The History of the World in One Video: Every Year from 200,000 BCE to Today

in Animation, History, Maps | January 11th, 2018

“Where are you from?” a char­ac­ter at one point asks Babe, the hap­less pro­tag­o­nist of the Fire­sign The­atre’s clas­sic com­e­dy album How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Any­where at All. “Nairo­bi, ma’am,” Babe replies. “Isn’t every­body?” Like most of that psy­che­del­ic radio troupe’s pieces of appar­ent non­sense, that mem­o­rable line con­tains a truth: trace human his­to­ry back far enough and you inevitably end up in east Africa, a point illus­trat­ed in reverse by the video above, “A His­to­ry of the World: Every Year,” which traces the march of human­i­ty between 200,000 BCE and the mod­ern day.

To a dra­mat­ic sound­track which opens and clos­es with the music of Hans Zim­mer, video cre­ator Ollie Bye charts mankind’s progress out of Africa and, ulti­mate­ly, into every cor­ner of all the con­ti­nents of the world.

Real, doc­u­ment­ed set­tle­ments, cities, empires, and entire civ­i­liza­tions rise and fall as they would in a com­put­er game, with a con­stant­ly updat­ed glob­al pop­u­la­tion count and list of the civ­i­liza­tions active in the cur­rent year as well as occa­sion­al notes about pol­i­tics and diplo­ma­cy, soci­ety and cul­ture, and inven­tions and dis­cov­er­ies.

All that hap­pens in under 20 min­utes, a pret­ty swift clip, though not until the very end does the world take the polit­i­cal shape we know today, includ­ing even the late late­com­er to civ­i­liza­tion that is the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. Bye’s many oth­er videos tend to focus on the his­to­ry of oth­er parts of the world, such as India, the British Isles, and that cra­dle of our species, the African con­ti­nent, all of which we can now devel­op first-hand famil­iar­i­ty with in this age of unprece­dent­ed human mobil­i­ty. Though the con­di­tion itself takes the ques­tion “Where are you from?” to a degree of com­pli­ca­tion unknown not only mil­len­nia but also cen­turies and even decades ago, at least now you have a snap­py answer at the ready.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Civ­i­liza­tion Mapped in 13 Min­utes: 5000 BC to 2014 AD

Take Big His­to­ry: A Free Short Course on 13.8 Bil­lion Years of His­to­ry, Fund­ed by Bill Gates

The His­to­ry of the World in 46 Lec­tures From Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

The His­to­ry of the World in 20 Odd Min­utes

A Crash Course in World His­to­ry

5‑Minute Ani­ma­tion Maps 2,600 Years of West­ern Cul­tur­al His­to­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

Watch an Episode of TV-CBGB, the First Rock ‘n’ Roll Sitcom Ever Aired on Cable TV (1981)

in Music, Television | January 10th, 2018

For a good long while, or at least a few decades, the best things on TV in the U.S. hap­pened out­side the major broad­cast and nation­al cable net­works. And like a great many oth­er cul­tur­al hap­pen­ings of the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry, you would have to live in New York to expe­ri­ence them. I mean, of course, the weird, won­der­ful world of Man­hat­tan pub­lic access cable TV. Here you could watch, for exam­ple, Glenn O’Brien’s TV Par­ty, cre­at­ed by the tit­u­lar host as “a drug-fueled re-inter­pre­ta­tion of Hugh Hefner’s Play­boy After Dark”—as we not­ed in a recent post—and fea­tur­ing the most cut­ting-edge artists and musi­cians of the day.

Around the same time, Andy Warhol con­duct­ed his ver­sion of a celebri­ty inter­view show on local cable, and as the banal info­tain­ment of day­time talk show and 24-hour-cable news devel­oped on main­stream TV, a dozen bizarre, hilar­i­ous, raunchy, and ridicu­lous inter­view and call-in shows took hold on New York cable access in the years to fol­low (some of them still exist).

