The Sins of the Renaissance, or The History That Shaped Michele Bachmann’s Worldview

in Current Affairs, Religion | August 12th, 2011

Dur­ing the 1970s, Fran­cis A. Scha­ef­fer, an evan­gel­i­cal the­olo­gian, wrote and nar­rat­ed How Should We Then Live?, a ten-part film series that traced the his­to­ry of West­ern cul­ture and thought. Lots of art and phi­los­o­phy were put on dis­play. But the real nar­ra­tive focused on some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent — the his­to­ry of human­i­ty’s lapse from God and a Bib­li­cal world­view. The film became a sen­sa­tion at evan­gel­i­cal church­es across Amer­i­ca, some­times draw­ing 5,000 peo­ple per screen­ing. And, as Ryan Liz­za writes in a New York­er pro­file pub­lished this week, the film had a life-alter­ing effect on Michele Bach­mann, the US Rep­re­sen­ta­tive now vying for the pres­i­den­cy.

For Scha­ef­fer, the big turn­ing point came dur­ing the Renais­sance. That’s when things went wrong. He laments (start­ing around the 10:45 mark above):

At the begin­ning of the Renais­sance, it could have gone either way. Nature could have had its prop­er place. Man could have been in his prop­er place, and it would have been absolute­ly beau­ti­ful. But at a cer­tain point in the Renais­sance, the scales tipped, and man put him­self at the cen­ter absolute­ly, and this opened the door com­plete­ly to the whole destruc­tive force of human­ism that fol­lowed down through the Enlight­en­ment [oth­er­wise called “The Age of Non Rea­son”] and into our own day.

If you want to see where this destruc­tive force brings us, you need only turn to the last seg­ment “Final Choic­es.” (Part 1 — Part 2 — Part 3) Accord­ing to Scha­ef­fer, we end up under the con­trol of an author­i­tar­i­an elite that impos­es its arbi­trary will on the peo­ple, some­times inject­ing birth con­trol into the water sup­ply, and some­times decid­ing who will be born, and who won’t. The author­i­tar­i­an elite resides in no one place. It’s shad­owy, doing its work in many places. But one place you def­i­nite­ly find it? The Supreme Court that gave us Roe v. Wade.

Should you wish, you can watch the remain­ing seg­ments via the links below.

Episode I — The Roman Age
Episode II — The Mid­dle Ages
Episode III — The Renais­sance
Episode IV — The Ref­or­ma­tion
Episode V — The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Age
Episode VI — The Sci­en­tif­ic Age
Episode VII — The Age of Non Rea­son
Episode VIII — The Age of Frag­men­ta­tion
Episode IX — The Age of Per­son­al Peace & Afflu­ence
Episode X — Final Choic­es (Part 1 — Part 2 — Part 3)

via The LA Times

The Making of The Shining

in Film | August 10th, 2011

In 1980, Stan­ley Kubrick shot The Shin­ing, the clas­sic hor­ror film based on Stephen King’s nov­el. Dur­ing pro­duc­tion, the direc­tor allowed his daugh­ter Vivian, then 17 years old, to shoot a doc­u­men­tary called Mak­ing The Shin­ing, which lets you spend 33 min­utes being a fly on the wall. The film orig­i­nal­ly aired on the BBC and gave British audi­ences the chance to see Jack Nichol­son revving him­self up to act, and Shel­ley Duvall col­laps­ing in the hall­way from stress and fatigue. Min­utes lat­er, we watch Mr. Kubrick exert some direc­to­r­i­al force on the actress, and we under­stand her predica­ment all the more.

via Coudal.com

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:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Down­load & Play The Shin­ing Board Game

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Anno­tat­ed Copy of Stephen King’s The Shin­ing

Saul Bass’ Reject­ed Poster Con­cepts for The Shin­ing (and His Pret­ty Excel­lent Sig­na­ture)

A Day in California

in Life | August 9th, 2011

Opin­ions are famous­ly mixed on South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. It has nev­er been Woody Allen’s kind of place. In Annie Hall, he quipped “I mean, who would want to live in a place where the only cul­tur­al advan­tage is that you can turn right on a red light.” But this is com­ing from a guy who prefers fog and over­cast skies to sun­ny days at the beach, some­one who does­n’t quite con­nect with what has drawn 25 mil­lion peo­ple to the region. Ryan Kil­lack­ey’s short film, “A Day in Cal­i­for­nia,” will speak to those res­i­dents, or any­one who dreams of the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia life. He worked on the project for a year and a half, and it com­bines 10,000 images into a seam­less whole. Learn more about the project or watch the film here.

via @alyssa_milano

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Animated

in Literature | August 5th, 2011

Back in 1959, Ken Kesey, then a grad stu­dent in Stan­ford’s cre­ative writ­ing pro­gram, start­ed par­tic­i­pat­ing in gov­ern­ment-spon­sored med­ical research that test­ed a range of hal­lu­cino­gens — LSD, psilo­cy­bin, mesca­line, and the rest. As part of the research project, Kesey spoke into a tapere­corder and recount­ed the ins-and-outs of his hal­lu­ci­na­tions. These tapes were even­tu­al­ly stored away, and Kesey went on to write One Flew Over the Cuck­oo’s Nest, a book that now sits on TIME’s list of the 100 Best Eng­lish-Lan­guage Nov­els since 1923.

