The Mirrors of Ingmar Bergman, Narrated with the Poetry of Sylvia Plath

in Film, Poetry | March 4th, 2015

Kag­o­na­da, the video-essay­ist behind the cin­e­mat­ic super­cuts of Kubrick’s “One-Point Per­spec­tive” and Ozu’s “Pas­sage­ways” returns with a look at mir­rors in the films of Ing­mar Bergman, set to a plain­tive Vival­di work for two man­dolins, and a read­ing of Sylvia Plath’s “Mir­ror.”

Mir­rors and reflec­tions turn up right in the begin­ning of Bergman’s films as a motif, when Jen­ny, the mid­dle-aged pro­tag­o­nist of Cri­sis exclaims to her image, “You can’t see from the out­side, but beneath this face … oh, my God!” Mir­rors show their view­ers a true face behind the mask in his films, mor­tal­i­ty, fail­ure, duplicity–everything fake stripped away. It’s a time to take stock and a time to break down.

It’s quite love­ly, this cut, with Plath’s descrip­tion of her wall “pink, with speck­les” match­ing the col­or shot from Fan­ny & Alexan­der; or “Faces and dark­ness sep­a­rate us over and over” as Nine-Chris­tine Jöns­son draws a frowny face and writes “lone­ly” on her reflec­tion from Port of Call. The video is also a trib­ute to Bergman’s favorite actress­es, from Har­ri­et Ander­s­son to Liv Ull­mann.

Inci­den­tal­ly, Sylvia Plath was not just a fan of the film­mak­er, she based her poem “Three Women” on Bergman’s film So Close to Life (aka Brink of Life) which she had seen in a Lon­don cin­e­ma in either 1961 or 1962.

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:

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Ing­mar Bergman Vis­its The Dick Cavett Show, 1971

Hear Sylvia Plath Read 15 Poems From Her Final Col­lec­tion, Ariel

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

A Racy Philosophy Lesson on Kant’s Aesthetics by Alain de Botton’s “School of Life”

in Philosophy | February 26th, 2015

For the past two decades, Alain de Bot­ton has refined his knack for pop­u­lar­iz­ing philo­soph­i­cal and lit­er­ary ideas. In 1997, he pub­lished his best­seller, How Proust Can Change Your Life. Next came his six-part video series, A Guide to Hap­pi­ness, where de Bot­ton showed how thinkers like Mon­taigne, Seneca and Schopen­hauer can help you grap­ple with time­less ques­tions — like deal­ing with anger, man­ag­ing your love life, or main­tain­ing your self-esteem. And, by 2008, we find Alain open­ing The School of Life, a Lon­don-based oper­a­tion that has as its tagline “good ideas for every­day life.”

The School of Life offers class­es, pub­lish­es books, makes films, and now pro­duces YouTube videos, some of which we’ve fea­tured here before. The School’s lat­est release won’t go unno­ticed. A three minute les­son on Kan­t’s aes­thet­ics, the video fea­tures an eroti­cized teacher talk­ing quick­ly and author­i­ta­tive­ly in Ger­man about dif­fi­cult aspects relat­ing to Kan­t’s phi­los­o­phy. Things get meta pret­ty quick­ly, and soon the dis­tract­ing cam­era work starts mak­ing Kan­t’s very point about the nature of the sub­jec­tive. The charged imagery is not, in oth­er words, entire­ly gra­tu­itous — but it’s cer­tain­ly pret­ty uncon­ven­tion­al, and whether it’s effec­tive, I guess that’s up for debate. Next, up Niet­zsche, we’re told.

If you would like some deep­er intro­duc­tions to Kan­t’s phi­los­o­phy, please see our list of 130 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es. Kan­t’s Cri­tique of Judg­ment appears in our col­lec­tion, 135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dai­ly Habits of High­ly Pro­duc­tive Philoso­phers: Niet­zsche, Marx & Immanuel Kant

Alain de Botton’s School of Life Presents Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions to Hei­deg­ger, The Sto­ics & Epi­cu­rus

How Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. Used Hegel, Kant & Niet­zsche to Over­turn Seg­re­ga­tion in Amer­i­ca