I hap­pened to catch the tail end of this gold­en era, which tapered off in the nineties as the inter­net took over for the com­mu­ni­ties these shows served. But oh, what it must have been like to watch the thriv­ing down­town scene doc­u­ment itself on TV from week-to-week, along­side the leg­en­dar­i­ly flam­boy­ant Man­hat­tan sub­cul­tures that found their voic­es on cable access?

Quite a few peo­ple remem­ber it well, and were thrilled when the video at the top emerged from obscu­ri­ty: an episode of TV-CBGB shot in 1981, “an odd glimpse,” writes Mar­tin Schnei­der at Dan­ger­ous Minds, “of a CBGB iden­ti­ty that nev­er took shape, as a cable access main­stay.” It is unclear how many episodes of the show were shot, or aired, or still exist in some form, but what we do have above seems rep­re­sen­ta­tive, accord­ing to two Bill­board arti­cles describ­ing the show. The first, from July 11, 1981, called the project “the first rock’n’roll sit­u­a­tion com­e­dy on cable tele­vi­sion.”

Cre­at­ed by CBG­Bs own­er, Hilly Kristal, the show aimed to give view­ers slices of life from the Bow­ery insti­tu­tion, which was already famous, accord­ing to Bill­board, as “the club that pio­neered new music.” Kristal told the trade mag­a­zine, “There will always be a plot, though a sim­ple plot. It will be about what hap­pens in the club, or what could hap­pen.” He then goes on to describe a series of plot ideas which, thank­ful­ly, didn’t dom­i­nate the show—or at least what we see of it above. The episode is “90% per­for­mance,” though “not true con­cert footage,” Schnei­der writes.

After an odd open­ing intro, we’re thrown into a song from Idiot Savant. Oth­er acts include The Roustabouts, The Hard, Jo Mar­shall, Shrap­nel, and Sic Fucks. While not among the best or most well-known to play at the club, these bands put on some excel­lent per­for­mances. By Novem­ber of the fol­low­ing year, it seems the first episode had still not yet aired. Bill­board quotes Kristal as call­ing TV-CBGB “one step fur­ther in expos­ing new tal­ent. Radio and reg­u­lar tv aren’t doing it. MTV is good, but it’s show­ing most­ly top 40.”

Had the show migrat­ed to MTV, Schnei­der spec­u­lates, it might have become a “nation­al TV icon,” ful­fill­ing Kristal’s vision for a new means of bring­ing obscure down­town New York musi­cians to the world at large. It might have worked. Though the sketch­es are lack­lus­ter, notable as his­tor­i­cal curiosi­ties, the music is what makes it worth­while, and there’s some real­ly fun stuff here—vital and dra­mat­ic. While these bands may not have had the mass appeal of, say, Blondie or the Ramones, they were stal­warts of the ear­ly 80s CBGB scene.

The awk­ward, strange­ly earnest, and often down­right goofy skits por­tray­ing the goings-on in the lives of club reg­u­lars and employ­ees are both some­how touch­ing and tedious, but with a lit­tle pol­ish and bet­ter direc­tion, the whole thing might have played like a punk rock ver­sion of Fame—which maybe no one need­ed. As it stands, giv­en the enthu­si­asm of sev­er­al YouTube com­menters who claim to have watched it at the time or been in the club them­selves, the episode con­sti­tutes a strange and rare doc­u­ment of what was, if not what could have been.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of CBGB, the Ear­ly Home of Punk and New Wave

Pat­ti Smith Plays at CBGB In One of Her First Record­ed Con­certs, Joined by Sem­i­nal Punk Band Tele­vi­sion (1975)

CBGB is Reborn … As a Restau­rant in Newark Air­port

When Glenn O’Brien’s TV Par­ty Brought Klaus Nomi, Blondie & Basquiat to Pub­lic Access TV (1978–82)

Ian McK­ellen Recites Shakespeare’s Son­net 20, Backed by Garage Rock Band, the Flesh­tones, on Andy Warhol’s MTV Vari­ety Show (1987)

