How Japanese Things Are Made in 309 Videos: Bamboo Tea Whisks, Hina Dolls, Steel Balls & More

in Technology | May 5th, 2016

The Japan­ese term kaizen, which just means some­thing like “good change,” has come to sig­ni­fy in glob­al man­age­ment cul­ture a process of con­tin­u­ous small-scale improve­ment — an ele­ment of the “Japan­ese busi­ness phi­los­o­phy” so envi­ous­ly scru­ti­nized dur­ing that coun­try’s post­war eco­nom­ic boom. Toy­ota has done the most to asso­ciate them­selves with the idea of kaizen-as-con­tin­u­ous-improve­ment, but it has made its way to count­less oth­er busi­ness­es, includ­ing for­eign ones sell­ing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent prod­ucts; even the Amer­i­can gro­cery store Trad­er Joe’s has worked the word into their inter­nal cus­tomer-ser­vice lex­i­con.

But the nature of kaizen comes most clear­ly into view in the sys­tems of Japan­ese man­u­fac­tur­ing. Japan has long pos­sessed a strong cul­ture of hand-crafts­man­ship, and, for almost as long, a strong cul­ture of automa­tion as well. You can see both at work in The Mak­ing, a series of videos from the Japan Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Agen­cy’s Sci­ence Chan­nel on Youtube. “There are from 2 to 150, and 151 to 309 videos to choose from,” writes Metafil­ter user arowe­of­shale, who high­lights the episodes on may­on­naise, “the mak­ing of steel balls (avail­able in Eng­lish), the con­struc­tion and test­ing of sewing machines, how rice crack­ers are made, a ther­mos fac­to­ry, the recy­cling of PET bot­tles, a matcha tea fac­to­ry and the cre­ation of bam­boo whisks.”

These mini-doc­u­men­taries take in-depth looks at the nuts and bolts (some­times lit­er­al­ly) of pro­duc­tion sys­tems that have evolved, small improve­ment after small improve­ment, over decades or indeed cen­turies. You can see in action every stage of these hybrid process­es of advanced and high­ly spe­cial­ized tech­nol­o­gy with skilled and some­times even arti­sanal human labor, some­how at once elab­o­rate and ele­gant. This goes for every prod­uct fea­tured, no mat­ter how impor­tant or triv­ial it may seem. (I got hooked myself after watch­ing one on chick­en-shaped sweets.)

Even non-Japan­ese-speak­ers can enjoy all of The Mak­ing’s clear and almost com­plete­ly visu­al-dri­ven episodes, but the JST has also made select ones avail­able with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles (see top playlist) in order to tell the world all about what it takes to make what it has come to see as quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Japan­ese, like urban rail­road cars, steel balls (of many uses, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to pachinko machines), and Hina dolls.

Any Amer­i­can old-timer will tell you that, back in their day — a time when the Unit­ed States’ for­mer ene­my had yet to ful­ly rebuild its econ­o­my, let alone to become a tech­no­log­i­cal leader — the “made in Japan” stamp sig­ni­fied a piece of junk. These videos show us, in detail, what it took to refute that notion for good.

via metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Japan’s Earth­quake Proof Under­ground Bike Stor­age Sys­tem: The Future is Now

Watch a Japan­ese Crafts­man Lov­ing­ly Bring a Tat­tered Old Book Back to Near Mint Con­di­tion

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

Let’s Learn Japan­ese: Two Clas­sic Video Series to Get You Start­ed in the Lan­guage

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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 Happens When a Japanese Woodblock Artist Depicts Life in London in 1866, Despite Never Having Set Foot There

in Art, History | May 4th, 2016

The affini­ties between Eng­land and Japan go far beyond the fact that both are tea-lov­ing nations with a devo­tion to gar­dens; far beyond the fact that both dri­ve on the left, are the world’s lead­ing over­seas investors, and are rainy islands stud­ded with green vil­lages. They go even beyond the fact that both have an astrin­gent sense of hier­ar­chy, sub­scribe to a code of social ret­i­cence, and are, in some respects, proud, iso­lat­ed monar­chies with more than a touch of xeno­pho­bia. The very qual­i­ties that seem so for­eign, even men­ac­ing, to many Amer­i­cans in Japan — the fact that peo­ple do not invari­ably mean what they say, that uncer­tain dis­tances sep­a­rate polite­ness from true feel­ings, and that every­thing is couched in a kind of code in which nuances are every­thing — will hard­ly seem strange to a cer­tain kind of Eng­lish­man.

