Jordan Peele as Auteur of the Film Nope — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #131

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | August 29th, 2022

Jor­dan Peele’s launch from a sol­id com­e­dy base with Com­e­dy Cen­tral’s Key & Peele show to the unex­pect­ed hor­ror film Get Out was so impres­sive that he’s gen­er­at­ed a huge amount of good will that allows him to play the full-on auteur with huge bud­gets. Did that pay off with his third film, the mon­ster movie Nope?

Your Pret­ty Much Pop host Mark Lin­sen­may­er is joined by Lawrence Ware (phi­los­o­phy prof. and enter­tain­ment writer), Sarahlyn Bruck (nov­el­ist and writ­ing prof.), and Nicole Pomet­ti (media artist and pod­cast­er) to sec­ond guess Peele’s var­i­ous cre­ative deci­sions.

A few arti­cles we reviewed include:

• “Jor­dan Peele and Keke Palmer Look to the Sky” by Ger­rick Kennedy
• “Jor­dan Peele Talks Being A Black Auteur And Dis­prov­ing Myths Of Rep­re­sen­ta­tion In Hol­ly­wood” by Dino-Ray Ramos
• “The Bloody His­to­ry Behind Those Mov­ing Pic­tures in Nope” by Jason Bai­ley
• “Jor­dan Peele’s Nope, Explained” by Alis­sa Wilkin­son
• “Jor­dan Peele’s Nope Calls Back to This Greek Myth” by Rebec­ca Radil­lo
• “Jupe is the biggest tragedy in Nope, a movie full of tragedies” by Tasha Robin­son

Fol­low us @law_writes, @sarahlynbruck, @remakespodcast, @MarkLinsenmayer.

Hear more Pret­ty Much Pop. Sup­port the show and hear bonus talk­ing for this and near­ly every oth­er episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

Vienna’s Albertina Museum Puts 150,000 Digitized Artworks Into the Public Domain: Klimt, Munch, Dürer, and More

in Archives, Art, Museums | August 26th, 2022

Though it may not fig­ure promi­nent­ly into the aver­age whirl­wind Eurail trip across the con­ti­nent, Vien­na’s role in the devel­op­ment of Euro­pean cul­ture as we know it can hard­ly be over­stat­ed. Grant­ed, the names of none of its cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions come mind as read­i­ly as those of the Pra­do, the Uffizi Gallery, or the Lou­vre. But as muse­ums go, Vien­na more than holds its own, both inside and out­side the neigh­bor­hood apt­ly named the Muse­um­squarti­er — and not just in the phys­i­cal world, but online as well. Recent­ly, the Alberti­na Muse­um in Vien­na put into the pub­lic domain 150,000 of its dig­i­tized works, all of which you can browse on its web site.

“Con­sid­ered to have one of the best col­lec­tions of draw­ings and prints in the world,” says Medievalists.net, the Alberti­na boasts “a large col­lec­tion of works by Albrecht Dür­er (1471–1528), a Ger­man artist who was famous for his wood­cut prints and a vari­ety of oth­er works.” Here on Open Cul­ture we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the genius of Dür­er as revealed by his famed self-por­traits. We’ve also fea­tured visu­al exege­ses of the art of Vien­na’s own Gus­tav Klimt as well as Edvard Munch, two more recent Euro­pean artists of great (and indeed still-grow­ing) repute, works from both of whom you’ll find avail­able to down­load in the Alberti­na’s online archive.

Those inter­est­ed in the devel­op­ment of Dür­er, Klimt, Munch, and oth­er Euro­pean mas­ters will espe­cial­ly appre­ci­ate the Alberti­na’s online offer­ings. As an insti­tu­tion renowned for its large print room and col­lec­tions of draw­ings, the muse­um has made avail­able a great many sketch­es and stud­ies, some of which clear­ly informed the icon­ic works we all rec­og­nize today. But there are also com­plete works as well, on which you can focus by click­ing the “High­lights” check­box above your search results. To under­stand Europe, you’d do well to begin in Vien­na; to under­stand Europe’s art — includ­ing its pho­tog­ra­phy, its posters, and its archi­tec­ture, each of which gets its own sec­tion of the archive — you’d do well to begin at the Alberti­na online.

via Medievalists.net

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Genius of Albrecht Dür­er Revealed in Four Self-Por­traits

136 Paint­ings by Gus­tav Klimt Now Online (Includ­ing 63 Paint­ings in an Immer­sive Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty Gallery)

Explore 7,600 Works of Art by Edvard Munch: They’re Now Dig­i­tized and Free Online

30,000 Works of Art by Edvard Munch & Oth­er Artists Put Online by Norway’s Nation­al Muse­um of Art

Take Immer­sive Vir­tu­al Tours of the World’s Great Muse­ums: The Lou­vre, Her­mitage, Van Gogh Muse­um & Much More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

The Only Written Eye-Witness Account of Pompeii’s Destruction: Hear Pliny the Younger’s Letters on the Mount Vesuvius Eruption

in History | August 25th, 2022

Though my shocked soul recoils, my tongue shall tell. — Pliny the Younger

A great deal of what we know — or think we know — about the destruc­tion of Pom­peii and Her­cu­la­neum in 79 AD comes fil­tered through mod­ern mytholo­gies like the 1834 nov­el The Last Days of Pom­peii. Writ­ten by Edward Bul­w­er-Lyt­ton (the first nov­el­ist to start a tale with “It was a dark and stormy night”), the book’s Roman­tic fas­ci­na­tion with civ­i­liza­tion­al decay was one stream of think­ing that blames Pom­pei­ians them­selves, in part, for their destruc­tion. That blame man­i­fests as explic­it, or more sub­tle, sug­ges­tions of divine pun­ish­ment. Or it can look like chid­ing imprac­ti­cal res­i­dents who did­n’t get out in time or took the wrong route out of town to avoid the heavy down­pour of molten rock and ash, as though a vol­canic erup­tion were a traf­fic jam in a thun­der­storm.…