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

David Bowie: The Last Five Years Is Now Airing/Streaming on HBO

in Film, Music | January 10th, 2018

FYI: David Bowie died two years ago today. And to com­mem­o­rate the anniver­sary, HBO has just start­ed air­ing David Bowie: The Last Five Years, a 90-minute BBC doc­u­men­tary that revis­its Bowie’s less pub­lic final years. If you don’t already have HBO, you could always watch the doc by sign­ing up for a free tri­al for HBO Now (HBO’s stream­ing ser­vice). Here’s a quick summary/overview of the film:

In the last years of his life, David Bowie end­ed near­ly a decade of silence to engage in an extra­or­di­nary burst of activ­i­ty, pro­duc­ing two ground­break­ing albums and a musi­cal. David Bowie: The Last Five Years explores this unex­pect­ed end to a remark­able career.

On the 2003–2004 “Real­i­ty” tour, David Bowie had a fright­en­ing brush with mor­tal­i­ty, suf­fer­ing a heart attack dur­ing what was to be his final full con­cert. He then dis­ap­peared from pub­lic view, only re-emerg­ing in the last five years of his life to make some of the most impor­tant music of his career. Made with remark­able access, Fran­cis Whately’s doc­u­men­tary is a rev­e­la­to­ry fol­low-up to his acclaimed 2013 doc­u­men­tary David Bowie: Five Years, which chron­i­cled Bowie’s gold­en ‘70s and early-‘80s peri­od.

While illu­mi­nat­ing icon­ic moments of his extra­or­di­nary and pro­lif­ic career, David Bowie: The Last Five Years focus­es on three major projects: the albums The Next Day and the jazz-infused Black­star (released on Bowie’s 69th birth­day, two days before his death in 2016), and the musi­cal Lazarus, which was inspired by the char­ac­ter he played in the 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth.

Dis­pelling the sim­plis­tic view that his career was sim­ply pred­i­cat­ed on change, the film includes reveal­ing inter­views with many of Bowie’s clos­est cre­ative col­lab­o­ra­tors, includ­ing: Tony Vis­con­ti, Bowie’s long-time pro­duc­er; musi­cians who con­tributed to The Next Day and Black­star; Jonathan Barn­brook, the graph­ic design­er of both albums; Robert Fox, pro­duc­er of Lazarus, along with cast mem­bers from the show, pro­vid­ing a unique behind-the-scenes look at Bowie’s cre­ative process; and Johan Renck, direc­tor of Bowie’s final music video, “Lazarus,” which was wide­ly dis­cussed as fore­shad­ow­ing his death.

You can watch a trail­er for the new film up above.

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:

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

The David Bowie Book Club Gets Launched by His Son: Read One of Bowie’s 100 Favorite Books Every Month

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

David Bowie Urges Kids to READ in a 1987 Poster Spon­sored by the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion

A Map of George Orwell’s 1984

in Literature, Maps | January 9th, 2018

Many fic­tion­al loca­tions resist map­ping. Our imag­i­na­tions may thrill, but our men­tal geolo­ca­tion soft­ware recoils at the impos­si­bil­i­ties in Ita­lo Calvino’s Invis­i­ble Cities—a series of geo­graph­i­cal­ly whim­si­cal tales told by Mar­co Polo to Genghis Khan; or Chi­na Miéville’s The City and the City, in which two metropolises—Besźel and Ul Qoma—occupy much of the same phys­i­cal space, and a secre­tive police pow­er com­pels cit­i­zens to will­ful­ly “unsee” one city or the oth­er.

That’s not to say such maps can­not be made. Calvino’s strange cities have been illus­trat­ed, if not at street lev­el, in as fan­ci­ful a fash­ion as the nar­ra­tor describes them. Miéville’s weird cities have received sev­er­al lit­er­al-mind­ed map­ping treat­ments, which per­haps mis­take the novel’s care­ful con­struc­tion of metaphor for a kind of cre­ative urban plan­ning.

