The Psychology of Blame: Another Animated Lesson That Can Make You a Better Person

in Psychology | March 24th, 2015

The last time we checked in with Dr. Brené Brown, a research pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton Grad­u­ate Col­lege of Social Work, we learned all about the dif­fer­ence between sym­pa­thy and empa­thy, and why empa­thy is much more mean­ing­ful in the end. Now, in a sequel to that first video, we dis­cov­er an impor­tant bar­ri­er to empa­thy — blame. Can you relate? Both videos come from RSA (the Roy­al Soci­ety of the Arts), the same cul­tur­al orga­ni­za­tion that brought us those white­board ani­ma­tions illus­trat­ing lec­tures by Slavoj Zizek, Steven Pinker, Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich, and oth­ers. You can watch Brown’s com­plete (unan­i­mat­ed) lec­ture here.

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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es (Part of our list of 1100 Free Online Cours­es)

Carl Gus­tav Jung Explains His Ground­break­ing The­o­ries About Psy­chol­o­gy in Rare Inter­view (1957)

Jacques Lacan’s Con­fronta­tion with a Young Rebel: Clas­sic Moment, 1972

New Ani­ma­tion Explains Sher­ry Turkle’s The­o­ries on Why Social Media Makes Us Lone­ly

What Happens When a Cheap Ikea Print Gets Presented as Fine Art in a Museum

in Art, Comedy, Design, Life | March 23rd, 2015

The enti­ty to whom Dutch group, Life­hunters, attrib­ut­es the muse­um qual­i­ty art­work in the video prank above doesn’t exist. The “famous” Swedish artist’s han­dle –IKE Andrews –is but a puck­ish ref­er­ence to IKEA, the pur­vey­or of the 10€ print (oh snap, it’s not even an orig­i­nal!) var­i­ous unnamed “art experts” are asked to eval­u­ate, hav­ing been led to believe it’s some­thing rare and won­der­ful. IKE Andrews’ fel­low fic­tion­al enti­ty, Borat, would be grat­i­fied by how read­i­ly these experts accept pre­sen­ter Boris Lange’s sug­ges­tions as to the val­ue of this work.

So how bad is this “paint­ing”? Wal­ter Keane bad? Mar­garet Keane bad? Is it a Velvis? A sad clown? The sort of crum­my land­scape artist Wayne White might snap up in a thrift store?

Only if you think IKEA achieved glob­al dom­i­nance by choos­ing designs, pat­terns, and images in order for snot­ty hip­sters to buy them iron­i­cal­ly…

As sev­er­al YouTube, Twit­ter, and blog com­menters have men­tioned, the print itself is pret­ty cool.

It’s a media fren­zy, but inter­est­ing­ly, the artist is not com­ing for­ward to her­ald his or her role in the hoax.

Make that artists. Turns out IKE Andrews is a pair of Swiss street artists, Chris­t­ian Rebec­chi and Pablo Tog­ni, who col­lab­o­rate as NEVERCREW.

They have a fas­ci­na­tion with cross sec­tions. As their web­site some­what murk­i­ly explains [all sic]:

These mod­els, as such, from time to time actu­al­ly con­tain more or less exten­sive real­i­ties, rep­re­sent­ed as autonomous sys­tems of which the real­i­ty of the view­er becomes a part. This then the rap­port becomes the very sub­ject, main­ly high­light­ed as the rela­tion­ship between man and nature (between human being and its nature), but auto­mat­i­cal­ly extend­ed to a vision of total and inevitable rela­tion­ship between every­thing, between every part, where it is only the point of view, the posi­tion with­in a sys­tem, to define a selec­tion.

IKEA stream­lines the artists’ phi­los­o­phy for the mass­es thus­ly:

We call the theme “liv­ing struc­tures” and we like to see them as mod­els of liv­ing sys­tems. We would like our art to gen­er­ate inter­est and curios­i­ty, and the view­er to become a part of the mech­a­nism with his or her thoughts, per­spec­tive and emo­tions.

Philosophy’s all well and good, but what’s it actu­al­ly look like, this “Mes­sage in a Bot­tle”?

Well, it seems to me to be a bot­tle, implau­si­bly halved length­wise to reveal a bunch of steam­punk stuff bal­anced atop robot spi­der legs, form­ing a cage around an ancient-look­ing whale. Also, a cloud rain­ing yel­low liq­uid, or pos­si­bly light. (Hope­ful­ly the lat­ter). Oh! And it appears to have been paint­ed on a brown paper bag.

I can think of plen­ty of peo­ple who’d not only like it, but find mean­ing in it, as the experts do. The only dif­fer­ence is the experts do so on cam­era, a fact not all of them are will­ing to laugh at, when host Lange informs them they’ve been punked.

