How the “Lost Cities” of the Amazon Were Finally Discovered

in History | October 25th, 2023

About a decade and a half ago, The Lost City of Z seemed to have been placed front-and-cen­ter in most book­stores of the Eng­lish-speak­ing world. It was the first book by jour­nal­ist David Grann, and it hand­i­ly proved that he knew how to deal with his­to­ry in a way that could cap­ture the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion. (His sec­ond, Killers of the Flower Moon, pro­vid­ed the basis for the acclaimed Mar­tin Scors­ese film now in the­aters.) Sub­ti­tled A Tale of Dead­ly Obses­sion in the Ama­zon, the book tells of British explor­er Cap­tain Per­cy Faw­cett, who went miss­ing with his son in that vast jun­gle back in 1925. They’d been look­ing for the “lost city” of the title, of whose exis­tence Faw­cett had been con­vinced by what may now strike us as rather scant evi­dence.

“The idea was based on rumors that had cir­cu­lat­ed for cen­turies that there were once large cities, filled with peo­ple, deep in the Ama­zon,” says the nar­ra­tor of the Vox Atlas video above, fired by the dis­cov­ery of grand cap­i­tals like Tenochti­t­lan in mod­ern-day Mex­i­co and Cus­co in Peru. Experts, for their part, “believed that this rain­for­est was sim­ply too hos­tile and too remote to ever have sup­port­ed cities.”

More recent­ly, sci­en­tists start­ed iden­ti­fy­ing man-made ditch­es and mounds all over the Ama­zon, which com­pli­cat­ed the pic­ture con­sid­er­ably. Instead of the extrav­a­gant metrop­o­lis inti­mat­ed by explor­ers in the cen­turies before him, Faw­cett only encoun­tered small groups of natives liv­ing in sim­ple vil­lages. The con­sen­sus came to hold that a host of envi­ron­men­tal, geo­log­i­cal, and bio­log­i­cal fac­tors con­spired against the growth of large-scale civ­i­liza­tions in the rain­for­est.

But “it turns out, Faw­cett was look­ing in the right place, just for the wrong thing.” He nev­er took note of patch­es of inten­tion­al­ly cul­ti­vat­ed fer­tile soil, ditch­es where once stood walls lead­ing to a plaza, and “delin­eat­ed areas for gar­dens and orchards.” Though none of this quite sug­gest­ed the fabled El Dora­do, “over the past few decades, experts have uncov­ered evi­dence of large set­tle­ments all over the Ama­zon,” a sin­gle one of which could have had up to 60,000 inhab­i­tants. By the time Faw­cett arrived in the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, most of those locals had long since died of Euro­pean-import­ed dis­eases, leav­ing their wood- and-Earth struc­tures to decom­pose. Giv­en how far trans­port and con­struc­tion tech­nolo­gies have come since then, per­haps it’s time to try out a dif­fer­ent obses­sion: not over find­ing old Ama­zon­ian cities, but build­ing new ones.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sis­tine Chapel of the Ancients: Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er 8 Miles of Art Paint­ed on Rock Walls in the Ama­zon

Tour the Ama­zon with Google Street View; No Pass­port Need­ed

Explor­er David Livingstone’s Diary (Writ­ten in Berry Juice) Now Dig­i­tized with New Imag­ing Tech­nol­o­gy

Hear Ernest Shack­le­ton Speak About His Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion in a Rare 1909 Record­ing

Lis­ten to Pla­to Invent the Myth of Atlantis (360 B.C)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch David Byrne Practice His Dance Moves for Stop Making Sense in Newly Released Behind-the-Scenes Footage

in Dance, Film, Music | October 19th, 2023

A new 4K restora­tion of Stop Mak­ing Sense debuted last month at the Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, then opened in the­aters around the world. The pro­mo­tion­al push for this cul­tur­al event start­ed ear­ly (as fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture), and has involved the release of rarely-seen sup­ple­men­tary mate­ri­als cho­sen to delight Talk­ing Heads fans. Take the short video above, a com­pi­la­tion of video clips in which David Byrne rehears­es his dance moves in advance of the band’s 1983 Speak­ing in Tongues tour, four of whose shows would be com­bined, with the help of many col­lab­o­ra­tors includ­ing direc­tor Jonathan Demme, into a seam­less, still-beloved musi­cal-cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence.