Miéville him­self might dis­avow such attempts, as he dis­avows one-to-one alle­gor­i­cal read­ings of his fan­tas­tic detec­tive novel—those, for exam­ple, that reduce the phe­nom­e­non of “unsee­ing” to an Orwellian means of thought con­trol. “Orwell is a much more overt­ly alle­gor­i­cal writer,” he tells There­sa DeLuc­ci at Tor, “although it’s always sort of unsta­ble, there’s a cer­tain kind of map­ping where­by x means y, a means b.”

Orwell’s spec­u­la­tive worlds are eas­i­ly decod­ed, in oth­er words, an opin­ion shared by many read­ers of Orwell. But Miéville’s com­ments aside, there’s an argu­ment to be made that The City and the City’s “unsee­ing” is the most vivid­ly Orwellian device in recent fic­tion. And that the fic­tion­al world of 1984 does not, per­haps, yield to such sim­ple map­ping as we imag­ine.

Of course it’s easy to draw a map (see above, or in a larg­er for­mat here) of the three impe­r­i­al pow­ers the nov­el tells us rule the world. Frank Jacobs at Big Think tidi­ly sums them up:

Ocea­nia cov­ers the entire con­ti­nents of Amer­i­ca and Ocea­nia and the British Isles, the main loca­tion for the nov­el, in which they are referred to as ‘Airstrip One’.
Eura­sia cov­ers Europe and (more or less) the entire Sovi­et Union.
Eas­t­a­sia cov­ers Japan, Korea, Chi­na and north­ern India.

These three super­states are per­pet­u­al­ly at war with each oth­er, though who’s at war with whom is unclear. “And yet… the war might just not even be real at all”—for all we know it might be a fab­ri­ca­tion of the Min­istry of Truth, to man­u­fac­ture con­sent for aus­ter­i­ty, mass sur­veil­lance, forced nation­al­ism, etc. It’s also pos­si­ble that the entire­ty of the novel’s geo-pol­i­tics have been invent­ed out of whole cloth, that “Airstrip One is not an out­post of a greater empire,” Jacobs writes, “but the sole ter­ri­to­ry under the com­mand of Ing­soc.”

One com­menter on the map—which was post­ed to Red­dit last year—points out that “there isn’t any evi­dence in the book that this is actu­al­ly how the world is struc­tured.” We must look at the map as dou­bly fic­tion­al, an illus­tra­tion, Lau­ren Davis notes at io9, of “how the cred­u­lous inhab­i­tant of Airstrip One, armed with only maps dis­trib­uted by the Min­istry of Truth, might view the world, how vast the realm of Ocea­nia seems and how close the sup­posed ene­mies in Eura­sia.” It is the world as the minds of the nov­el­’s char­ac­ters con­ceive it.

All maps, we know, are dis­tor­tions, shaped by ide­ol­o­gy, belief, per­spec­ti­val bias. 1984’s lim­it­ed third-per­son nar­ra­tion enacts the lim­it­ed views of cit­i­zens in a total­i­tar­i­an state. Such a state nec­es­sar­i­ly uses force to pre­vent the peo­ple from inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fy­ing con­stant­ly shift­ing, con­tra­dic­to­ry pieces of infor­ma­tion. But the nov­el itself states that force is large­ly irrel­e­vant. “The patrols did not mat­ter… Only the Thought Police mat­tered.”