That astute com­par­i­son comes from an essay called “For Japan, See Oscar Wilde” by Pico Iyer, a writer unique­ly well-placed to sense this sort of thing by virtue of his child­hood in Eng­land and long­time res­i­dence as an adult in Japan. His Indi­an her­itage and pen­chant for world trav­el have also equipped him to write with clar­i­ty about the ways — some­times grotesque, some­times delu­sion­al, some­times aspi­ra­tional, some­times fan­tas­ti­cal — in which one coun­try can per­ceive anoth­er.

In the case of the some­how sep­a­rat­ed-at-birth nations of Eng­land and Japan, we have some direct doc­u­men­ta­tion of the for­mer as dreamed of by the lat­ter in Uta­gawa Yoshitora’s 1866 trip­tych Igirisukoku Ron­don no zu.

“Togeth­er, the three images depict a street scene near the Riv­er Thames, com­plete with throng­ing Eng­lish pedes­tri­ans, two sail­ing ships, hors­es, oxen, and car­riages,” writes Slate’s Rebec­ca Onion: “The images would have sold fair­ly cheap­ly, in the thriv­ing mar­ket in wood­block (ukiyo‑e) prints in 19^th-cen­tu­ry Japan. Uta­gawa, a rel­a­tive­ly minor artist from an exten­sive lin­eage of wood­block print­ers, also pro­duced por­traits of Kabu­ki actors, trip­tychs of his­tor­i­cal bat­tle scenes, and images of for­eign­ers in Yokohama—one of the only places in Japan where they were allowed to trade at the time. (Here’s an 1861 print titled ‘Two Amer­i­cans.’) Uta­gawa prob­a­bly did not vis­it Lon­don, and was instead work­ing from sec­ond­hand reports.”

That would make him a per­fect sub­ject for Iyer, who has tend­ed to spe­cial­ize in writ­ing not just about the places of the world but the places of the mind. While the peo­ple of Uta­gawa’s Lon­don of the mind dis­play a sim­pli­fied typ­i­cal Eng­lish style of dress, and do so before a proud domed build­ing and a mighty-look­ing, elab­o­rate­ly rigged sail­ing ship, their com­po­si­tion remains some­how quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Japan­ese. But then, how much sep­a­rates the quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Japan­ese from the quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Eng­lish? “The actu­al peo­ple who live in Japan,” said Oscar Wilde as quot­ed in Iyer’s essay, “are not unlike the gen­er­al run of Eng­lish peo­ple.”

And the affin­i­ty goes both ways. When Prince Fushi­mi Sada­naru made a state vis­it to Eng­land forty years after Uta­gawa made his prints, he hoped to catch a per­for­mance of The Mika­do, Gilbert and Sul­li­van’s hit com­ic opera set very much in the Japan of the Eng­lish mind (and one that faces accu­sa­tions of cul­tur­al impe­ri­al­ism to this day). Alas, the British gov­ern­ment had pre­emp­tive­ly can­celed all per­for­mances dur­ing the Prince’s stay for fear of offend­ing him. This prompt­ed a Japan­ese jour­nal­ist in Lon­don to lat­er see the show him­self. He went on to write of his dis­ap­point­ment: he’d gone in expect­ing “real insults” to his home­land, only to find “bright music and much fun.”

via Slate’s The Vault/Two Nerdy His­to­ry Girls

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lon­don Mashed Up: Footage of the City from 1924 Lay­ered Onto Footage from 2013

2,000 Years of London’s His­tor­i­cal Devel­op­ment, Ani­mat­ed in 7 Min­utes

Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion Lets You Fly Through 17th Cen­tu­ry Lon­don

1927 Lon­don Shown in Mov­ing Col­or

Down­load Hun­dreds of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Mas­ters of the Tra­di­tion

The Best Writ­ing Advice Pico Iyer Ever Received

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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.

