines like that are balm for the soul. The whole inter­view has this same infec­tious joy of cre­at­ing. Brad­bury, by the way, wrote up until he died at the age of 91.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

A Day in the After­life: Revis­it­ing the Life & Times of Philip K. Dick

Ani­ma­tions Revive Lost Inter­views with David Fos­ter Wal­lace, Jim Mor­ri­son & Dave Brubeck

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Watch a Japanese Craftsman Lovingly Bring a Tattered Old Book Back to Near Mint Condition

in Books, Design | April 27th, 2015

Remem­ber dis­fig­ur­ing binders with band logos and lyrics, doo­dling in the mar­gins of text­books, idly mark­ing the fore edges with ball point designs?

At most, such pur­suits helped pass a few min­utes in study hall.

How long would it take to undo all this hand­i­work?

Clear­ly much, much longer than it took to cre­ate. In the above episode of the Japan­ese doc­u­men­tary series, The Fas­ci­nat­ing Repair­men, Tokyo-based book con­ser­va­tor Nobuo Okano brings over 30 years of expe­ri­ence to bear on a tat­tered, mid­dle school Eng­lish-to-Japan­ese dic­tio­nary. This is not the sort of job that can be rushed.

Its orig­i­nal own­er must be dri­ven by sen­ti­ment in hir­ing a mas­ter crafts­man to restore the book as a present for his col­lege-bound daugh­ter. Sure­ly it would be just as easy, pos­si­bly even more con­ve­nient, for the young woman in ques­tion to look up vocab­u­lary online. If keep­ing things old school is the goal, I guar­an­tee a recent­ly pub­lished paper­back would prove far cheap­er than con­ser­va­tor Okano’s labo­ri­ous fix.

He spends four hours just turn­ing and press­ing its bat­tered pages—all 1000 of them—with tweez­ers and a tiny pink iron.

He also scrapes the spine free of crum­bling glue, resets tat­tered maps, pre­serves the old cover’s title as a dec­o­ra­tive ele­ment for the new one, and dis­patch­es the ini­tials of a teenage crush with one chop of his blade. (So much for sen­ti­ment…)

One need not speak Japan­ese to admire the painstak­ing crafts­man­ship that will keep this beat-up old book out of the land­fill.

Oth­er episodes fol­low oth­er crafts­peo­ple as they lav­ish atten­tion on a suit­case, grater, and a stuffed toy pen­guin. Watch a com­plete playlist here.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Artist Takes Old Books and Gives Them New Life as Intri­cate Sculp­tures

The Chem­istry Behind the Smell of Old Books: Explained with a Free Info­graph­ic

The Craft and Phi­los­o­phy of Build­ing Wood­en Boats by Hand

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Animated Philosophers Presents a Rocking Introduction to Socrates, the Father of Greek Philosophy

in Philosophy | April 27th, 2015

Would there be such a thing as phi­los­o­phy had there been no such person—or lit­er­ary char­ac­ter, at least—as Socrates? Sure­ly peo­ple the world over have always asked ques­tions about the nature of real­i­ty, and come up with all sorts of spec­u­la­tive answers. But the par­tic­u­lar form of inquiry known as the Socrat­ic method—a blan­ket pre­sump­tion of ignorance—would not have become the dom­i­nant force in West­ern intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry with­out its name­sake. And that is, of course, not all. In the work of Socrates’ high­ly imag­i­na­tive stu­dent, inter­preter, and biog­ra­ph­er Pla­to, we find, as Alfred North White­head sug­gest­ed, a “wealth of gen­er­al ideas” that have made for “an inex­haustible mine of sug­ges­tion” for philoso­phers since antiq­ui­ty.

As blues­man Robert John­son did for rock and roll, Socrates more or less sin­gle-hand­ed­ly invent­ed the for­mu­las of West­ern thought. He might be called the first philo­soph­i­cal rock star—and judg­ing by the Guns N’ Ros­es sound­track to the ani­mat­ed video above, the pro­duc­ers of the Greek Pub­lic Tele­vi­sion series Ani­mat­ed Philoso­phers seem to feel the same. Dubbed into Eng­lish, and with char­ac­ter ani­ma­tion that owes more than a lit­tle to South Park, this episode makes the case for Socrates’ impor­tance to phi­los­o­phy as tan­ta­mount to Christ’s in Chris­tian­i­ty. Over­stat­ed? Per­haps, but the argu­ment is by no means a thin one.