In Orwell’s fic­tion “sim­i­lar out­comes” as those in total­i­tar­i­an states, as Noam Chom­sky remarks, “can be achieved in free soci­eties like Eng­land” through edu­ca­tion and mass media con­trol. The most unset­tling thing about the seem­ing sim­plic­i­ty of 1984’s map of the world is that it might look like almost any­thing else for all the aver­age per­son knows. Its ele­men­tary-school rudi­ments metaphor­i­cal­ly point to fright­en­ing­ly vast areas of igno­rance, and pos­si­bil­i­ties we can only imag­ine, since Win­ston Smith and his com­pa­tri­ots no longer have the abil­i­ty, even if they had the means.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

A Com­plete Read­ing of George Orwell’s 1984: Aired on Paci­fi­ca Radio, 1975

A Map Shows What Every Coun­try in the World Calls Itself in its Own Lan­guage: Explore the “Endonyms of the World” Map

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

Hear a Dramatization of Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys: Free for a Limited Time

in Audio Books | January 5th, 2018

A quick heads up: The BBC is now stream­ing a new, six-part adap­ta­tion of Anan­si Boys, Neil Gaiman’s myth­i­cal fan­ta­sy nov­el from 2006. Only avail­able for the next few weeks, each episode runs about 30 min­utes. Find them here.

Fans of Neil Gaiman will also def­i­nite­ly want to check out this post in our archive: 18 Sto­ries & Nov­els by Neil Gaiman Online: Free Texts & Read­ings by Neil Him­self.

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 Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Gaiman Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”: One Mas­ter of Dra­mat­ic Sto­ry­telling Reads Anoth­er

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Hear Radio Dra­mas of Isaac Asimov’s Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy & 7 Clas­sic Asi­mov Sto­ries

Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Painting Free Online: 403 Episodes Spanning 31 Seasons

in Art, How to Learn for Free, Life, Television | January 3rd, 2018

Whether your New Year’s res­o­lu­tion involves tak­ing up paint­ing, man­ag­ing stress, cul­ti­vat­ing a more pos­i­tive out­look, or build­ing a busi­ness empire, the late tele­vi­sion artist Bob Ross can help you stick it out.

Like Fred Rogers’ Mr Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood, Ross’ long-run­ning PBS show, The Joy of Paint­ing, did not dis­ap­pear from view fol­low­ing its creator’s demise. For over twen­ty years, new fans have con­tin­ued to seek out the half-hour long instruc­tion­al videos, along with its mes­mer­iz­ing­ly mel­low, eas­i­ly spoofed host.

Now all 403 episodes have been made avail­able for free on Ross’ offi­cial Youtube chan­nel. That cov­ers all 31 sea­sons.

It’s said that 90% of the reg­u­lar view­ers tun­ing in to watch Ross crank out his sig­na­ture “wet-on-wet” land­scapes nev­er took up a brush, despite his belief that, with a bit of encour­age­ment, any­one can paint.

Per­haps they pre­ferred sad clowns or big-eyed chil­dren to scenic land­scapes of the sort that would not have looked out of place in a 1970’s motel.… Or per­haps Ross, him­self, was the big draw.

Like Mis­ter Rogers, Ross spoke soft­ly, using direct address to cre­ate an impres­sion of inti­ma­cy between him­self and the view­er. Twen­ty years in the mil­i­tary had soured him on barked-out, rigid instruc­tions. Instead, Ross reas­sured less expe­ri­enced painters that the 16th-cen­tu­ry ”Alla Pri­ma” tech­nique he brought to the mass­es could nev­er result in mis­takes, only “hap­py acci­dents.” He was patient and kind and he did­n’t take his own abil­i­ties too seri­ous­ly, though he seemed like he would cer­tain­ly have tak­en plea­sure in yours.

Ross’ Land of Make Believe was a char­ac­ter-free nat­ur­al world, in which many of the same ele­ments appear over and over.  Accord­ing to Five Thir­ty Eight cul­ture edi­tor Walt Hickey’s sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis, trees reigned supreme. The real life land­scapes he observed as first sergeant of the U.S. Air Force Clin­ic at Eiel­son Air Force Base in Alas­ka became his life­long sub­ject, and by exten­sion, that of untold num­bers of home view­ers.

His devo­tees may be con­tent just see­ing “hap­py lit­tle trees” and “pret­ty lit­tle moun­tains” bloom on can­vas, but in an inter­view with NPR, Ross’ busi­ness part­ner, Annette Kowal­s­ki, sug­gests that he would not have been.

