Watch L’Inferno (1911), Italy’s First Feature Film and Perhaps the Finest Adaptation of Dante’s Classic

in Film | July 8th, 2021

In its sec­ond decade, cin­e­ma strug­gled to evolve. The first films by the Lumière Broth­ers and Thomas Edi­son were short and gim­micky — shots of trains rac­ing towards the screen, cou­ples kiss­ing and cute kit­tens get­ting fed. A quick rush. A bit of fun. Its cre­ators didn’t see much past the nov­el­ty of cin­e­ma but then oth­er film­mak­ers like Georges Méliès, Edwin S Porter, Alice Guy-Blaché and D.W. Grif­fith start­ed inject­ing this new medi­um with ele­ments of sto­ry. It start­ed aspir­ing towards art.

To this end, film­mak­ers start­ed to expand the can­vas on which they cre­at­ed. Films that were just two to eight min­utes length­ened in dura­tion as their sto­ries grew in com­plex­i­ty. The first fea­ture-length movie came in 1906 with the Aus­tralian movie The Sto­ry of the Kel­ly Gang.

In 1915, D.W. Grif­fith pre­miered his racist dra­ma The Birth of a Nation, which crys­tal­lized film lan­guage and proved that longer movies could be finan­cial­ly suc­cess­ful. In between those two movies came L’Inferno (1911) – per­haps the finest cin­e­mat­ic adap­ta­tion of Dan­te’s Infer­no out there and the first fea­ture-length Ital­ian movie ever.

Like Grif­fith, the mak­ers of L’Inferno — Francesco Bertoli­ni, Adol­fo Padovan and Giuseppe de Liguoro – sought to raise cin­e­ma to the ranks of lit­er­a­ture and the­ater. Unlike Grif­fith, they didn’t real­ly do much to for­ward the lan­guage of cin­e­ma. Through­out L’Inferno, the cam­era remains wide and locked down like the prosce­ni­um of a stage. Instead, they focused their efforts on cre­at­ing glo­ri­ous­ly baroque sets and cos­tumes. Much of the film looks like it was pulled straight from Gus­tave Dorè’s famed illus­tra­tions of The Divine Com­e­dy. Yet see­ing a pic­ture in a book of a demon is one thing. See­ing it leap around lash­ing the naked backs of the damned is some­thing else entire­ly. If you were ever tempt­ed by the sin of simo­ny, you’ll think twice after see­ing this film.

L’Inferno — now added to our col­lec­tion of 1,000+ Free Movies Online — became both a crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial hit world­wide, rak­ing in over $2 mil­lion (rough­ly $48 mil­lion in today’s mon­ey) in the US alone. “We have nev­er seen any­thing more pre­cious and fine than those pic­tures. Images of hell appear in all their great­ness and pow­er,” gushed famed Ital­ian nov­el­ist and reporter Matilde Serao when the film came out.

Amer­i­can film crit­ic for The Mov­ing Pic­ture World, W. Stephen Bush, was even more effu­sive:

“I know no high­er com­men­da­tion of the work than men­tion of the fact that the film-mak­ers have been exceed­ing­ly faith­ful to the words of the poet. They have fol­lowed, in let­ter and in spir­it, his con­cep­tions. They have sat like docile schol­ars at the feet of the mas­ter, con­sci­en­tious­ly and to the best of their abil­i­ty obey­ing every sug­ges­tion for his genius, know­ing no inspi­ra­tion, except such as came from the foun­tain­head. Great indeed has been their reward. They have made Dante intel­li­gi­ble to the mass­es. The immor­tal work, whose beau­ties until now were acces­si­ble only to a small band of schol­ars, has now after a sleep of more than six cen­turies become the prop­er­ty of mankind.”

Of course, the film’s com­bi­na­tion of ghoul­ish­ness and nudi­ty made it ripe to be co-opt­ed by shady pro­duc­ers who had less that lofty motives. Scenes from L’Inferno were cut into such exploita­tion flicks as Hell-O-Vision (1936) and Go Down, Death! (1944).

You can watch the full movie above. Be sure to watch to the end where Satan him­self can be seen devour­ing Bru­tus and Cas­sius.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus­tave Doré’s Haunt­ing Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

A Free Course on Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Why Should We Read Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Cam­era and 52 Sec­onds of Film

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. 

