Marie Osmond Performs the Dadaist Poem “Karawane” on the TV Show, Ripley’s Believe It or Not (1985)

in Life, Literature, Music, Poetry, Television | July 15th, 2016

Remem­ber Don­ny and Marie Osmond, the toothy, teenage Mor­mon sib­lings whose epony­mous tele­vi­sion vari­ety show was a whole­some 70’s mix of skits, songs, and ice skat­ing?

Their sur­pris­ing­ly endur­ing theme song reduced their pop­u­lar­i­ty to an eas­i­ly gras­pable bina­ry for­mu­la:

She was a lit­tle bit coun­try. He was a lit­tle bit rock and roll.

Turns out Marie was also more than a lit­tle bit Dada.

From 1985 to 1986, Marie served as actor Jack Palance’s cohost on Ripley’s Believe It or Not, a TV series explor­ing strange occur­rences, bizarre his­tor­i­cal facts, and oth­er such crowd-pleas­ing odd­i­ties… one of which was appar­ent­ly the afore­men­tioned Euro­pean avant-garde art move­ment, found­ed a hun­dred years ago this week.

If you don’t know as much about Dada as you’d like, Ms. Osmond’s brief primer is a sur­pris­ing­ly stur­dy intro­duc­tion.

No cutesy boot­sy, easy ref­er­ences to melt­ing clocks here.

The high­light is her per­for­mance of Dada poet and man­i­festo author Hugo Bal­l’s non­sen­si­cal 1916 sound poem “Karawane.”

Lose the yel­low bathrobe and she could be a cap­tive war­rior princess on Game of Thrones, fierce­ly peti­tion­ing the Moth­er of Drag­ons on behalf of her peo­ple. (Invent some sub­ti­tles for extra Dada-inflect­ed fun!)

A sharp eyed young art stu­dent named Ethan Bates did catch one error in Marie’s les­son. The ’13’ cos­tume she pulls from a handy dress­ing room niche was not worn by Hugo Ball, but rather Dutch painter Theo Van Does­burg, one of the founders of the De Sti­jl move­ment.

Still you’ve got to hand it to Marie, who was slat­ed to per­form just a sin­gle line of the poem. When it came time to tape, she aban­doned the cue cards, blow­ing pro­duc­ers’ and crew’s minds by deliv­er­ing the poem in its unhinged entire­ty from mem­o­ry.

Now that’s rock and roll.

Below you’ll find footage of Ball him­self per­form­ing the work in 1916.

Marie’s ver­sion was even­tu­al­ly released by Rough Trade Records as a track on Lip­stick Traces, a com­pan­ion sound­track to Greil Mar­cus’ sem­i­nal book.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dada Was Born 100 Years Ago: Cel­e­brate the Avant-Garde Move­ment Launched by Hugo Ball on July 14, 1916

Hear the Exper­i­men­tal Music of the Dada Move­ment: Avant-Garde Sounds from a Cen­tu­ry Ago

Down­load All 8 Issues of Dada, the Arts Jour­nal That Pub­li­cized the Avant-Garde Move­ment a Cen­tu­ry Ago (1917–21)

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

Aaron Sorkin, Creator of The West Wing & The Social Network, Teaches Screenwriting in an Online Class

in Film, Online Courses, Television, Writing | July 14th, 2016

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Sports Night, The West Wing, The Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent, The Social Net­work — hard­ly shame­ful items to appear on any­one’s résumé. Sure, peo­ple dis­agree about the likes of Stu­dio 60 on the Sun­set Strip and The News­room, but we’ve all got to admit that when Aaron Sorkin writes, he hits more than he miss­es, and even the sup­posed miss­es have more of inter­est about them than many oth­ers’ hits. How does this mas­ter of the mod­ern Amer­i­can scene — its con­cerns, its per­son­al­i­ties, its con­ver­sa­tions, its pol­i­tics — do it? You can find out in his Screen­writ­ing course on Mas­ter­Class, the new plat­form for online instruc­tion as giv­en by big-name doers of high-pro­file work.

Back in May, we fea­tured Mas­ter­Class’s offer­ing of Wern­er Her­zog on film­mak­ing, and though most every­one can enjoy hear­ing the man behind Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitz­car­ral­do, and Griz­zly Man talk for five hours, not every­one can sum­mon the will to make movies like those. Sorkin, by con­trast, uses his also con­sid­er­able cre­ative vital­i­ty to a dif­fer­ent end entire­ly, writ­ing snap­py scripts that bring his own com­pelling idio­syn­crasies to main­stream film and tele­vi­sion.

But he start­ed, accord­ing to Mas­ter­Class, by writ­ing his first screen­play on the hum­ble medi­um of cock­tail nap­kins — cock­tail nap­kins that became A Few Good Men. Since then, he’s come up with “rules of sto­ry­telling, dia­logue, char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, and what makes a script actu­al­ly sell,” now ready to share with his online stu­dents.