Wes Anderson Likes the Color Red (and Yellow)

in Design, Film | February 25th, 2015

Red seems to be a mag­net for angry bulls and great direc­tors. After all, it’s the col­or that seems to stand out more than any oth­er. Yasu­jiro Ozu, for one, made the jump to col­or movies very reluc­tant­ly late in his career and prompt­ly became obsessed with the col­or red. His pro­duc­tion team kept a box on set of small red house­hold things – a match­box, an umbrel­la, a teaket­tle — which he used to place in the back­ground of just about every shot. Jean-Luc Godard famous­ly bathed Brigitte Bardot’s back­side in red light for his first col­or film Con­tempt. When crit­ics com­plained that his fea­ture, Pier­rot le Fou, was too bloody, he quipped, “It’s not blood, it’s red.” And from HAL 9000’s unfor­giv­ing elec­tron­ic eye in 2001 to the buck­ets of blood pour­ing out of the ele­va­tor from hell in The Shin­ing, Stan­ley Kubrick built some of his most mem­o­rable scenes around the col­or red.

Edi­tor and design­er Rishi Kane­r­ia, who seems to be mak­ing a career out of point­ing out the col­or choic­es of auteurs, has just released a video called “Red & Yel­low: A Wes Ander­son Super­cut” that square­ly places Wes Ander­son among the ranks of cinema’s great crim­son-lov­ing styl­ists – from Ben Stiller’s sweats in The Roy­al Tenen­baums to the lux­u­ri­ous car­pets of his lat­est effort The Grand Budapest Hotel. As you might gath­er from the title of Kaneria’s short, Ander­son is also a fan of the col­or yel­low too. You can watch the video above. And you can watch Kaneria’s look into Kubrick’s use of red below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s the Big Deal About Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel? Matt Zoller Seitz’s Video Essay Explains

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

A Glimpse Into How Wes Ander­son Cre­ative­ly Remixes/Recycles Scenes in His Dif­fer­ent Films

Watch Wes Anderson’s Charm­ing New Short Film, Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti, Star­ring Jason Schwartz­man

Wes Anderson’s First Short Film: The Black-and-White, Jazz-Scored Bot­tle Rock­et (1992)

Orson Welles Names His 10 Favorite Films: From Chaplin’s City Lights to Ford’s Stagecoach

in Film | February 20th, 2015

I hope Orson Welles got used to see­ing his name on top-ten-films-of-all-time lists. He became a main­stay as soon as crit­i­cal con­sen­sus declared his debut Cit­i­zen Kane prob­a­bly the most impor­tant motion pic­ture ever made, and some cinephiles give spe­cial notice to his sub­se­quent works, such as The Lady from Shang­hai, Touch of Evil, F for Fake, and — for true con­trar­i­ans only — The Tri­al. So what does a man whose projects appear on so many top-ten lists from crit­ics and oth­er film­mak­ers alike put on his own?

“I don’t like cin­e­ma,” goes one per­haps-apoc­ryphal Welles quote. “I like mak­ing cin­e­ma.” (Some­times-heard vari­a­tion: “I don’t like cin­e­ma unless I shoot it.”) But even if he actu­al­ly said and believed that, he still man­aged to put togeth­er the fol­low­ing list of favorites in the ear­ly 1950s, about a decade after hav­ing entered the film­mak­ing game but with most of the cin­e­ma he would make still to come:

1. City Lights (Char­lie Chap­lin)
2. Greed (Erich von Stro­heim, 1924)
3. Intol­er­ance (D.W. Grif­fith, 1916)
4. Nanook of the North (Robert Fla­her­ty, 1992)
5. Shoe Shine (Vit­to­rio De Sica, 1946)
6. The Bat­tle­ship Potemkin (Sergei Eisen­stein, 1925)
7. La Femme du Boulanger (Mar­cel Pag­nol, 1938)
8. Grand Illu­sion (Jean Renoir, 1937)
9. Stage­coach (John Ford, 1939)
10. Our Dai­ly Bread (King Vidor, 1934)

If Cit­i­zen Kane opened up the pos­si­bil­i­ties of cin­e­ma — and to get an idea of just how much influ­ence it has had from its release to this day, sim­ply watch any film made before it — the pic­tures Welles puts onto his list, in large part a clas­si­cist’s even in the 50s, gave cin­e­ma its form in the first place. If you plan on doing a self-admin­is­tered course in film his­to­ry, you could do much worse than begin­ning with the favorite films of Orson Welles — then mov­ing on, of course, to the films of Orson Welles.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Eight Inter­views of Orson Welles by Film­mak­er Peter Bog­danovich (1969–1972)