Watch Footage of the Allies Rolling Through a Defeated German Town in April, 1945: Restored & Colorized with AI

in History | July 8th, 2021

Ear­ly April, 1945. The Sovi­ets are clos­ing in on Ger­many, lib­er­at­ing War­saw, Krakow, and Budapest. Amer­i­can troops have crossed the Rhine. Adolf Hitler won’t live to see May. World War II is com­ing to an end. This footage, tak­en from film by Amer­i­can troops in and around Nord­hausen, Ger­many, shows the wreck­age of a defeat­ed nation. Enhanced by AI into 60fps, with col­or and atmos­pher­ic sound added, it’s anoth­er of YouTube’s increas­ing library of old footage that looks like it was shot yes­ter­day. (Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the video has changed the film’s ratio, widen­ing all the humans in it.)

The orig­i­nal film—you can watch it here at the Unit­ed States Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al Muse­um—has an inter­est­ing his­to­ry itself. Shot by a mem­ber of the US Army Sig­nal Corps, the film was kept in the Nation­al Archives and Records Admin­is­tra­tion until being unearthed by Dou­glas Hack­ney while research­ing his grand­fa­ther who served in the war. (Appar­ent­ly he is seen in one of the oth­er films in the orig­i­nal col­lec­tion.) The dig­i­ti­za­tion was then gift­ed to the Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al Muse­um.

The 60fps ver­sion is assem­bled from sev­er­al reels. We see fight­ing in a for­est out­side Nord­hausen, then a gath­er­ing of cap­tured Nazi sol­diers, then troops cel­e­brat­ing with freed pris­on­ers with some shots of liquor, a bit of morn­ing down­time, and the effects of allied bomb­ing.

Nord­hausen was the sight of the Dora-Mit­tel­bau con­cen­tra­tion camp, built in August of 1943 so Nazis could use its pris­on­ers as slave labor, dig­ging tun­nels into the near­by hill­side for Ger­man fac­to­ries relat­ed to the V‑2 rock­et pro­gram.

Accord­ing to the Holo­caust his­to­ry web­site, remember.org:

On April 11th, the 104th Infantry Divi­sion entered the Dora camp and the 3rd Armored Divi­sion entered the Boel­cke-Kaserne sub­camp. Although mem­bers of the VII Corps had been fore­warned there was a prison camp, they cer­tain­ly could not have expect­ed the inhu­mane atroc­i­ties they were about to wit­ness. The dead and near-dead were every­where, piled upon one anoth­er, and imme­di­ate med­ical atten­tion was giv­en to the few sur­vivors. There were 3000 corpses and 750 ema­ci­at­ed sur­vivors that were aban­doned by the SS.

Of the 60,000 pris­on­ers to enter the Dora-Mit­tel­bau camps, it is esti­mat­ed that 13,000–18,000 died in the camp. Com­mon caus­es of death includ­ed tuber­cu­lo­sis, pneu­mo­nia, star­va­tion, dysen­tery, and trau­ma.

One can hope these 60fps enhanced videos con­tin­ue to be uploaded to YouTube. Per­son­al­ly, the col­oriza­tion adds lit­tle, but as a win­dow into time real­ly not that long ago (and with neo-Nazis still kick­ing around) we need reminders of where it can all lead with­out our vig­i­lance.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Real D‑Day Land­ing Footage, Enhanced & Col­orized with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (June 6, 1944)

Dra­mat­ic Footage of San Fran­cis­co Right Before & After the Mas­sive­ly Dev­as­tat­ing Earth­quake of 1906

Watch the Only Known Footage of Anne Frank

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Watch the Tate Modern Restore Mark Rothko’s Vandalized Painting, Black on Maroon: 18 Months of Work Condensed Into 17 Minutes

in Art | July 8th, 2021

“The peo­ple who weep before my pic­tures are hav­ing the same reli­gious expe­ri­ence I had when I paint­ed them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their col­or rela­tion­ship, then you miss the point.” — Mark Rothko

In 2012, a Russ­ian artist call­ing him­self Vladimir Umanets wrote his name and the words “A poten­tial piece of yel­low­ism” in black mark­er on the cor­ner of Mark Rothko’s 1958 can­vas Black on Maroon. The dam­age to the paint­ing, housed at the Tate Mod­ern since 1970, was sub­stan­tial, and it turned out to be one of the museum’s most chal­leng­ing restora­tion projects, as well as one of its most suc­cess­ful — “far more suc­cess­ful than any of us dared hope,” said Tate direc­tor Nicholas Sero­ta. The paint­ing went back on dis­play in May of 2014.