The artists aren’t the only ones play­ing it cool. The inter­net may be explod­ing, but so far, nei­ther IKEA, nor the Nether­lands’ Arn­hem Muse­um, where the prank was staged, have made men­tion of this busi­ness.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

F for Fake: Orson Welles’ Short Film & Trail­er That Was Nev­er Released in Amer­i­ca

The Great Dr. Fox Lec­ture: A Vin­tage Aca­d­e­m­ic Hoax (1970)

How the “Paul McCart­ney is Dead” Hoax Start­ed at an Amer­i­can Col­lege News­pa­per and Went Viral (1969)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and moth­er of a teen film­mak­er whose best known work was shot guer­ril­la style in a Red Hook, Brook­lyn Ikea. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Take a “Breath” and Watch Samuel Beckett’s One-Minute Play

in Film, Theatre | March 19th, 2015

As Samuel Beckett’s writ­ing pro­gressed through the ’60s, it became even more min­i­mal, despair­ing, and bleak. It was as if he was par­ing away as much as he could to see if the­ater was left stand­ing. If a paint­ing could be one col­or like Ad Rein­hardt, what would be the Rein­hardt of the­ater? Jonathan Crow men­tioned yes­ter­day how Beck­et­t’s 1969 play Breath, for instance, “runs just a minute long and fea­tures just the sound of breath­ing.” There is a bit more to it than that. Not a lot more, but yes, more. Here’s the play’s script in full:

Cur­tain.

1. Faint light on stage lit­tered with mis­cel­la­neous rub­bish.  Hold for about five sec­onds.

2.  Faint brief cry and imme­di­ate­ly inspi­ra­tion and slow increase of light togeth­er reach­ing max­i­mum togeth­er in about ten sec­onds.  Silence and hold about five sec­onds.

3.  Expi­ra­tion and slow decrease of light togeth­er reach­ing min­i­mum togeth­er (light as in I) in about ten sec­onds and imme­di­ate­ly cry as before.  Silence and hold for about five sec­onds.

Beck­ett adds some notes:

Rub­bish.  No ver­ti­cals, all scat­tered and lying.

Cry.  Instant of record­ed vagi­tus.  Impor­tant that two cries be iden­ti­cal, switch­ing on and off strict­ly syn­chro­nized light and breath.

Breath.  Ampli­fied record­ing.

Max­i­mum light.  Not bright.  If 0 = dark and 10 = bright, light should move from about 3 to 6 and back.

The play came about when one of the most impor­tant Eng­lish the­ater crit­ics of his time Ken­neth Tynan asked for short skits for an erot­ic revue he was putting on in 1969, called Oh! Cal­cut­ta. Oth­ers invi­tees includ­ed Jules Feif­fer, John Lennon, Edna O’Brien, Jacques Levy, Sam Shep­ard, and Leonard Melfi. The plan was to per­form each skit but keep each writer’s name a secret. Beck­ett report­ed­ly wrote the play on a post­card and sent it to Tynan, then became enraged when he heard that instead of rub­bish on stage, Tynan had used naked bod­ies *and* in fact had explic­it­ly cred­it­ed Beck­ett in the pro­gram. Breath wouldn’t get a prop­er stag­ing until 1999 in London’s West End, as part of an evening with Beckett’s more sub­stan­tial Krapp’s Last Tape. You can read reports of how the audi­ence react­ed.

Sev­er­al direc­tors have brought Breath to life. Artist Damien Hirst had a go for the 2002 Beck­ett on Film project. As seen above, his ver­sion has very spec­tac­u­lar rub­bish gath­ered from a hos­pi­tal and, glimpsed in the final sec­onds, a cig­a­rette butt swasti­ka.

Below, check out a more “tra­di­tion­al” inter­pre­ta­tion of the play from the Nation­al The­atre School of Canada’s Tech Pro­duc­tion class. After that comes a repeat of Hirst’s ver­sion, and then one more alter­na­tive, Dar­ren Smyth’s 2009 TV sta­t­ic-filled attempt. (The rest of the video is a mixed bag of the Alan Par­sons Project and a Tim Bur­ton short, don’t ask why.)

Despite Beckett’s morose rep­u­ta­tion, there’s always a black humor under­neath it all. And if you’re going to ask the man to write an “erot­ic skit,” this is what you get, the futil­i­ty of life from womb to tomb in a minute.

Final­ly, you can watch an infor­ma­tive mini lec­ture on the play, pre­sent­ed by Dr. Cather­ine Brown for the New Col­lege of the Human­i­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Open­ing Cred­its of an Imag­i­nary 70s Cop Show Star­ring Samuel Beck­ett

Samuel Beck­ett Directs His Absur­dist Play Wait­ing for Godot (1985)

Mon­ster­piece The­ater Presents Wait­ing for Elmo, Calls BS on Samuel Beck­ett

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.

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

in History, Science | March 16th, 2015

I remem­ber open­ing my col­lege news­pa­per one day, and out of it fell what looked like an adver­tis­ing sup­ple­ment of unusu­al­ly util­i­tar­i­an design. Upon clos­er inspec­tion, it con­tained a series of math‑y look­ing prob­lems for the read­er to work out and, if they did so, mail in to an address pro­vid­ed. Word soon began to cir­cu­late that this unusu­al leaflet came from no less an insti­tu­tion than Google itself, already well known as a provider of advanced search ser­vices but not quite yet as a benev­o­lent provider of dream jobs (an image now sat­i­rized in movies like The Intern­ship).