Blame is a reflex­ive defense against the hor­ri­fy­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty that the scream­ing fig­ures frozen in ash could be us. There’s lit­tle to counter our cer­tain­ty from Pom­pei­ians them­selves. Some­where between 10,000 to 12,000 peo­ple got out in time (approx­i­mate­ly 2,000 were killed), but there are no exist­ing accounts from the city’s for­mer res­i­dents-turned- refugees. If they had any­thing to say about it lat­er, we’ll nev­er know. We do, how­ev­er, have an eye­wit­ness account of the destruc­tion. Its author, Pliny the Younger, watched from a van­tage point above the imme­di­ate scenes of pan­ic and death: his vil­la across the bay of Naples in Mis­enum. He also hap­pened to be nephew to the great Roman nat­u­ral­ist and mil­i­tary cam­paign­er Pliny the Elder, and an adept writer and keen observ­er of nature him­self.

Pliny the Younger’s let­ters — pub­lished in 9 vol­umes dur­ing his life­time, 10 after­ward — hold more inter­est for his­to­ri­ans than their descrip­tions of Vesu­vius. In his long life, “he was a poet, a sen­a­tor, a pub­lic offi­cial,” Joan Aco­cel­la writes at The New York­er. He had first­hand knowl­edge of “cel­e­brat­ed crimes” among the Roman elite. But the destruc­tion of Pom­peii was for­ma­tive: his uncle died in an attempt­ed evac­u­a­tion of the city by sea, a major event for Pliny and for Roman arms and let­ters. While the Younger had been at leisure in Mis­enum, the Elder had been at work, “in active com­mand of the fleet,” his nephew writes in a let­ter to his friend, fel­low lawyer, and lat­er famed his­to­ri­an Pub­lius Cor­nelius Tac­i­tus. Pliny begins with an expla­na­tion, more or less, for why he’s still alive.

When his uncle saw the “cloud of unusu­al size and appear­ance” ris­ing over the bay, he “ordered a boat made ready, telling me I could come with him if I wished.” Had the cau­tious nephew accept­ed his invi­ta­tion, Pliny the Younger would prob­a­bly have died at the age of 18, some­thing he sure­ly med­i­tat­ed upon from time to time in lat­er life. In the let­ter, he styles his uncle as a “hero” for his res­cue attempts. Pliny was­n’t there him­self to see these events, but he imag­ines what his uncle said and did. He even describes Pliny the Elder’s dra­mat­ic col­lapse and death in Stabi­ae, sev­er­al miles away across the Bay. It’s hard to sift the facts from lit­er­ary embell­ish­ment, but Pliny’s descrip­tions of Vesu­vius itself are vivid and ter­ri­fy­ing. The moun­tain, he writes, was cov­ered in “broad sheets of fire and leap­ing flames… their bright glare empha­sized by the dark­ness of night.”

His obser­va­tions of the ini­tial erup­tion seem high­ly cred­i­ble giv­en his actu­al loca­tion:

It was not clear at that dis­tance from which moun­tain the cloud was ris­ing (it was after­wards known to be Vesu­vius); its gen­er­al appear­ance can best be expressed as being like an umbrel­la pine, for it rose to a great height on a sort of trunk and then split off into branch­es, I imag­ine because it was thrust upwards by the first blast and then left unsup­port­ed as the pres­sure sub­sided, or else it was borne down by its own weight so that it spread out and grad­u­al­ly dis­persed. In places it looked white, else­where blotched and dirty, accord­ing to the amount of soil and ash­es it car­ried with it.

Pliny seems to want to write more about what he saw, but he oblig­es Tac­i­tus’ request to tell the sto­ry of his uncle’s death. “You will pick out of this nar­ra­tive what­ev­er is most impor­tant,” he con­cludes. “For a let­ter is one thing, a his­to­ry anoth­er; it is one thing writ­ing as a friend, anoth­er thing writ­ing to the pub­lic.” You can hear the let­ter read in full in the YouTube video above from Voic­es of the Past.

The line between pub­lic his­to­ry and pri­vate cor­re­spon­dence may not be so clear as Pliny imag­ined, espe­cial­ly when his let­ters are the only eye­wit­ness sources we have. In a sec­ond mis­sive to Tac­i­tus, per his friend’s request, Pliny describes the scene back in Mis­enum on the sec­ond day of the erup­tion. He and his moth­er had debat­ed what to do, and final­ly decid­ed to evac­u­ate. Here, writ­ing about events he expe­ri­enced first­hand, he strays from the nar­ra­tive con­ven­tions of his first let­ter, con­vey­ing the chaot­ic atmos­phere of ter­ror all around him as they left. The let­ter is har­row­ing, and worth quot­ing at length.

Though Pliny him­self, at the end of the let­ter, pro­nounces it unwor­thy of inclu­sion in Tac­i­tus’ his­to­ry, it remains the one first­hand account to which we can turn when imag­in­ing the expe­ri­ence.