Walter Benjamin Jots in His Notebook Every Book He’s Read Since He Was 18

in Books | May 3rd, 2016

If you’re in Berlin, stop by the Galerie Max Het­zler, which is cur­rent­ly stag­ing an exhi­bi­tion where the Jew­ish mys­tic philoso­pher Wal­ter Ben­jamin plays a promi­nent role. Here’s how the gallery sets the scene:

[British artist British artist Edmund] De Waal first came to know the city of Berlin through the writ­ings of Wal­ter Ben­jamin, par­tic­u­lar­ly his auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal frag­ments in A Berlin Child­hood around 1900. The exhi­bi­tion title, Irrkun­st, has been tak­en from Benjamin’s con­cept of the art of get­ting lost, the art of notic­ing what has been dis­re­gard­ed.

In the Bleib­treustrasse gallery, offer­ing a room with a view on Wal­ter Ben­jam­in’s for­mer school, [De Waal] will show works that reflect Ben­jam­in’s child­hood, his pas­sion for gath­er­ing objects and the idea of col­lect­ing as mem­o­ry work. Here, amongst oth­ers, de Waal will present a major new series of vit­rines. Fur­ther­more, a selec­tion of orig­i­nal notes and man­u­scripts from the Wal­ter Ben­jamin archive in Berlin will be on view at Bleib­treustrasse and illus­trate Ben­jam­in’s own way of work­ing as well as de Waal’s deep fas­ci­na­tion with the œuvre of this thinker.

One such item on dis­play, we dis­cov­ered through Julia Michal­ska’s Twit­ter stream, is “Wal­ter Ben­jam­in’s note­book in which he not­ed all the books he read since he was 18”–a pic­ture of which you can find above. When I zoomed into the image, I could­n’t make out the books on the list. But I did get this detail: By 1931/32, the 40-year-old Ben­jamin had amassed 1200 books on his list, which means he was read­ing, on aver­age, 54 books per year. No doubt, they weren’t light ones. If any­one stops by Galerie Max Het­zler and iden­ti­fies actu­al titles in the note­book, we’d love it if you could note some in the com­ments sec­tion below.

Update: Some titles were added to the com­ments below–books by Cocteau, Hem­ing­way, Mal­raux and more. Check them out.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? 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.

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:

Wal­ter Benjamin’s 13 Orac­u­lar Writ­ing Tips

Wal­ter Benjamin’s Radio Plays for Kids (1929–1932)

Wal­ter Benjamin’s Philo­soph­i­cal Thought Pre­sent­ed by Two Exper­i­men­tal Films

Hear “Starlight,” Michael Jackson’s Early Demo of “Thriller”: A Version Before the Lyrics Were Radically Changed

in Music | May 3rd, 2016

The defin­i­tive block­buster albums of an 80s child­hood… maybe you weren’t there, but the Inter­net has made it so you might as well have been. Prince’s 1999 and Pur­ple Rain, Van Halen’s 1984, Michael Jackson’s Mid­night Man, the best-sell­ing album of all time and biggest thing to hap­pen to pop music since Off the Wall. Sure­ly you remem­ber the hit sin­gle “Starlight.” Its smooth grooves have bur­rowed into the brain of any­one who has ever seen a radio. Hit play above and tell me you don’t imme­di­ate­ly start singing the cho­rus:

We need some starlight starlight sun
There ain’t no sec­ond chance we got to make it while we can
You need the starlight some starlight sun
I need you by my side you give me starlight starlight tonight yeah

But this sounds an awful lot like that oth­er song, the one you actu­al­ly remem­ber singing—and dancing—along to every Hal­loween. In fact, it sounds exact­ly like “Thriller.” But what’s with these lyrics?

“Starlight” is the song writer Rod Tem­per­ton orig­i­nal­ly penned. And the album title? Tem­per­ton tells The Tele­graph that after Quin­cy Jones gave him the assign­ment, he went back to his hotel room, “wrote two or three hun­dred titles, and came up with the title ‘Mid­night Man.’” It didn’t last long. The next morn­ing, Tem­per­ton had an epiphany:

I woke up, and I just said this word… Some­thing in my head just said, this is the title. You could visu­al­ize it on the top of the Bill­board charts. You could see the mer­chan­dis­ing for this one word, how it jumped off the page as “Thriller.”