In a film full of mem­o­rable ele­ments, from the Pablo Fer­ro titles to the lamp to the big suit, Byrne’s dis­tinc­tive way of car­ry­ing him­self stands out. “His wide-eyed stare, jerky move­ments and onstage cool remind­ed many com­men­ta­tors of Antho­ny Perkins, star of Hitchcock’s movie Psy­cho,” Col­in Larkin writes of ear­li­er Heads shows in The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Pop­u­lar Music.

This elab­o­rate awk­ward­ness, so thor­ough­ly delib­er­ate-look­ing that it comes around the oth­er side to suavi­ty, may seem like a nat­ur­al expres­sion of his artis­tic per­son­al­i­ty. But as revealed by the video he shot of him­self try­ing out dif­fer­ent chore­o­graph­ic ideas — and even more so by the full 25-minute ver­sion, which fea­tures not just numer­ous VHS glitch­es but also the band’s back­up singers — it took tri­al and error to devel­op.

“The film’s peak moments come through Byrne’s sim­ple phys­i­cal pres­ence,” Roger Ebert wrote of Stop Mak­ing Sense upon its ini­tial release in 1984. “He jogs in place with his side­men; he runs around the stage; he seems so hap­py to be alive and mak­ing music,” and even “serves as a reminder of how sour and weary and strung-out many rock bands have become.” Though, when rock bands may be less strung-out but are cer­tain­ly no less weary, his restored per­for­mance is remind­ing count­less Heads enthu­si­asts why they got into the band in the first place — and no doubt giv­ing hereto­fore unini­ti­at­ed new gen­er­a­tions a few para­noical­ly exu­ber­ant, rigid­ly unin­hib­it­ed, and smooth­ly un-smooth moves to try out on the dance floor them­selves.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Brief His­to­ry of Talk­ing Heads: How the Band Went from Scrap­py CBGB’s Punks to New Wave Super­stars

David Byrne Plays Sev­en Char­ac­ters & Inter­views Him­self in Fun­ny Pro­mo for Stop Mak­ing Sense

How Jonathan Demme Put Human­i­ty Into His Films: From The Silence of the Lambs to Stop Mak­ing Sense

David Byrne Explains How the “Big Suit” He Wore in Stop Mak­ing Sense Was Inspired by Japan­ese Kabu­ki The­atre

How Talk­ing Heads and Bri­an Eno Wrote “Once in a Life­time”: Cut­ting Edge, Strange & Utter­ly Bril­liant

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

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

130 Animators Remake an Episode of Frasier, One Frame at a Time

in Animation, Television | October 18th, 2023

Behold a crowd­sourced, col­lab­o­ra­tive art project where more than 130 ani­ma­tors and film­mak­ers from 11 dif­fer­ent coun­tries joined togeth­er and remade a full episode of Frasi­er. (It’s the finale of Sea­son 1, “My Cof­fee with Niles.”) The pro­jec­t’s mas­ter­mind, Jacob Reed, asked indi­vid­ual artists to ani­mate dif­fer­ent scenes, each with a dif­fer­ent style, and then he stitched them all togeth­er. Above, you can see how every­thing hangs togeth­er.

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!