Due to Rothko’s lay­ered tech­nique, the painting’s “sur­face is real­ly del­i­cate and it turned out that most of the sol­vent sys­tems that could dis­solve and remove the ink could poten­tial­ly dam­age the paint­ing as well.” Patri­cia Smithen, the Tate’s head of con­ser­va­tion, told The Guardian. The video above from the muse­um shows the art and sci­ence that went into restor­ing the famous work, an eigh­teen-month-long process that involved some reverse engi­neer­ing from a can­vas donat­ed by the Rothko fam­i­ly.

Black on Maroon seemed like an odd choice for a protest, as a blog­ger at Art His­to­ry Abroad wrote the fol­low­ing day: “‘Why Rothko?’. His paint­ings [are] often crit­i­cised by those who don’t favour their abstrac­tion, but rarely deemed polit­i­cal­ly or social­ly moti­vat­ed to a point that they might pro­voke van­dal­ism.” The pres­ence of Black on Maroon and oth­er Sea­gram Murals at the Tate, in fact, mark an act of protest by Rothko him­self (who com­mit­ted sui­cide the day the paint­ings arrived at the Lon­don muse­um).

The Sea­gram Murals were orig­i­nal­ly com­mis­sioned for the Four Sea­sons restau­rant in the Sea­gram build­ing in New York, designed by Mies van der Rohe and Philip John­son. Sev­en paint­ings were com­mis­sioned, Rothko made 30. He report­ed­ly told Harper’s edi­tor John Fis­ch­er he want­ed to cre­ate “some­thing that will ruin the appetite of every son-of-a-bitch who ever eats in that room.” When he final­ly got the chance to dine at the com­plet­ed restau­rant, he was dis­gust­ed, with­drew his work, and returned his com­mis­sion, writ­ing, “it seemed clear to me at once that the two were not for each oth­er.” He spent the next decade think­ing about how and where to dis­play the paint­ings.

Umanets did not seem to care much about the his­to­ry of the murals in the Tate’s Rothko Room and claims his choice had no mean­ing. “I didn’t sin­gle out Rothko to make my state­ment,” he wrote in a pub­lic let­ter of apol­o­gy pub­lished after he spent a year and a half in prison. “I would have done the same had the artist been Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin. It was a spon­ta­neous deci­sion and noth­ing per­son­al.” Like­wise, his Dada-esqe “Man­i­festo of Yel­low­ism” out­lines a pro­gram with a dis­tinct lack of con­cern for speci­fici­ty and a vague­ly satir­i­cal desire to flat­ten art into one col­or, one pur­pose, one mean­ing.

Even as he pub­licly abjured his act of protest (maybe by order of the court?), Umanets also expressed a gen­uine con­cern for the future of art, “Art has become a busi­ness, which appears to serve only the needs of the art mar­ket. As a result the art world no longer has rad­i­cal thinkers and polemi­cists will­ing to scythe new and dif­fer­ent path­ways. Every­one is play­ing safe.” He might have made his point more clear­ly by going after Jeff Koons. Rothko was a rad­i­cal thinker, and his Sea­gram Murals rep­re­sent a final refusal to com­pro­mise with the demands of the art mar­ket.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Short Doc­u­men­tary on Artist Jeff Koons, Nar­rat­ed by Scar­lett Johans­son

Watch an Art Con­ser­va­tor Bring Clas­sic Paint­ings Back to Life in Intrigu­ing­ly Nar­rat­ed Videos

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

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

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in | July 8th, 2021

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Hear Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos Played on Original Baroque Instruments

in History, Music | July 7th, 2021

“Sub­tle and bril­liant at the same time, they are a micro­cosm of Baroque music, with an aston­ish­ing­ly vast sam­ple of that era’s emo­tion­al uni­verse.” — Ted Libbey 

The port­fo­lio, the demo, the head shot, the resume…. These are not mate­ri­als made for gen­er­al con­sump­tion, much less the praise and admi­ra­tion of pos­ter­i­ty. But not every appli­cant is Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach, who wrote his six Bran­den­burg con­cer­tos, in essence, “because, like pret­ty much every­one through­out his­to­ry, Bach need­ed a job,” notes String Ova­tion. In 1721, he applied for a posi­tion with the Mar­grave of Bran­den­burg, younger broth­er of King Fred­er­ick Wil­helm I of Prus­sia, by send­ing the music: “It’s one of the few man­u­scripts that Bach wrote out him­self, rather than give to a copy­ist…. At the time, Bach was the Kapellmeis­ter in the small town of Cöthen. Work­ing for His Roy­al High­ness would have been a seri­ous­ly upward move.”