Ash­es were already falling, not as yet very thick­ly. I looked round: a dense black cloud was com­ing up behind us, spread­ing over the earth like a flood. ‘Let us leave the road while we can still see,’ I said, ‘or we shall be knocked down and tram­pled under­foot in the dark by the crowd behind.’ We had scarce­ly sat down to rest when dark­ness fell, not the dark of a moon­less or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a closed room.

You could hear the shrieks of women, the wail­ing of infants, and the shout­ing of men; some were call­ing their par­ents, oth­ers their chil­dren or their wives, try­ing to rec­og­nize them by their voic­es. Peo­ple bewailed their own fate or that of their rel­a­tives, and there were some who prayed for death in their ter­ror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imag­ined there were no gods left, and that the uni­verse was plunged into eter­nal dark­ness for ever­more.

There were peo­ple, too, who added to the real per­ils by invent­ing fic­ti­tious dan­gers: some report­ed that part of Mis­enum had col­lapsed or anoth­er part was on fire, and though their tales were false they found oth­ers to believe them. A gleam of light returned, but we took this to be a warn­ing of the approach­ing flames rather than day­light. How­ev­er, the flames remained some dis­tance off; then dark­ness came on once more and ash­es began to fall again, this time in heavy show­ers. We rose from time to time and shook them off, oth­er­wise we should have been buried and crushed beneath their weight. I could boast that not a groan or cry of fear escaped me in these per­ils, but I admit that I derived some poor con­so­la­tion in my mor­tal lot from the belief that the whole world was dying with me and I with it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Destruc­tion of Pom­peii by Mount Vesu­vius, Re-Cre­at­ed with Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion (79 AD)

The Last Morn­ing in Pom­peii & The Night Pom­peii Died: A New Video Series Explores the End of the Doomed Roman City

Pom­peii Rebuilt: A Tour of the Ancient City Before It Was Entombed by Mount Vesu­vius

Behold 3D Recre­ations of Pompeii’s Lav­ish Homes–As They Exist­ed Before the Erup­tion of Mount Vesu­vius

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

Why 80s British Pop Queen Kate Bush Owns 2022

in Music | August 24th, 2022

Kate Bush has been lying in wait for us on this side of the mil­len­ni­um – espe­cial­ly for those of us on the U.S. side of the pond, who paid too lit­tle atten­tion when she became pop roy­al­ty in the UK (and Japan!) at the turn of the 80s.

Bush was too quirky, too British, and maybe too much her own woman for U.S. audi­ences, maybe. But now they’re ready. Final­ly, in the mil­lions, Amer­i­cans are catch­ing up to the bril­liance of her 1985 sin­gle “Run­ning Up That Hill” thanks to its res­ur­rec­tion by Stranger Things Sea­son 4.

Thus far, the Inter­net has pre­ferred her ear­ly stuff. Her first album and its epony­mous sin­gle, Wuther­ing Heights, gar­nered atten­tion online because of its beloved, bizarre video, an inspi­ra­tion to Kate fans world­wide. 1979 was the last time that she toured and the last time she appeared onstage until a 2015 come­back appear­ance.

Bush relied on elab­o­rate music films to car­ry her image. Her ear­ly turn to video, we might say, helped make her a cult favorite when she declined to be a celebri­ty for a few decades. Now video has killed the tour­ing super­star, and Bush is an Amer­i­can pop queen.

In 2022 — almost 40 years after its release — “Run­ning Up That Hill” has hit No 1 on the Hot Bill­board 100 Song­writ­ers charts, the first song by a female artist to top the chart this year. Her 1985 album Hounds of Love has become Bush’s first Bill­board No. 1 album, this sum­mer, rank­ing at the top for alter­na­tive albums and No. 2 for top rock albums.

“Run­ning Up That Hill (A Deal with God)” first peaked at No. 3 on British charts in 1985. The  album, Hounds of Love — one of her very best among a long string of great records — was hailed as “f**ing” bril­liant” by NME. “Our Kate’s a genius, the rarest solo artist this coun­try’s ever pro­duced,” wrote Jane Solanas.

Over here in the States, we were hard­ly unaware of Kate. Although “Run­ning Up That Hill” only hit No. 30 on the charts, her music con­tin­ued to thrive in under­ground scenes yet unmea­sured by sales and chart posi­tions. (Hounds of Love’s “Cloud­bust­ing” invad­ed U.S. raves and clubs in 1992 via sam­ples in British group Utah Saints’ “Some­thing Good,” a song most peo­ple heard on sketchy dance floors and rat­ty cas­sette mix­tapes).

As for the main­stream U.S. press, well… “The Mis­tress of Mys­ti­cism has woven anoth­er album that both daz­zles and bores,” wrote a Rolling Stone crit­ic in 1985. “Her vision will seem sil­ly to those who believe chil­dren should be seen and not heard.” A New York Times’ review called Hounds of Love “slight­ly pre­cious, cal­cu­lat­ed female art rock.”

There’s noth­ing slight about Kate Bush’s work, but Cheers to the sounds of f***ing bril­liant chil­dren at work. See why Bush’s revival — or endur­ing stay­ing pow­er — should come as no sur­prise in the Poly­phon­ic video above.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Kate Bush Enjoys a (Long-Over­due) Revival, Sparked by Sea­son 4 of Stranger Things

Revis­it Kate Bush’s Pecu­liar Christ­mas Spe­cial, Fea­tur­ing Peter Gabriel (1979)

300 Kate Bush Imper­son­ators Pay Trib­ute to Kate Bush’s Icon­ic “Wuther­ing Heights” Video

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

How a Dutch “Dementia Village” Improves Quality of Life with Intentional Design

in Design, Health, Life, Psychology | August 23rd, 2022

Peo­ple suf­fer­ing from demen­tia lose their abil­i­ty to take an active part in con­ver­sa­tions, every­day activ­i­ties, and their own phys­i­cal upkeep.