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent

Watch “Pass the Ball,” a Col­lab­o­ra­tive Ani­ma­tion Made by 40 Ani­ma­tors Across the Globe

Disney’s 12 Time­less Prin­ci­ples of Ani­ma­tion

Watch The Amaz­ing 1912 Ani­ma­tion of Stop-Motion Pio­neer Ladis­las Stare­vich, Star­ring Dead Bugs

Watch a Strange Animation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart,” Voted the 24th Best Cartoon of All Time (1953)

in Film, Literature | October 17th, 2023

Ani­ma­tion stu­dio UPA—United Pro­duc­tions of America—is best known these days as the stu­dio that gave us Mr. Magoo and Ger­ald McBo­ing Boing (which inspired a cer­tain web­site). But the stu­dio, orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed by three for­mer Dis­ney employ­ees, want­ed to broad­en hori­zons back in the 1950s, and cre­at­ed this quite dis­turb­ing adap­ta­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” nar­rat­ed by the ven­er­a­ble James Mason.

Due to its adult sub­ject mat­ter, it was the first ani­mat­ed film to receive an “X” rat­ing
(or “suit­able for those aged 16 and over”) in the UK. Though not intend­ed for chil­dren, many undoubt­ed­ly saw the film as kids and were pro­found­ly affect­ed by it. The film, designed by Paul Julian, bor­rows both from Dali-esque sur­re­al­ism and Ger­man expres­sion­ism.

And while it does fea­ture some tra­di­tion­al cell ani­ma­tion, there’s a mix of tech­niques that keep the film in the realm of the dream­like and avant-garde: sud­den zooms, shad­ows that fade in and out, flat­tened per­spec­tives, inven­tive use of chiaroscuro. In this film, one can see both the future careers of Roger Cor­man and Dario Argen­to, both grab­bing influ­ences left and right.

In fact, though design­er Paul Julian is best known for his back­ground work at Warn­er Bros. ani­ma­tion stu­dios (he also is known as the cre­ator of the Road Runner’s beep-beep sound), he wound up pro­vid­ing direc­tor Roger Cor­man with art­work for movies like Demen­tia 13 and The Ter­ror.

UPA con­tin­ued to pro­duce films with its mod­ern and flat space-age aes­thet­ic dur­ing the ‘50s, but it nev­er real­ly hit these adult heights again. The ‘60s how­ev­er, would pick up from where UPA left off.

Julian’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” was vot­ed the 24th great­est car­toon of all time, in a 1994 sur­vey of 1,000 ani­ma­tion pro­fes­sion­als. It was also nom­i­nat­ed for the Acad­e­my Award for Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film. We hope you enjoy this glimpse into dis­tur­bia. It will be added to our list of Free Ani­ma­tions, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Lee Reads “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe’s 1843 Clas­sic

Watch Vin­cent Price Turn Into Edgar Allan Poe & Read Four Clas­sic Poe Sto­ries (1970)

Famous Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Iggy Pop, Jeff Buck­ley, Christo­pher Walken, Mar­i­anne Faith­ful & More

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

Discover the Regions in Italy Where the People Descended from the Medieval or Ancient Greeks, and Still Speak Greek

in History, Language, Travel | October 12th, 2023

All of us, across the world, know that Italy is shaped like a boot. But almost none of us know that, in the regions of Apu­lia and Cal­abria at the coun­try’s “heel” and “toe,” live small com­mu­ni­ties who, among them­selves, still speak not Ital­ian but Greek. The word “still” applies because these peo­ples, known as Griko (or Gre­cani­ci), are thought to have descend­ed from the much larg­er medieval or even ancient Greek com­mu­ni­ties that once exist­ed there. Of course, it would­n’t have been at all unusu­al back then for inhab­i­tants of one part of what we now call Italy to speak a quite dif­fer­ent lan­guage from the inhab­i­tants of anoth­er.

John Kaza­k­lis at Isto­ria writes that “the Ital­ian lan­guage did not become the sta­ple lan­guage until well into the end of the 19th Cen­tu­ry dur­ing the process of Ital­ian uni­fi­ca­tion, or the Risorg­i­men­to,” which turned the Tus­can dialect into the nation­al lan­guage. Yet “there exists today a tiny enclave of Greek-speak­ing peo­ple in the Aspromonte Moun­tain region of Reg­gio Cal­abria that seem to have sur­vived mil­len­nia.”