He didn’t get the job. Indeed, it seems his appli­ca­tion was ignored, and near­ly lost sev­er­al times through­out his­to­ry. Now, Bach’s call­ing cards are some of the most vir­tu­oso com­po­si­tions of Baroque music we know. “Each con­cer­to is a con­cer­to grosso, a con­cer­to that’s a con­tin­u­ous inter­play of small groups of soloists and full orches­tra…. The range of instru­ments with solos through­out the six con­cer­tos was designed to give oppor­tu­ni­ties to show the poten­tial of near­ly every instru­ment in the orches­tra. Even the recorder got a solo.” The six togeth­er present them­selves as an anthol­o­gy of sorts, “a Baroque musi­cal trav­el­ogue mov­ing through ‘the court­ly ele­gance of the French suite, the exu­ber­ance of the Ital­ian solo con­cer­to and the grav­i­ty of Ger­man coun­ter­point.’”

These pieces do not only demon­strate Bach’s com­po­si­tion­al mas­tery; they also rep­re­sent his “ulti­mate view,” as the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety points out, “of the most impor­tant large-scale instru­men­tal genre of his day: the con­cer­to.” In the third of these works, for exam­ple, he makes the “sur­pris­ing” choice to com­pose for “three vio­lins, three vio­las, three cel­los and bas­so con­tin­uo. In oth­er words, 3x3, which is a ratio­nal choice you would expect from a mod­ernist like Pierre Boulez, rather than a Baroque com­pos­er like Bach.” In order to play these pieces the way Bach intend­ed them to be heard, Ted Libbey writes at NPR, they must be played on the orig­i­nal instru­ments for which he com­posed, some­thing a grow­ing num­ber of ensem­bles have been doing.

Voic­es of Music, one of the most promi­nent ensem­bles recov­er­ing the orig­i­nal sounds of Bach’s time, per­forms Con­cer­to Num­ber Three in G Major at the top and Con­cer­to Num­ber Six in B Flat just above, anoth­er sur­pris­ing arrange­ment for the time. The final Bran­den­burg Con­cer­to also upsets the musi­cal order of things again: “Vio­lins — usu­al­ly the gold­en boys of the orches­tra,” writes the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety, “are con­spic­u­ous by their absence! Instead, two vio­las play the lead­ing role. As the high­est parts, they ‘play first fid­dle’ as soloists, sup­port­ed by two vio­la da gam­bas, a cel­lo, dou­ble bass and harp­si­chord.” The Mar­grave of Bran­den­burg, it seems had lit­tle time or inter­est, and nev­er had these pieces per­formed by his ensem­ble, which may have lacked the skill and instru­men­ta­tion. After hear­ing this music in its orig­i­nal glo­ry, we can be grate­ful Bach’s hand­writ­ten resume sur­vived the neglect.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Hear 10 of Bach’s Pieces Played on Orig­i­nal Baroque Instru­ments

The Authen­tic Vivaldi’s The Four Sea­sons: Watch a Per­for­mance Based on Orig­i­nal Man­u­scripts & Played with 18th-Cen­tu­ry Instru­ments

Watch J.S. Bach’s “Air on the G String” Played on the Actu­al Instru­ments from His Time

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

Watch Artisans Make Hand-Carved Championship Chess Sets: Each Knight Takes Two Hours

in Games, History | July 7th, 2021

Whether because of the pop­u­lar­i­ty of Net­flix’s The Queen’s Gam­bit or because of how much time indoors the past year and a half has entailed, chess has boomed late­ly. Luck­i­ly for those would-be chess­mas­ters who’ve had their inter­est piqued, every­thing they need to learn the game is avail­able free online. But the deep­er one gets into any giv­en pur­suit, the greater one’s desire for con­crete rep­re­sen­ta­tions of that inter­est. In the case of chess play­ers, how many, at any lev­el, have tran­scend­ed the desire for a nice board and pieces? And how many have nev­er dreamed of own­ing one of the finest chess sets mon­ey can buy?

Such a set appears in the Busi­ness Insid­er video above. “You can pick up a plas­tic set for $20 dol­lars, but a wood­en set cer­ti­fied for the World Chess Cham­pi­onship costs $500,” says its nar­ra­tor. “Much of the val­ue of a high-qual­i­ty of the set comes down to how well just one piece is made: the knight.”