They are prone to sud­den mood swings, irri­tabil­i­ty, depres­sion, and anx­i­ety.

They may be strick­en with delu­sions and wild hal­lu­ci­na­tions.

All of these things can be under­stand­ably upset­ting to friends and fam­i­lies. There’s a lot of stig­ma sur­round­ing this sit­u­a­tion.

Tak­ing care of a spouse or par­ent with demen­tia can be an over­whelm­ing­ly iso­lat­ing expe­ri­ence, though no one is more iso­lat­ed than the per­son expe­ri­enc­ing severe cog­ni­tive decline first­hand.

While many of us would do any­thing to stay out of them, the sad fact is res­i­den­tial mem­o­ry care facil­i­ties are often the end-of-the-line real­i­ty for those liv­ing with extreme demen­tia.

Dur­ing the first sum­mer of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, nurs­ing home deaths attrib­uted to Alzheimer’s dis­ease and demen­tia increased by more than 20 per­cent, owing to such fac­tors as chron­ic staffing short­ages and a ban on out­side vis­i­tors.

As DeAnn Wal­ters, direc­tor of clin­i­cal affairs for the Cal­i­for­nia Asso­ci­a­tion of Health Facil­i­ties, told Politi­co:

We’re try­ing to be sup­port­er, social work­er, care­giv­er, friend and house­keep­ing for the res­i­dent. It’s putting a lot of pres­sure on the care­givers and the oper­a­tion of the facil­i­ty to make sure every­one has what they need. Before the pan­dem­ic we couldn’t even get socks on peo­ple and you’d see them walk­ing around bare­foot.

Not the vision any of us would choose for our parent’s gold­en years, or our own.

The Hogeweyk, a planned vil­lage just out­side of Ams­ter­dam, offers a dif­fer­ent sort of future for those with severe demen­tia.

The above episode of By Design, Vox’s series about the inter­sec­tion of design and tech­nol­o­gy, explores the inno­va­tions that con­tribute to the Hogeweyk’s res­i­dents over­all hap­pi­ness and well­be­ing.

Rather than group­ing res­i­dents togeth­er in a sin­gle insti­tu­tion­al set­ting, they are placed in groups of six, with every­one inhab­it­ing a pri­vate room and shar­ing com­mon spaces as they see fit.

The com­mon spaces open onto out­door areas that can be freely enjoyed by all housed in that “neigh­bor­hood”. No need to wait until a staff mem­ber grants per­mis­sion or fin­ish­es some task.

Those wish­ing to ven­ture fur­ther afield can avail them­selves of such pleas­ant quo­tid­i­an des­ti­na­tions as a gro­cery, a restau­rant, a bar­ber­shop, or a the­ater.

These loca­tions are designed in accor­dance with cer­tain things proven to work well in insti­tu­tion­al set­tings —  for instance, avoid­ing dark floor tiles, which some peo­ple with demen­tia per­ceive as holes.

But oth­er design ele­ments reflect the choice to err on the side of qual­i­ty of life. Hand rails may help in pre­vent­ing falls, but so do rol­la­tors and walk­ers, which the res­i­dents use on their jaunts to the town squares, gar­dens and pub­lic ameni­ties.

The design­ers believe that equip­ping res­i­dents with a high lev­el of free­dom not only pro­motes phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, it min­i­mizes issues asso­ci­at­ed with demen­tia like aggres­sion, con­fu­sion, and wan­der­ing.

Co-founders Eloy van Hal and Jan­nette Spier­ing write that the Hogeweyk’s crit­ics com­pare it to the Tru­man Show, the 1998 film in which Jim Car­rey’s title char­ac­ter real­izes that his whole­some small town life, and his every inter­ac­tion with his pur­port­ed friends, neigh­bors, and loved ones, have been a set up for a high­ly rat­ed, hid­den cam­era real­i­ty TV show.

They describe The Hogeweyk as a stage for, “the rem­i­nis­cence world”, in which actors help the res­i­dents live in a fic­ti­tious world. Many Alzheimer’s experts have, how­ev­er, val­ued The Hogeweyk for what it real­ly is: a famil­iar and safe envi­ron­ment in which peo­ple with demen­tia live while retain­ing their own iden­ti­ty and auton­o­my as much as pos­si­ble. They live in a social com­mu­ni­ty with real streets and squares, a real restau­rant with real cus­tomers, a super­mar­ket for gro­ceries and a the­atre that hosts real per­for­mances. There is no fake bus stop or post office, there are no fake façades and sets. The restau­rant employ­ee, the handy­man, the care­tak­er, the nurse, the hair­dress­er, etc.—in short: every­one who works at The Hogeweyk uses their pro­fes­sion­al skills to actu­al­ly sup­port the res­i­dents and are, there­fore, cer­tain­ly not actors.

Pro­fes­sion­al care and sup­port goes on around the clock, but rarely takes cen­ter­stage. Nor­mal life is pri­or­i­tized.