To make the point, writer, edi­tor, and host George Chatzi­vasileiou inter­views Greek philoso­phers like Vasilis Kara­ma­n­is and Vasilis Kalfas, who basi­cal­ly agree with Roman ora­tor Cicero’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Socrates bring­ing “phi­los­o­phy down from the heav­ens to the earth”… as well as, says Kalfas, “into the city” as a “teacher of the cit­i­zen” in a mod­ern demo­c­ra­t­ic city-state. A key part of Socrates’ appeal is that he “did not take any­thing for grant­ed, no mat­ter how obvi­ous it may have seemed.” Though this atti­tude is as much a per­for­mance as it is a gen­uine admis­sion of igno­rance, the Socrat­ic approach nonethe­less set the stan­dards of intel­lec­tu­al integri­ty in the West.

The com­par­i­son with Christ is rel­e­vant in more ways than one. The fathers of the Chris­t­ian church relied as much on Pla­to and his stu­dent Aris­to­tle—some­times it seems even more so—as they did on the Bible. Per­haps chief among ear­ly the­olo­gians, Bish­op Augus­tine of Hip­po receives the ani­mat­ed rock star treat­ment above in anoth­er episode of Ani­mat­ed Philoso­phers, this one sub­ti­tled in Eng­lish. The many oth­er episodes in the series—on Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Dem­ocri­tus, Empe­do­cles, Par­menides, Plot­i­nus, Epi­cu­rus, Her­a­cli­tus, and Pythagoras—are all avail­able on Youtube, but only in the orig­i­nal Greek with no titles or dub­bing. It’s no great sur­prise the series focus­es almost exclu­sive­ly on Greek philoso­phers. And yet, nation­al pride notwith­stand­ing, the ancient civ­i­liza­tion does have legit­i­mate claim to the ori­gins of the dis­ci­pline, espe­cial­ly in that most influ­en­tial fig­ure of them all, Socrates.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

140 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

A His­to­ry of Ideas: Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain The­o­ries of Simone de Beau­voir, Edmund Burke & Oth­er Philoso­phers

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy … With­out Any Gaps

Allan Bloom’s Lec­tures on Socrates (Boston Col­lege, 1983) 

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

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

in Philosophy, Politics | April 22nd, 2015

Opin­ions on what we gen­er­al­ly mean by the phrase “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness” vary wide­ly. Does it refer to the ways we try to main­tain basic polite­ness and com­mon decen­cy in what we like to think of as a plu­ral­is­tic, egal­i­tar­i­an soci­ety? Or is it a form of Orwellian, state-spon­sored mind con­trol that squash­es dis­sent and ban­ish­es unpop­u­lar ideas from pub­lic dis­course? On the one hand, sto­ries of unac­cept­ably abu­sive behav­ior in work­places, class­rooms, and gov­ern­ment build­ings abound, seem­ing to require plac­ing rea­son­able lim­its on speech. On the oth­er hand, extreme exam­ples of ram­pant “trig­ger warn­ings” and oth­er such qual­i­fiers—on col­lege lit­er­a­ture syl­labi, for exam­ple—can seem hyper­sen­si­tive, patron­iz­ing, and sil­ly at best.

In the Big Think video above, Marx­ist the­o­rist, cul­tur­al crit­ic, and pro­fes­sion­al provo­ca­teur Slavoj Žižek approach­es the term as a kind of enforced nice­ness that obscures oppres­sive pow­er rela­tion­ships. He begins with an exam­ple, of a so-called “post­mod­ern, non-author­i­tar­i­an father,” who uses a sub­tle form of emo­tion­al coer­cion, play­ing on feel­ings of guilt, to enforce love and respect for a grand­par­ent. This mod­el, says Žižek, is “par­a­dig­mat­ic” of “mod­ern total­i­tar­i­an­ism”:

This is why the for­mu­la of mod­ern total­i­tar­i­an­ism is not “I don’t care what you think, just do it.” This is tra­di­tion­al author­i­tar­i­an­ism. The total­i­tar­i­an for­mu­la is, “I know bet­ter than you what you real­ly want.”