The unusu­al hir­ing prac­tices of giant, inno­v­a­tive Amer­i­can tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies have become the stuff of mod­ern myth, but the usage of seem­ing­ly job-unre­lat­ed intel­lec­tu­al tests as a fil­ter for poten­tial employ­ees has a much longer his­to­ry. Thomas Edi­son, that orig­i­nal giant of Amer­i­can tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, put for­ward the first famous exam­ple: a 146-ques­tion test on sub­jects of gen­er­al knowl­edge from geog­ra­phy to his­to­ry to physics to the price of gold.

“Amer­i­cans obsessed over the test fol­low­ing [the] pub­li­ca­tion of many ques­tions in the May 11, 1921 New York Times,” writes Pale­o­fu­ture’s Matt Novak. “From there the test was debat­ed, copied, and par­o­died in news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines around the coun­try.” If you’d like to get a sense of how you’d have fared in the scram­ble for a sweet Edi­son job, set your mind back to the ear­ly 1920s and tack­le these ques­tions as best you can:

1. What coun­tries bound France?

2. What city and coun­try pro­duce the finest chi­na?

3. Where is the Riv­er Vol­ga?

4. What is the finest cot­ton grown?

5. What coun­try con­sumed the most tea before the war?

6. What city in the Unit­ed States leads in mak­ing laun­dry machines?

7. What city is the fur cen­tre of the Unit­ed States?

8. What coun­try is the great­est tex­tile pro­duc­er?

9. Is Aus­tralia greater than Green­land in area?

10. Where is Copen­hagen?

11. Where is Spitzber­gen?

12. In what coun­try oth­er than Aus­tralia are kan­ga­roos found?

13. What tele­scope is the largest in the world?

14. Who was Besse­mer and what did he do?

15. How many states in the Union?

16. Where do we get prunes from?

17. Who was Paul Revere?

18. Who was John Han­cock?

19. Who was Plutarch?

20. Who was Han­ni­bal?

21. Who was Dan­ton?

22. Who was Solon?

23. Who was Fran­cis Mar­i­on?

24. Who was Leonidas?

25. Where did we get Louisiana from?

26. Who was Pizarro?

27. Who was Boli­var?

28. What war mate­r­i­al did Chile export to the Allies dur­ing the war?

29. Where does most of the cof­fee come from?

30. Where is Korea?

31. Where is Manchuria?

32. Where was Napoleon born?

33. What is the high­est rise of tide on the North Amer­i­can Coast?

34. Who invent­ed log­a­rithms?

35. Who was the Emper­or of Mex­i­co when Cortez land­ed?

36. Where is the Impe­r­i­al Val­ley and what is it not­ed for?

37. What and where is the Sar­gas­so Sea?

38. What is the great­est known depth of the ocean?

39. What is the name of a large inland body of water that has no out­let?

40. What is the cap­i­tal of Penn­syl­va­nia?

41. What state is the largest? Next?

42. Rhode Island is the small­est state. What is the next and the next?

43. How far is it from New York to Buf­fa­lo?

44. How far is it from New York to San Fran­cis­co?

45. How far is it from New York to Liv­er­pool?

46. Of what state is Hele­na the cap­i­tal?

47. Of what state is Tal­la­has­see the cap­i­tal?

48. What state has the largest cop­per mines?

49. What state has the largest amethyst mines?

50. What is the name of a famous vio­lin mak­er?

51. Who invent­ed the mod­ern paper-mak­ing machine?

52. Who invent­ed the type­set­ting machine?

53. Who invent­ed print­ing?

54. How is leather tanned?

55. What is arti­fi­cial silk made from?

56. What is a cais­son?

57. What is shel­lac?

58. What is cel­lu­loid made from?

59. What caus­es the tides?

60. To what is the change of the sea­sons due?

61. What is coke?

62. From what part of the North Atlantic do we get cod­fish?

63. Who reached the South Pole?

64. What is a mon­soon?

65. Where is the Mag­dale­na Bay?

66. From where do we import figs?

67. From where do we get dates?

68. Where do we get our domes­tic sar­dines?

69. What is the longest rail­road in the world?

70. Where is Kenosha?

71. What is the speed of sound?

72. What is the speed of light?

73. Who was Cleopa­tra and how did she die?

74. Where are con­dors found?

75, Who dis­cov­ered the law of grav­i­ta­tion?