In fact, he gives one away for free in the trail­er above: “No one in real life starts a sen­tence with, ‘Damn it.’ ” That alone may get you writ­ing your own Oscar-win­ning screen­play, thus sav­ing you the $90 fee for the whole five-hour course, but Sorkin goes on to tease his meth­ods for break­ing through his “con­stant state of writer’s block” to craft dia­logue as he con­ceives of that process: “Tak­ing some­thing some­one has just said, hold­ing them in your hand, and then punch­ing them in the face with it.” He also makes ref­er­ence to Aris­totle’s Poet­ics, mak­ing his own lec­tur­ing sound like the very same high-and-low, intel­lec­tu­al and vis­cer­al cock­tail that his fans so enjoy in the dia­logue he writes. “The worst crime you can com­mit,” he warns, “is telling the audi­ence some­thing they already know,” and it sounds as if, in teacher mode to his audi­ence of aspir­ing screen­writ­ers, he plans on fol­low­ing his own advice.

Note: You can get a year-long pass to all Mas­ter­class cours­es for $180. Or give any indi­vid­ual course as a gift.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog Will Teach His First Online Course on Film­mak­ing

10 Tips From Bil­ly Wilder on How to Write a Good Screen­play

Ray­mond Chan­dler: There’s No Art of the Screen­play in Hol­ly­wood

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

What Is an “Existential Crisis”?: An Animated Video Explains What the Expression Really Means

in Philosophy | July 9th, 2016

“Who am I?” many of us have won­dered at some point in our lives, “What am I? Where am I?”… maybe even—while gaz­ing in bewil­der­ment at the pale blue dot and lis­ten­ing to the Talk­ing Heads—“How did I get here?”

That feel­ing of unset­tling and pro­found con­fu­sion, when it seems like the hard floor of cer­tain­ty has turned into a black abyss of end­less obliv­ion…. Thanks to mod­ern phi­los­o­phy, it has a handy name: an exis­ten­tial cri­sis. It’s a name, says Alain de Bot­ton in his School of Life video above, that “touch­es on one of the major tra­di­tions of Euro­pean phi­los­o­phy,” a tra­di­tion “asso­ci­at­ed with ideas of five philoso­phers in par­tic­u­lar: Kierkegaard, Camus, Niet­zsche, Hei­deg­ger, and Sartre.”

What do these five have in com­mon? The ques­tion is com­pli­cat­ed, and we can’t real­ly point to a “tra­di­tion.” As the Inter­net Ency­clo­pe­dia of Phi­los­o­phy notes, Exis­ten­tial­ism is a “catch-all term” for a few con­ti­nen­tal philoso­phers from the 19th and 20th cen­turies, some of whom had lit­tle or no asso­ci­a­tion with each oth­er. Also, “most of the philoso­phers con­ven­tion­al­ly grouped under this head­ing either nev­er used, or active­ly dis­avowed the term ‘exis­ten­tial­ist.’” Camus, accord­ing to Richard Raskin, thought of Exis­ten­tial­ism as a “form of philo­soph­i­cal sui­cide” and a “destruc­tive mode of thought.” Even Sartre, who can be most close­ly iden­ti­fied with it, once said “Exis­ten­tial­ism? I don’t know what it is.”

But labels aside, we can iden­ti­fy many com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tics of the five thinkers de Bot­ton names that apply to our par­a­lyz­ing expe­ri­ences of supreme doubt. The video iden­ti­fies five such broad com­mon­al­i­ties of the “exis­ten­tial cri­sis”:

1. “It’s a peri­od when a lot that had pre­vi­ous­ly seemed like com­mon sense or nor­mal reveals its con­tin­gent, chance, uncan­ny, and rel­a­tive nature…. We are freer than we thought.”

2. We rec­og­nize we’d been delud­ing our­selves about what had to be…. We come to a dis­turb­ing aware­ness that our ulti­mate respon­si­bil­i­ty is to our­selves, not the social world.”

3. “We devel­op a height­ened aware­ness of death. Time is short and run­ning out. We need to re-exam­ine our lives, but the clock is tick­ing.”

4. “We have many choic­es, but are, by the nature of the human con­di­tion, denied the infor­ma­tion we would need to choose with ulti­mate wis­dom or cer­tain­ty. We are forced to decide, but can nev­er be assured that we’ve done so ade­quate­ly. We are steer­ing blind.”

5. This means that anx­i­ety is a “basic fea­ture” of all human exis­tence.

All of this, de Bot­ton admits, can “seem per­ilous and dispir­it­ing,” and yet can also enno­ble us when we con­sid­er that the pri­vate ago­nies we think belong to us alone are “fun­da­men­tal fea­tures of the human con­di­tion.” We can dis­pense with the triv­i­al­iz­ing idea, prop­a­gat­ed by adver­tis­ers and self-help gurus, that “intel­li­gent choice might be pos­si­ble and untrag­ic… that per­fec­tion is with­in reach.” Yet de Bot­ton him­self presents Exis­ten­tial­ist thought as a kind of self-help pro­gram, one that helps us with regret, since we real­ize that every­one bears the bur­dens of choice, mor­tal­i­ty, and con­tin­gency, not just us.