Dis­cov­er the Lost Films of Orson Welles

Watch Orson Welles’ The Stranger Free Online, Where 1940s Film Noir Meets Real Hor­rors of WWII

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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

in Comedy, Magazines | February 20th, 2015

I can well remem­ber the first time I read Mad Mag­a­zine. I was prob­a­bly around Bart Simpson’s age, but nowhere near his degree of wiseass-ness. I found the humor of the adult world most­ly mys­ti­fy­ing and also pret­ty tame, giv­en my rather shel­tered exis­tence. It was my dis­cov­ery of Mad—stacks and stacks of old Mads, to be pre­cise, in the rec room of a fam­i­ly acquaintance—that cracked the shell, one of those for­ma­tive loss-of-inno­cence moments that are ulti­mate­ly edi­fy­ing. At the time, I couldn’t tell sophis­ti­cat­ed satire from puerile par­o­dy, and the aver­age issue of Mad was no Gulliver’s Trav­els. Nonethe­less, its glee­ful skew­er­ing of the Amer­i­can civ­il reli­gion of pol­i­tics, celebri­ty, pro­fes­sion­al sports, com­merce, and mid­dle class com­fort hooked me instant­ly, and taught me about the val­ue of freethought before I’d ever heard the name Jonathan Swift.

Found­ed as a com­ic book by edi­tor Har­vey Kurtz­man and pub­lish­er William Gaines in 1952, Mad and its gap-toothed mas­cot Alfred E. New­man (still active today!) pio­neered pop­ulist satire and inspired many less­er imi­ta­tors. One dis­tinc­tive fea­ture of the mag­a­zine for almost its entire exis­tence was its abil­i­ty to run with­out adver­tis­ing, allow­ing it to tear apart mate­ri­al­ist cul­ture with­out fear of bit­ing the hands that fed it. Instead, for decades, the mag­a­zine ran fake spoof ads like those you see here. At the top, for exam­ple, see a 1963 ad for the “1963 ¾ Edsel,” an update of the “1963 ½ models—which made all ’63 mod­els obso­lete.” The text goes on to state frankly, “we’re tak­ing the first steps toward “Planned Month­ly Obsolescence—when every car own­er will be shamed into trad­ing in his old June ’64 car for a brand new shiny July ’64 mod­el.” Apple, take note.

In the 1960 spoof ad above, mil­i­tary cul­ture gets a send-up with “Aspire Boot-Lick Pol­ish,” made for “The Man in Com­mand: Pompous… Pig-head­ed… Patho­log­i­cal.” The fla­vored boot polish—“licorice, caviar, choco­late, caramel, molasses, borscht, halavah, and Mox­ie in a base of chick­en fat”—is said to make “boot-lick­ing a lit­tle more tasty when you got­ta do it.” A clever inset links the U.S. chain of com­mand with pre­vi­ous empires, show­ing a car­toon Euro­pean naval offi­cer of cen­turies past get­ting his boots licked by a sub­or­di­nate sailor.

Just above, the dis­turb­ing 1969 fake ad for “Ceme­tery Filler Cig­a­rettes” pre­dates the tobac­co tri­als of the 1990s by decades. Long pro­mot­ed for their health ben­e­fits, calm­ing effects, sophis­ti­ca­tion, and taste—as in that mem­o­rable first episode of Mad Men—cig­a­rettes are exposed for the mass killers they are by none oth­er than “Adolph Hitler”. (Anoth­er 1970 fake ad for “Win­som Cig­a­rettes” uses an actu­al ceme­tery to sim­i­lar effect.)

While cig­a­rette com­pa­nies were a fre­quent tar­get of Mad’s fake ads, just as often they took on the inani­ty of the entire ad indus­try itself, as in the above 1965 meta-ad for “Let’s Kill Off Ridicu­lous Ad Cam­paigns.” The text reads, “If you adver­tis­ers have to blow your own horns, why tie your prod­ucts to unre­lat­ed activ­i­ties? Main­ly, what’s eat­ing a Break­fast Cere­al got to do with play­ing a musi­cal instru­ment? Boy… we just can’t swal­low that!” Anoth­er reg­u­lar fea­ture was “Mad’s Great Moments in Adver­tis­ing,” a kind of high­light bloop­er reel of ads gone wrong. The exam­ple below, also from 1965, spoofs the promis­es of clean­ing prod­uct ads to make the lives of house­wives eas­i­er with a prod­uct that works just a lit­tle too well.