A half cen­tu­ry lat­er (and ten years after Kesey’s own death), the LSD tapes live again. This week, the film­mak­er Alex Gib­ney will release Mag­ic Trip, a new doc­u­men­tary that revis­its Kesey’s fabled road trip across Amer­i­ca with the Mer­ry Pranksters and their psy­che­del­ic “Fur­ther” bus. (Tom Wolfe, you might recall, famous­ly cov­ered this trip with The Elec­tric Kool-Aid Acid Test, pub­lished in 1968.) Tak­en from the new film, the sequence above mix­es the redis­cov­ered tapes with some art­ful ani­ma­tion, and it cap­tures the whole mood of Kesey’s first trip …

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:

Beyond Tim­o­thy Leary: 2002 Film Revis­its His­to­ry of LSD

Tim­o­thy Leary’s Wild Ride and the Fol­som Prison Inter­view

via Wired

The Adoration of the Mona Lisa Begins with Theft

in Art | August 4th, 2011

Every year, five mil­lion vis­i­tors stream into the Lou­vre in Paris, mak­ing it the most vis­it­ed muse­um in the world. And, more than any oth­er paint­ing, vis­i­tors head to see Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s Mona Lisa, paint­ed cir­ca 1503 — 1519.

It’s tempt­ing to attribute the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the Mona Lisa to the endur­ing genius of da Vin­ci. But, as NPR’s All Things Con­sid­ered recounts, there was a time when the paint­ing hard­ly attract­ed pub­lic atten­tion, and what turned the paint­ing into an object of pub­lic ado­ra­tion was some­thing baser than genius itself: brazen theft. Click here and NPR will tell you the sto­ry of the great Mona Lisa heist that went down on August 21, 1911, almost 100 years ago…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

David Lynch’s Video Response to Washington Debt Deal

in Current Affairs, Film, Politics | August 3rd, 2011

No one is hap­py with Wash­ing­ton D.C. this week, and that includes film­mak­er David Lynch, who gives you his com­men­tary in sounds and images, not words. The sym­bol­ism? Amer­i­ca is in a dark posi­tion and mov­ing back­wards? The deficit deal is flat out garbage?

H/T @opedr

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch and Inter­pol Team Up on Short Film

David Lynch’s Organ­ic Cof­fee (Bar­bie Head Not Includ­ed)

David Lynch on his Favorite Movies and Film­mak­ers

Al Jazeera: The Top 1% in America

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | August 3rd, 2011

Al Jazeera forced many West­erns view­ers to take their report­ing seri­ous­ly dur­ing the Egypt­ian upris­ing this spring, and now the Qatar-based news net­work has released a time­ly reportage (Aug. 2) on the fault lines in Amer­i­ca — on the gap between rich and poor that only grew wider this week. Alex­is de Toc­queville they’re not. There’s no sub­tle soci­ol­o­gy here. But, at the same time, I sus­pect that this for­eign per­spec­tive on the U.S. won’t appear unfa­mil­iar to many Amer­i­cans. The pro­gram runs 24 min­utes, and oth­er shows in the Fault Lines series can be viewed on YouTube here. H/T @courosa

Snack Foods of Great Writers

in Literature | August 1st, 2011

Wendy Mac­Naughton, an artist and illus­tra­tor liv­ing in San Fran­cis­co, won­dered what snacks fueled some of our great­est writ­ers. F. Scott Fitzger­ald turned to apples and canned meats, and Kaf­ka to milk, dur­ing their dai­ly writ­ing rou­tines. How about Lord Byron, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Mar­cel Proust, John Stein­beck, Tru­man Capote or food writer Michael Pol­lan? Mac­Naughton tells you about their dietary habits in The New York Times Book Review. (And it just so hap­pens you can find texts by many of these authors in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.)

Mac­Naughton’s illus­trat­ed col­umn, “Mean­while,” appears reg­u­lar­ly at The Rum­pus.

The Tarantino Mixtape (NSFW)

in Art, Film, Music | July 29th, 2011

Take Quentin Taran­ti­no’s movies, then let Eclec­tic Method decon­struct and recon­struct the scenes, leav­ing you with The Taran­ti­no Mix­tape, which is a lit­tle Not Safe for Work.

Based in Lon­don, the mem­bers of Eclec­tic Method have been exper­i­ment­ing with audio-visu­al mix­ing of sounds and images for a good decade. 60+ of their videos appear online, includ­ing their lat­est release — a Star Wars remix called Dark Wars. H/T Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What if Taran­ti­no Direct­ed the Super Bowl Broad­cast?

“Tarantino’s Mind,” Award Win­ning Short Film

Tarantino’s Favorite Films Since ’92

Life in Moments/Moments in Life

in Art, Film, Life | July 28th, 2011

Back in 2009, the folks at Radi­o­Lab tack­led anoth­er big ques­tion: “What hap­pens at the moment when we slip from life…to the oth­er side? Is it a moment? If it is, when exact­ly does it hap­pen? And what hap­pens after­ward?”

The show (lis­ten here) inspired film­mak­er Will Hoff­man to shoot a video the med­i­tates on the lit­tle moments that give life (and death) their mean­ing. Some moments stand in iso­la­tion. Oth­ers moments are con­nect­ed, cre­at­ing a link between birth and death, cause and effect, begin­nings and ends. In this audio clip, Hoff­man talks with Radi­o­Lab co-host Robert Krul­wich about the vision inform­ing the video sim­ply called Moments. And, if it delights, don’t miss two oth­er Hoffman/RadioLab pro­duc­tions, one sim­ply called Words, the oth­er Sym­me­try.