How­ev­er, in most so-called Exis­ten­tial­ist philoso­phers, we also dis­cov­er anoth­er press­ing prob­lem. Once we become unteth­ered from pleas­ing fic­tions of pre-exist­ing real­i­ties, “worlds-behind-the-scene,” as Niet­zsche put it, or “being-behind-the-appear­ance,” in Sartre’s words, we no longer see a benev­o­lent hand arrang­ing things neat­ly, nor have absolute order, mean­ing, or pur­pose to appeal to.

We must con­front that fact that we, and no one else, bear respon­si­bil­i­ty for our choic­es, even though we make them blind­ly. It’s not a com­fort­ing thought, hence the “cri­sis.” But many of us resolve these moments of shock with vary­ing degrees of wis­dom and expe­ri­ence. As we know from anoth­er great thinker, Eleanor Roo­sevelt, who was not an Exis­ten­tial­ist philoso­pher, “Free­dom makes a huge require­ment of every human being…. For the per­son who is unwill­ing to grow up… this is a fright­en­ing prospect.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Human, All Too Human: 3‑Part Doc­u­men­tary Pro­files Niet­zsche, Hei­deg­ger & Sartre

The Absurd Phi­los­o­phy of Albert Camus Pre­sent­ed in a Short Ani­mat­ed Film by Alain De Bot­ton

Exis­ten­tial Phi­los­o­phy of Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus Explained with 8‑Bit Video Games

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

The Steamy Love Letters of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West (1925–1929)

in Letters, Literature | July 4th, 2016

Every­one loves a love story—especially a love affair. We may think our­selves above a juicy scan­dal…, but who are we kid­ding? Trag­i­cal­ly, how­ev­er, for many famous peo­ple of the past—from Oscar Wilde to Alan Tur­ing to Tab Hunter—affairs could not only end careers and rep­u­ta­tions, they could end lives. Peo­ple who would much rather not have to hide their love have been forced to do so by rigid social pro­pri­ety, reli­gious moral­ism, and repres­sive law.

In oth­er famous cas­es, however—like that of Vir­ginia Woolf and her friend and lover Vita Sackville-West—an affair doesn’t end in tragedy but sim­ply in a cool­ing of pas­sions into a beau­ti­ful, last­ing friend­ship.

While prud­ish out­siders may have been scan­dal­ized, nei­ther Woolf’s nor Sackville-West’s hus­band found the rela­tion­ship shock­ing. Leonard Woolf, his wife report­ed, regard­ed the affair as “rather a bore… but not enough to wor­ry him.” Vita and her aris­to­crat­ic hus­band Harold Nicol­son, writes the Vir­ginia Woolf blog, “were both bisex­u­al and… had an open mar­riage.” Fur­ther­more, the bohemi­an artis­tic cir­cle in which the Woolfs moved—the Blooms­bury group—hard­ly trou­bled itself about such mun­dane goings-on as a steamy affair between two mar­ried women. So much for social scan­dal and soap-oper­at­ic the­atrics.

But while their love was not for­bid­den, what pas­sion they had while it last­ed! One need only read their let­ters to each oth­er, col­lect­ed in The Let­ters of Vita Sackville-West to Vir­ginia Woolf. Many of those epis­tles doc­u­ment the heat­ed peri­od between the mid-1920s, when their affair began, and 1929, when it end­ed on ami­able terms (in a friend­ship the let­ters doc­u­ment until Woolf’s sui­cide in 1941).

“I am reduced to a thing that wants Vir­ginia,” writes Sackville-West in a 1926 let­ter to Woolf, “You have bro­ken down my defences. And I real­ly don’t resent it… Please for­give me for writ­ing such a mis­er­able let­ter.” The brief, ago­nized let­ter cap­tures the exquis­ite pangs and pin­ions of roman­tic infat­u­a­tion. Woolf, in response, is the more reserved, but also the more col­or­ful, with play­ful, cryp­tic images that hint at who knows what:

“Always, always, always I try to say what I feel,” she writes, “I have missed you. I do miss you. I shall miss you. And if you don’t believe it, you’re a longeared owl and ass…. Open the top but­ton of your jer­sey and you will see, nestling inside, a live­ly squir­rel with the most inquis­i­tive habits, but a dear crea­ture all the same—”

In her diary, Woolf described Sackville-West on their first meet­ing in 1923 as “a pro­nounced sap­phist…. Snob as I am, I trace her pas­sions – 500 years back, & they become roman­tic to me, like old yel­low wine.” Woolf was ten years old­er than Sackville-West, and seemed to feel infe­ri­or to her lover, com­par­ing her­self unfa­vor­ably in a sexy 1925 diary entry:

Vita shines in the gro­cers shop in Sevenoaks…pink glow­ing, grape clus­tered, pearl hung…There is her matu­ri­ty and full-breast­ed­ness: her being so much in full sail on the high tides, where I am coast­ing down back­wa­ters; her capac­i­ty I mean to take the floor in any com­pa­ny, to rep­re­sent her coun­try, to vis­it Chatsworth, to con­trol sil­ver, ser­vants, chow dogs; her motherhood…her in short (what I have nev­er been) a real woman.