76. What is the dis­tance between the earth and sun?

77. Who invent­ed pho­tog­ra­phy?

78. What coun­try pro­duces the most wool?

79. What is felt?

80. What cere­al is used in all parts of the world?

81. What states pro­duce phos­phates?

82. Why is cast iron called pig iron?

83. Name three prin­ci­pal acids?

84. Name three pow­er­ful poi­sons.

85. Who dis­cov­ered radi­um?

86. Who dis­cov­ered the X‑ray?

87. Name three prin­ci­pal alka­lis.

88. What part of Ger­many do toys come from?

89. What States bound West Vir­ginia?

90. Where do we get peanuts from?

91. What is the cap­i­tal of Alaba­ma?

92. Who com­posed “Il Trova­tore”?

93. What is the weight of air in a room 20 by 30 by 10?

94. Where is plat­inum found?

95. With what met­al is plat­inum asso­ci­at­ed when found?

96. How is sul­phuric acid made?

97. Where do we get sul­phur from?

98. Who dis­cov­ered how to vul­can­ize rub­ber?

99. Where do we import rub­ber from?

100. What is vul­can­ite and how is it made?

101. Who invent­ed the cot­ton gin?

102. What is the price of 12 grains of gold?

103. What is the dif­fer­ence between anthracite and bitu­mi­nous coal?

104. Where do we get ben­zol from?

105. Of what is glass made?

106. How is win­dow glass made?

107. What is porce­lain?

108. What coun­try makes the best opti­cal lens­es and what city?

109. What kind of a machine is used to cut the facets of dia­monds?

110. What is a foot pound?

111. Where do we get borax from?

112. Where is the Assuan Dam?

113. What star is it that has been recent­ly mea­sured and found to be of enor­mous size?

114. What large riv­er in the Unit­ed States flows from south to north?

115. What are the Straits of Messi­na?

116. What is the high­est moun­tain in the world?

117. Where do we import cork from?

118. Where is the St. Gothard tun­nel?

119. What is the Taj Mahal?

120. Where is Labrador?

121. Who wrote “The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner”?

122. Who wrote “Home, Sweet Home”?

123. Who was Mar­tin Luther?

124. What is the chief acid in vine­gar?

125. Who wrote “Don Quixote”?

126. Who wrote “Les Mis­er­ables”?

127. What place is the great­est dis­tance below sea lev­el?

128. What are axe han­dles made of?

129. Who made “The Thinker”?

130. Why is a Fahren­heit ther­mome­ter called Fahren­heit?

131. Who owned and ran the New York Her­ald for a long time?

132. What is copra?

133. What insect car­ries malar­ia?

134. Who dis­cov­ered the Pacif­ic Ocean?

135. What coun­try has the largest out­put of nick­el in the world?

136. What ingre­di­ents are in the best white paint?

137. What is glu­cose and how made?

138. In what part of the world does it nev­er rain?

139. What was the approx­i­mate pop­u­la­tion of Eng­land, France, Ger­many and Rus­sia before the war?

140. Where is the city of Mec­ca?

141. Where do we get quick­sil­ver from?

142. Of what are vio­lin strings made?

143. What city on the Atlantic seaboard is the great­est pot­tery cen­tre?

144. Who is called the “father of rail­roads” in the Unit­ed States?

145. What is the heav­i­est kind of wood?

146. What is the light­est wood?

Some of these ques­tions, like those on the loca­tion of Copen­hagen or the iden­ti­ty of Leonidas (you need think back only to 300), have grown eas­i­er with time. Some — “What is coke?” “What is vul­can­ite and how is it made?” — have grown hard­er. Oth­ers will require you to call upon not cur­rent knowl­edge, but peri­od knowl­edge: sure, you know the num­ber of states in the union now, but how about in 1921? And sure, you know which city is the fur cen­ter of the Unit­ed States now, but how about in 1921?

Once you’ve made your guess­es, you can check your answers over at Pale­o­fu­ture. Edis­on’s test will almost cer­tain­ly frus­trate you — and if it does­n’t, you may have a career wait­ing not at Google, but on Jeop­ardy! — and it may even fill you with grat­i­tude that we live in an age where hot employ­ers check for raw brain­pow­er, not the abil­i­ty to mem­o­rize a seem­ing­ly ran­dom assort­ment of facts. But the test itself, like sev­er­al of its ques­tions, pulls a bit of a trick. The tremen­dous amount of atten­tion it received when the pub­lic caught a glimpse of it reveals Edis­on’s mas­tery of the high­est Amer­i­can force: pub­lic­i­ty.

Note: Thanks to one of our read­ers, you can see how Edi­son defend­ed the test in the pages of The New York Times.

via Pale­o­fu­ture

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Thomas Edi­son & His Trusty Kine­to­scope Cre­ate the First Movie Filmed In The US (c. 1889)

Take The Near Impos­si­ble Lit­er­a­cy Test Louisiana Used to Sup­press the Black Vote (1964)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch Charles Burns’ Illustrations Come to Life in the Animated French Horror Film, Fear of the Dark

in Comics/Cartoons, Film | March 12th, 2015

Since Charles Burns’ ‘70s-set sex-hor­ror graph­ic nov­el Black Hole won a Har­vey, Eis­ner, and an Ignatz Award in 2006, Hol­ly­wood has been toy­ing with bring­ing the cartoonist’s dark visions to the screen. David Finch­er was rumored to be devel­op­ing Black Hole, until he picked up a copy of The Girl with the Drag­on Tat­too instead.