“In this sense,” says Žižek, “I am hor­ri­fied by this new cul­ture of experts.” In his typ­i­cal­ly ani­mat­ed style, he leaps from case to case—the ban­ning of pub­lic e‑cigarette smok­ing, for example—to show how con­cerns about pub­lic health or racism give way to mean­ing­less, cul­tur­al­ly stul­ti­fy­ing mor­al­iz­ing. His point that polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness can be a humor­less “self-dis­ci­pline” is per­sua­sive. Whether his exam­ples of “pro­gres­sive racism”—or the social release valve of obscene or racist jokes—translate to an Amer­i­can con­text is debat­able. (Trig­ger warn­ing: Žižek drops a cou­ple n‑words).

Does the uncouth Žižek get a pass because he dis­avows per­son­al prej­u­dice, even as he makes light of it? Is there real­ly a “great art” to the racist joke that can bring peo­ple clos­er togeth­er? Do we need a “tiny exchange of friend­ly obscen­i­ties” to estab­lish “real con­tact” with oth­er peo­ple? I for one wouldn’t want to live in a soci­ety with­out obscene humor and hon­est, open con­ver­sa­tion. But whether all forms of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness— what­ev­er it is—are “mod­ern total­i­tar­i­an­ism,” I leave to you to decide. It does seem to me that if we can’t have polit­i­cal debates with­out fear and shame then we real­ly have lost some mea­sure of free­dom; but if we’re unable to debate with good will and sen­si­tiv­i­ty, then we’ve lost some impor­tant mea­sure of our human­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Slavoj Žižek: What Full­fils You Cre­ative­ly Isn’t What Makes You Hap­py

Slavoj Žižek on the Feel-Good Ide­ol­o­gy of Star­bucks

Slavoj Žižek’s Pervert’s Guide to Ide­ol­o­gy Decodes The Dark Knight and They Live

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

Henry Miller Makes a List of “The 100 Books That Influenced Me Most”

in Books, Literature | April 20th, 2015

Image licensed under Pub­lic Domain via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Take a sur­vey of a hun­dred writ­ers from the mid- to late-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry about the books that influ­enced them most and you’re bound to find plen­ty of Hen­ry Miller tucked in with the Vic­to­ri­ans, the Rus­sians, and the Beats. The Brook­lyn-raised author of such noto­ri­ous­ly banned nov­els as Trop­ic of Capri­corn and Trop­ic of Can­cer has long appealed to con­tem­po­rary writ­ers not only because of his frank explo­rations of sex­u­al­i­ty and oth­er taboo sub­jects but also because—like so many avant-garde and not so avant-garde writ­ers after him—he had the audac­i­ty to present his own life and loves as lit­er­ary mate­r­i­al. Long before the mem­oir became the dom­i­nant force in Amer­i­can let­ters, with all of the atten­dant con­tro­ver­sies about truth-telling in the form, Miller blend­ed fact and fic­tion in ways that made it hard to tell where one end­ed and the oth­er began.

Miller’s rep­u­ta­tion for liv­ing his fiction—or fic­tion­al­iz­ing his life—may have led many read­ers with only a pass­ing famil­iar­i­ty with his books to regard him as a kind of shame­less self-mythol­o­giz­er. The char­ac­ter­i­za­tion isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly wrong, but it only cap­tures part of the sto­ry. Like every seri­ous writer, Miller was also a seri­ous read­er, and his work is as much informed by the books he loved as by the women he loved.

Miller freely acknowl­edged the lit­er­ary rela­tion­ships in his life, the authors who exert­ed influ­ence on his work and whose styles and ideas he bor­rowed and made his own. He wrote an entire book on the sub­ject, The Books in My Life, which Maria Popo­va at Brain Pick­ings describes as “a sin­gu­lar lens on his approach to read­ing.” In the book, Miller’s “cen­tral con­cern is a kind of anato­my of influ­ence,” Popo­va writes, tak­ing a phrase from lit­er­ary crit­ic Harold Bloom.