A vis­i­tor describes a stroll through some of the Hogeweyk’s pub­lic areas:

In the shade of one of the large trees, a mar­ried cou­ple gazes hap­pi­ly at the activ­i­ty in the the­atre square. An elder­ly gen­tle­man, togeth­er with a young lady, intent­ly study the large chess board and take turns mov­ing the pieces. At the foun­tain, a group of women chat loud­ly on colour­ful gar­den chairs. The sto­ry is clear­ly audible—it is about a mem­o­ry of a vis­it to a park in Paris which had the same chairs. Passers-by, old and young, greet the women enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly. A lit­tle fur­ther on, a woman is talk­ing to a man oppo­site her. She is ges­tur­ing wild­ly. After a while, anoth­er woman joins the con­ver­sa­tion. The two women then walk through the open front door of Boule­vard 15. 

The cov­ered pas­sage smells of fresh­ly-baked cook­ies. The scent is com­ing from De Bonte Hof. Amus­ing con­ver­sa­tions can be heard that pause for a moment when the oven beeps in the kitchen that has been dec­o­rat­ed in an old-fash­ioned style. A tray of fresh cook­ies is removed from the oven. Two women, one in a wheel­chair, enter the venue, obvi­ous­ly seduced by the smell. They sam­ple the cook­ies. 

The super­mar­ket across the street is very busy. Shop­ping trol­leys loaded with gro­ceries are pushed out of the shop. The rat­tle of a shop­ping trol­ley dis­si­pates into the dis­tance as it dis­ap­pears from view towards Grote Plein. A man reluc­tant­ly push­es the full trol­ley while two women fol­low behind him arm in arm. The trio dis­ap­pear behind the front door of Grote Plein 5.

A staffer’s account of a typ­i­cal morn­ing in one of Hogeweyk’s hous­es reveals more about the hands-on care that allows res­i­dents to con­tin­ue enjoy­ing their care­ful­ly designed home, and the autonomous lifestyle it makes pos­si­ble:

Mr Hen­dricks wakes up on the sofa. He unzips his fly. I jump up and escort him to the toi­let just in time. I grab a roll of med­ica­tion for him from the med­ica­tion trol­ley. He is now walk­ing to his room. We pick out clothes togeth­er and I lay them out on his bed. He wash­es him­self at the sink. I watch briefly before leav­ing. Fif­teen min­utes lat­er, I poke my head through the door. That’s not how elec­tric shav­ing works! I offer to help, but Mr. Hen­dricks is clear­ly a bit irri­tat­ed and grum­bles. He’ll be a lit­tle less shaven today. We’ll try again after break­fast…

We help Mrs Sti­j­nen into the show­er chair with the hoist. She is clear­ly not used to it. Dis­cussing her exten­sive Swarovs­ki col­lec­tion, dis­played in the glass case in her room, turns out to be an excel­lent dis­trac­tion. She proud­ly talks about the lat­est piece she acquired this year. On to the show­er. The two oth­er res­i­dents are still sleep­ing. Great, that gives me the chance to devote some extra time to Mrs Sti­j­nen today. 

The door­bell rings again and my col­league, Yas­min, walks in. She’s the famil­iar face that every­one can rely on. Always present at 8 a.m., 5 days a week. What a relief for res­i­dents and fam­i­ly. She, too, puts her coat and bag in the lock­er. The wash­ing machine is ready, and Yas­min loads up the dry­er. The table in the din­ing room is then set. Yas­min puts a flo­ral table­cloth from the cup­board on the table. Mr Hen­dricks lends a hand and, with some guid­ance, puts two plates in their place, but then walks away to the sofa and sits down. A Dutch break­fast with bread, cheese, cold cuts, jam, cof­fee, tea and milk is served. Yas­min is mak­ing por­ridge for Mrs Smit. As always, she has break­fast in bed. Yas­min helps Mrs Smit. It is now 08:45 and Mr Hen­dricks and Mrs Sti­j­nen are sit­ting at the din­ing table. Yas­min push­es the chairs in and sits down her­self. They chat about the weath­er, and Yas­min lends a help­ing hand when need­ed. 

Mr Hen­dricks is real­ly grumpy today and is cur­rent­ly grum­bling at Mrs Jansen. I’m won­der­ing if we’re over­look­ing some­thing?

Learn more about the Hogeweyk, the world’s first demen­tia vil­lage here.

Watch a playlist of Vox By Design episodes here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Restau­rant of Mis­tak­en Orders: A Tokyo Restau­rant Where All the Servers Are Peo­ple Liv­ing with Demen­tia

How Music Can Awak­en Patients with Alzheimer’s and Demen­tia

Demen­tia Patients Find Some Eter­nal Youth in the Sounds of AC/DC

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Pink Lady and Jeff: Japan’s Biggest Pop Musicians Star in One of America’s Worst-Reviewed TV Shows (1980)

in History, Music, Television | August 23rd, 2022

In 1963, Kyu Sakamo­to’s “Sukiya­ki” proved that a song sung in Japan­ese could top the charts in the Unit­ed States. Not that the Amer­i­can record­ing indus­try was quick to inter­nal­ize it: anoth­er Japan­ese sin­gle would­n’t break the Bill­board Top 40 for six­teen years, and even then it did so in Eng­lish. The song was “Kiss in the Dark” by Pink Lady, a pop duo con­sist­ing of Mit­suyo Nemo­to and Keiko Masu­da, bet­ter known as Mie and Kei. In 1978 they’d been the biggest pop-cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non in their native coun­try, but the fol­low­ing year their star had begun unmis­tak­ably to fall. And so, like many passé West­ern acts who become “big in Japan,” Pink Lady attempt­ed to cross the Pacif­ic.