Prop­er­ly carved by a mas­ter arti­san, each knight — with its horse’s head, the only real­is­tic piece in chess — takes about two hours. Very few are qual­i­fied for the job, and one knight carv­er appears in an inter­view to explain that it took him five or six years to learn it, as against the four or five months required to mas­ter carv­ing the oth­er pieces.

The work­shop intro­duced in this video is locat­ed in Amrit­sar (also home to the Gold­en Tem­ple and its enor­mous free kitchen, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here in Open Cul­ture). To those just start­ing to learn about chess, India may seem an unlike­ly place, but in fact no coun­try has a longer his­to­ry with the game. “Chess has been played for over 1,000 years, with some form of the game first appear­ing in India around the sixth cen­tu­ry,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor. “Over the past two cen­turies, high-lev­el com­pe­ti­tions have drawn inter­na­tion­al inter­est.” For most of that peri­od, fluc­tu­a­tions in pub­lic enthu­si­asm for chess have result­ed in pro­por­tion­ate fluc­tu­a­tions in the demand for chess sets, much of which is sat­is­fied by large-scale indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion. But the most expe­ri­enced play­ers pre­sum­ably feel sat­is­fac­tion only when han­dling a knight carved to arti­sanal per­fec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn How to Play Chess Online: Free Chess Lessons for Begin­ners, Inter­me­di­ate Play­ers & Beyond

A Brief His­to­ry of Chess: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the 1,500-Year-Old Game

Man Ray Designs a Supreme­ly Ele­gant, Geo­met­ric Chess Set in 1920–and It Now Gets Re-Issued

Mar­cel Duchamp, Chess Enthu­si­ast, Cre­at­ed an Art Deco Chess Set That’s Now Avail­able via 3D Print­er

The Bauhaus Chess Set Where the Form of the Pieces Art­ful­ly Show Their Func­tion (1922)

A Beau­ti­ful Short Doc­u­men­tary Takes You Inside New York City’s Last Great Chess Store

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 or on Face­book.

Hiroshige, Master of Japanese Woodblock Prints, Creates a Guide to Making Shadow Puppets for Children (1842)

in Art, History | July 6th, 2021

Even if the name Uta­gawa Hiroshige does­n’t ring a bell, “Hiroshige” by itself prob­a­bly does. And on the off chance that you’ve nev­er heard so much as his mononym, you’ve still almost cer­tain­ly glimpsed one of his por­tray­als of Tokyo — or rather, one of his por­tray­als of Edo, as the Japan­ese cap­i­tal, his home­town, was known dur­ing his life­time. Hiroshige lived in the 19th cen­tu­ry, the end of the clas­si­cal peri­od of ukiyo‑e, the art of wood­block-print­ed “pic­tures of the float­ing world.” In that time he became one of the for­m’s last mas­ters, hav­ing cul­ti­vat­ed not just a high lev­el of artis­tic skill but a for­mi­da­ble pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

In total, Hiroshige pro­duced more than 8,000 works. Some of those are account­ed for by his well-known series of prints like The Fifty-three Sta­tions of the Tōkaidō, The Six­ty-nine Sta­tions of the Kisokaidō, One Hun­dred Famous Views of Edo. But his mas­tery encom­passed more than the urban and rur­al land­scapes of his home­land, as evi­denced by this much hum­bler project: a set of omocha‑e, or instruc­tion­al pic­tures for chil­dren, explain­ing how to make shad­ow pup­pets.

Hiroshige explains in clear and vivid images “how to twist your hands into a snail or rab­bit or grasp a mat to mim­ic a bird perched on a branch,” writes Colos­sal’s Grace Ebert. “Appear­ing behind a translu­cent sho­ji screen, the clever fig­ures range in dif­fi­cul­ty from sim­ple ani­mals to spar­ring war­riors and are com­plete with prop sug­ges­tions, writ­ten instruc­tions for mak­ing the crea­tures move — ‘open your fin­gers with­in your sleeve to move the owl’s wings’ or ‘draw up your knee for the fox’s back’ — and guides for full-body con­tor­tions.” The dif­fi­cul­ty curve does seem to rise rather sharply, begin­ning with pup­pets requir­ing lit­tle more than one’s hands and end­ing with full-body per­for­mances sure­ly intend­ed more for amuse­ment than imi­ta­tion.