In his med­i­ta­tion on “his sources of cre­ative spark,” Miller dis­cuss­es at length his ideas about edu­ca­tion, and its many fail­ings. And in the book’s appendix—as if antic­i­pat­ing our cur­rent mania for lists—he makes a com­pre­hen­sive record of “The 100 Books that Influ­enced Me Most.” See Miller’s com­plete list below, and read The Books in My Life free at the Open Library. A fair num­ber of the books on Miller’s list can be found in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

1 Ancient Greek Drama­tists
2 Ara­bi­an Nights (for chil­dren)
3 Eliz­a­bethan Play­wrights (except­ing Shake­speare)
4 Euro­pean Play­wrights of 19th Cen­tu­ry
5 Greek Myths and Leg­ends
6 Knights of King Arthur’s Court
7 Abèlard, Pierre, The Sto­ry of My Mis­for­tunes
8 Alain-Fournier, The Wan­der­er
9 Ander­sen, Hans Chris­t­ian, Fairy Tales
10 Anony­mous, Diary of a Lost One
11 Balzac, Hon­oré de, Seraphi­ta
12 Balzac, Hon­oré de, Louis Lam­bert
13 Bel­lamy, Edward, Look­ing Back­ward
14 Bel­loc, Hilaire, The Path to Rome
15 Blavatsky, Mme. H. P., The Secret Doc­trine
16 Boc­cac­cio, Gio­van­ni, The Decameron
17 Bre­ton, André, Nad­ja
18 Bronte, Emi­ly, Wuther­ing Heights
19 Bul­wyer-Lyt­ton, Edward, Last Days of Pom­peii
20 Car­roll, Lewis, Alice in Won­der­land
21 Céline, Louis-Fer­di­nand, Jour­ney to the End of the Night
22 Celli­ni, Ben­venu­to, Auto­bi­og­ra­phy
23 Cen­drars, Blaise, Vir­tu­al­ly the com­plete works
24 Chester­ton, G.K., Saint Fran­cis of Assisi
25 Con­rad, Joseph, His works in gen­er­al
26 Coop­er James Fen­i­more, Leather­stock­ing Tales
27 Defoe, Daniel, Robin­son Cru­soe
28 De Ner­val, Gérard, His works in gen­er­al
29 Dos­toievsky, Feodor, His works in gen­er­al
30 Dreis­er, Theodore, His works in gen­er­al
31 Duhamel, Geoges, Salavin Series
32 Du Mau­ri­er, George, Tril­by
33 Dumas, Alexan­der, The Three Mus­ke­teers
34 Eck­er­mann, Johann, Con­ver­sa­tions with Goethe
35 Eltzbach­er, Paul, Anar­chism
36 Emer­son, Ralph Wal­do, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Men
37 Fab­re, Hen­ri, His works in gen­er­al
38 Fau­re, Elie, The His­to­ry of Art
39 Fenol­losa, Ernest, The Chi­nese Writ­ten Char­ac­ter as a Medi­um for Poet­ry
40 Gide, André, Dos­toievs­ki
41 Giono, Jean, Refus d’Obéis­sance
42 Giono, Jean, Que ma joie domeure
43 Giono, Jean, Jean le Bleu
44 Grimm Broth­ers, Fairy Tales
45 Gutkind, Erich, The Absolute Col­lec­tive
46 Hag­gard, Rid­er, She
47 Ham­sun, Knut, His works in gen­er­al
48 Hen­ty, G. A., His works in gen­er­al
49 Hesse, Her­mann, Sid­dhartha
50 Hud­son, W. H., His works in gen­er­al
51 Hugo, Vic­tor, Les Mis­érables
52 Huys­mans, Joris Karl, Against the Grain
53 Joyce, James, Ulysses
54 Key­ser­ling, Her­mann, South Amer­i­can Med­i­ta­tions
55 Kropotkin, Peter, Mutu­al Aid
56 Lao-tse, Tao Teh Ch’ing
57 Latzko, Andreas, Men in War
58 Long, Haniel, Inter­lin­ear to Cabeza de Vaca
59 M, Gospel of Ramakr­ish­na
60 Machen, Arthur, The Hill of Dreams
61 Maeter­linck, Mau­rice, His works in gen­er­al
62 Mann, Thomas, The Mag­ic Moun­tain
63 Menck­en, H. L., Prej­u­dices
64 Niet­zsche, His works in gen­er­al
65 Nijin­sky, Diary
66 Nord­hoff & Hall, Pit­cairn Island
67 Nos­tradamus, The Cen­turies
68 Peck, George Wilbur, Peck­’s Bad Boy
69 Per­ci­val, W. O., William Blake’s Cir­cle of Des­tiny
70 Petro­n­ius, The Satyri­con
71 Plutarch, Lives
72 Powys, John Cow­per, Visions and Revi­sions
73 Prescott, William H., Con­quest of Mex­i­co
74 Prescott, William H., Con­quest of Peru
75 Proust, Mar­cel, Remem­brance of Things Past
76 Rabelais, Gar­gan­tua and Pan­ta­gru­el
77 Rim­baud, Jean-Arthur, His works in gen­er­al
78 Rol­land, Romain, Jean-Christophe
79 Rol­land, Romain, Prophets of the New India
80 Rud­h­yar, Dane, Astrol­o­gy of Per­son­al­i­ty
81 Saltus, Edgar, The Impe­r­i­al Pur­ple
82 Scott, Sir Wal­ter, Ivan­hoe
83 Sienkiewicz, Hen­ry, Quo Vadis
84 Sike­lianos, Angh­e­los, Proanakrous­ma
85 Sin­nett, A. P., Eso­teric Bud­dhism
86 Spencer, Her­bert, Auto­bi­og­ra­phy
87 Spen­gler, Oswald, The Decline of the West
88 Strind­berg, August, The Infer­no
89 Suarès, Car­lo, Krish­na­mur­ti
90 Suzu­ki, Daisetz Teitaro, Zen Bud­dhism
91 Swift, Jonathan, Guil­liv­er’s Trav­els
92 Ten­nyson, Alfred, Idylls of the King
93 Thore­au, Hen­ry David, Civ­il Dis­obe­di­ence & Oth­er Essays
94 Twain, Mark, Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn
95 Van Gogh, Vin­cent, Let­ters to Theo
96 Wasser­mann, Jacob, The Mau­r­iz­ius Case (Tril­o­gy)
97 Weigall, Arthur, Akhna­ton
98 Welch, Gal­braith, The Unveil­ing of Tim­buc­too
99 Wer­fel, Franz, Star of the Unborn
100 Whit­man, Walt, Leaves of Grass