The rest is a his­to­ry so thor­ough­ly embed­ded in the pop cul­ture matrix that it’s near­ly impos­si­ble to think things could have been oth­er­wise. “Imag­in­ing ‘Thriller’ as any­thing else,” writes Patrick Rivers at Amer­i­can Music Review, “can be puz­zling, even unfath­omable.” In his short, but com­pre­hen­sive sur­vey of Thriller’s cre­ation, Rivers won­ders “whether unpol­ished prod­ucts of pop­u­lar artists should be made avail­able.” Do such demos com­pro­mise or enhance our appre­ci­a­tion of the final, com­mer­cial prod­uct? “ ‘Starlight’ can real­ly dis­turb pri­or under­stand­ings of Jackson’s career and image,” Rivers con­cludes; it “does not fit the prod­uct or artist that is Michael Jack­son.”

And yet, such record­ings almost invari­ably become pub­lic even­tu­al­ly: “While years of pop­u­lar music cre­ation remain behind the bliss­ful cur­tain, the pres­ence of ‘Starlight’ on social and peer-to-peer net­works demon­strates an appetite for this con­tent.” While no sim­i­lar appetite may exist in the case of great lit­er­ary works, the shock and sur­prise at hear­ing “Starlight” (read­i­ly avail­able on YouTube) is akin to that feel­ing many stu­dents of T.S. Eliot’s poet­ry expe­ri­ence when they dis­cov­er that his mas­ter­piece The Waste Land was orig­i­nal­ly titled “He Do the Police in Dif­fer­ent Voic­es” and was a very dif­fer­ent work of art before it was heav­i­ly edit­ed and even rewrit­ten by Ezra Pound.

The com­par­i­son illu­mi­nates an impor­tant point about all art, com­mer­cial or oth­er­wise: that it is very often the prod­uct of many hands and the result of many pri­or ver­sions, and its suc­cess depends upon an often ungain­ly, tri­al-and-error process that might have led to very dif­fer­ent results. “Starlight,” Rivers writes, “elu­ci­dates the cal­cu­lat­ed deci­sions made in the cre­ation of com­mer­cial pop­u­lar music.” Sure­ly we knew this, yet when it comes to an artist like Michael Jack­son at the height of his cre­ative pow­ers, we assume a kind of instant pop per­fec­tion, rather than the hit-by-com­mit­tee process Rivers describes in his arti­cle.

In the case of “Thriller,” the com­mit­tee most­ly con­sist­ed of Temperton—whose “Starlight” demo had been cho­sen from hun­dreds sub­mit­ted by others—and Quin­cy Jones, who gen­tly pushed the song­writer toward an edgi­er theme and secured the great Vin­cent Price for the song’s out­ro (writ­ten by Tem­per­ton in a taxi on the way to the stu­dio; Hear a stu­dio out­take of Price’s voiceover above.) Album engi­neer Bruce Swe­di­an remem­bers “the words ‘Edgar Allan Poe’ going between Quin­cy and Rod. Quin­cy say­ing it should be more Edgar Allan Poe. And that ‘Starlight’ isn’t, ‘Thriller’ is.”

Tem­per­ton recalled lat­er in his com­men­tary for the 2001 Thriller: Spe­cial Edi­tion that as “Thriller” took shape along with “Bil­lie Jean” and “Wan­na be Start­ing Some­thing,” the pro­duc­tion team “were kind of giv­ing the whole thing an edge and a direc­tion that some of the oth­er tracks didn’t have.” It was an edge, Rivers notes, “intend­ed to rep­re­sent Jackson’s unveil­ing as an adult record­ing artist,” jump­start­ing his tran­si­tion from child star and the boy­ish twen­ty-year-old of Off the Wall.

Deliv­er­ing to the world a grown-up Michael Jack­son in the artist’s next mas­sive hit record was cer­tain­ly Jones’ intent, though it was Jack­son who penned most of album’s edgi­er songs. Hits like “Bil­lie Jean” and “Beat It” arrived near­ly ful­ly formed. (Hear “Bil­lie Jean” in a home demo above and an a cap­pel­la demo of “Beat It” below.) But it took the bril­liance of Quin­cy Jones and his pro­duc­tion “A‑Team” to bring these songs to the pop music mar­ket­place, sup­ply­ing just the right embellishments—like Eddie Van Halen’s “Beat It” solo—to etch these tunes into our col­lec­tive con­scious­ness for­ev­er.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ori­gins of Michael Jackson’s Moon­walk: Vin­tage Footage of Cab Cal­loway, Sam­my Davis Jr., Fred Astaire & More