Mie and Kei made their Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion debut per­form­ing “Kiss in the Dark” on Leif Gar­ret­t’s CBS spe­cial in May 1979. Accounts dif­fer about what hap­pened next, but less than a year lat­er they had their own prime­time vari­ety show on NBC. Offi­cial­ly titled Pink Lady, it tends to be referred to these four decades lat­er as Pink Lady and Jeff. This owes to the role of its host, ris­ing (and NBC-con­tract­ed) young come­di­an Jeff Alt­man, who brought to the table not just his com­ic tim­ing and skill with impres­sions, but also his com­mand of the Eng­lish lan­guage. That last hap­pened not to be pos­sessed to any sig­nif­i­cant degree by Mie or Kei, who had to deliv­er both their songs and their jokes pho­net­i­cal­ly.

In the video at the top of the post, you can see a com­pi­la­tion of the high­lights of Pink Lady and Jeff’s entire run. Then again, “high­lights” may not be quite the word for a TV show now remem­bered as one of the worst ever aired. “Pink Lady and Jeff rep­re­sents an unpalat­able com­bi­na­tion of insti­tu­tions that were on their way out, like vari­ety shows, dis­co, and the tele­vi­sion empire of cre­ators and pup­peteers Sid and Mar­ty Krofft,” writes the AV Club’s Nathan Rabin. The Krofft broth­ers, cre­ators of H.R. Pufn­stuf and Land of the Lost, tell of hav­ing been tapped to devel­op a pro­gram around Mie and Kei by NBC pres­i­dent Fred Sil­ver­man, who’d hap­pened to see footage of one of their sta­di­um-fill­ing Tokyo con­certs on the news.

Sid Krofft remem­bers declar­ing his ambi­tion to make Pink Lady “the strangest thing that’s ever been on tele­vi­sion.” The star­tled Sil­ver­man’s response: “Let’s do Don­ny and Marie.” Don­ny Osmond him­self end­ed up being one of the show’s high-pro­file guest stars, a line­up that also includ­ed Blondie, Alice Coop­er, Sid Cae­sar, Ted­dy Pen­der­grass, Roy Orbi­son, Jer­ry Lewis, and even Lar­ry Hag­man just a week before the epochal shoot­ing of his char­ac­ter on Dal­las. None of them helped Pink Lady find enough of an audi­ence to sur­vive beyond its ini­tial six episodes (all avail­able to watch on Youtube), a dis­com­fit­ing mélange of gener­ic com­e­dy sketch­es, unsuit­able musi­cal per­for­mances (with pre­cious few excep­tions, Mie and Kei weren’t per­mit­ted to sing their own Japan­ese songs), and broad ref­er­ences to sushi, samu­rai, and sumo.

The main prob­lem, Alt­man said in a more recent inter­view, was that “the vari­ety show had run the gaunt­let already, and real­ly was not a for­mat that was going to live in the hearts and homes of peo­ple across Amer­i­ca any­more.” Not only had that long and earnest tele­vi­sion tra­di­tion come to its igno­min­ious end, it would soon be replaced by the iron­ic, ultra-satir­i­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty of Alt­man’s col­league in com­e­dy David Let­ter­man. But here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, Alt­man guess­es, the time may be ripe “for a vari­ety-type show to come back.” We live in an era, after all, when a piece of for­got­ten eight­ies Japan­ese pop can become a glob­al phe­nom­e­non. And how­ev­er dim the prospects of the vari­ety show as a form, Mie and Kie them­selves have since man­aged more come­backs than all but their most die-hard fans can count.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Amer­i­cans” and Oth­er Songs on 1975 Vari­ety Show

Famed Art Crit­ic Robert Hugh­es Hosts the Pre­miere of 20/20, Where Tabloid TV News Began (1978)

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

How Youtube’s Algo­rithm Turned an Obscure 1980s Japan­ese Song Into an Enor­mous­ly Pop­u­lar Hit: Dis­cov­er Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plas­tic Love”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

The Brooklyn Public Library Gives Every Teenager in the U.S. Free Access to Books Getting Censored by American Schools

in Books, Current Affairs | August 22nd, 2022

We have cov­ered it before: school dis­tricts across the Unit­ed States are increas­ing­ly cen­sor­ing books that don’t align with white-washed con­ser­v­a­tive visions of the world. Art Spiegel­man’s Maus, The Illus­trat­ed Diary of Anne Frank, Alice Walk­er’s The Col­or Pur­ple, Toni Mor­rison’s The Bluest Eye, and Harp­er Lee’s To Kill a Mock­ing­bird–these are some of the many books get­ting pulled from library shelves in Amer­i­can schools. In response to this con­cern­ing trend, the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library has made a bold move: For a lim­it­ed time, the library will offer a free eCard to any per­son aged 13 to 21 across the Unit­ed States, allow­ing them free access to 500,000 dig­i­tal books, includ­ing many cen­sored books. The Chief Librar­i­an for the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library, Nick Hig­gins said:

A pub­lic library rep­re­sents all of us in a plu­ral­is­tic soci­ety we exist with oth­er peo­ple, with oth­er ideas, oth­er view­points and per­spec­tives and that’s what makes a healthy democ­ra­cy — not shut­ting down access to those points of view or silenc­ing voic­es that we don’t agree with, but expand­ing access to those voic­es and hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions and ideas that we agree with and ideas that we don’t agree with.

And he added:

This is an intel­lec­tu­al free­dom to read ini­tia­tive by the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library. You know, we’ve been pay­ing atten­tion to a lot of the book chal­lenges and bans that have been tak­ing place, par­tic­u­lar­ly over the last year in many places across the coun­try. We don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly expe­ri­ence a whole lot of that here in Brook­lyn, but we know that there are library patrons and library staff who are fac­ing these and we want­ed to fig­ure out a way to step in and help, par­tic­u­lar­ly for young peo­ple who are see­ing, some books in their library col­lec­tions that may rep­re­sent them, but they’re being tak­en off the shelves.