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leo Tol­stoy Cre­ates a List of the 50+ Books That Influ­enced Him Most (1891)

28 Impor­tant Philoso­phers List the Books That Influ­enced Them Most Dur­ing Their Col­lege Days

Stephen King Cre­ates a List of 96 Books for Aspir­ing Writ­ers to Read

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

David Chase Reveals the Philosophical Meaning of The Soprano’s Final Scene

in Life, Television | April 17th, 2015

Eight years after it aired, the final scene of the final episode of The Sopra­nos still has peo­ple guess­ing: What hap­pened when the screen sud­den­ly went black? Did Tony Sopra­no get whacked? Or did he live to see anoth­er qua­si-ordi­nary day? Could he real­ly die as Jour­ney sings, “Don’t Stop Believ­ing?”

In a new inter­view appear­ing on The Direc­tors Guild of Amer­i­ca web site, David Chase, cre­ator of The Sopra­nos, revis­its the mak­ing of the final scene. Chase does­n’t direct­ly answer the ques­tions about Tony’s fate. But he does give us some insight into the deep­er philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions raised in the scene (watch it above) and how much they’re bound up in the lyrics of Jour­ney’s sound­track. There’s some deep­er mean­ing in the small town girl and the city boy tak­ing “the mid­night train goin’ any­where”:

I love the tim­ing of the lyric when Carmela enters: ‘Just a small town girl livin’ in a lone­ly world, she took the mid­night train goin’ any­where.’ Then it talks about Tony: ‘Just a city boy,’ and we had to dim down the music so you did­n’t hear the line, ‘born and raised in South Detroit.’ The music cuts out a lit­tle bit there, and they’re speak­ing over it. ‘He took the mid­night train goin’ any­where.’ And that to me was [every­thing]. I felt that those two char­ac­ters had tak­en the mid­night train a long time ago. That is their life. It means that these peo­ple are look­ing for some­thing inevitable. Some­thing they could­n’t find. I mean, they did­n’t become mis­sion­ar­ies in Africa or go to col­lege togeth­er or do any­thing like that. They took the mid­night train going any­where. And the mid­night train, you know, is the dark train.

And there’s mean­ing packed in the idea of “Strangers wait­ing up and down the boule­vard.”

Cut­ting to Mead­ow park­ing was my way of build­ing up the ten­sion and build­ing up the sus­pense, but more than that I want­ed to demon­strate the lyrics of the song, which is street­lights, peo­ple walk­ing up and down the boule­vard, because that’s what the song is say­ing. ‘Strangers wait­ing.’ I want­ed you to remem­ber that is out there. That there are street­lights and peo­ple out there and strangers mov­ing up and down. It’s the stream of life, but not only that, it’s the stream of life at night. There’s that pic­ture called His­to­ry Is Made at Night [from 1937]. I love that title. And that kind of echoes in my head all the time.

