Scenes from HBO’s Chernobyl v. Real Footage Shot in 1986: A Side-By-Side Comparison

in History, Television | June 14th, 2019

Audi­ences today can’t get enough of his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly his­to­ry pre­sent­ed as a pod­cast or a pres­tige tele­vi­sion series. Best of all is the his­tor­i­cal pres­tige tele­vi­sion series accom­pa­nied by its own pod­cast, cur­rent­ly exem­pli­fied by Cher­nobyl, HBO’s five-episode drama­ti­za­tion of the events lead­ing up to and the after­math of the tit­u­lar Sovi­et nuclear dis­as­ter. “The mate­r­i­al cul­ture of the Sovi­et Union is repro­duced with an accu­ra­cy that has nev­er before been seen in West­ern tele­vi­sion or film — or, for that mat­ter, in Russ­ian tele­vi­sion or film,” The New Yorker’s Masha Gessen writes of the show. “Sovi­et-born Amer­i­cans — and, indeed, Sovi­et-born Rus­sians — have been tweet­ing and blog­ging in awe at the uncan­ny pre­ci­sion with which the phys­i­cal sur­round­ings of Sovi­et peo­ple have been repro­duced.”

But along with all the praise for the accu­ra­cy on Cher­nobyl’s sur­face has come crit­i­cism of its deep­er con­cep­tion of the time and place it takes as its set­ting: “its fail­ure to accu­rate­ly por­tray Sovi­et rela­tion­ships of pow­er,” as Gessen puts it, or to acknowl­edge that “res­ig­na­tion was the defin­ing con­di­tion of Sovi­et life. But res­ig­na­tion is a depress­ing and untelegenic spec­ta­cle. So the cre­ators of Cher­nobyl imag­ine con­fronta­tion where con­fronta­tion was unthink­able.”

Among the chill­ing truths of the real sto­ry of the Cher­nobyl dis­as­ter is how many peo­ple involved knew before­hand what could, and prob­a­bly would, go wrong with the reac­tor that explod­ed on April 26, 1986. But Cher­nobyl, adher­ing to “the out­lines of a dis­as­ter movie,” instead pits a lone truth-teller against a set of self-serv­ing, malev­o­lent high­er-ups.

Cher­nobyl cre­ator and writer Craig Mazin is not unaware of this, as any­one who has lis­tened to the minis­eries’ com­pan­ion pod­cast knows. On each episode, Mazin dis­cuss­es (with Peter Sagal from Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, inci­den­tal­ly) the com­pli­ca­tions of bring­ing such a com­plex event, and one that involved so many peo­ple, to the screen three decades lat­er, and the inher­ent trade­offs involved between his­tor­i­cal faith­ful­ness and artis­tic license. The video essay from Thomas Flight above com­bines clips from the Cher­nobyl pod­cast with not just clips from Cher­nobyl itself but the real-life source footage that inspired the show. The six-minute view­ing expe­ri­ence show­cas­es the often-aston­ish­ing recre­ations Cher­nobyl accom­plish­es even as it casts doubt on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ever tru­ly recre­at­ing his­to­ry on the screen. But watch­ing cre­ators take on that increas­ing­ly daunt­ing chal­lenge is pre­cise­ly what today’s audi­ences can’t get enough of.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Haunt­ing Drone’s‑Eye View of Cher­nobyl

The Ani­mals of Cher­nobyl

200 Haunt­ing Videos of U.S. Nuclear Tests Now Declas­si­fied and Put Online

A is for Atom: Vin­tage PR Film for Nuclear Ener­gy

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Hear What’s Likely the Only Known Recording of Frida Kahlo’s Voice (1954)

in Art | June 14th, 2019

Per­haps no artist in mod­ern his­to­ry, save Andy Warhol, has been so well doc­u­ment­ed, and self-doc­u­ment­ed, as Fri­da Kahlo, or has used doc­u­men­tary meth­ods, sur­re­al­ist and oth­er­wise, to so unflinch­ing­ly con­front ideas about dis­abil­i­ty, gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, nation­al iden­ti­ty, and rela­tion­ships. These qual­i­ties make her the per­fect celebri­ty artist for our times, but unlike the aver­age 21st cen­tu­ry star mak­ing art out of self-pre­sen­ta­tion, Kahlo’s voice has nev­er been heard, though she lived in a time almost as sat­u­rat­ed with mass media—of the radio, TV, and film variety—as our own.

That is, per­haps, until now, with the unearthing of what the Nation­al Sound Library of Mex­i­co believes to be a record­ing of her voice, “tak­en from a pilot episode of 1955 radio show El Bachiller [“The Bach­e­lor”],” writes Steph Har­mon at The Guardian. The show “aired after her death in 1954,” like­ly the fol­low­ing year. Though the pro­gram does not intro­duce her by name, the pre­sen­ter does refer to her as recent­ly deceased, and she does read an essay about her hus­band Diego Rivera, which hap­pens to be writ­ten by Fri­da Kahlo. The case seems fair­ly con­clu­sive.