Miles Davis Cov­ers Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” (1983)

Hear the 1962 Bea­t­les Demo that Dec­ca Reject­ed: “Gui­tar Groups are on Their Way Out, Mr. Epstein”

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

Sir Ian McKellen Releases New Apps to Make Shakespeare’s Plays More Enjoyable & Accessible

in iPad, Literature, Theatre | May 2nd, 2016

FYI: Ian McK­ellen, who first made his rep­u­ta­tion per­form­ing at the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny in the 1970s and 80s, has just released the first of a series of iPad apps meant to make Shake­speare’s plays more acces­si­ble, espe­cial­ly for high school and col­lege stu­dents.

As McK­ellen explains above, Shake­speare’s plays were orig­i­nal­ly meant to be seen per­formed live in a the­atre, not read as books. And so these apps fea­ture actors per­form­ing dra­mat­ic scenes from the plays, while text scrolls by. They’ve just launched the first of 37 apps. It’s devot­ed to The Tem­pest, runs $5.99 on iTunes, and frankly seems well worth the price. Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch likes it. See below.

The app also includes these fea­tures:

• The full text of The Tem­pest as pub­lished in the First Folio.
• A full dig­i­tal ver­sion of Arden Shake­speare The Tem­pest.
• The abil­i­ty to switch between three dif­fer­ent lev­els of notes depend­ing on the lev­el of reader’s needs.
• A full break­down and expla­na­tion of every char­ac­ter and all of their lines across every scene.
• A linked his­tor­i­cal time line of Shake­speare’s life, his plays, his the­atres, and con­tem­po­rary con­text to put it all into per­spec­tive.
• Video expla­na­tions and dis­cus­sions by both Sir Ian McK­ellen and Pro­fes­sor Sir Jonathan Bate on char­ac­ters, themes, and the mean­ing of the play.
• A full “play at a glance” with illus­tra­tions and sum­maries to explain the play’s plot with key quotes and events.
• A his­to­ry of all the major pro­duc­tions of The Tem­pest from the 17th cen­tu­ry to the present day.
• The option to make notes, copy and high­light text that can be col­lect­ed, cor­re­lat­ed and export­ed for lat­er use.
• The option to search the play’s full text and essays.

Keep your eye on Heuris­tic Shake­speare’s iTunes site for new Shake­speare apps down the line.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ian McK­ellen Stars in King Lear

Sir Ian McK­ellen Puts on a Daz­zling One-Man Shake­speare Show

A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Per­formed by Great Actors: Giel­gud, McK­ellen & More

The Poetic Harmony of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Filmmaking: A Video Essay

in Film | May 2nd, 2016

“What words would best describe a Tarkovsky film?” asks Lewis Bond, cre­ator of the cinephile video-essay Youtube chan­nel Chan­nel Criswell. He offers a few right away: “Haunt­ing, ethe­re­al, hyp­not­ic, serene.” But appre­ci­a­tors, schol­ars, and even crit­ics of the work of Andrei Tarkovsky, the Sovi­et direc­tor of such aus­tere yet visu­al­ly rich, seri­ous-mind­ed yet dream­like, and long artis­ti­cal­ly scru­ti­nized pic­tures as Andrei Rublev, Solaris, Stalk­er, and The Mir­ror (watch them all free online here), could come up with many more. And though the man him­self may have denied draw­ing any inspi­ra­tion from sim­i­lar­ly respect­ed film­mak­ers — Bres­son, Anto­nioni, Bergman, Kuro­sawa, Mizoguchi, “I have no desire to imi­tate any of them” — few could avoid expo­sure to his own wide­spread and last­ing influ­ence on cin­e­ma.

Why has Tarkovsky’s work made such an impact? One might argue that the answer has do to with his com­mit­ment to “pure cin­e­ma,” or in Bond’s words, “to do with film that which could­n’t be done with oth­er art forms.” Solaris may have emerged, exten­sive­ly rethought, out of the source mate­r­i­al of Stanis­law Lem’s epony­mous sci­ence fic­tion nov­el, and Stalk­er may have more recent­ly pro­vid­ed the ele­ments of a video game (which went on to become a series of nov­els itself), but none of Tarkovsky’s works can tru­ly exist out­side the medi­um, with all its emo­tion­al and expe­ri­en­tial pow­er, in which he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors made them.