The two had oth­er lovers, and Woolf, “as the old­er woman in the rela­tion­ship,” the Vir­ginia Woolf blog writes, felt “unwant­ed and dowdy” as Sackville-West strayed. But though the love affair end­ed, it not only pro­duced a close friend­ship, but a nov­el, Woolf’s Orlan­do, which Vita’s son Nigel called “the longest and most charm­ing love let­ter in lit­er­a­ture.”

Their love and friend­ship will also soon pro­duce a film, Vita and Vir­ginia, direct­ed by Chanya But­ton and writ­ten by Dame Eileen Atkins. And, if you were won­der­ing what Vita and Virginia’s pas­sion­ate exchanges would sound like in a 21st cen­tu­ry idiom, have a look at “The Col­lect­ed Sexts of Vir­ginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West” at The New York­er. The elo­quence of an epis­to­lary romance may be a thing of the past, but email and text have their own effi­cient charms:

Vita: Hey girl
Vir­ginia: Hey
Vita: Sup?
Vir­ginia: In bed
Vita: Hot
Vir­ginia: Come vis­it?
Vita: Mmm can’t. Have a toothache.

Cute. But what could ever replace one of Woolf’s last let­ters to her friend and for­mer lover, writ­ten in 1940 while Britain endured Ger­man air bom­bard­ments: “there you sit with the bombs falling around you. What can one say– except that I love you and I’ve got to live through this strange qui­et evening think­ing of you sit­ting there alone. Dearest—let me have a line…You have giv­en me such hap­pi­ness….”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vir­ginia Woolf’s Hand­writ­ten Sui­cide Note: A Painful and Poignant Farewell (1941)

Vir­ginia Woolf Loved Dos­to­evsky, Oscar Wilde Some­times Despised Dick­ens & Oth­er Gos­sip from The Read­ing Expe­ri­ence Data­base

Vir­ginia Woolf Offers Gen­tle Advice on “How One Should Read a Book”

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

President Warren G. Harding’s Steamy Love Letters

in Letters | June 29th, 2016

If you know some­thing about Amer­i­can his­to­ry, you know that War­ren G. Hard­ing (1865–1923) will nev­er appear on Mount Rush­more. He died dur­ing his unpop­u­lar first term in office, tar­nished by the Teapot Dome scan­dal and rev­e­la­tions of an extra­mar­i­tal affair. Hard­ing once appar­ent­ly said, “I am not fit for this office and should nev­er have been here.” And his­to­ri­ans tend to agree. Con­sis­tent­ly polls rank­ing the per­for­mance of Amer­i­can pres­i­dents put him at the bot­tom of the list.

His­to­ry might, how­ev­er, look more kind­ly upon Hard­ing’s love let­ters, the byprod­uct of his wom­an­iz­ing ways. Before tak­ing office, Hard­ing fathered a love child with Nan Brit­ton, a woman 31 years his junior. He also car­ried on a 15-year affair with Car­rie Ful­ton Phillips, a friend’s wife, to whom he start­ed writ­ing let­ters in 1910. And what let­ters they were. Here’s one from Jan­u­ary 28, 1912:

I love your poise

Of per­fect thighs

When they hold me

in par­adise…

I love the rose

Your gar­den grows

Love seashell pink

That over it glows

I love to suck

Your breath away

I love to cling —

There long to stay…

I love you garb’d

But naked more

Love your beau­ty

To thus adore…

I love you when

You open eyes

And mouth and arms

And cradling thighs…

If I had you today, I’d kiss and

fon­dle you into my arms and

hold you there until you said,

‘War­ren, oh, War­ren,’ in a

bene­dic­tion of bliss­ful joy.… I

rather like that encore

dis­cov­ered in Mon­tre­al.

Did you?

And anoth­er from Sep­tem­ber 15, 1913, which John Oliv­er play­ful­ly mocks above:

Hon­est­ly, I hurt with the insa­tiate long­ing, until I feel that there will nev­er be any relief untilI take a long, deep, wild draught on your lips and then bury my face on your pil­low­ing breasts. Oh, Car­rie! I want the solace you only can give. It is awful to hunger so and be so whol­ly denied.… Wouldn’t you like to hear me ask if we only dared and answer, “We dare,” while souls rejoic­ing sang the sweet­est of cho­rus­es in the music room? Wouldn’t you like to get sop­ping wet out on Supe­ri­or — not the lake — for the joy of fevered fondling and melt­ing kiss­es? Wouldn’t you like to make the sus­pect­ed occu­pant of the next room jeal­ous of the joys he could not know, as we did in morn­ing com­mu­nion at Rich­mond?