Pre­vi­ous­ly the lit­tle evi­dence of what she sound­ed like came from writ­ten descrip­tions, such as French pho­tog­ra­ph­er Gisèle Freund’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of her voice as “melo­di­ous and warm.” Hear for your­self what is very like­ly the record­ed voice of Fri­da Kahlo in the audio above. In her typ­i­cal­ly florid yet unspar­ing style she paints a ver­bal por­trait of Rivera full of unflat­ter­ing phys­i­cal detail and lay­ers of emo­tion and admi­ra­tion. In one Eng­lish trans­la­tion, she calls him “a huge, immense child, with a friend­ly face and a sad gaze.

River­a’s “high, dark, extreme­ly intel­li­gent and big eyes rarely hold still. They almost pop out of their sock­ets because of their swollen and pro­tu­ber­ant eyelids—like a toad’s.” His huge eyes seem “built espe­cial­ly for a painter of spaces and crowds.” The Mex­i­can mural­ist, she says is like “an inscrutable mon­ster.” These are the words of a writer, we must remem­ber, who was pas­sion­ate­ly in love with her sub­ject, but who did not pre­tend to ignore his phys­i­cal odd­i­ties. As she had prac­ticed lov­ing her­self, she loved and admired Rivera because of his unique appear­ance, not in spite of it.

Researchers are mak­ing con­tin­u­ing efforts to ver­i­fy that the voice on the recod­ing is Kahlo and search­ing through about 1,300 oth­er episodes of the show, record­ed for Tele­visa Radio, to find out if there are any more record­ings of her. Giv­en Frida’s flam­boy­ant per­sona and minor art star­dom in her life­time, it’s hard to imag­ine we won’t hear more of her, if this is in fact her, as oth­er archives reveal their secrets.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fri­da Kahlo’s Pas­sion­ate Love Let­ters to Diego Rivera

Dis­cov­er Fri­da Kahlo’s Wild­ly-Illus­trat­ed Diary: It Chron­i­cled the Last 10 Years of Her Life, and Then Got Locked Away for Decades

A Brief Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Life and Work of Fri­da Kahlo

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

Bryan Cranston Narrates the Landing on Omaha Beach on the 75th Anniversary of the D‑Day Invasion

in Uncategorized | June 6th, 2019

75 years ago today, the Allies launched the D‑Day inva­sion in Nor­mandy, which marked a crit­i­cal turn­ing point in World War II–the begin­ning of the free­ing of Europe from Nazi con­trol. Above, actor Bryan Cranston com­mem­o­rates the anniver­sary by read­ing a let­ter that Pfc. Dominick “Dom” Bart sent to his wife. A 32-year-old infantry­man, Bart took part in the har­row­ing first wave of the mas­sive amphibi­ous assault. Below, we also hear Cranston read­ing the words of Pfc. Jim “Pee Wee” Mar­tin, describ­ing “his first taste of bat­tle as a para­troop­er in the D‑Day inva­sion.” As Cranston reads, you can watch “nev­er-before-seen restored high-res­o­lu­tion 4K footage from Oma­ha Beach.”

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:

Free Audio: Bryan Cranston, Break­ing Bad Star, Reads First Chap­ter of The Things They Car­ried

Bryan Cranston Reads Shelley’s Son­net “Ozy­man­dias” in Omi­nous Teas­er for Break­ing Bad’s Last Sea­son

Bryan Cranston Gives Advice to the Young: Find Your­self by Trav­el­ing and Get­ting Lost

The Giger Bar: Discover the 1980s Tokyo Bar Designed by H. R. Giger, the Same Artist Who Created the Nightmarish Monster in Ridley Scott’s Alien

in Art, Food & Drink | June 4th, 2019

In 1980s Tokyo, every­thing was pos­si­ble — or at least every­thing was tried out. Hav­ing devel­oped fever­ish­ly since the end of the Sec­ond World War, Japan had by that point inflat­ed an asset bub­ble so enor­mous that, so the sto­ry goes, the land on which the Impe­r­i­al Palace stands was worth more than all of Cal­i­for­nia. Many Japan­ese felt rich, and upward­ly mobile young Toky­oites felt much more so; in the cap­i­tal sprung up count­less estab­lish­ments aim­ing to cash in on their will­ing­ness and abil­i­ty to spend their new mon­ey on expe­ri­ences, espe­cial­ly expe­ri­ences slick, expen­sive, and exot­ic.