In this video essay called “Poet­ic Har­mo­ny,” Bond iden­ti­fies the pure­ly cin­e­mat­ic qual­i­ties of Tarkovsky’s films: from the tex­tures of their visu­al com­po­si­tion to their selec­tive use of sound (and quiet­ness as well) to build moods and the resis­tance of their abstrac­tion and ambi­gu­i­ty to intel­lec­tu­al analy­sis (despite how much view­ers con­tin­ue to fling at them); from their lack of sym­bol­ism to their build­ing of char­ac­ters through not words but action, the con­nec­tion of scenes through metaphor (as in Nos­tal­ghia, which cuts from a man who lights him­self on fire to a man who strug­gles to light a can­dle), and their use of long takes to build the “pres­sure of time.” Tarkovsky enthu­si­asts could hard­ly dis­agree, though the time soon comes to put away what The Sac­ri­fice’s cen­tral char­ac­ter calls “words, words, words” and sim­ply watch.

When you’re done watch­ing Bond’s video, you can watch many of Tarkovsky’s major films free online, thanks to Russ­ian film stu­dio Mos­film.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Poet in Cin­e­ma: Andrei Tarkovsky Reveals the Director’s Deep Thoughts on Film­mak­ing and Life

“Auteur in Space”: A Video Essay on How Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris Tran­scends Sci­ence Fic­tion

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris Shot by Shot: A 22-Minute Break­down of the Director’s Film­mak­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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.

Hear Oscar Wilde’s “The Happy Prince,” Performed by Orson Welles & Bing Crosby on Christmas Eve 1944

in Literature, Radio | April 27th, 2016

The most beloved fables have sur­vived for ages, passed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion in one form or anoth­er since time immemo­r­i­al. It speaks to the genius of Oscar Wilde that his chil­dren’s sto­ry “The Hap­py Prince” has attained that sta­tus despite hav­ing exist­ed for less than 130 years. In that time it has cap­ti­vat­ed read­ers, lis­ten­ers, and view­ers (includ­ing the likes of Pat­ti Smith) in the orig­i­nal text as well as in a vari­ety of adap­ta­tions, includ­ing an orches­tral per­for­mance, an ani­mat­ed film, a read­ing by Stephen Fry, and a rock opera. It also pro­vid­ed mate­r­i­al for a num­ber of radio broad­casts in the 1930s and 40s, includ­ing the one above, a read­ing by Orson Welles, Bing Cros­by, and Lurene Tut­tle.

Welles takes the Wildean role of the nar­ra­tor. Cros­by plays the tit­u­lar prince immor­tal­ized in stat­ue form with­out hav­ing ever, iron­i­cal­ly, expe­ri­enced hap­pi­ness in life. Tut­tle, a pro­lif­ic actress of not just radio but vaude­ville, film, and tele­vi­sion, gives voice to the swal­low who, left behind when his flock migrates to Egypt for the win­ter, alights on the prince’s shoul­der. In their shared lone­some­ness, the bird and the stat­ue become friends, and the prince asks the spar­row to dis­trib­ute his dec­o­ra­tions to the peo­ple of the impov­er­ished town around them. What comes of these self­less deeds? The answer resides, with the rest of the sto­ry, in the hal­lowed realm of myth.

Welles, Cros­by, and Tut­tle’s per­for­mance of “The Hap­py Prince” debuted on the Philco Radio Hall of Fame on Christ­mas Eve 1944. It proved pop­u­lar enough that two years lat­er, Dec­ca com­mis­sioned the actors for anoth­er per­for­mance of the sto­ry and put it out as a record album. In becom­ing some­thing of a hol­i­day tra­di­tion, Wilde’s immac­u­late­ly craft­ed tale of com­pan­ion­ship, sac­ri­fice, and redemp­tion has sure­ly turned a few gen­er­a­tions on to the work of one of the sharpest wits in west­ern his­to­ry. The prince and the swal­low may come to an unfor­tu­nate end on Earth, but they enjoy the recog­ni­tion their deeds have earned them in the king­dom of heav­en. Wilde’s own short life closed with a series of dif­fi­cult chap­ters, but now we all rec­og­nize the pre­cious­ness of what he left behind.