Are they “descen­dants of the Ancient Greeks who col­o­nized South­ern Italy? Are they rem­nants of the Byzan­tine pres­ence in South­ern Italy? Did their ances­tors come in the 15th-16th Cen­turies from the Greek com­mu­ni­ties in the Aegean flee­ing Ottoman inva­sion?” Every­one who con­sid­ers the ori­gins of the Griko/Grecanici peo­ple (or their Griko/Gri­co/Greko lan­guages) seems to come to a slight­ly dif­fer­ent con­clu­sion.

“I sus­pect they speak a dialect more close­ly relat­ed to the Koine Greek spo­ken at the time of the 11th cen­tu­ry Byzan­tine Empire, the last and final time South­ern Italy was still part of the Greek-speak­ing world,” writes Gre­coph­o­ne Youtu­ber Tom_Traveler, who vis­its the Griko-speak­ing vil­lages of Gal­li­cianò and Bova in the video above. “Or per­haps it was influ­enced by Greek refugees flee­ing Con­stan­tino­ple upon its fall to the Turks in 1453.” How­ev­er it devel­oped, it’s long been a lan­guage on the decline: “the clear­est esti­mate of remain­ing Greko speak­ers seems to be between 200–300,” Kaza­k­lis wrote in 2017, “and num­bers con­tin­ue to decrease.” In the inter­est of pre­serv­ing the lan­guage and the his­to­ry reflect­ed with­in it, now would be a good time for a few of those speak­ers to start up Youtube chan­nels of their own.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the Byzan­tine Empire Rose, Fell, and Cre­at­ed the Glo­ri­ous Hagia Sophia: A His­to­ry in Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

Map­ping the Sounds of Greek Byzan­tine Church­es: How Researchers Are Cre­at­ing “Muse­ums of Lost Sound”

Learn Ancient Greek in 64 Free Lessons: A Free Online Course from Bran­deis & Har­vard

Can Mod­ern-Day Ital­ians Under­stand Latin? A Youtu­ber Puts It to the Test on the Streets of Rome

Meet the Amer­i­cans Who Speak with Eliz­a­bethan Eng­lish Accents: An Intro­duc­tion to the “Hoi Toi­ders” from Ocra­coke, North Car­oli­na

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Ian Bremmer on The Israel-Hamas War, and What It Means for the World

in Current Affairs | October 11th, 2023

In the wake of Hamas’ grue­some attack on Israeli civil­ians, polit­i­cal sci­en­tist Ian Brem­mer explains “the his­tor­i­cal con­text of the con­flict, how Israel might respond and what it means for Jews, Pales­tini­ans and the world at large.” The con­ver­sa­tion also cov­ers “how the US may fac­tor into the glob­al response and how to find reli­able infor­ma­tion amid the breath­less media cov­er­age and the fog of war.” Host­ed by TED’s head of cura­tion Helen Wal­ters, this con­ver­sa­tion was record­ed on Octo­ber 9, 2023.

Why Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s Rococo Masterpiece, The Swing, Is Less Innocent Than It First Appears

in Art, History | October 6th, 2023

If you were to see Jean-Hon­oré Frag­o­nard’s L’Escar­po­lette, or The Swing, at the Wal­lace Col­lec­tion, you might not think par­tic­u­lar­ly hard about it. Though all the sub­tle light effects that make the young woman in pink pop out of the lush gar­den that sur­rounds her are impres­sive, grant­ed — and they’ve become even more so since the paint­ing’s recent restora­tion — there does­n’t seem to be much else of inter­est at first glance. But take a sec­ond glance, and you may well get a sense of what, back in the sev­en­teen-six­ties, made this com­mis­sion “so raunchy, many artists would­n’t have done it for all the mon­ey in the world.”