And for the high­est-rolling young Toky­oites of the 1980s, con­sumers for whom pieces of Amer­i­ca and Europe would­n’t be exot­ic enough, there was the Giger Bar. Writer on Japan­ese cul­ture W. David Marx recent­ly tweet­ed out a few mag­a­zine clip­pings to do with one of what he calls the “hot yup­pie date spots in Tokyo, 1989: GIGER BAR Bring your date to the Tokyo bar designed by Swiss artist H. R. Giger of Alien fame, where ‘the atmos­phere dif­fers from the usu­al.’ ‘alien eggs’ on the menu at ¥1200, and some­thing called ‘sex­u­al com­mu­nion’ for ¥1500.”

“The Giger Bar in Tokyo was actu­al­ly cre­at­ed against my will,” Giger him­self wrote in 1997. “While I was in Tokyo, I was asked to make a wish, on stage, dur­ing a press con­fer­ence. Spon­ta­neous­ly, I wished for a bar, which was then brought into being even more spon­ta­neous­ly!”

For that bar, Giger designed “tables-for-two in open ele­va­tor cars in the man­ner of glid­ing ele­va­tors that would trav­el up and down the four-sto­ry estab­lish­ment, per­pet­u­al­ly in motion.” But he had­n’t tak­en into con­sid­er­a­tion the rigid­i­ty of Japan­ese fire mar­shals, and already “dri­ven to the brink of mad­ness” by the coun­try’s com­plex earth­quake-relat­ed build­ing codes, Giger ulti­mate­ly stepped back from his design role.

Giger also had­n’t fore­seen the fact that his name­sake Japan­ese bar “was tai­lor-made for the under­world.” Five years after the bar opened, a friend vis­it­ed and told Giger that “it had fall­en into the hands of the Yakuza. He went on to report that he was alone in the bar until 11 o’clock, when it began to fill with the type of unsa­vory char­ac­ters who might have installed a roulette table in the atri­um.” By the time Giger wrote this reflec­tion, the Tokyo Giger Bar had closed its doors entire­ly: “Insid­ers know that a bar in Tokyo rarely sur­vives more than five years!”

But two oth­er Giger Bars live on, not in Japan but in Giger’s native Switzer­land, one in his home­town of Chur (orig­i­nal­ly planned for New York City, a loca­tion that proved too expen­sive for the elab­o­rate design) and the oth­er in Gruyères (adja­cent to the H.R. Giger Muse­um). Those Swiss branch­es, a cou­ple pic­tures of which appear above, car­ry on the Giger Bar’s aes­thet­ic in a man­ner seem­ing­ly more faith­ful to the artist’s grotesque bio­me­chan­i­cal visions than did the Tokyo branch. Whether this could ever prove a sus­tain­able nightlife con­cept else­where in the world remains to be seen, but as Giger’s hard­core fans — the kind who would­n’t hes­i­tate to make the Giger Bar pil­grim­age to Switzer­land — might well ask, who would­n’t want to have a drink in the womb of the alien queen?

via W. David Marx

Relat­ed Con­tent:

H.R. Giger’s Tarot Cards: The Swiss Artist, Famous for His Design Work on Alien, Takes a Jour­ney into the Occult

A Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

High School Kids Stage Alien: The Play and You Can Now Watch It Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

The Art & Cooking of Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dali, Georgia O’Keeffe, Vincent Van Gogh & More

in Art, Education, Food & Drink | May 31st, 2019

Mex­i­can cui­sine is as time-con­sum­ing as it is deli­cious.

Fri­da Kahlo fans attract­ed to the idea of dupli­cat­ing some dish­es from the ban­quet served at her wed­ding to fel­low artist Diego Rivera should set aside ample time, so as to tru­ly enjoy the expe­ri­ence of mak­ing chiles rel­lenos and nopales sal­ad from scratch.

Sarah Urist Green’s Kahlo-themed cook­ing les­son, above, adapt­ed from Marie-Pierre Colle and Frida’s step­daugh­ter Guadalupe Rivera’s 1994 cook­book Frida’s Fies­tas: Recipes and Rem­i­nis­cences of Life with Fri­da Kahlo, is refresh­ing­ly frank about the chal­lenges of tack­ling these types of dish­es, espe­cial­ly for those of us whose grand­mas ran more toward Jell‑O sal­ad.

Her self-dep­re­ca­tion should go a long way toward reas­sur­ing less-skilled cooks that per­fec­tion is not the goal.

As she told Nuvo’s Dan Gross­man:

The art cook­ing videos are immense­ly fun to make… And what I’m try­ing to do is reach peo­ple who aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly out­ward­ly into art or don’t know whether they’re into art so they’re not going to click on a video that’s strict­ly about art. But if you can present art ideas through a cook­ing tuto­r­i­al per­haps they’ll be more open to it. I love to cook. And I love to think about that side of art his­to­ry.

To that end, she takes a cou­ple of bite-sized art breaks, to intro­duce view­ers to Frida’s life and work, while the toma­toes are roast­ing.