But then, kids take their fun wher­ev­er they find it, whether in 2021 or in 1842, when these images were orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished. Though it was a fair­ly late date in the life of Hiroshige, at that time mod­ern Japan had­n’t even begun to emerge. The chil­dren who enter­tained them­selves with his shad­ow pup­pets against the sho­ji screens of their homes would have come of age with the arrival of Unit­ed States Com­modore Matthew C. Per­ry’s “black ships,” which began the long-closed Japan’s process of re-open­ing itself to world trade — and set off a whirl­wind of civ­i­liza­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion that, well over a cen­tu­ry and a half lat­er, has yet to set­tle down.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 1,000+ Beau­ti­ful Wood­block Prints by Hiroshige, the Last Great Mas­ter of the Japan­ese Wood­block Print Tra­di­tion

1,000+ His­toric Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Smith­son­ian: From the Edo & Meji Eras (1600–1912)

Wagashi: Peruse a Dig­i­tized, Cen­turies-Old Cat­a­logue of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Can­dies

The Ground­break­ing Sil­hou­ette Ani­ma­tions of Lotte Reiniger: Cin­derel­la, Hansel and Gre­tel, and More

Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets in Vin­tage Primer From 1969

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 or on Face­book.

Why Finland & Denmark Are Happier Than the United States

in Life | July 6th, 2021

We may nev­er con­vince the greed­i­est among us that mon­ey won’t buy hap­pi­ness. But if we weren’t per­suad­ed before the pan­dem­ic, it seems more of us are now, since thou­sands of work­ers refuse to return to exploita­tive con­di­tions. “The Covid job mar­ket,” the Har­vard Busi­ness Review admits, “is not like 2008, nor real­ly like any­thing any­one has observed since the birth of mod­ern cap­i­tal­ism.” This obser­va­tion comes amidst a dis­cus­sion of the fac­tors influ­enc­ing hir­ing, but most econ­o­mist-speak avoids the emo­tion­al lan­guage we use to talk about our jobs.

The fact is, most of us are stressed out, unhap­py, over­worked, and under­paid, with lit­tle in terms of pub­lic pol­i­cy or cor­po­rate ben­e­fits to help reduce the bur­dens on the aver­age Amer­i­can work­er. It’s far worse for oth­er work­ers around the world. “The aver­age US work­week is 38.6 hours,” notes Busi­ness Insid­er. “That may feel like for­ev­er to some peo­ple, but it’s noth­ing com­pared to some coun­tries’ work­weeks.” Work­ers in Colom­bia, for exam­ple, spend an aver­age of 47.7 hours at work.

Much of that time could be spent car­ing for our­selves and our fam­i­lies, and lock­downs, quar­an­tines, shel­ter-in-place and work-from-home orders have giv­en us time to recon­sid­er how we’ve been liv­ing. As we do, we might look to Fin­land and Den­mark, where peo­ple pro­fess some of the high­est rates of hap­pi­ness in the world, accord­ing to the most recent World Hap­pi­ness Report, a series of mea­sures co-cre­at­ed by Jef­frey Sachs, Direc­tor of Colum­bia University’s Cen­ter for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment.

“In a lam­en­ta­ble year,” the report points out, “Fin­land again is the hap­pi­est coun­try in the world.” Den­mark isn’t far behind. What does this mean? “It’s not pri­mar­i­ly a mea­sure of whether one laughed or smiled yes­ter­day,” says Sachs, “but how one feels about the course of one’s life.” This feel­ing is mea­sured accord­ing to “six areas of life sat­is­fac­tion,” CNBC notes in an intro­duc­tion to the video above — a short doc­u­men­tary on Finnish and Dan­ish hap­pi­ness — includ­ing “income, healthy life expectan­cy, social sup­port, free­dom, trust and gen­eros­i­ty.”