But why wait to see Burns turned into a live-action film when the com­ic artist him­self wrote and direct­ed a seg­ment for an ani­mat­ed French hor­ror anthol­o­gy called Peur(s) du noir/Fear(s) of the Dark in 2007.

The film nev­er received Amer­i­can dis­tri­b­u­tion, which is a shame, because this CG-ani­ma­tion brings Burns’ beau­ti­ful black and white brush­work to life, with a sto­ry of a col­lege romance gone hor­ri­bly, obses­sive­ly wrong. It’s close in sub­ject mat­ter to the “bug” at the cen­ter of Black Hole, but (maybe it’s the French dia­log) with a nou­velle vague twist. There are creepy insects aplen­ty, too.

The film also con­tains ani­mat­ed hor­ror tales direct­ed by oth­er car­toon­ists who might not be as famil­iar to Amer­i­can audi­ences: Blutch, Marie Cail­lou, Pierre di Sci­ul­lo, Loren­zo Mat­tot­ti, and Richard McGuire. Hav­ing seen the whole film, despite being hit-and-miss like all anthol­o­gy fea­tures, it makes one wish there was more oppor­tu­ni­ties for com­ic artists to ven­ture into film with­out hav­ing to com­pro­mise for live action, or exhaust an idea for a big bud­get.

In the mean­time, the future of a live action Black Hole is up in the air. Accord­ing a year-old post­ing on Screen­Rant, Finch­er was out and Rupert Sanders was in. But that was before he signed on to direct a live action ver­sion of the man­ga Ghost in the Shell (with Scar­Jo!). How­ev­er, he did have the idea to make an 11-minute short film teas­er just in case.

Relat­ed Con­tent
The Con­fes­sions of Robert Crumb: A Por­trait Script­ed by the Under­ground Comics Leg­end Him­self (1987)

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry Shows You How to Draw Bat­man in Her UW-Madi­son Course, “Mak­ing Comics”

The Last Sat­ur­day: A New Graph­ic Nov­el by Chris Ware Now Being Seri­al­ized at The Guardian (Free)

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.

Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh & Other Arists Tell Their Musical Stories in the Animated Video Series, “California Inspires Me”

in Animation, Creativity, Literature, Music | March 6th, 2015

I’ve lived all of my life in var­i­ous cities on the East Coast, north and south. Var­i­ous cul­tur­al and geo­graph­ic fea­tures of the mid-Atlantic have shaped me in ways I’m prob­a­bly only par­tial­ly aware of. But this past sum­mer I spent more time on the West Coast—L.A. to be precise—than I ever have before, and I found it com­plete­ly refresh­ing. Of course, mass com­merce being what it is, no mat­ter where you go in the U.S., you run smack into a Tar­get, usu­al­ly flanked by strips of oth­er tedious­ly famil­iar chains. But instead of the tow­er­ing pines of my cur­rent locale, I gazed up at lan­guid palm fronds, and instead of the typ­i­cal East Coast swel­ter, I rel­ished the arid heat and the faint ocean tang in the air. A change in cli­mate changes one’s per­cep­tions of the world, and that’s not even to men­tion my—admittedly superficial—tourist’s appre­ci­a­tion of myr­i­ad archi­tec­tur­al, culi­nary, and oth­er SoCal eccen­tric­i­ties.

On return­ing and set­tling back into the grind, I still felt the pull west­ward, toward L.A.’s weird­ness. This is unsurprising—it’s a city, and a state, that have always sym­bol­ized escapism, as well as dis­ap­point­ment, whether that of the Joads, Nor­ma Desmond, or count­less real anony­mous hope­fuls. The sto­ry of mov­ing west in pur­suit of some Amer­i­can Dream is as old as Lewis and Clark and as new as Devo, one of whose found­ing mem­bers, native Cal­i­forn­ian Mark Moth­ers­baugh, nar­rates above his jour­ney to Hol­ly­wood with his band­mates after col­lege at Kent State (at the top of the post). He begins with some for­ma­tive child­hood experiences—getting his first pair of glass­es in 2nd grade (Moth­ers­baugh is legal­ly blind), see­ing the Bea­t­les on Ed Sul­li­van. He then tells, in brief, the sto­ry of Devo vs. the record com­pa­ny, or how a quirky art-rock band co-opt­ed Madi­son Avenue strate­gies to “tell the good news of de-evo­lu­tion,” only to them­selves become a com­mod­i­ty after scor­ing a hit with “Whip It.”