The gen­tle, for­est-and-cloud-lov­ing host was also an ambi­tious and high­ly focused busi­ness­man, who used TV as the medi­um for his suc­cess. Every folksy com­ment was rehearsed before film­ing and he stuck with the permed hair­do he loathed, rather than scrap­ping what had become a high­ly visu­al brand iden­ti­fi­er.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Watch all 31 sea­sons of Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing here, or right here on this page. Offi­cial Bob Ross paint­ing kits are wide­ly avail­able online, or source your own using a cob­bled togeth­er sup­ply list.

Sea­son Three

Sea­son Four

Sea­son Five

Sea­son Six

We will con­tin­u­ing adding sea­sons to this list as they become avail­able.

Sea­son Sev­en

Sea­son Eight

Sea­son Nine

Sea­son Ten

Sea­son 11

Sea­son 12

Sea­son 13

Sea­son 14

Sea­son 15

Sea­son 16

Sea­son 17

Sea­son 18

Sea­son 19

Sea­son 20

Sea­son 21

Sea­son 22

Sea­son 23

Sea­son 24

Sea­son 25

Sea­son 26

Sea­son 27

Sea­son 28

Sea­son 29

Sea­son 30

Sea­son 31

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing, Sea­sons 1–3, Free Online

Mr. Rogers Goes to Con­gress and Saves PBS: Heart­warm­ing Video from 1969

Stream 23 Free Doc­u­men­taries from PBS’ Award-Win­ning Amer­i­can Expe­ri­ence Series

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her res­o­lu­tion is to spend less time online, but you can still fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Ian McKellen Recites Shakespeare’s Sonnet 20, Backed by Garage Rock Band, the Fleshtones, on Andy Warhol’s MTV Variety Show (1987)

in Literature, Music, Television | January 1st, 2018

80s revival­ism can be done bad­ly and it can be done well. Those old enough to remem­ber the decade seem best placed to recre­ate it, but the suc­cess of Stranger Things offers an excel­lent coun­terex­am­ple. The mil­len­ni­al Duf­fer broth­ers did a mar­velous job of con­jur­ing the look and feel of mid-80s mise-en-scène by stitch­ing togeth­er close view­ings of a dozen or so films—from the mas­sive­ly pop­u­lar E.T. to more obscure flicks like made-for-TV Mazes and Mon­sters (not to men­tion such pre­cious archival footage as this.)

When it comes to music how­ev­er, 80s retro tends to con­fine them­selves to ear­ly hip and hop and elec­tro, the syn­th­pop of Gary Numan and Duran Duran or the cheesy hair met­al of Möt­ley Crüe. But this lens miss­es the sig­nif­i­cant 60s revival­ism that emerged at the time. Garage, surf, and psych rock and the jan­g­ly sounds of The Byrds inspired R.E.M., the B52s, the Replace­ments, the House of Love, and the Flesh­tones, a much less­er-known NYC band who may nev­er have got­ten their com­mer­cial due, but who cer­tain­ly appealed to 60s art star Andy Warhol.

When Warhol remade him­self as a TV per­son­al­i­ty in the 80s with his MTV vari­ety show Andy Warhol’s 15 Min­utes he cast the Flesh­tones as the back­ing band for ris­ing the­ater and film star Ian McK­ellen, a match-up that rep­re­sents anoth­er hall­mark of 80s pop culture—the post­mod­ern jux­ta­po­si­tion of gen­res, styles, and reg­is­ters which Warhol helped pio­neer 20 years ear­li­er when he brought kitschy silk-screened soup cans, sexy street hus­tlers, and the Vel­vet Under­ground into the art scene.