As tempt­ing as it is for old Fri­da hands to skip this well-chart­ed ter­rain, doing so will not make din­ner ready any faster. Why not enjoy the non-cook­ing relat­ed sec­tions with the eas­i­est item on the menu—a tequi­la shot?

Don’t trick your­self into think­ing there’s noth­ing more to learn.

For instance, I did not know the Span­ish for “I can’t get over this hang­over,” but Frida’s pet par­rot did. (Didn’t know that either.)

Green also offers some quick how-tos that could come in handy for oth­er, less time-con­sum­ing dish­es, like a sand­wich or a plate of home­made pasta—everything from how to make home­made toma­to sauce  to denud­ing prick­ly pear cac­tus pads of their non-edi­ble spines.

If you’re undaunt­ed by the Fri­da recipes, per­haps you should pro­ceed to Sal­vador Dali’s tow­er­ing Bush of Cray­fish in Viking herbs, or the Futur­ists’ high­ly sug­ges­tive Meat Sculp­ture. Oth­er recipes come from Vin­cent Van Gogh and Geor­gia O’Ke­effe. See above.

Books ref­er­enced in the videos include: Din­ner with Geor­gia O’Ke­effe; A Painter’s Kitchen: Recipes from the Kitchen of Geor­gia O’Ke­effe; Dal­i’s Les Din­ers de Gala; Van Gogh’s Table at the Auberge Ravoux: Recipes From the Artist’s Last Home and Paint­ings of Cafe Life; and again Frida’s Fies­tas: Recipes and Rem­i­nis­cences of Life with Fri­da Kahlo.

View the full playlist of The Art Assignment’s Art Cook­ing episodes here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Futur­ist Cook­book (1930) Tried to Turn Ital­ian Cui­sine into Mod­ern Art

MoMA’s Artists’ Cook­book (1978) Reveals the Meals of Sal­vador Dalí, Willem de Koon­ing, Andy Warhol, Louise Bour­geois & More

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City this June for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

When Boris Pasternak Won–and Then the Soviets Forced Him to Decline–the Nobel Prize (1958)

in Literature, Politics | May 30th, 2019

Behind the award­ing of the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture, there are sto­ries upon sto­ries, some as juicy as those in the work of win­ners like William Faulkn­er or Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez—and some just as dev­as­tat­ing to the par­ties involved. Last year’s award was post­poned after sex­u­al assault alle­ga­tions lead to sev­er­al mem­bers to resign­ing. (There will be two prizes award­ed for 2019.) The charges need­ed to be aired, but if you’re look­ing for details about how the secre­tive com­mit­tee selects the nom­i­nees and win­ners, you’ll have to wait a while.

“The Swedish Acad­e­my keeps all infor­ma­tion about nom­i­na­tions and selec­tions for the pres­ti­gious award secret for 50 years,” writes Alli­son Flood at The Guardian. New­ly unsealed doc­u­ments from the Acad­e­my have shone light on Jean-Paul Sartre’s rejec­tion of the prize in 1964, and the shun­ning of Samuel Beck­ett in 1968 by com­mit­tee chair­man Anders Öster­ling, who found his work too nihilis­tic (Beck­ett won the fol­low­ing year), and of Vladimir Nabokov, whose Loli­ta Öster­ling declared “immoral.”

Per­haps the sad­dest of Nobel sto­ries has tak­en on even more vivid detail, not only through new­ly opened files of the Nobel Prize com­mit­tee, but also recent­ly declas­si­fied CIA doc­u­ments that show how the agency used Boris Pasternak’s Doc­tor Zhiva­go as a pro­pa­gan­da tool (hand­ing out hasty re-trans­la­tions into Russ­ian to Sovi­et vis­i­tors at the World’s Fair). In Octo­ber 1958, the author was award­ed the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture. He had, as The Guardian report­ed in Octo­ber of that year, intend­ed to “accept it in per­son in Stock­holm next month.” He may have had lit­tle rea­son to think he could not do so.

Despite his role as a per­pet­u­al thorn in the side of the Sovi­et gov­ern­ment, and their attempts to sup­press his work and refusal to allow Doc­tor Zhiva­go to be pub­lished, the repres­sive regime most­ly gave Paster­nak his rel­a­tive free­dom, even after the nov­el was smug­gled abroad, trans­lat­ed, and released to an inter­na­tion­al read­er­ship. Whether or not the Nobel com­mit­tee chose him as an anti-Com­mu­nist state­ment, as some have alleged, made no dif­fer­ence to his rep­u­ta­tion around the world as a pen­e­trat­ing real­ist in the great Russ­ian nov­el­is­tic tra­di­tion.