But if you’re look­ing for the philo­soph­i­cal essence of the scene, then look no fur­ther than the mantra, “Don’t stop believin.’ ” That’s what it’s all about:

I thought the end­ing would be some­what jar­ring, sure. But not to the extent it was, and not a sub­ject of such dis­cus­sion. I real­ly had no idea about that. I nev­er con­sid­ered the black a shot. I just thought what we see is black. The ceil­ing I was going for at that point, the biggest feel­ing I was going for, hon­est­ly, was don’t stop believ­ing. It was very sim­ple and much more on the nose than peo­ple think. That’s what I want­ed peo­ple to believe. That life ends and death comes, but don’t stop believ­ing. There are attach­ments we make in life, even though it’s all going to come to an end, that are worth so much, and we’re so lucky to have been able to expe­ri­ence them. Life is short. Either it ends here for Tony or some oth­er time. But in spite of that, it’s real­ly worth it. So don’t stop believ­ing.

Read Chase’s com­plete account of the famous final scene here.

Thanks to Ted Mills for flag­ging this. Fol­low him at @TedMills.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

The Talking Heads’ First TV Appearance Was on American Bandstand, and It Was a Little Awkward (1979)

in Music | March 26th, 2015

“I guess he’s…organically shy.”–Tina Wey­mouth

As Talk­ing Heads went from CBG­Bs (see some vin­tage video) to col­lege radio to a Euro­pean tour open­ing for The Ramones in 1977, the band was slow­ly mak­ing its way out of New York City pover­ty while their art school rock was seep­ing into Amer­i­can cul­ture at large. When “Take Me To the Riv­er,” their airy, ner­vous but still funky Eno-pro­duced cov­er of the Al Green song became their first Bill­board Top 30 hit, the band took a step towards nation­al recog­ni­tion.

And that leads us to this awk­ward March 17, 1979 appear­ance of the band on ABC’s Amer­i­can Band­stand, their first on Amer­i­can TV. Long­time host Dick Clark was pret­ty square–rock crit­ic Nik Cohn described him as “a disc jock­ey who looked like an all-Amer­i­can choirboy”–but Amer­i­can Band­stand was a prime oppor­tu­ni­ty. In 1979, the New Wave and Post-Punk scenes were rag­ing at the show’s doors. Talk­ing Heads were one of the few acts that year from NYC’s cre­ative caul­dron of a music scene, apart from Blondie and Grace Jones, to make it onto Band­stand.

In the above clip, Clark apol­o­gizes for get­ting Tina Weymouth’s name wrong, then jumps in to inter­view David Byrne, who responds to Clark’s ques­tions by shut­ting them down with embar­rassed looks and mat­ter-of-fact answers. Clark then turns back to Tina for some psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic help. “Is he always this enthu­si­as­tic?” he asks. It crum­bles from there.
Wey­mouth remem­bered it slight­ly dif­fer­ent­ly in this recent (2014) inter­view in New York Mag­a­zine:

I couldn’t explain to the record-label peo­ple why David’s behav­ior could be so incred­i­bly odd. He had a freak-out on our first tele­vi­sion appear­ance, on Dick Clark, on Amer­i­can Band­stand. David sort of froze, and Dick Clark sort of whirled around, and hands the micro­phone to me. And there were oth­er things going on, too. I don’t think any per­son is one thing, or defined by a con­di­tion that they might have.

It’s not exact­ly freez­ing, but it is odd…for rock front­men. And ask­ing Byrne “Do you flog your­self into this?” tells you a bit more about Clark’s state of mind than any­thing else.

You can see the mimed per­for­mance of their hit here:

The oth­er song they per­formed on the broad­cast “Thank You for Send­ing Me an Angel” has not popped up on YouTube…yet.

Part­ing note: The oth­er guest that night on Band­stand was twee, blue-eyed dis­co act Brook­lyn Dreams with their sin­gle Make It Last.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear the Ear­li­est Known Talk­ing Heads Record­ings (1975)

Talk­ing Heads Live in Rome, 1980: The Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Jim Jarmusch’s Anti-MTV Music Videos for Talk­ing Heads, Neil Young, Tom Waits & Big Audio Dyna­mite

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

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