Warhol’s tele­vi­sion work turned this impulse into a mul­ti­me­dia cir­cus fea­tur­ing “The high and the low. The rich and the famous. The strug­gling artists and the ris­ing stars,” as Warhol Muse­um cura­tor Ger­a­lyn Hux­ley puts it. In this par­tic­u­lar­ly fit­ting exam­ple, McK­ellen and the Flesh­tones bring Shake­speare’s racy Son­net 20 to young, hip MTV audi­ences in 1987. L.A. Week­ly lists a few of the “cool points” from the clip:

• A young, hot, already insane­ly tal­ent­ed Ian McK­ellen
• Wear­ing awe­some New Wave fash­ions
• At Andy Warhol’s Fac­to­ry in 1987
• Backed by cult group the Flesh­tones
• Recit­ing a Shake­speare Son­net

What’s not to love? Start your 2018 with some Shake­speare-meets-garage-rock cool­ness from 31 years ago—and revis­it more of Warhol’s MTV vari­ety show at our pre­vi­ous post. For seri­ous stu­dents of the decade, this is essen­tial view­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol’s 15 Min­utes: Dis­cov­er the Post­mod­ern MTV Vari­ety Show That Made Warhol a Star in the Tele­vi­sion Age (1985–87)

Ian McK­ellen Reads a Pas­sion­ate Speech by William Shake­speare, Writ­ten in Defense of Immi­grants

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

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

How to “Hijack” Amazon Prime for Good: Short Video Shows How Prime & Other Instant Delivery Services Can Easily Help the Homeless

in Life | January 1st, 2018

Today, it’s 18 degrees in New York City, 4 degrees in Chica­go, and 13 degrees in Boston. It’s damn cold, espe­cial­ly for the home­less.

Keep this in mind as you watch Rob Bliss’ short video above. In a poignant video, he points out how ser­vices offer­ing the imme­di­ate deliv­ery of prod­ucts and ser­vices could eas­i­ly help the home­less. While he uses Ama­zon Prime as an exam­ple, the same idea could be extend­ed to ser­vices like Door­Dash, Grub­Hub, and UberEats (which is appar­ent­ly now out­grow­ing the taxi busi­ness in some cities).

via Swiss Miss

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!

What Happens When a Cat Watches Hitchcock’s Psycho

in Random | December 30th, 2017

Let’s sus­pend dis­be­lief for a moment and watch Hitch­cock give new mean­ing to “scaredy cat.” Enjoy.

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:

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho (1960)

Hitch­cock­’s Secret Sauce for Cre­at­ing Sus­pense

Alfred Hitchcock’s 7‑Minute Mas­ter Class on Film Edit­ing

Alfred Hitch­cock Presents Ghost Sto­ries for Kids (1962)

Photographer Nan Goldin Now on Instagram

in Photography | December 26th, 2017

A quick heads up: Back in August, Cindy Sher­man, one of the best-known pho­tog­ra­phers work­ing today, launched an Insta­gram account where she has post­ed 600 new pho­tos and strange self-por­traits. Now you can look for­ward to explor­ing an Insta­gram account belong­ing to anoth­er influ­en­tial Amer­i­can pho­tog­ra­ph­er, Nan Goldin. So far, you’ll only find 19 pho­tos, includ­ing the one above, cap­tioned as “Self por­trait as a Dom­i­na­trix Boston 1977 (a long time ago).” But hope­ful­ly that’s just the begin­ning.

Gold­in’s Insta­gram account makes its debut at the same time that Stei­dl Books has re-released Nan Goldin: The Beau­ti­ful Smile–the mem­oir in which Goldin famous­ly pho­tographed, writes The New York Times, the sub­jects who “have been those clos­est to her: Trans­sex­u­als, cross-dressers, drug users, lovers, all peo­ple she befriend­ed when she moved to New York” and who lived in what main­stream crit­ics would cold­ly call the ‘mar­gins of soci­ety’.” The high­ly-praised book is now out again.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cindy Sherman’s Insta­gram Account Goes Pub­lic, Reveal­ing 600 New Pho­tos & Many Strange Self-Por­traits

Say What You Real­ly Mean with Down­load­able Cindy Sher­man Emoti­cons

Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Launch­es Free Course on Look­ing at Pho­tographs as Art