The award might have been per­ceived as a val­i­da­tion of Russ­ian let­ters, but the Sovi­ets saw it as a threat. They had “raged” against Doc­tor Zhiva­go and its “anti-Marx­ist” pas­sages, “but that only increased its pop­u­lar­i­ty,” writes Ben Panko at Smith­son­ian. Paster­nak had already been “repeat­ed­ly nom­i­nat­ed for the Nobel Prize” and the “world­wide buzz around his new book pushed him to the top of the list in 1958.” Upon learn­ing of the win, he sent a telegram to the com­mit­tee that read, in part, “Thank­ful, glad, proud, con­fused.”

Days lat­er, as The Guardian wrote, Paster­nak decid­ed to decline the award “with­out hav­ing con­sult­ed even his friends.” He sent a short telegram to the Swedish Acad­e­my read­ing:

Con­sid­er­ing the mean­ing this award has been giv­en in the soci­ety to which I belong, I must reject this unde­served prize which has been pre­sent­ed to me. Please do not receive my vol­un­tary rejec­tion with dis­plea­sure. — Paster­nak.

The author’s “deci­sion” was not as abrupt as it might have seemed. In the days after his win, a storm raged, as he put it. Even before the declas­si­fied trove of infor­ma­tion, read­ers around the world could fol­low the sto­ry, “which had more twists and turns than a Cold War-era spy nov­el,” Tina Jor­dan writes at The New York Times. It played out in the papers “with one front-page sto­ry after anoth­er.” Paster­nak angered the Sovi­ets by express­ing his “delight” at win­ning the prize in an inter­view. He was denounced in Sovi­et news­pa­pers, called by a Prav­da edi­tor a “malev­o­lent Philis­tine” and “libel­er,” and his book described as “low-grade reac­tionary hack­work.”

Paster­nak faced exile in the days after he gave up the prize and issued a forced pub­lic apol­o­gy in Prav­da on Novem­ber 6. The Acad­e­my held the cer­e­mo­ny in his absence and placed his award in trust “in case he may some day have a chance to accept them,” the Times report­ed. Paster­nak had hoped to be rein­stat­ed to the Sovi­et Writer’s Union, which had expelled him, and had hoped that his nov­el would be pub­lished in his own coun­try and lan­guage in his life­time.

Nei­ther of these things occurred. The events sur­round­ing the Nobel broke him. His health began to fail and he died two years lat­er in 1960. Pasternak’s son Yevge­ny describes in mov­ing detail see­ing his father the night after he turned down the Nobel. “I couldn’t rec­og­nize my father when I saw him that evening. Pale, life­less face, tired painful eyes, and only speak­ing about the same thing: ‘Now it all doesn’t mat­ter, I declined the Prize.’” Doc­tor Zhiva­go was pub­lished in the Sovi­et Union in 1988. “The fol­low­ing year,” notes Panko, “Yevge­ny was allowed to go to Oslo and retrieve his father’s denied prize.”

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? That could include  Doc­tor Zhiva­go. Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jean-Paul Sartre Rejects the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture in 1964: “It Was Mon­strous!”

Hear Albert Camus Deliv­er His Nobel Prize Accep­tance Speech (1957)

How the Inven­tor of Dyna­mite, Alfred Nobel, Read an Obit­u­ary That Called Him “The Mer­chant of Death” and Made Amends by Cre­at­ing the Nobel Prize

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

The Psychological Dimensions of Game of Thrones: The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast Explores the Fantasy Spectacle

in Podcasts, Television | May 29th, 2019

The HBO TV show Game of Thrones, like its source books, George R.R. Mar­t­in’s A Song of Ice and Fire, is clas­si­fied as “fan­ta­sy,” but that term as lit­er­ary clas­si­fi­ca­tion has become unmoored from its lit­er­al mean­ing. A per­son­’s fan­ta­sy is most typ­i­cal­ly a mat­ter of wish ful­fill­ment, which should put super-hero media at the cen­ter of the genre: We reg­u­lar mor­tals wish to be pow­er­ful and strong, to save the day and be rec­og­nized as a hero. Cer­tain ele­ments of clas­si­cal fan­ta­sy fall under this descrip­tion: Fro­do in Lord of the Rings gets to save the world while remain­ing more or less ordi­nary (well, yes, he can turn invis­i­ble with the ring, but that becomes prob­lem­at­ic), and Har­ry Pot­ter qual­i­fies as a kid super-hero.

Anoth­er key ele­ment of fan­ta­sy is obvi­ous­ly the imag­i­na­tion, which can be deployed as in dreams and the psy­che­del­ic art that draws on dream expe­ri­ence to come up with ever-more-fan­tas­ti­cal imagery, ever more amaz­ing sit­u­a­tions and pow­ers one could fan­ta­size about pos­sess­ing. How­ev­er, the imag­i­na­tion also seeks to expand the fan­ta­sized cre­ation, to make its world wider and rich­er, to fill in the details, and almost inevitably to try to make the fan­ta­sy more “real­is­tic.” What would it actu­al­ly be like to have super pow­ers? Would you suf­fer emo­tion­al trau­ma from dam­ag­ing all those vil­lains? What about col­lat­er­al dam­age? If you get to ride on a drag­on, how do you take care of it? What (who) does it eat?