The video is part of a series called “Cal­i­for­nia Inspires Me,” a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Google Play and Cal­i­for­nia Sun­day mag­a­zine. Beneath Mothersbaugh’s ani­mat­ed sto­ry, see one from film­mak­er and artist Mike Mills, who talks about skate­board­ing and punk rock in his L.A. youth. In the video above, singer/songwriter Thao Nguyen shares her “real­ly deep appre­ci­a­tion for the his­to­ry of San Fran­cis­co in music.” And below, Jack Black relates his expe­ri­ences grow­ing up in the “deep, deep South” of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, specif­i­cal­ly Her­mosa Beach, with its surf cul­ture, and “free-wheel­ing hip­pie love.” If there’s one thing that ties all four videos together—besides the music by Shan­non Ferguson—it’s the mel­low per­son­al­i­ties of the four Cal­i­forn­ian artists. Watch­ing the series from my cur­rent­ly blus­tery win­ter cli­mate gave me the East Coast jit­ters, fir­ing up that urge again to hit the dusty trail and revis­it, or maybe relo­cate to the Sun­shine State.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Huell Howser’s Decades of Tele­vi­sion Trav­els Online. It’s Cal­i­for­nia Gold!

The Mas­ter­mind of Devo, Mark Moth­ers­baugh, Shows Off His Syn­the­siz­er Col­lec­tion

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

Errol Morris Celebrates The Madness of Sports with Six New Mini-Docs: Watch Them Free Online

in Film, Sports | March 5th, 2015

In hon­or of Errol Mor­ris’ 67th birth­day, which just passed on Feb­ru­ary 9, Grantland.com is cel­e­brat­ing with a full week of new doc­u­men­taries shot for ESPN by the film­mak­er. Fre­quent­ly named one of the most impor­tant doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ers of our times, he rose to fame with 1978’s pet ceme­tery doc Gates of Heav­en, then cement­ed it with The Thin Blue Line, which helped save a man from the elec­tric chair. (It also start­ed his long col­lab­o­ra­tion with com­pos­er Philip Glass.) Mor­ris has been a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor, a jour­nal­ist, and a mak­er of com­mer­cials, all of which pro­vide the men­tal fuel (and fund­ing) for his film­mak­ing. He invent­ed the “Inter­ro­tron” a vari­a­tion on the teleprompter, which allowed his sub­jects to talk straight into the cam­era while he inter­viewed them. It added an unset­tling jolt to his two con­ver­sa­tions with the men vot­ed most like­ly to be war crim­i­nals, Robert McNa­ma­ra and Don­ald Rums­feld. But as Mor­ris says in a Grant­land inter­view, he is not here to accuse or pros­e­cute.

When I was inter­view­ing killers years ago, I enjoyed talk­ing to them. I enjoyed being with them. I wasn’t there to mor­al­ize with them or tem­po­rize with them, I was there to talk to them. And I think that’s still true. Rums­feld pushed it, I have to say.

It’s been two years since his last film, the Rums­feld inter­view The Unknown Known, and, while we wait for his next fea­ture and pos­si­bly a third book, Mor­ris has giv­en us six short docs that range between 10 and 20 min­utes. The Sub­ter­ranean Sta­di­um (at the top of this post) delves into the sub-cul­ture of table­top elec­tron­ic foot­ball games that have been around since the 1940s, and the grown-ups who still play them.

The Heist exam­ines, with dia­grams and sus­pense­ful music, the four col­lege stu­dents who stole Michael Jordan’s jer­sey from the vault­ed heights of a sta­di­um.

The Streak­er pro­files Mark Roberts, the affa­ble Liv­er­pudlian who has streaked at “every major sport­ing event in the world.”

There are three more videos wait­ing to be doled out. (Find them here.) One is on A.J. Mass, a writer for ESPN; anoth­er about sports col­lectibles; and the oth­er about horse rac­ing. The con­stant theme is the par­tic­u­lar mad­ness of sports fans, obses­sion being a major theme of Mor­ris’ work.

The oth­er link in all these films is the sound of Mor­ris, who choos­es not to edit out his off­screen voice. It’s the sound of a man clear­ly hav­ing a good time. How­ev­er:

“I’m sick of inter­view­ing,” he says. “I am real­ly sick of it. I’m not gonna say I do it bet­ter than any­body else, but I do it dif­fer­ent­ly than any­body else. I am good at it, for what­ev­er rea­son. There are a lot of dif­fer­ent rea­sons, but if that’s all I’m going to do for the rest of my life is stick a cam­era in front of peo­ple and say to them, “I don’t have a first ques­tion, what’s your first answer?” I think I would be very sad.”

So let’s cel­e­brate Mor­ris before he changes his mind.

This new series of short films will be added to our meta col­lec­tion, 285 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online. Find more films in our col­lec­tion of 700 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed con­tent:

30 Errol Mor­ris Movies That Can Be Streamed Online

Wern­er Her­zog Los­es a Bet to Errol Mor­ris, and Eats His Shoe

“They Were There” — Errol Mor­ris Final­ly Directs a Film for IBM

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.