As for how to get the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library’s free eCard, their Books Unbanned web­site offers the fol­low­ing instruc­tions: “indi­vid­u­als ages 13–21 can apply for a free BPL eCard, pro­vid­ing access to our full eBook col­lec­tion as well as our learn­ing data­bas­es. To apply, email bo***********@**********ry.org.” In short, send them an email.

You can find a list of Amer­i­ca’s most fre­quent­ly banned books at the web­site of the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion.

NOTE: We’re see­ing reports on Twit­ter that a teacher in Nor­man, OK has been ter­mi­nat­ed for let­ting a stu­dent know about the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library’s free library. While this report has­n’t been ful­ly sub­stan­ti­at­ed, teach­ers who want to rec­om­mend this resource should pro­ceed with cau­tion. Par­ents could seem­ing­ly refer BPL’s free library to stu­dents with less con­cern about retal­i­a­tion.

via KTVB

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 

Texas School Board Bans Illus­trat­ed Edi­tion of The Diary of Anne Frank

Ten­nessee School Board Bans Maus, the Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Graph­ic Nov­el on the Holo­caust; the Book Becomes #1 Best­seller on Ama­zon

The 850 Books a Texas Law­mak­er Wants to Ban Because They Could Make Stu­dents Feel Uncom­fort­able

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

How Salman Rushdie Has Lived and Written Under the Threat of Death: a Free Documentary

in Current Affairs, Literature, Television | August 22nd, 2022

Alfred Hitch­cock spe­cial­ized in films about marked men: inno­cents, more or less, who sud­den­ly find them­selves pur­sued by sin­is­ter forces to the ends of the Earth. Lit­tle won­der, then, that Salman Rushdie would count him­self a Hitch­cock fan. The nov­el­ist ref­er­ences the film­mak­er more than once in Salman Rushdie: Writ­ing Under Death Threats, the DW tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary above. He remem­bers a sequence from The Birds that cuts between stu­dents in a class­room and the play­ground out­side: in one shot a black­bird comes to sit on the jun­gle gym, and just a few shots lat­er it’s been joined by 500 more. “The case of what hap­pened to The Satan­ic Vers­es was, it was some­thing like the first black­bird.”

Rushdie refers, of course, to the fat­wa called down upon him in response to that nov­el­’s sup­posed blas­phemies against Islam by Aya­tol­lah Khome­i­ni. As a result he had to spend most of the sub­se­quent decade in hid­ing, under the pro­tec­tion of the British gov­ern­ment. By the time of this doc­u­men­tary, which came out in 2018, the dan­ger seemed to have passed.

“What’s hap­pen­ing now, as the scan­dal goes away,” he says of The Satan­ic Vers­es, “is that peo­ple are able to read it as a book, rather than as some kind of scan­dalous text.” But the dan­ger had not passed, as we learned ear­li­er this month when Rushdie was stabbed onstage at a lit­er­ary event in upstate New York, avoid­ing death by what’s been report­ed as a nar­row mar­gin indeed.

This sto­ry has its ironies, not least that Rushdie’s attack­er was born in Cal­i­for­nia a decade after the Iran­ian gov­ern­men­t’s dis­avow­al of the fat­wa. But for Rushdie him­self, the attempt on his life can’t have come entire­ly as a sur­prise: he saw the gath­er­ing black­birds of vio­lent fanati­cism as well as those of met­ro­pol­i­tan com­pla­cen­cy. Reflect­ing on the 2015 attack on French satir­i­cal mag­a­zine Char­lie Heb­do, he laments that “even peo­ple who are on the lib­er­al, pro­gres­sive, left­ist end of the spec­trum now find ‘prob­lem­at­ic’ the idea of sup­port­ing peo­ple who make fun of reli­gion.” Always and every­where, writ­ing has been done under the threat of one kind of pun­ish­ment or anoth­er; more than 30 years after The Satan­ic Vers­es, Rushdie’s case remains the most har­row­ing­ly extreme illus­tra­tion of the writer’s con­di­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

When Christo­pher Hitchens Vig­i­lant­ly Defend­ed Salman Rushdie After the Fat­wah: “It Was a Mat­ter of Every­thing I Hat­ed Ver­sus Every­thing I Loved”

Hear Salman Rushdie Read Don­ald Barthelme’s “Con­cern­ing the Body­guard” 

Jeff Koons and Salman Rushdie Teach New Cours­es on Art, Cre­ativ­i­ty & Sto­ry­telling for Mas­ter­Class

Salman Rushdie: Machiavelli’s Bad Rap

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

What Made Better Call Saul a Master Class in Visual Storytelling: A Video Essay

in Television | August 19th, 2022

A decade ago, nobody inter­est­ed in pres­tige dra­mat­ic tele­vi­sion could have ignored Break­ing Bad, Vince Gilli­gan’s AMC series about a down­trod­den high-school chem­istry teacher who becomes a cal­cu­lat­ing and sav­age crys­tal-meth deal­er. Such was the crit­i­cal and pop­u­lar suc­cess of the show that, less than two years after it end­ed, it was resumed in the form of Bet­ter Call Saul. The title char­ac­ter Saul Good­man had been the afore­men­tioned teacher-turned-deal­er’s lawyer in Break­ing Bad, and the lat­er series, a pre­quel, traces the half-decade jour­ney that brought him to that point: a jour­ney that began when he was a Chica­go con man named Jim­my McGill.