Oh, Car­rie mine! You can see I have yield­ed and writ­ten myself into wild desire. I could beg. And Jer­ry came and will not go, says he loves you, that you are the only, only love worth­while in all this world, and I must tell you so and a score or more of oth­er fond things he sug­gests, but I spare you. You must not be annoyed. He is so utter­ly devot­ed that he only exists to give you all. I fear you would find a fierce enthu­si­ast today.

Orig­i­nal­ly unearthed by his­to­ri­an Fran­cis Rus­sell in 1964, the let­ters were donat­ed to the Library of Con­gress, where they remained under seal until 2014. You can find scans of the orig­i­nal War­ren G. Hard­ing-Car­rie Ful­ton Phillips Cor­re­spon­dence on the LOC web­site. (The LOC also pro­duced an infor­ma­tive video on the exchange.) Read tran­scrip­tions of the best let­ters at The New York Times.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce’s “Dirty Let­ters” to His Wife (1909)

Dear Immanuel — Kant Gives Love Advice to a Heart­bro­ken Young Woman (1791)

Ernest Hemingway’s “Love Let­ter” to His “Dear­est Kraut,” Mar­lene Diet­rich (1955)

Read Beethoven’s Lengthy Love Let­ter to His Mys­te­ri­ous “Immor­tal Beloved” (1812)

Slavoj Žižek Explains the Artistry of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Films: Solaris, Stalker & More

in Film | June 27th, 2016

Though a film­mak­er of strong per­son­al con­vic­tions, artis­tic and oth­er­wise, Andrei Tarkovsky made films that endure in part because they open them­selves to a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of inter­pre­ta­tions. Noth­ing in the Tarkovsky canon opens itself up to quite such a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of inter­pre­ta­tions as Stalk­er, which con­tin­ues to pro­duce fas­ci­nat­ing new works derived from their cre­ators’ expe­ri­ence of the film, such as Geoff Dyer’s Zona: A Book About a Film About a Jour­ney to a Room, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of video games, and even a seg­ment of the Slavoj Žižek-star­ring doc­u­men­tary The Per­vert’s Guide to Cin­e­ma, which you can watch above.

“We need the excuse of a fic­tion to stage what they tru­ly are,” declares the philo­soph­i­cal, cul­tur­al, and polit­i­cal provo­ca­teur over footage of what many con­sid­er Tarkovsky’s mas­ter­piece. He describes it as “a film about a ‘Zone,’ a pro­hib­it­ed space where there are debris, remain­ders of aliens vis­it­ing us.” The tit­u­lar pro­fes­sion­als he describes as “peo­ple who spe­cial­ize in smug­gling for­eign­ers who want to vis­it into this space where you get many mag­i­cal objects.” The ulti­mate goal of all who make the har­row­ing jour­ney to the Zone? “The room in the mid­dle of this space, where it is claimed your desires will be real­ized.”

Not a bad sum­ming-up of the premise of a movie even whose biggest fans strug­gle to explain. But Žižek, of course, takes his analy­sis fur­ther, bring­ing in Solaris, Tarkovsky’s 1972 adap­ta­tion of Stanis­law Lem’s sci­ence fic­tion nov­el about a plan­et that can read the minds of the humans in orbit around it, “an id machine as an object which real­izes your night­mares, desires, fears, even before you ask for it.” With Stalk­er, Tarkovsky envi­sions the oppo­site, “a zone where your desires, your deep­est wish­es, get real­ized on con­di­tion that you are able to for­mu­late them. Which, of course, you are nev­er able.”

If you sub­scribe to Žižek’s read­ing of the films, it actu­al­ly makes per­fect sense that they could con­tin­ue to find new, enthralled audi­ences: the human rela­tion­ship to desire remains as fraught as ever — and per­haps has only gained fraugh­t­ness as we find ways to sat­is­fy our desires — and both Solaris and Stalk­er find artis­ti­cal­ly strik­ing new ways to dra­ma­tize it. And accord­ing to Žižek, the respect­ed film­mak­er also pro­vides a solu­tion: “reli­gious obscu­ran­tism,” a “ges­ture of self-sac­ri­fice” of the kind we see made in his final films, Nos­tal­ghia and The Sac­ri­fice. Tarkovsky also sac­ri­ficed him­self, but for cin­e­ma, and so cre­at­ed some of the most for­mal­ly remark­able motion pic­tures ever made, ones in which, in Žižek’s words, “we are made to feel this iner­tia, drab­ness of time,” and even “the den­si­ty of time itself.” If you won­der what he means by that, as ever, you’ve just got to expe­ri­ence Tarkovsky for your­self. A num­ber of his major films you can watch free online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online: Watch the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky, Arguably the Most Respect­ed Film­mak­er of All Time