Two Short Films on Coffee and Cigarettes from Jim Jarmusch & Paul Thomas Anderson

in Film | February 23rd, 2015

When Amer­i­can soci­ety relin­quished cig­a­rettes, Amer­i­can cin­e­ma lost one of its most dra­mat­ic visu­al devices. You still see smok­ing in the movies, but its mean­ing has changed. “A cig­a­rette wasn’t always a state­ment,” wrote David Sedaris when he him­self kicked the habit. “Back when I start­ed, you could still smoke at work, even if you worked in a hos­pi­tal where kids with no legs were hooked up to machines. If a char­ac­ter smoked on a TV show, it did not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that he was weak or evil. It was like see­ing some­one who wore a striped tie or part­ed his hair on the left — a detail, but not a telling one.”

These two short films show Amer­i­can auteurs keep­ing the cin­e­mat­ic cen­tral­i­ty of the cig­a­rette alive well after its hey­day had end­ed. At the top of the post, you can watch Jim Jar­musch’s 1986 short Cof­fee and Cig­a­rettes, which stars Steven Wright and Rober­to Benig­ni sit­ting down for and talk­ing about those very same con­sum­ables. It began a long-term project that cul­mi­nat­ed in Jar­musch’s 2003 fea­ture of the same name, which com­pris­es eleven such cof­fee- and cig­a­rette-cen­tric short films (one of them fea­tur­ing Iggy Pop and Tom Waits, anoth­er fea­tur­ing Bill Mur) shot over those eigh­teen years.

While one might nat­u­ral­ly have met a friend specif­i­cal­ly to enjoy caf­feine and nico­tine in the mid-1980s, a decade lat­er the sit­u­a­tion had changed: only in Amer­i­ca’s seed­i­er cor­ners could you even find a cof­fee-serv­ing estab­lish­ment to smoke in. Paul Thomas Ander­son used this very set­ting to begin his career with Cig­a­rettes and Cof­fee below. Eschew­ing film school, he gath­ered up his col­lege fund, some gam­bling win­nings, his girl­friend’s cred­it card, and var­i­ous oth­er bits and pieces of fund­ing in order to com­mit this short sto­ry to film.

It worked: Cig­a­rettes and Cof­fee scored Ander­son an invi­ta­tion to the Sun­dance Film­mak­ers Lab, a set­ting that allowed him to adapt the short into his fea­ture debut Hard Eight. Like Cig­a­rettes and Cof­fee, Hard Eight stars Philip Bak­er Hall, a favorite actor of Ander­son­’s that he went on to use in both Boo­gie Nights and Mag­no­lia. The­mat­i­cal­ly, this tale of a group of low-liv­ing but in their own ways hard-striv­ing char­ac­ters all con­nect­ed by a $20 bill presages the themes that, in his pic­tures of high­er and high­er pro­file, he con­tin­ues to work with today.

And can it be an acci­dent that Ander­son has, in the main, set his films in past eras that not only accept­ed smok­ing, but expect­ed it? Jar­musch, for his part, seems to pre­fer milieus at increas­ing dis­tance from our every­day expe­ri­ence, amid urban samu­rai, assas­sins in for­eign lands, immor­tal vam­pires in Detroit, that sort of thing. So if these film­mak­ers want to keep using smok­ing, they have ways. I just hope cof­fee does­n’t fall out of style. That would bring about a world that, as a film­go­er and a human being, I doubt I’d be pre­pared to live in.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Paul Thomas Ander­son Dropped Out of NYU Film School in 2 Days; Stud­ied Lit­er­a­ture with David Fos­ter Wal­lace

John Cleese Stars in a Mor­bid­ly Fun­ny Anti-Smok­ing Cam­paign (1992–1994)

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

Bertrand Rus­sell: “I Owe My Life to Smok­ing”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

David Carr Gives 10 Pieces of Work & Life Advice to UC Berkeley Graduates

in Graduation Speech, Life, Media | February 14th, 2015

David Carr took sev­en years to get through col­lege. He did­n’t have a Mas­ter’s degree or a PhD. Before he made it big writ­ing for The New York Times, he spent time in rehab and on wel­fare. David Carr did­n’t fit the pro­file of your aver­age com­mence­ment speak­er.

And yet Carr, who died in the Times news­room on Thurs­day night, earned his spot speak­ing before the 2014 grad­u­at­ing class at UC Berke­ley’s Grad­u­ate School of Jour­nal­ism. Known for his insight­ful report­ing on changes in pub­lish­ing, tele­vi­sion and social media, Carr under­stood the world these young jour­nal­ists were enter­ing. And when he offered 10 pieces of grad­u­a­tion advice, you know the stu­dents took note. You should too:

1.) Some­one who is under­es­ti­mat­ed will be the one who changes the world. It’s not the per­son every­one expects. It might be you.

2.) “Do what is front of you.” Focus on the small steps ahead of you.

3.) Don’t wor­ry about achiev­ing a mas­ter plan, about the plot to take over the world.

4.) Be a work­er among work­ers. It’s more impor­tant that you fit in before you stick out.