“We need urgent­ly to learn from Covid-19,” says Sachs. “The pan­dem­ic reminds us of our glob­al envi­ron­men­tal threats, the urgent need to coop­er­ate, and the dif­fi­cul­ties of achiev­ing coop­er­a­tion in each coun­try and glob­al­ly. The World Hap­pi­ness Report 2021 reminds us that we must aim for well­be­ing rather than mere wealth, which will be fleet­ing indeed if we don’t do a much bet­ter job of address­ing the chal­lenges of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment.” Learn what makes the Finns and Danes so hap­py in the video above (spoil­er: it isn’t exor­bi­tant salaries) and learn more about why peo­ple in the “hap­pi­est” coun­tries thrive at the World Hap­pi­ness Report.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Cre­ativ­i­ty, Not Mon­ey, is the Key to Hap­pi­ness: Dis­cov­er Psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s The­o­ry of “Flow”

How Much Mon­ey Do You Need to Be Hap­py? A New Study Gives Us Some Exact Fig­ures

The Keys to Hap­pi­ness: The Emerg­ing Sci­ence and the Upcom­ing MOOC by Raj Raghu­nathan

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

Storytelling and Race in Captain America — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #98

in Comics/Cartoons, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | July 6th, 2021

What is it for a super-hero to rep­re­sent Amer­i­ca? Though the char­ac­ter cre­at­ed by Joe Simon and Jack Kir­by in 1941 may have been a way to cap­i­tal­ize on WWII patri­o­tism, it has since been used to ask ques­tions about what it real­ly means to be patri­ot­ic and how Amer­i­ca’s ideals and its real­i­ty may con­flict. We’re of course talk­ing about race, a theme explored by Sam Wil­son, for­mer­ly Cap’s side-kick, pick­ing up the shield in the comics and now on TV (and in the forth­com­ing film).

Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca, and Bri­an are joined by com­ic super-fan Antho­ny LeBlanc (return­ing from our ep.  56 on black nerds) to dis­cuss the recent com­ic runs by Ta-Nehishi Coates and Nick Spencer and espe­cial­ly Truth: Red, White and Black, Mar­vel’s 2003 comics mini-series by Robert Morales and Kyle Bak­er that tells the sto­ry of Amer­i­can super-sol­dier exper­i­ments on unknow­ing black men (rem­i­nis­cent of the real-life Tuskegee Syphilis Study). This was the source of the “first black Cap­tain Amer­i­ca” char­ac­ter Isa­iah Bradley fea­tured in The Fal­con and the Win­ter Sol­dier Dis­ney+ show, which we also dis­cuss.

Here are a few arti­cles that fed into our dis­cus­sion:

• “The Pow­er of a Skep­ti­cal Cap­tain Amer­i­ca” by Sophie Gilbert
• “‘The Fal­con and the Win­ter Sol­dier’ Nev­er Took Its Pro­tag­o­nist Seri­ous­ly” by Justin Char­i­ty
• “‘The Fal­con and the Win­ter Sol­dier’ Was Rid­dled With Con­tra­dic­tions” by Ali­son Her­man
• “When Sam Wil­son Became Cap­tain Amer­i­ca” by Brit­tany Mat­ter
• “Why I’m Writ­ing Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, and Why It Scares the Hell out of Me” by Ta-Nehishi Coates
• “My Secret His­to­ry With Secret Empire: Look­ing Back At Nick Spencer’s Cap­tain Amer­i­ca” by Vishal Gul­la­pal­li
• “Secret Empire Cre­ators Pre­view Cap­tain Amer­i­ca’s Assault on the Mar­vel Uni­verse” by Chris­t­ian Hol­ub
• “Cap­tain Amer­i­ca Goes to War With Jor­dan Peter­son” by Matthew Gault
• “Black Pan­ther Writer Crit­i­cizes Mar­vel’s Treat­ment of Com­ic Cre­ators” by Robert Wood

The final issue of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Cap­tain Amer­i­ca is com­ing July 7.

We rec­om­mend the Cap­tain Amer­i­ca Com­ic Book Fans pod­cast for more infor­ma­tion. Their recent inter­view with long­time edi­tor Tom Brevoort was illu­mi­nat­ing, and they spent eps.  33 and 34 walk­ing through Truth: Red, White & Black.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. 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.

How Ramen Became the Currency of Choice in Prison, Beating Out Cigarettes

in Finance, Food & Drink, Life | July 5th, 2021

The last decade ush­ered in a slew of tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese-style ramen restau­rants — enough to jus­ti­fy ramen maps to New York City, Chica­go, and the Bay Area.

Yet most Amer­i­cans still con­ceive of ramen as the pack of sea­son­ing and dehy­drat­ed instant noo­dles that have long sus­tained broke artists and col­lege stu­dents.

Add incar­cer­at­ed per­sons to the list of pack­aged ramen’s most ardent con­sumers.

In the above episode of Vox’s series, The Goods, we learn how those ubiq­ui­tous cel­lo­phane pack­ages have out­stripped cig­a­rettes and postage stamps as the pre­ferred form of prison cur­ren­cy.