All of these fake Mad ads come from a Flickr account com­piled by user “Jas­par­do.” See many more of them there, and for even more of the magazine’s illus­tri­ous past, check out this Fla­vor­wire gallery of “The 10 Great­est Mad Mag­a­zine Cov­ers.”

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Men In Com­mer­cials Being Jerks About Cof­fee: A Mashup of 1950s & 1960s TV Ads

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

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

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

Advertisements from Japan’s Golden Age of Art Deco

in Art | February 16th, 2015

Get talk­ing with graph­ic design peo­ple, and Japan will come up soon­er or lat­er. That coun­try, always a world leader in aes­thet­ics, has put the time and ener­gy of gen­er­a­tions into per­fect­ing the dis­ci­pline. You can see this progress chart­ed out on the Tokyo-based Ian Lynam Design’s “Misruptions/Disruptions: A Japan­ese Graph­ic Design His­to­ry Time­line.” It labels the busy peri­od of 1910–1941 as the time of an “adop­tion of West­ern Avant Garde aes­thet­ics in Graph­ic Design & Typog­ra­phy, coin­cid­ing with Left-lean­ing exper­i­men­ta­tion and increased state sup­pres­sion of the Left” — and the time that gave rise to Japan­ese Art Deco.

Last year, I attend­ed Deco Japan, a show at the Seat­tle Art Muse­um, which show­cased a great many arti­facts from that pre­war move­ment of such com­bined artis­tic and com­mer­cial abun­dance. It put on dis­play all man­ner of paint­ings, vas­es, pieces of fur­ni­ture, house­hold items, and pack­ages, but some­how, the peri­od adver­tise­ments struck me as still the most vital of all. The Japan­ese graph­ic design­ers who made them drew, in the words of Cap­i­tal’s Grace-Yvette Gem­mell, “on sta­ples of pro­gres­sive Euro­pean and Amer­i­can high and pop­u­lar art, incor­po­rat­ing styl­ized ver­sions of gears and clocks that bring to mind Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis and Char­lie Chaplin’s Mod­ern Times.”

This makes more sense than it sounds like it would: “the Deco use of for­eign imagery and design ele­ments was a vir­tu­al­ly seam­less process giv­en exist­ing prac­tices of both abstrac­tion and cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion at work in the dec­o­ra­tive arts at the time in Japan. Many tra­di­tion­al designs already pos­sessed a sort of visu­al affin­i­ty with the Art Deco aes­thet­ic; the syn­the­sis of con­ven­tion­al design ele­ments with con­tem­po­rary, pared-down forms appealed to the culture’s col­lec­tive knowl­edge of tra­di­tion­al motifs and sym­bols while feed­ing their desire for mod­ern con­sumer prod­ucts that reflect­ed a keen sense of cos­mopoli­tanism per­fect­ly com­bin­ing the old with the ultra­mod­ern.”

Many of the adver­tise­ments, or oth­er works of graph­ic design like leaflets and mag­a­zine cov­ers, to come out of Japan’s Art Deco gold­en age fea­ture the image of the “moga,” or, in Japanized Eng­lish, “mod­ern girl.” Hav­ing appeared in Japan as a new kind of jazz-lov­ing, bob-haired, rel­a­tive­ly lib­er­at­ed woman, the moga quick­ly became an attrac­tive com­mer­cial propo­si­tion. The Asian Art Muse­um print­ed up a leaflet of their own, list­ing off the “ten qual­i­fi­ca­tions for being a moga” as orig­i­nal­ly enu­mer­at­ed in 1929 by illus­tra­tor Tak­a­batake Kashō in the mag­a­zine Fujin sekai (Ladies’ World):

1. Strength, the “ene­my” of con­ven­tion­al fem­i­nin­i­ty
2. Con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion of West­ern food and drink
3. Devo­tion to jazz records, danc­ing, and smok­ing Gold­en Bat cig­a­rettes from a met­al cig­a­rette hold­er
4. Knowl­edge of the types of West­ern liquor and a will­ing­ness to flirt to get them for free
5. Devo­tion to fash­ion from Paris and Hol­ly­wood as seen in for­eign fash­ion mag­a­zines
6. Devo­tion to cin­e­ma
7. Real or feigned inter­est in dance halls as a way to show off one’s osten­si­ble deca­dence to mobo (mod­ern boys)
8. Strolling in the Gin­za every Sat­ur­day and Sun­day night
9. Pawn­ing things to get mon­ey to buy new clothes for each sea­son
10. Offer­ing one’s lips to any man who is use­ful, even if he is bald or ugly, but keep­ing one’s chasti­ty because “infringe­ment of chasti­ty” law­suits are out of style