So says the nar­ra­tor of the Art Deco video above, which promis­es an expla­na­tion of why The Swing “isn’t as inno­cent as it seems.” Take, for exam­ple, the young man reclin­ing in the can­vas low­er-left cor­ner, whose ecsta­t­ic expres­sion can per­haps be explained by what’s entered his line of sight. But “for­get about the fact that he can see up her skirt: her ankle is show­ing, a very erot­ic ges­ture at the time.”

All of this inten­si­fies when we know the sto­ry behind the paint­ing, and specif­i­cal­ly that “the man who com­mis­sioned the paint­ing is the man in the bush, and he’s also the wom­an’s lover, not her hus­band.” Is her hus­band the old­er fel­low crouched in the oppo­site cor­ner, clutch­ing the swing’s reins? Per­haps, but like any piece of art worth regard­ing, this one leaves room for inter­pre­ta­tion.

Still, if you under­stand some­thing of the mores of its time and place, there’s no mis­tak­ing its tit­il­lat­ing intent. None of Frag­o­nard’s con­tem­po­raries could have imag­ined that this paint­ing would one day hang in a pub­lic gallery for all the world to see, com­mis­sioned as it was for dis­play only in a pri­vate home. Many paint­ings were in the time of Roco­co, “a style of art that comes out of the Baroque,” as art his­to­ri­an Steven Zuck­er says in the Smarthis­to­ry video just above, which despite hav­ing “jet­ti­soned the seri­ous­ness, the moral­i­ty” of its pre­de­ces­sor, nev­er­the­less retained “a sense of ener­gy, a sense of move­ment.” The Swing remains “a per­fect expres­sion of the friv­o­li­ty, the lux­u­ry, and the indul­gence of the Roco­co” — and a reminder, as the Art Deco video puts it, that “what­ev­er hap­pens in the mys­ti­cal gar­den, stays in the mys­ti­cal fairy gar­den.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Scan­dalous Paint­ing That Helped Cre­ate Mod­ern Art: An Intro­duc­tion to Édouard Manet’s Olympia

What Makes Vermeer’s The Milk­maid a Mas­ter­piece?: A Video Intro­duc­tion

When John Singer Sargent’s “Madame X” Scan­dal­ized the Art World in 1884

Why Does This Lady Have a Fly on Her Head?: A Curi­ous Look at a 15th-Cen­tu­ry Por­trait

Gus­tav Klimt’s Icon­ic Paint­ing The Kiss: An Intro­duc­tion to Aus­tri­an Painter’s Gold­en, Erot­ic Mas­ter­piece (1908)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Martin Scorsese Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, GoodFellas, and More

in Film | September 27th, 2023

“Did Scors­ese make the best movie of each decade since the ’70s?” asks GQ’s Zach Baron in a recent pro­file of that long-lived auteur. “Prob­a­bly not (I think his case is weak­est in the first decade of this cen­tu­ry), but you could argue it, and many peo­ple have.” And indeed, you may well find your­self believ­ing it after watch­ing the video above, also pub­lished by GQ, in which Scors­ese him­self dis­cuss­es a selec­tion of fea­tures from the past half-cen­tu­ry of his career, the ear­li­est of which, Mean Streets, was a break­out project for both its young direc­tor and even younger star, a cer­tain Robert de Niro, in 1973.

Scors­ese’s lat­est, Killers of the Flower Moon, opens next month as not just anoth­er of his many col­lab­o­ra­tions with de Niro, but the first Scors­ese film to fea­ture both de Niro and Leonar­do DiCaprio. “We were acquaint­ed with each oth­er when we were six­teen years old,” the direc­tor says of de Niro in the GQ video. “He expe­ri­enced what I expe­ri­enced grow­ing up” in rough-and-tum­ble New York neigh­bor­hoods like Lit­tle Italy and the Bow­ery, and thus “knows who I am and where I came from.” Hence the trust with which Scors­ese took de Niro’s rec­om­men­da­tion of DiCaprio in the ear­ly nineties: “You got­ta work with him some­day.”