Watch Stalk­er, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mind-Bend­ing Mas­ter­piece Free Online

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mas­ter­piece Stalk­er Gets Adapt­ed into a Video Game

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

Slavoj Žižek Names His Favorite Films from The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Johnny Rotten Becomes a DJ and Plays Songs from His Record Collection, 1977

in Music | June 23rd, 2016

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

One of the ini­tial impres­sions of the British punks–and one that impre­sario Mal­colm McLaren tried to cultivate–was that they were dan­ger­ous, unschooled yobs cre­at­ing rock music from pri­mor­dial mate­ri­als. That’s why McLaren was unhap­py about John Lydon aka John­ny Rotten’s appear­ance on Cap­i­tal Radio’s Tom­my Vance Show in the mid­dle of the sum­mer of punk, 1977.

“Anar­chy in the U.K.” and “God Save the Queen” had already been released as sin­gles. The Pis­tols had made their infa­mous appear­ance on Bill Grundy’s chat show, where goad­ed into doing some­thing out­ra­geous, they swore a bit and the British press melt­ed down in parox­ysms of pan­ic. They had been dropped by both EMI and A&M, and had fin­ished record­ing the bulk of Nev­er Mind the Bol­locks the month before. The band was in lim­bo.

DJ Tom­my Vance was six­teen years old­er than Lydon, but Cap­i­tal Radio was an inde­pen­dent sta­tion and offered an alter­na­tive to the BBC, which only a few months ear­li­er banned out­right “God Save the Queen” from the air­waves and refused to award it a num­ber one sin­gle spot, even though the sin­gle had earned it, sales­wise.

Lydon was asked to bring in records from his own col­lec­tion and talk about them, and, in doing so, demon­strat­ed that he was­n’t a thug, but an eclec­tic young music fan with broad tastes. He liked a lot of reg­gae (Peter Tosh, Mak­ka Bees, Dr. Ali­man­ta­do) and dub, and says he grew up with it. It also explains the dub heavy out­ings he’d soon do with Pub­lic Image Ltd. And he choos­es tracks by singer-song­writ­ers like Tim Buck­ley, Kevin Coyne, and Neil Young; John Cale, Lou Reed, and Nico; and art rock like Can, a band intro­duced to him by Sid Vicious.

He’s still abrupt, insult­ing and dis­mis­sive when he needs to be. He calls David Bowie a “real bad drag queen,” doesn’t think much of the Rolling Stones or most ‘60s bands (“ter­ri­ble scratch­ing sound” he says), and says most of his con­tem­po­rary punk bands are “stag­nant” and pre­dictable. But it wouldn’t be John­ny Rot­ten any oth­er way, would it?

When asked about his record col­lec­tion, Lydon says it’s quite big:

I ain’t got a record play­er at the moment, so I have to pass them around, because music’s for lis­ten­ing to, not to store away in a bloody cup­board. Yeah, I love my music.

You can lis­ten to the broad­cast here:

And here’s the full track list­ing:

Tim Buck­ley – Sweet Sur­ren­der
The Cre­ation – Life Is Just Begin­ning
David Bowie – Rebel Rebel
Unknown Irish Folk Music / Jig
Augus­tus Pablo – King Tub­by Meets The Rock­ers Uptown
Gary Glit­ter – Doing Alright With The Boys
Fred Locks – Walls
Vivian Jack­son and the Prophets – Fire in a Kingston
Cul­ture – I’m Not Ashamed
Dr Ali­man­ta­do & The Rebels – Born For A Pur­pose
Bob­by Byrd – Back From The Dead
Neil Young – Rev­o­lu­tion Blues
Lou Reed – Men Of Good For­tune
Kevin Coyne – East­bourne Ladies
Peter Ham­mill – The Insti­tute Of Men­tal Health, Burn­ing
Peter Ham­mill – Nobody’s Busi­ness
Mak­ka Bees – Nation Fid­dler / Fire!
Cap­tain Beef­heart – The Blimp
Nico – Jan­i­tor Of Luna­cy
Ken Boothe – Is It Because I’m Black
John Cale – Legs Lar­ry At Tele­vi­sion Cen­tre
Third Ear Band – Fleance
Can – Hal­leluh­wah
Peter Tosh – Legalise It

via That Eric Alper/WFMU

Relat­ed con­tent:

John Lydon & Pub­lic Image Ltd. Sow Chaos on Amer­i­can Band­stand: The Show’s Best and Worst Moment (1980)

The Sex Pis­tols’ 1976 Man­ches­ter “Gig That Changed the World,” and the Day the Punk Era Began

Nev­er Mind the Bol­locks, Here’s … John Lydon in a But­ter Com­mer­cial?

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.