Bet­ter Call Saul’s six-sea­son run (one episode longer than Break­ing Bad) came to an end this week. Dur­ing that time, the show has received even stronger acco­lades than the one that spun it off. To get a sense of what makes it such an achieve­ment in a field crowd­ed with some of the most ambi­tious cre­ators of pop­u­lar cul­ture today, watch the video essay above by Youtu­ber Thomas Flight.

Here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his visu­al analy­ses of auteurs like Wes Ander­son and Bong Joon-ho as well as shows like The Wire and Cher­nobyl. Five years ago, he uploaded a video explain­ing “why Bet­ter Call Saul is bril­liant”; now he argues that it’s a “mas­ter class in visu­al sto­ry­telling.”

“ ‘Show, don’t tell’ is such com­mon advice in film­mak­ing and screen­writ­ing that it’s basi­cal­ly a cliché at this point,” says Flight, “but it’s also much eas­i­er said than done.” He goes on to draw from Bet­ter Call Saul a host of prime exam­ples of show­ing-not-telling, orga­nized into four cat­e­gories of its spe­cial strengths: “props as sym­bol­ic objects,” “visu­al per­for­mances,” “char­ac­ters in process,” and “sto­ry­telling with cin­e­matog­ra­phy.” Bet­ter Call Saul’s cre­ators make rich use of objects, ges­tures, expres­sions, places, angles, and much else besides to tell — or rather, show — the sto­ry of Jimmy/Saul’s trans­for­ma­tion, as well as the trans­for­ma­tions of those around him. But which of those char­ac­ters will star in Gilli­gan’s next, sure­ly even more ambi­tious series?

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Break­ing Bad Craft­ed the Per­fect TV Pilot: A Video Essay

Watch the Pilot of Break­ing Bad with a Chem­istry Pro­fes­sor: How Sound Was the Sci­ence?

The Sci­ence of Break­ing Bad: Pro­fes­sor Don­na Nel­son Explains How the Show Gets it Right

Watch the Orig­i­nal Audi­tion Tapes for Break­ing Bad Before the Final Sea­son Debuts

Break­ing Bad Illus­trat­ed by Gonzo Artist Ralph Stead­man

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

“When We All Have Pocket Telephones”: A 1920s Comic Accurately Predicts Our Cellphone-Dominated Lives

in Comics/Cartoons, History, Technology | August 18th, 2022

Much has been said late­ly about jokes that “haven’t aged well.” Some­times it has do to with shift­ing pub­lic sen­si­bil­i­ties, and some­times with a gag’s exag­ger­a­tion hav­ing been sur­passed by the facts of life. As a Twit­ter user named Max Salt­man post­ed not long ago, “I love find­ing New York­er car­toons so dat­ed that the joke is lost entire­ly and the car­toons become just descrip­tions of peo­ple doing nor­mal things.” The exam­ples includ­ed a par­ty­go­er admit­ting that “I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve down­loaded it from the inter­net,” and a teacher admon­ish­ing her stu­dents to “keep your eyes on your own screen.”

All of those New York­er car­toons appear to date from the nine­teen-nineties. Even more pre­scient yet much old­er is the Dai­ly Mir­ror car­toon at the top of the post, drawn by artist W. K. Haselden at some point between 1919 and 1923. It envi­sions a time “when we all have pock­et tele­phones,” liable to ring at the most incon­ve­nient times: “when run­ning for a train,” “when your hands are full,” “at a con­cert,” even “when you are being mar­ried.” Such a com­ic strip could nev­er, as they say, be pub­lished today — not because of its poten­tial to offend mod­ern sen­si­tiv­i­ties, but because of its sheer mun­dan­i­ty.

For here in the twen­ty-twen­ties, we all, indeed, have pock­et tele­phones. Not only that, we’ve grown so accus­tomed to them that Haselden’s car­toon feels rem­i­nis­cent of the turn of the mil­len­ni­um, when the nov­el­ty and pres­tige of cell­phones (to say noth­ing of their grat­ing­ly sim­ple ring­tones) made them feel more intru­sive in day-to-day-life. Now, increas­ing­ly, cell­phones are day-to-day life. Far from the lit­er­al “pock­et tele­phones” envi­sioned a cen­tu­ry ago, they’ve worked their way into near­ly every aspect of human exis­tence, includ­ing those Haselden could nev­er have con­sid­ered.

Yet this was­n’t the first time any­one had imag­ined such a thing. “Rumors of a ‘pock­et phone’ had been ring­ing around the world since 1906,” writes Laugh­ing Squid’s Lori Dorn. “A man named Charles E. Alden claimed to have cre­at­ed a device that could eas­i­ly fit inside a vest pock­et and used a ‘wire­less bat­tery.’ ” In the event, it would take near­ly eight decades for the first cell­phone to arrive on the mar­ket, and three more on top of that for them to become indis­pens­able in the West. Now the “pock­et tele­phone” has become the defin­ing device of our era all over the world, though the social norms around its use do remain a work in progress.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed con­tent:

The First Cell­phone: Dis­cov­er Motorola’s DynaT­AC 8000X, a 2‑Pound Brick Priced at $3,995 (1984)

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

Film­mak­er Wim Wen­ders Explains How Mobile Phones Have Killed Pho­tog­ra­phy

A 1947 French Film Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed Our 21st-Cen­tu­ry Addic­tion to Smart­phones

The World’s First Mobile Phone Shown in 1922 Vin­tage Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.