5.) Fol­low the “Mom Rule.” Don’t do any­thing you couldn’t explain or jus­ti­fy to your mom.

6.) Don’t just do what you’re good at. Get out­side of your com­fort zone. Being a jour­nal­ist is per­mis­sion for life­time learn­ing.

7.) Be present. Don’t wor­ry about doc­u­ment­ing the moment with your smart­phone. Expe­ri­ence it your­self.

8.) Take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the good and the bad. Learn to own your fail­ures.

9.) Be hon­est, and be will­ing to have the dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tion.

10.) Don’t be afraid to be ambi­tious. It’s not a crime.

He says it’s a lis­ti­cle that won’t appear on Buz­zfeed. But it fits per­fect­ly on OC. David, we’re so sor­ry to see you go.

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:

Michael Pol­lan Presents an Edi­ble Edu­ca­tion, A Free Online Course From UC Berke­ley

“Wear Sun­screen”: The Sto­ry Behind the Com­mence­ment Speech That Kurt Von­negut Nev­er Gave

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 2005 Com­mence­ment Speech “This is Water” Visu­al­ized in Short Film

NPR Launch­es Data­base of Best Com­mence­ment Speech­es Ever

William Faulkner Outlines on His Office Wall the Plot of His Pulitzer Prize Winning Novel, A Fable (1954)

in Literature | February 12th, 2015

Image cour­tesy of enotes

This past sum­mer I had occa­sion to vis­it Oxford Mis­sis­sip­pi for a con­fer­ence on William Faulkn­er, host­ed by the uni­ver­si­ty he briefly attend­ed, Ole Miss. Own­er of Faulkner’s estate, Rowan Oak, since 1972, the uni­ver­si­ty often stages events on the novelist’s for­mer grounds—particularly to cel­e­brate meet­ings devot­ed to his work. While I had wan­dered around the prop­er­ty a few times dur­ing my stay on cam­pus, I thought I’d wait until the cap­stone bar­be­cue at the conference’s close to enter the house itself. More fool me. A rain­storm forced the fes­tiv­i­ties into a col­lege hall, and I had to depart ear­ly the fol­low­ing morn­ing.

And so, sad­ly, I missed out on walk­ing Faulkner’s floor­boards, peer­ing out through his win­dows, and, espe­cial­ly, see­ing first­hand the notes he scrawled on the walls of his study to out­line the plot of his 1954 nov­el A Fable. The Pulitzer Prize and Nation­al Book Award-win­ning book, which—depending on your tol­er­ance for Faulkner’s excess­es is either a “crown­ing achieve­ment or self-indul­gent mess”—occu­pied the author for over a decade. He began A Fable—set in France dur­ing World War 1—just after the end of the Sec­ond World War, and did much of the writ­ing in the small office he added to the house in 1950, the year after he won the Nobel Prize. (Hear him read his Nobel Prize Speech here.)

Pho­to by Nick Rus­sell

Plot­ting the chronol­o­gy on the walls helped him become ful­ly immersed in the novel’s den­si­ty, but, writes edu­ca­tion blog Enotes, “not every­body was so pleased with the method”: “Faulkner’s wife, dis­ap­point­ed with the deci­sion, had the walls repaint­ed. In return, Faulkn­er rewrote the out­line and then shel­lacked the wall to ensure a per­ma­nent record.”

There are much worse ways to antag­o­nize one’s spouse, I sup­pose, but I’m sure that wasn’t his pri­ma­ry intent. Faulkn­er con­sid­ered the nov­el his masterpiece—Pulitzer and Nation­al Book Award com­mit­tees agreed—but crit­ics have not been so kind. It’s now one of his less­er-known works, one of the few not set in the fic­tion­al Yoknopataw­pha, a stand-in for his own Lafayette coun­ty, which he mined for sto­ries all of his mature career after some brief adven­tur­ing abroad.

Per­haps his defi­ant preser­va­tion of the plan for A Fable rep­re­sents his deep desire to leave behind the “postage stamp” of Oxford and its surrounds—to ven­ture into oth­er imag­i­na­tive ter­ri­to­ries. If so, his plan failed. Faulkn­er will be for­ev­er asso­ci­at­ed with the South—with Mis­sis­sip­pi, and with Rowan Oak. And like so many devo­tees, I’ll like­ly make my pil­grim­age to his well-pre­served home a year­ly event. The next time I’m down there, how­ev­er, I’ll actu­al­ly make it inside to see the writ­ing on the walls.

Pho­to by John Lawrence, from Faulkner’s Rowan Oak , by John Lawrence and Dan Hise

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Audio: William Faulkn­er Names His Best Nov­el, And the First Faulkn­er Nov­el You Should Read

William Faulkn­er Reads His Nobel Prize Speech

The Art of William Faulkn­er: Draw­ings from 1916–1925

How Famous Writ­ers — From J.K. Rowl­ing to William Faulkn­er — Visu­al­ly Out­lined Their Nov­els

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