Find more read­ings of Oscar Wilde clas­sics in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry Reads Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ry “The Hap­py Prince”

Watch Ani­ma­tions of Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ries “The Hap­py Prince” and “The Self­ish Giant”

Pat­ti Smith’s List of Favorite Books: From Rim­baud to Susan Son­tag

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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.

Frida!

in Art | April 22nd, 2016

In a pret­ty great gif. That’s all.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fri­da Kahlo and Diego Rivera Vis­it Leon Trot­sky in Mex­i­co, 1938

Fri­da Kahlo Writes a Per­son­al Let­ter to Geor­gia O’Keeffe After O’Keeffe’s Ner­vous Break­down (1933)

1933 Arti­cle on Fri­da Kahlo: “Wife of the Mas­ter Mur­al Painter Glee­ful­ly Dab­bles in Works of Art”

Sell & Spin: The History of Advertising, Narrated by Dick Cavett (1999)

in Business, Television | April 22nd, 2016

“Accord­ing to a study pub­lished Mon­day by researchers at Duke University’s Cen­ter for Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science, humans expe­ri­ence the most intense feel­ings of hap­pi­ness when press­ing the ‘skip ad’ but­ton before watch­ing a video on the inter­net.” That comes from The Onion, whose satir­i­cal report­ing hits the mark as usu­al. If we know one thing about adver­tis­ing for sure, we know that we don’t like it — or at least we don’t like many of its cur­rent man­i­fes­ta­tions, so much so that we will­ing­ly engage in the arms race of down­load­ing spe­cial pro­grams to block them, which adver­tis­ers soon find a way to defeat, requir­ing us to find new eva­sive tac­tics, which forces adver­tis­es to cut anoth­er path to us, and so on.

How has it come to this? You can learn exact­ly how from Sell & Spin, the 1999 tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary above. “From ancient phras­es etched in stone to today’s cut­ting-edge mul­ti­me­dia com­mer­cials, sell­ing has always meant grab­bing atten­tion,” says its nar­ra­tor, the respect­ed talk-show host Dick Cavett. “The point? Mov­ing the prod­uct. The means? Tap­ping into desire — cre­at­ing need.” From the first known adver­tise­ment, a wine shop’s sign from ancient Baby­lon, to the eve of the high-tech 21st cen­tu­ry, Cavett and a host of adver­tis­ing experts tell the sto­ry of not just how adver­tis­ing became an indus­try in the first place, but how it became the huge, shape-shift­ing indus­try we regard today as both wild­ly cre­ative yet some­how sin­is­ter.

Even the most ad-loathing view­er will rec­og­nize many of the icon­ic exam­ples of this ultra-com­mer­cial art form of the thou­sands this doc­u­men­tary includes: Bur­ma-Shave road­signs, the smoke-blow­ing Camel cig­a­rettes bill­board in Times Square, the Volk­swa­gen Bee­tle tout­ing itself as a “lemon” on a whole mag­a­zine page, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing”; mas­cots from Tony the Tiger to the Marl­boro Man (a sym­bol of free­dom, we hear, for post­war office work­ers shack­led to their desks) to the Taco Bell chi­huahua; and of course Coca-Cola’s “I’d like to teach the world to sing,” whose con­cep­tion the final episode of Mad Men fic­tion­al­ized by putting into the mind of its pro­tag­o­nist, 1960s Madi­son Avenue “cre­ative” Don Drap­er.

That acclaimed recent tele­vi­sion dra­ma both glam­or­ized and crit­i­cized the cul­ture of the 20th-cen­tu­ry adver­tis­ing indus­try, which may have oper­at­ed as cyn­i­cal­ly and oppor­tunis­ti­cal­ly as the busi­ness­es it worked for, but which nev­er­the­less craft­ed some of the most endur­ing words and images in our mod­ern cul­ture. But what of the “mad men” of today, charged with the thank­less (if often remu­ner­a­tive) task of com­ing up with those videos we get such a kick out of click­ing past? Sell & Spin shows us the very begin­ning of their work, tak­ing place on a now-quaint-look­ing cyber­space that had only just moved beyond Bur­ma Shave-sim­ple ban­ner ads.