George R.R. Mar­tin writes in the tra­di­tion pop­u­lar­ized by J.R.R. Tolkien of “high fan­ta­sy,” which involves not only char­ac­ters of high stature engaged in epic strug­gles, but typ­i­cal­ly involves a very fleshed out alter­na­tive world with its own slight­ly dif­fer­ent laws. The more spelled out these laws are, the more nuts and bolts of the work­ings of the world are spec­i­fied, the more real­ism and hence suf­fer­ing can be depict­ed. A Song of Ice and Fire describes its rotat­ing cast of pro­tag­o­nists with such a degree of detail that read­ers are (as in much lit­er­a­ture) able to iden­ti­fy with them, to see the world through their eyes, but they suf­fer so much that such alter­nate lives as these books offer read­ers would hard­ly be any­one’s fan­ta­sy in the sense of wish ful­fill­ment. A visu­al pre­sen­ta­tion like a TV show by neces­si­ty can’t be as clear about whose eyes the view­er is sup­posed to see events through (we see through the cam­era instead), but nonethe­less Game of Thrones invites us to live through (some of) its char­ac­ters, to iden­ti­fy with them, through their exer­tions of pow­er, through their reac­tions to loss and tri­umph. But such iden­ti­fi­ca­tions will always be imper­fect, giv­en that these char­ac­ters have been drawn as liv­ing in a world that is fun­da­men­tal­ly for­eign to us, not because there are zom­bies and drag­ons, but because HBO view­ers are for the most part liv­ing com­fort­ably in a peace­ful coun­try, not hav­ing been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly and often per­son­al­ly exposed to hor­ri­ble suf­fer­ings.

Hear Mark Lin­sen­may­er and Wes Alwan, reg­u­lar hosts of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast, along with guest Sab­ri­na Weiss, dis­cuss the psy­cho­log­i­cal and social aspects of the show, but in what is depict­ed on screen and how these play out in our soci­ety’s rela­tion­ship to this grand spec­ta­cle.

Read more about it on The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life web­site.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er is the host of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life and Naked­ly Exam­ined Music pod­casts. 

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Game of Thrones: A Great Behind-the-Scenes Look at The Show’s Visu­al Effects

Ani­mat­ed Video Explores the Invent­ed Lan­guages of Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones & Star Trek

15-Year-Old George R.R. Mar­tin Writes a Fan Let­ter to Stan Lee & Jack Kir­by (1963)

New Web Project Immortalizes the Overlooked Women Who Helped Create Rock and Roll in the 1950s

in History, Music | May 23rd, 2019

“For six­ty years, con­ven­tion­al wis­dom has told us that women gen­er­al­ly did not per­form rock and roll dur­ing the 1950s,” writes Leah Branstet­ter, Ph.D. can­di­date in musi­col­o­gy at Case West­ern Reserve Uni­ver­si­ty. Like so many cul­tur­al forms into which we are ini­ti­at­ed, through edu­ca­tion, per­son­al inter­est, and gen­er­al osmo­sis, this pop­u­lar form of West­ern music—now a genre with sev­en­ty years under its belt—has func­tioned as an almost ide­al exam­ple of the great man the­o­ry of his­to­ry.

It can seem like set­tled fact that Chuck Berry, Elvis Pres­ley, Jer­ry Lee Lewis, Lit­tle Richard, Bud­dy Hol­ly, and their cel­e­brat­ed male con­tem­po­raries invent­ed the music; and that women played pas­sive roles as fans, stu­dio audi­ence mem­bers, groupies, per­son­i­fi­ca­tions of cars and gui­tars.…

The recog­ni­tion of rare excep­tions, like Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe, does not chal­lenge the rule. But Branstetter’s Women in Rock and Roll’s First Wave project almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly does.

The real­i­ty is, how­ev­er, that hundreds—or maybe thousands—of women and girls per­formed and record­ed rock and roll in its ear­ly years. And many more par­tic­i­pat­ed in oth­er ways: writ­ing songs, own­ing or work­ing for record labels, work­ing as ses­sion or tour­ing musi­cians,design­ing stage wear, danc­ing, or man­ag­ing tal­ent…. [W]omen’s careers didn’t always resem­ble those of their more famous male coun­ter­parts. Some female per­form­ers were well known and per­formed nation­al­ly as stars, while oth­ers had more influ­ence region­al­ly or only in one tiny club. Some made the pop charts, but even more had impact through live per­for­mance. Some women exhib­it­ed the kind of wild onstage behav­ior that had come to be expect­ed from fig­ures Jer­ry Lee Lewis or Lit­tle Richard—but that wasn’t the only way to be rebel­lious, and oth­ers found their own meth­ods of being rev­o­lu­tion­ary.