Sound a fair bit more inter­est­ing than the women demand­ed for today’s ads in the West, don’t they?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gaze at Glob­al Movie Posters for Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go: U.S., Japan, Italy, Poland & Beyond

René Magritte’s Ear­ly Art Deco Adver­tis­ing Posters, 1924–1927

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs of 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Designer Reimagines Iconic Movie Posters With Minimalist Designs: Reservoir Dogs, The Matrix & More

in Art, Film | February 10th, 2015

While watch­ing Inter­stel­lar and hat­ing it, design­er Nick Bar­clay came up with a project for him­self — tak­ing the posters of famous films and reimag­in­ing them with a min­i­mal­ist design that uses only cir­cles. Above, you can see his clever take on Taran­ti­no’s Reser­voir Dogs. It’s a far cry, to be sure, from the orig­i­nal movie poster found below.

Over at My Mod­ern Met, you’ll find oth­er min­i­mal­ist designs for The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings, Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la, For­rest Gump, Har­ry Pot­ter, Pulp Fic­tion, Trainspot­ting, 101 Dal­ma­tions, Léon: The Pro­fes­sion­al, The Deer Hunter, Total Recall, Mon­sters Inc., and, of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Prints can be pur­chased on Bar­clay’s web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gaze at Glob­al Movie Posters for Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go: U.S., Japan, Italy, Poland & Beyond

Down­load Vin­tage Film Posters in High-Res: From The Philadel­phia Sto­ry to Attack of the Crab Mon­sters

50 Film Posters From Poland: From The Empire Strikes Back to Raiders of the Lost Ark

Watch the Coen Brothers’ TV Commercials: Swiss Cigarettes, Gap Jeans, Taxes & Clean Coal

in Film | February 10th, 2015

Rais­ing Ari­zona; The Big Lebows­ki; O Broth­er, Where Art Thou? — Joel and Ethan Coen have made more than a few movies not just wide­ly beloved, but also wide­ly thought of as eccen­tric. One thus would­n’t imag­ine their sen­si­bil­i­ty trans­lat­ing well to adver­tis­ing, that means of occa­sion­al sup­port for many an uncom­pro­mis­ing auteur. But just as the Coen broth­ers have brought Hol­ly­wood at least par­tial­ly over to their way of cre­at­ing, they’ve also, on sev­er­al occa­sions, bent the form of the com­mer­cial to their advan­tage.

Take the Coen broth­ers’ Parisi­enne cig­a­rette com­mer­cial at the top, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture (along­side David Lynch, Emir Kus­turi­ca, Roman Polan­s­ki and, Jean-Luc Godard’s work for the same appar­ent­ly auteur-lov­ing brand). But if they felt guilty about thus encour­ag­ing the befoul­ing of the air, they sure­ly cleared their own con­sciences with the satir­i­cal spot about “clean coal” just above. And in the slight­ly more straight­for­ward Gap ad below, they used the main­stream-yet-alter­na­tive icons Christi­na Ric­ci and Den­nis Hop­per:

And even if you keep up with the Coen broth­ers’ short film work, you may nev­er have seen the spot below, which orig­i­nal­ly aired dur­ing the 2002 Super Bowl. Work­ing for H&R Block, they use per­haps the least promis­ing set­ting imag­in­able, a slow-mov­ing tax law lec­ture, to cre­ate a dystopi­an vision not a mil­lion miles from the one Rid­ley Scott used to intro­duce the Apple Mac­in­tosh eigh­teen Super Bowls before.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cig­a­rette Com­mer­cials from David Lynch, the Coen Broth­ers and Jean Luc Godard

Tui­leries: A Short, Slight­ly Twist­ed Film by Joel and Ethan Coen

World Cin­e­ma: Joel and Ethan Coen’s Play­ful Homage to Cin­e­ma His­to­ry

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Clash Play Their Final Show (San Bernardino, 1983)

in Music | February 2nd, 2015

Few bands in rock ‘n’ roll his­to­ry have faced as many charges of sell­ing out—back when the term meant some­thing—as The Clash. Even before they’d released their first record, they were accused of killing punk rock by sign­ing to major label CBS. And 1985’s Cut the Crap, the final Clash release (hard­ly a Clash record at all by any true fan’s mea­sure) has more or less been seen, right­ly or not, as a mon­ey grab. For a band who stood in sol­i­dar­i­ty with work­ing peo­ple and rev­o­lu­tion­ary left­ist move­ments, The Clash walked a del­i­cate line between finan­cial suc­cess and polit­i­cal cred­i­bil­i­ty.