“Nobody quite knows how to use it effec­tive­ly,” says Jay Chi­at of the inter­net toward the doc­u­men­tary’s end. As the co-founder of Los Ange­les’ for­mi­da­ble Chiat/Day adver­tis­ing indus­try, he knew the mechan­ics of the craft well indeed, more than thor­ough­ly enough to rec­og­nize both the medi­um’s poten­tial and the extent to which nobody had yet tapped it. How we all use the inter­net has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly since Chi­at died in 2002, but his words still ring true. It’s still ear­ly days for inter­net adver­tis­ing, and its mad­dest men (and women) — the ones who ful­ly reject the old indus­try com­mand­ment to “irri­tate your way into peo­ples’ con­scious­ness — have yet to arrive on the scene.

Sell & Spin will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the First Com­mer­cial Ever Shown on Amer­i­can TV, 1941

Eisen­how­er Answers Amer­i­ca: The First Polit­i­cal Adver­tise­ments on Amer­i­can TV (1952)

Before Mad Men: Famil­iar and For­got­ten Ads from 1950s to 1980s Now Online

The Mad Men Read­ing List: 25 Reveal­ing Books Read by the Char­ac­ters on the Show

Dig­i­tal Archive of Vin­tage Tele­vi­sion Com­mer­cials

David Ogilvy’s 1982 Memo “How to Write” Offers 10 Pieces of Time­less Advice

A Gallery of Mad Magazine’s Rol­lick­ing Fake Adver­tise­ments from the 1960s

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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.

Delight in Prince’s Extraordinarily Poignant Cover of Radiohead’s “Creep

in Music | April 22nd, 2016

Prince didn’t cov­er a song, he pos­sessed it. He took over its limbs and made it do things it had nev­er done before—dance wild­ly down the aisles, scream, shout, and fall to the ground. When he cov­ered a song, it got reli­gion the way peo­ple only do in the movies. And if you had the priv­i­lege to see it hap­pen, you too became a believ­er in every word and note. As the pro­duc­er Fafu, a one­time mem­ber of his army of play­ers and techs, tes­ti­fied yes­ter­day: “I nev­er saw Prince make a mistake—in any­thing.” It may sound like a musi­cian who fits that descrip­tion would have to be some kind of robot; Prince was pre­cise­ly the oppo­site, the apoth­e­o­sis of what a human being could do with voice, gui­tar, and vir­tu­al­ly every oth­er instru­ment.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Prince’s all-pow­er­ful con­trol over his musi­cian­ship extend­ed to most oth­er areas of his life. He “was hard on peo­ple,” Fafu remem­bered, “I don’t want to paint an ugly pic­ture, but he was tough. You want­ed to please dad­dy.” He was equal­ly hard on peo­ple who dis­sem­i­nat­ed his record­ings and per­for­mances in unau­tho­rized ways. But in at least one case, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke fought back, forc­ing Prince to unblock access to Youtube footage of his 2008 Coachel­la ver­sion of “Creep.” And wow, are we glad he did. See it above (espe­cial­ly poignant is his gospel deliv­ery of the line, “you just want to have con­trooool.”), and be reborn.

Prince reminds us that every hard rock bal­lad since the ear­ly ‘80s owes him a roy­al­ty check, and that just one of his screams, one of his explo­sive gui­tar fills, even one of his preg­nant paus­es, had more pow­er and beau­ty in it than some entire albums. Prince didn’t have to want to be spe­cial. He just was.

As I shared yes­ter­day, he was with­out a doubt the most incred­i­ble live per­former I have ever expe­ri­enced, so much so that I gen­er­al­ly pre­fer his live recordings—bootlegged or otherwise—to his stu­dio stuff. Mil­lions of peo­ple feel like­wise, and thanks to one fan, we have the full audio of that head­lin­ing Coachel­la show. Hear it all here (and see the setlist fur­ther down)—the ridicu­lous­ly catchy funk/soul hits, the between-song inspi­ra­tional pat­ter, the soar­ing, snarling gui­tar solos, and the cov­ers: includ­ing “Creep,” “Come Togeth­er,” Sarah Mclach­lan’s “Angel,” songs by San­tana, The Time, Sheila E., and, no kid­ding, The B‑52’s “Rock Lob­ster.”

via Live for Music

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Prince (RIP) Play Mind-Blow­ing Gui­tar Solos On “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” and “Amer­i­can Woman”

Prince (RIP) Per­forms Ear­ly Hits in a 1982 Con­cert: “Con­tro­ver­sy,” “I Wan­na Be Your Lover” & More   

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