Hear the Only Castrato Ever Recorded Sing “Ave Maria” and Other Classics (1904)

in History, Music | June 22nd, 2016

Every human cul­ture has prac­ticed some form of rit­u­al muti­la­tion, from the mild mar­ring of a Spring Break tat­too to the dis­fig­ure­ment of foot-bind­ing. On the more extreme end of the scale, we have the ear­ly mod­ern Euro­pean prac­tice of cas­trat­ing young boys to inhib­it growth of their vocal cords and thy­roid glands dur­ing puber­ty. Such singers, known as cas­trati, became “high-sopra­nos, mez­zos, and altos, stri­dent voic­es and sweet ones, loud and mel­low voic­es,” writes Martha Feld­man in her book The Cas­tra­to.

The pur­pose of muti­lat­ing these singers ini­tial­ly had to do with a ban on women in church choirs. Cas­trati took their place, and were in very high demand. “Oppor­tu­ni­ties for cas­trati were stag­ger­ing,” writes i09, “and many fam­i­lies were fac­ing star­va­tion” in 16th cen­tu­ry Italy, where the prac­tice began. Despite a church pro­hi­bi­tion on unnec­es­sary ampu­ta­tion, par­ents and sur­geons con­spired to ille­gal­ly cas­trate boys cho­sen to ful­fill the role, and the prac­tice con­tin­ued into the 19th cen­tu­ry.

Sev­er­al cas­trati achieved last­ing pop­u­lar fame. “The best cas­trati were super­stars,” remarks Sarah Bard­well of the Han­del House Muse­um, “adored by female fans.” Oth­ers, io9 points out, “were low-rent singers who spent their time doing small gigs in small towns, and oth­ers spun their singing careers into posi­tions as min­is­ters at roy­al courts.” One of the more glam­orous fates await­ed one of the last of the cas­trati, Alessan­dro Moreschi, who may have been cas­trat­ed to rem­e­dy an inguinal her­nia or may have been inten­tion­al­ly muti­lat­ed to become a cas­tra­to.

How­ev­er he came by it, Moreschi’s voice so impressed a Roman choir­mas­ter that he appoint­ed the singer first sopra­no of the Papal basil­i­ca of St. John Lat­er­an in 1873 at age 15. Soon after, Moreschi, his fame spread­ing wide­ly, joined the Sis­tine Chapel Choir and took on sev­er­al admin­is­tra­tive duties. By this time, it’s said that Moreschi was so pop­u­lar that audi­ences would call out “Evi­va il coltel­lo” (“Long live the knife!”) dur­ing his per­for­mances. While still with the Sis­tine Choir and near the end of his career, Moreschi began to make record­ings for the Gramo­phone & Type­writer Com­pa­ny of London—the only known record­ings of a cas­tra­to.

Between 1902 and 1904, Moreschi record­ed 17 tracks, and you can hear them all here. At the top of the post, hear a restored ver­sion of “Ave Maria,” fur­ther down, a ren­di­tion of Euge­nio Terziani’s “Hos­tias et Pre­ces,” and here, the com­plete record­ings of Alessan­dro Moreschi, in their noisy orig­i­nal state. Nicholas Clap­ton, cura­tor of a 2006 cas­trati exhib­it at the Han­del House Muse­um in Lon­don, describes Moreschi’s voice as “Pavarot­ti on heli­um” and his­tor­i­can David Starkey tells of the “full hor­ror” of the pro­ce­dure, but also adds, “it’s hor­ri­bly like the child star of today, forced into this arti­fi­cial­i­ty, forced… to deliv­er that ineluctable, strange, desir­able thing of star qual­i­ty.”

Sad­ly, like many of today’s har­ried child singers and actors, few cas­trati actu­al­ly achieved star­dom. But those few who did, like Moreschi, “had a tremen­dous emo­tion­al impact on the audi­ences of the day,” Bard­well tells us. Moreschi’s record­ings, made while he was in his mid-for­ties, sound alien to us not only because of the strange­ness of cas­trati singing but because of the high­ly melo­dra­mat­ic style pop­u­lar at the time. His singing may not be rep­re­sen­ta­tive of some of the most renowned cas­trati in his­to­ry, like the 18th cen­tu­ry sen­sa­tion Farinel­li, but it is—barring a resur­gence of the pret­ty bar­bar­ic practice—probably the clos­est we’ll come to hear­ing the infa­mous cas­trati voice.

via His­to­ry Buff

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Video Cap­tures 29-Year-Old Luciano Pavarot­ti in One of His Ear­li­est Record­ed Per­for­mances (1964)

Watch Clas­sic Per­for­mances from Maria Callas’ Won­drous and Trag­i­cal­ly-Short Opera Career

What Beat­box­ing and Opera Singing Look Like Inside an MRI Machine

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

Discover the First Horror & Fantasy Magazine, Der Orchideengarten, and Its Bizarre Artwork (1919–1921)

in Art, Literature, Magazines | June 17th, 2016

From the 18th cen­tu­ry onward, the gen­res of Goth­ic hor­ror and fan­ta­sy have flour­ished, and with them the sen­su­al­ly vis­cer­al images now com­mon­place in film, TV, and com­ic books. These gen­res per­haps reached their aes­thet­ic peak in the 19th cen­tu­ry with writ­ers like Edgar Allan Poe and illus­tra­tors like Gus­tave Dore. But it was in the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry that a more pop­ulist sub­genre tru­ly came into its own: “weird fic­tion,” a term H.P. Love­craft used to describe the pulpy brand of super­nat­ur­al hor­ror cod­i­fied in the pages of Amer­i­can fan­ta­sy and hor­ror mag­a­zine Weird Tales—first pub­lished in 1923. (And still going strong!)