Ramen is durable, portable, pack­aged in stan­dard units, avail­able in the prison com­mis­sary, and high­ly prized by those with a deep need to pad their chow hall meals.

Ramen can be used to pay for cloth­ing and hygiene prod­ucts, or ser­vices like laun­dry, bunk clean­ing, dic­ta­tion, or cus­tom illus­tra­tion. Gam­blers can use it in lieu of chips.

Ramen’s sta­tus as the pre­ferred form of exchange also speaks to a sharp decline in the quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty of food in Amer­i­can penal insti­tu­tions.

Ethno­g­ra­ph­er Michael Gib­son-Light, who spent a year study­ing home­grown mon­e­tary prac­tices among incar­cer­at­ed pop­u­la­tions, notes that slashed prison bud­gets have cre­at­ed a cul­ture of “puni­tive fru­gal­i­ty.”

Called upon to mod­el a demon­stra­bly tough on crime stance and cut back on expen­di­tures, the insti­tu­tions are unof­fi­cial­ly shunt­ing many of their tra­di­tion­al costs onto the pris­on­ers them­selves.

In response, those on the inside have piv­ot­ed to edi­ble cur­ren­cy:

What we are see­ing is a col­lec­tive response — across inmate pop­u­la­tions and secu­ri­ty lev­els, across prison cliques and racial groups, and even across states — to changes and cut­backs in prison food services…The form of mon­ey is not some­thing that changes often or eas­i­ly, even in the prison under­ground econ­o­my; it takes a major issue or shock to ini­ti­ate such a change. The use of cig­a­rettes as mon­ey in U.S. pris­ons hap­pened in Amer­i­can Civ­il War mil­i­tary pris­ons and like­ly far ear­li­er. The fact that this prac­tice has sud­den­ly changed has poten­tial­ly seri­ous impli­ca­tions.

Ramen may be a rel­a­tive­ly new devel­op­ment in the prison land­scape, but culi­nary exper­i­men­ta­tion behind bars is not. From Pruno prison wine to Martha Stewart’s prison grounds crabap­ple jel­ly, it’s a noth­ing ven­tured, noth­ing gained type of deal. Work with what you’ve got.

Gus­ta­vo “Goose” Alvarez, who appears in Vox’s video, col­lect­ed a num­ber of the most adven­tur­ous recipes in his book, Prison Ramen: Recipes and Sto­ries from Behind Bars. Any­one can bring some vari­ety on the spur of the moment by sprin­kling some of your ramen’s sea­son­ing pack­et into your drink­ing water, but amass­ing the ingre­di­ents for an ambi­tious dish like Orange Porkies — chili ramen plus white rice plus ½ bag of pork skins plus orange-fla­vored punch — takes patience and per­se­ver­ance.

Alvarez’s Egg Ramen Sal­ad Sand­wich recipe earns praise from actor Shia LeBoeuf, whose time served is both mul­ti­ple and min­i­mal.

Some­one serv­ing a longer sen­tence has a more com­pelling rea­son to search for the ramen-cen­tered sense of har­mo­ny and well­be­ing on dis­play in Tam­popo, the first “ramen west­ern”:

Appre­ci­ate its gestalt. Savor the aro­mas.

Joe Guer­rero, host of YouTube’s After­Pris­on­Show, is not immune to the plea­sures of some of his ramen-based con­coc­tions, below, despite being on the out­side for sev­er­al years now.

You’re free to wrin­kle your nose at the thought of snack­ing on a crum­bled brick of uncooked ramen, but Guer­rero points out that some­one serv­ing a long sen­tence craves vari­ety in any form they can get. Expe­ri­enc­ing it can tap into the same sense of pride as self-gov­er­nance.

Guerrero’s recipes require a microwave (and a block of ramen).

Even if you’re not par­tic­u­lar­ly keen on eat­ing the fin­ished prod­uct, there’s a sci­ence project appeal to his Ramen Noo­dle Cook­ie. It calls for no addi­tion­al  ingre­di­ents, just ten min­utes cook­ing time, an out­ra­geous prospect in a com­mu­nal set­ting with only one microwave.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Prop­er Way to Eat Ramen: A Med­i­ta­tion from the Clas­sic Japan­ese Com­e­dy Tam­popo (1985)

What Goes Into Ramen Noo­dles, and What Hap­pens When Ramen Noo­dles Go Into You

Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki Shows Us How to Make Instant Ramen

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