Branstetter’s project, a dig­i­tal dis­ser­ta­tion, cov­ers dozens of musi­cians from the peri­od, just a frac­tion of the names she has uncov­ered in her research. Some of the women pro­filed were nev­er par­tic­u­lar­ly well-known. Many more were accom­plished stars before the 60’s girl group phe­nom­e­non, and con­tin­ued per­form­ing into the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Meet rock­ers like Sparkle Moore (see up top), born in Oma­ha, Nebras­ka and inspired by Bill Haley in the mid-fifties to play rock­a­bil­ly in her home­town. She went on to tour the coun­try, putting out record after record. “By 1957,” writes Branstet­ter, “she had about forty song­writ­ing cred­its to her name.” Teen mag­a­zine Dig wrote that Moore had “an amaz­ing resem­blance to the late James Dean… Presley’s style and Dean’s looks.” She is still a “favorite with rock­a­bil­ly fans,” notes her biog­ra­phy. Moore “has been induct­ed into the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and also made a new album in 2010 enti­tled Spark-a-Bil­ly.”

Meet Lil­lie Bryant, one half of duo Bil­lie & Lil­lie, whose breezi­er R&B sounds and more whole­some image res­onat­ed with ear­ly rock and roll fans, pro­mot­ers, and stars. Bryant began per­form­ing in New York City clubs as a teenag­er. Then pro­duc­ers Bob Crewe and Frank Slay turned her and singer Bil­lie Ford into a duo who went on to star in leg­endary DJ Alan Freed’s stage shows, “includ­ing a six-week tour with Chuck Berry and Frankie Lymon” and an appear­ance on Amer­i­can Band­stand. Bryant still per­forms in her home­town of New­burgh, New York.

Meet The Chan­tels. “Formed in the Bronx, New York in the ear­ly 1950s,” they were “among the first African-Amer­i­can female vocal groups to gain nation­al atten­tion.” They also toured with Alan Freed and appeared on Amer­i­can Band­stand and The Dick Clark Show. In 1961, their hit “Look in My Eyes” went to num­ber 14 on the pop charts and 6 on the R&B charts. (Thir­ty years lat­er, it appeared on the Good­fel­las sound­track.)

Most peo­ple who grew up on the music of the 50s and 60s have like­ly heard of many of these women rock­ers, or have at least heard their music if they didn’t know the names and faces. But Branstetter’s project does more than tell the sto­ries of individuals—in biogra­phies, inter­views (with, for one, Jer­ry Lee Lewis’s sis­ter, singer and piano play­er Lin­da Gail Lewis), blog posts, playlists (hear one below), song analy­ses, and essays.

She also sub­stan­ti­ates her larg­er claim that women’s “con­tri­bu­tions shaped the cul­ture and sound of rock and roll,” in numer­ous well-doc­u­ment­ed ways. This despite the fact that women in ear­ly rock were told ver­sions of the same thing Joan Jett heard 20 years later—“girls don’t play rock and roll.” They some­times heard it from oth­er women in the music busi­ness. Pop singer Con­nie Frances, for exam­ple, offered her opin­ion in a 1958 issue of Bill­board: “A girl can’t sing rock and roll. It’s basi­cal­ly too sav­age for a girl singer to han­dle.”

Atti­tudes like these per­sist­ed so long, and became so uncon­scious, that one of the largest gui­tar mak­ers in the world, Fend­er, and sev­er­al oth­er musi­cal instru­ment mak­ers, may have lost mil­lions in sales before they final­ly real­ized that women make up half of new gui­tar play­ers. Women in Rock and Roll’s First Wave will inspire and enlight­en many of those young musi­cians who did­n’t grow up know­ing any­thing about Sparkle Moore or The Chan­tels, but should have. Unless rock his­to­ri­ans will­ing­ly ignore the work of schol­ars like Branstet­ter, sub­se­quent accounts should reflect a more expan­sive, inclu­sive, view of the ter­ri­to­ry. Start here.

via WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Hot Gui­tar Solos of Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe, “America’s First Gospel Rock Star”

How Joan Jett Start­ed the Run­aways at 15 and Faced Down Every Bar­ri­er for Women in Rock and Roll

33 Songs That Doc­u­ment the His­to­ry of Fem­i­nist Punk (1975–2015): A Playlist Curat­ed by Pitch­fork

Chrissie Hynde’s 10 Pieces of Advice for “Chick Rock­ers” (1994)

Four Female Punk Bands That Changed Women’s Role in Rock

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

When John Waters Appeared on The Simpsons and Changed America’s LGBTQ Views (1997)

in Television | May 23rd, 2019

On the week where Alaba­ma Pub­lic Tele­vi­sion banned an episode of the kids’ car­toon Arthur for show­ing a gay wed­ding (just after ban­ning abor­tion the week before), let’s go back to a time when the entire coun­try need­ed a lit­tle bit of an edu­ca­tion on homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and used The Simp­sons and a guest appear­ance by direc­tor John Waters to make the point.