That some­day came in 2002, with Gangs of New York, after which the Scors­ese-diCaprio pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship would mature to bear addi­tion­al cin­e­mat­ic fruit with projects like The Depart­ed and The Wolf of Wall Street. At this point it has become a par­al­lel enter­prise to Scors­ese-de Niro, which can be traced from The Irish­man, which came out in 2019, back through the likes of Good­Fel­las (though it stars the late Ray Liot­ta), Casi­no, The King of Com­e­dy, and Rag­ing Bull — a pic­ture that, along with oth­er brazen­ly ambi­tious Unit­ed Artists releas­es like Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la’s Apoc­a­lypse Now and Michael Cimi­no’s Heav­en’s Gate, Scors­ese now sees as mark­ing the end of “the pow­er of the direc­tor.”

In “new Hol­ly­wood” era of the nine­teen-sev­en­ties, Scors­ese remem­bers, “things were wide open, and we went in and took it like the bar­bar­ians at the gate, and we trans­formed what­ev­er we could, but they caught us.” Still, since then he’s “nev­er stopped work­ing for any notice­able amount of time,” as Baron puts it, though in recent years he’s been giv­en to rue­ful com­ment about the artis­tic and eco­nom­ic dynam­ics of his indus­try and art form. As for the state of the world in gen­er­al, he makes an equal­ly grim diag­no­sis with ref­er­ence to his and de Niro’s best-known col­lab­o­ra­tion, Taxi Dri­ver: “Every oth­er per­son is like Travis Bick­le now.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Mar­tin Scors­ese Directs a Movie: The Tech­niques Behind Taxi Dri­ver, Rag­ing Bull, and More

The Decay of Cin­e­ma: Susan Son­tag, Mar­tin Scors­ese & Their Lamen­ta­tions on the Decline of Cin­e­ma Explored in a New Video Essay

The Film­mak­ing of Mar­tin Scors­ese Demys­ti­fied in 6 Video Essays

What Makes Taxi Dri­ver So Pow­er­ful? An In-Depth Study of Mar­tin Scorsese’s Exis­ten­tial Film on the Human Con­di­tion

Mar­tin Scors­ese Explains the Dif­fer­ence Between Cin­e­ma and Movies

Scorsese’s The Irish­man in the Con­text of his Oeu­vre – Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #29 Fea­tur­ing Col­in Mar­shall

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How Big Ben Works: A Detailed Look Inside London’s Beloved Victorian Clock Tower

in Architecture, History | September 22nd, 2023

If asked to name the best-known tow­er in Lon­don, one could, per­haps, make a fair case for the likes of the Shard or the Gherkin. But what­ev­er their cur­rent promi­nence on the sky­line, those works of twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry star­chi­tec­ture have yet to devel­op much val­ue as sym­bols of the city. If sheer age were the decid­ing fac­tor, then the Tow­er of Lon­don, the old­est intact build­ing in the cap­i­tal, would take the top spot, but for how many peo­ple out­side Eng­land does its name call a clear image to mind? No, to find Lon­don’s most beloved ver­ti­cal icon, we must look to the Vic­to­ri­an era, the only his­tor­i­cal peri­od that could have giv­en rise to Big Ben.

We must first clar­i­fy that Big Ben is not a tow­er. The build­ing you’re think­ing of has been called the Eliz­a­beth Tow­er since Queen Eliz­a­beth II’s Dia­mond Jubilee in 2012, but before that its name was the Clock Tow­er. That was apt enough, since tow­er’s defin­ing fea­ture has always been the clock at the top — or rather, the four clocks at the top, one for each face.