Most crit­ics date the end of the band well before that hat­ed final album, made with­out gui­tarist Mick Jones and long­time drum­mer Top­per Head­on. As Rolling Stone writes, “The Clash came to a rather sad end­ing in May 1983,” when they accept­ed a $500,000 offer from Apple co-founder Steve Woz­ni­ak to head­line the ‘New Wave Day’ of a mas­sive fes­ti­val in San Bernardi­no, Cal­i­for­nia.

By this time, Head­on had been kicked out of the band for drug prob­lems, replaced by 23-year-old Pete Howard, “and Mick Jones and Joe Strum­mer were bare­ly speak­ing.”

By the time they got to San Bernardi­no, Cal­i­for­nia for the fes­ti­val, they were in com­plete dis­ar­ray. Things got worse when they learned fans were pay­ing $25 to attend the show. They had been told pre­vi­ous­ly that prices would be set at $17, and short­ly before they went onstage, they held a press con­fer­ence. The band announced they would­n’t go on unless Apple gave $100,000 to char­i­ty. It was chaos. Some lat­er claimed the real cause of their rage was the knowl­edge that Van Halen were get­ting a mil­lion dol­lars for their set.

Arriv­ing onstage two hours late, under a ban­ner that read “The Clash Not For Sale,” they played an angry set of songs, between which Strum­mer taunt­ed the crowd. He opens with a sneer: “Alright then, here we are, in the cap­i­tal of the deca­dent U.S. of A. This here set of music is now ded­i­cat­ed to mak­ing sure that those peo­ple in the crowd who have chil­dren, there is some­thing left for them lat­er in the cen­turies.” It’s an odd state­ment, announc­ing Strummer’s sense that The Clash were leav­ing a lega­cy, and that they were exit­ing the cul­tur­al stage.

Despite their rage, they still walked away with half a mil­lion bucks. Four months lat­er, Mick Jones was out—the San Bernardi­no con­cert would be his last with the band—and The Clash, as the world had known them, were effec­tive­ly dead. As a swan song, it’s a hell of a show, infight­ing and line­up changes aside. See the whole thing above (except “Lon­don Call­ing,” which cuts off mid­way through). It’s maybe a shame they didn’t retire the name after this per­for­mance, how­ev­er. Though Strum­mer and bassist Paul Simenon toured with three replace­ments as The Clash in the years to come and, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “did a few things worth remem­ber­ing between 1984 and 1986,” in most people’s minds, that part of the band’s his­to­ry is best left out of the offi­cial record.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Live Footage Doc­u­ments The Clash From Their Raw Debut to the Career-Defin­ing Lon­don Call­ing

Doc­u­men­tary Viva Joe Strum­mer: The Sto­ry of the Clash Sur­veys the Career of Rock’s Beloved Front­man

Allen Gins­berg & The Clash Per­form the Punk Poem “Cap­i­tal Air,” Live Onstage in Times Square (1981)

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

Richard Dawkins Reads “Love Letters” from “Fans” (NSFW)

in Random, Religion | January 28th, 2015

Richard Dawkins — some know him as the Oxford evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist who coined the term “meme” in his influ­en­tial 1976 book, The Self­ish Gene; oth­ers con­sid­er him a lead­ing fig­ure in the New Athe­ism move­ment, a posi­tion he has assumed unapolo­get­i­cal­ly. In recent years, Dawkins has made his case against reli­gion though dif­fer­ent forms of media: books, doc­u­men­taries, col­lege lec­tures, and pub­lic debates. He can be aggres­sive and snide, to be sure. But he dish­es out far less than he receives in return. Just wit­ness him read­ing the “love let­ters” (as he euphemisti­cal­ly calls them) that he has received from the gen­er­al pub­lic. They are not safe for work. You can see him read­ing a pre­vi­ous batch of let­ters here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse: Richard Dawkins Presents Cap­ti­vat­ing Sci­ence Lec­tures for Kids (1991)

Richard Dawkins’ Doc­u­men­tary The God Delu­sion Tack­les Faith & Reli­gious Vio­lence (2006)

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es