“Homer’s Pho­bia” pre­miered on Feb­ru­ary 16, 1997 in the show’s eighth sea­son. Writ­ten by Ron Hauge, the episode casts Waters as John, the own­er of Springfield’s antique and mem­o­ra­bil­ia store “Cockamamie’s”, who befriends the fam­i­ly. Bart and Lisa love the retro and campy objects on sale, Marge loves John’s com­pli­ments, but Homer freaks out when he real­izes (and it takes some time) that John is gay. Pan­ick­ing that Bart might become gay from John’s influ­ence, he forces Bart to take a tour of the man­li­est thing he can think of, a steel mill, only to find that it dou­bles as a gay dis­co after work (“We work hard and we play hard,” says the fore­man).

Homer dou­bles down, believ­ing that hunt­ing and killing a deer will make Bart a man. John saves the day of course, Homer learns a lit­tle les­son on accep­tance, and only at the end does Bart under­stand what the whole pan­ic has been about.

As com­e­dy with a mes­sage, the episode still holds up. Homer’s clue­less­ness (when Marge says “He prefers the com­pa­ny of men,” Homer responds, “Who does­n’t?”) and his homo­pho­bia (refer­ring to the word “queer” he says “I resent you peo­ple using that word. That’s our word for mak­ing fun of you! We need it!”) is both dopey and point­ed, but nev­er vicious. Also delight­ful is John’s vis­it to the Simp­sons’ home, where he has a vin­tage collector’s swoon over the kitsch of the entire inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tion, which as view­ers we’ve nev­er real­ly con­sid­ered. There’s plen­ty of visu­al gags, like a pink flamin­go in John’s shop and the amaz­ing Sha-Boom-Ka-Boom goo­gie-archi­tec­ture cafe.

Accord­ing to Matt Baume’s recent video essay, this episode did more for aware­ness and expos­ing intol­er­ance than any live action show at the time. John Waters, despite his filthy fil­mog­ra­phy, is fun, col­lect­ed, and cool. He is nei­ther a punch­line nor a trag­ic fig­ure. At this time in Amer­i­ca, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty was still a crime in many states. A head cen­sor at Fox object­ed to near­ly every line in the show (although not always from the right–there was also con­cern that gay peo­ple might be offend­ed). Time solved the prob­lem, how­ev­er. By the time it came back from the ani­ma­tors that one cen­sor had lost his job.

A few months lat­er Ellen Degeneres came out on Oprah and the cul­ture start­ed to shift even a lit­tle more. But as this week proved, this episode’s insights still ring true today.

For Waters, it’s been a weird lega­cy, with kids and fam­i­lies rec­og­niz­ing him from the episode and not from his more infa­mous work. He now has out a new book, Mr. Know-It-All: The Tar­nished Wis­dom of a Filth Elder.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Rise and Fall of The Simp­sons: An In-Depth Video Essay Explores What Made the Show Great, and When It All Came to an End

John Waters Talks About His Books and Role Mod­els in a Whim­si­cal Ani­mat­ed Video

John Waters’ RISD Grad­u­a­tion Speech: Real Wealth is Nev­er Hav­ing to Spend Time with A‑Holes

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Banksy Strikes Again in Venice

in Art, Current Affairs | May 22nd, 2019

Jux­tapoz writes: “Nev­er invit­ed to be the part of Venice Bien­nale, Banksy once again invit­ed him­self to show­case his work. Using a typ­i­cal pop-up stand that usu­al­ly sells tacky paint­ings and sou­venirs, he assem­bled a selec­tion of 9 works that col­lec­tive­ly built an image of a mas­sive cruise ship block­ing the city.”

In recent years, the flood of mas­sive cruise ships into Venice has cre­at­ed ten­sions between Vene­tians and tourism com­pa­nies. It’s pret­ty clear on what side the street artist comes down.

Get more at Jux­tapoz.

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:

How Venice Works: 124 Islands, 183 Canals & 438 Bridges

Venice in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images 125 Years Ago: The Rial­to Bridge, St. Mark’s Basil­i­ca, Doge’s Palace & More

The Venice Time Machine: 1,000 Years of Venice’s His­to­ry Gets Dig­i­tal­ly Pre­served with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and Big Data

Watch City Out of Time, A Short Trib­ute to Venice, Nar­rat­ed by William Shat­ner in 1959

Huge Hands Rise Out of Venice’s Waters to Sup­port the City Threat­ened by Cli­mate Change: A Poignant New Sculp­ture