You can see how they work in the ani­mat­ed video from Youtu­ber Jared Owen above, which pro­vides a detailed visu­al and ver­bal expla­na­tion of both the struc­ture’s con­text and its con­tent, includ­ing a tour of the mech­a­nisms that have kept it run­ning near­ly with­out inter­rup­tion for more than a cen­tu­ry and a half.

Only by look­ing into the tow­er’s bel­fry can you see Big Ben, which, as Owens says, is actu­al­ly the name of the largest of its bells. Its announce­ment of each hour on the hour — as well as the ring­ing of the oth­er, small­er bells — is acti­vat­ed by a sys­tem of gear trains ulti­mate­ly dri­ven by grav­i­ty, har­nessed by the swing­ing of a large pen­du­lum (to which occa­sion­al speed adjust­ments have always been made with the reli­able method of plac­ing pen­nies on top of it). Owens does­n’t clar­i­fy whether or not this is the same pen­du­lum Roger Miller sang about back in the six­ties, but at least now we know that, tech­ni­cal­ly speak­ing, we should inter­pret the fol­low­ing lyrics as not “the tow­er, Big Ben” but “the tow­er; Big Ben.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Growth of Lon­don, from the Romans to the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Visu­al­ized in a Time-Lapse Ani­mat­ed Map

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

The Old­est Known Footage of Lon­don (1890–1920) Fea­tures the City’s Great Land­marks

Prague Mon­u­ment Dou­bles as Artist’s Can­vas

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Sylvia Plath’s Ten Back to School Commandments (1953)

in Life, Literature | September 22nd, 2023

Before her lit­er­ary fame, her stormy rela­tion­ship with Ted Hugh­es and her crip­pling bat­tles with depres­sion, Sylvia Plath was an enthu­si­as­tic stu­dent at Smith Col­lege. “The world is split­ting open at my feet like a ripe, juicy water­mel­on,” she wrote to her moth­er. “If only I can work, work, work to jus­ti­fy all of my oppor­tu­ni­ties.”

Dur­ing her junior year, she broke her leg on a ski­ing trip in upstate New York. The acci­dent land­ed her briefly in the hos­pi­tal and she wound up with a cast on her leg. Her mood dark­ened.

Psych­ing her­self out for her return to col­lege, she wrote in her diary a pair of lists.

The first list is a short series of rules about how to behave around her new beau, Myron Lotz. All three points are good advice for any­one who is utter­ly smit­ten, par­tic­u­lar­ly num­ber two – “I will not throw myself at him phys­i­cal­ly.” In the end, Plath’s rela­tion­ship with Lotz didn’t amount to much. She report­ed­ly com­mem­o­rat­ed him with­in her poem “Mad Girl’s Love Song” with the refrain “I think I made you up inside my head.”

The sec­ond list is a col­lec­tion of “Back to School Com­mand­ments.” These com­mand­ments includ­ed ask­ing her Eng­lish prof Robert Gorham Davis for an exten­sion; con­sult­ing with her Ger­man teacher Marie Schnieders (“Be calm,” she writes mys­te­ri­ous­ly, “even it is a mat­ter of life & death.”); and com­plet­ing her appli­ca­tion to be a guest edi­tor for Made­moi­selle mag­a­zine. (She nailed that last task.)

The list’s final com­mand­ment comes off bleak­er than the mild­ly pan­icky moti­va­tion­al tone of the rest of the list. “Atti­tude is every­thing: so KEEP CHEERFUL, even if you fail your sci­ence, your unit, get a hate­ful silence from Myron, no dates, no praise, no love, noth­ing. There is a cer­tain clin­i­cal sat­is­fac­tion in see­ing just how bad things can get.”

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

via The Excel­lent Lists of Note book

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Should We Read Sylvia Plath? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Christo­pher Hitchens Cre­ates a Revised List of The 10 Com­mand­ments for the 21st Cen­tu­ry

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 vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.