A pre­cur­sor to EC Comics’ many lurid titles, Weird Tales is often con­sid­ered the defin­i­tive ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry venue for weird fic­tion and illus­tra­tion.

But we need only look back a few years and to anoth­er con­ti­nent to find an ear­li­er pub­li­ca­tion, serv­ing Ger­man-speak­ing fans — Der Orchideen­garten (“The Gar­den of Orchids”), the very first hor­ror and fan­ta­sy mag­a­zine, which ran 51 issues from Jan­u­ary 1919 to Novem­ber 1921.

The mag­a­zine fea­tured work from its edi­tors Karl Hans Strobl and Alfons von Czibul­ka, from bet­ter-known con­tem­po­raries like H.G. Wells and Karel Capek, and from fore­fa­thers like Dick­ens, Pushkin, Guy de Mau­pas­sant, Poe, Voltaire, Wash­ing­ton Irv­ing, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and oth­ers. “Although two issues of Der Orchideen­garten were devot­ed to detec­tive sto­ries,” writes 50 Watts, “and one to erot­ic sto­ries about cuck­olds, it was a gen­uine fan­ta­sy mag­a­zine.” And it was also a gallery of bizarre and unusu­al art­work.

50 Watts quotes from Franz Rottensteiner’s descrip­tion of the magazine’s art, which ranged “from rep­re­sen­ta­tions of medieval wood­cuts to the work of mas­ters of the macabre such as Gus­tave Dore or Tony Johan­not, to con­tem­po­rary Ger­man artists like Rolf von Hoer­schel­mann, Otto Lenneko­gel, Karl Rit­ter, Hein­rich Kley, or Alfred Kubin.” These artists cre­at­ed the cov­ers and illus­tra­tions you see here, and many more you can see at 50 Watts, the black sun, and John Coulthart’s {feuil­leton}.

“What strikes me about these black-and-white draw­ings,” like the dense, fren­zied pen-and-ink scene above, Coulthart com­ments, “is how dif­fer­ent they are in tone to the pulp mag­a­zines which fol­lowed short­ly after in Amer­i­ca and else­where. They’re at once far more adult and fre­quent­ly more orig­i­nal than the Goth­ic clichés which padded out Weird Tales and less­er titles for many years.” Indeed, though the for­mat may be sim­i­lar to its suc­ces­sors, Der Orchideen­garten’s cov­ers show the influ­ence of Sur­re­al­ism, “some are almost Expres­sion­ist in style,” and many of the illus­tra­tions show “a dis­tinct Goya influ­ence.”

Pop­u­lar fan­ta­sy and hor­ror illus­tra­tion has often leaned more toward the soft-porn of sev­en­ties air­brushed vans, pulp-nov­el cov­ers, or the gris­ly kitsch of the comics. Rot­ten­stein­er writes in his 1978 Fan­ta­sy Book that this “large-for­mat mag­a­zine… must sure­ly rank as one of the most beau­ti­ful fan­ta­sy mag­a­zines ever pub­lished.” It’s hard to argue with that assess­ment. View, read (in Ger­man), and down­load orig­i­nal scans of the magazine’s first sev­er­al issues over on this Prince­ton site.

via 50 Watts

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Exten­sive Archive of Avant-Garde & Mod­ernist Mag­a­zines (1890–1939) Now Avail­able Online

The Pulp Fic­tion Archive: The Cheap, Thrilling Sto­ries That Enter­tained a Gen­er­a­tion of Read­ers (1896–1946)

The First Illus­tra­tions of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds: The Sur­re­al & Hor­ri­fy­ing Art of Hen­rique Alvim Cor­rêa (1906)

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

The Best Drone Cinema in the World

in Film | June 17th, 2016

From the New York Drone Fes­ti­val comes a mon­tage of the best drone cin­e­ma in the world. Put drones in the hands of 32 film­mak­ers, and here’s what they can deliv­er. Pret­ty remark­able. Find more fine drone cin­e­ma in the Relat­eds below.

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 Coudal/WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Haunt­ing Drone’s‑Eye View of Cher­nobyl

Auschwitz Cap­tured in Haunt­ing Drone Footage (and a New Short Film by Steven Spiel­berg & Meryl Streep)

A Beau­ti­ful Drone’s Eye View of Antarc­ti­ca

A Drone’s Eye View of Los Ange­les, New York, Lon­don, Bangkok & Mex­i­co City