An Aging Louis Armstrong Sings “What a Wonderful World” in 1967, During the Vietnam War & The Civil Rights Struggle

in Jazz, Life, Music | May 1st, 2017

It’s not uncom­mon to have a knee jerk response to Bob Thiele and George David Weiss’ now-ubiq­ui­tous “What a Won­der­ful World.”

The qual­i­ty of your reac­tion is like­ly deter­mined by your world­view.

A misty-eyed bride-to-be brows­ing tunes for her upcom­ing reception’s father-daugh­ter dance will not be com­ing at things from the same angle as the direc­tors of Bowl­ing for Columbine, Good Morn­ing, Viet­nam, and—unexpectedly—Mada­gas­car.

The first ver­sion, sung by an aging Louis Arm­strong, remains defin­i­tive, though it was dis­missed at first by record execs, who hoped for anoth­er rol­lick­ing chart top­per along in the “Hel­lo, Dol­ly!” mod­el.

As Jack Doyle notes on the Pop His­to­ry Dig, Arm­strong dug the song, and per­formed it often, hop­ing to strike a chord of hope and opti­mism dur­ing a peri­od of great civ­il unrest:

Seems to me it ain’t the world that’s so bad but what we’re doing to it, and all I’m say­ing is: see what a won­der­ful world it would be if only we’d give it a chance. Love, baby, love.  That’s the secret…

The song’s white authors shared his view, and hoped his crossover appeal would pro­mote feel­ings of racial har­mo­ny on all sides of the record-buy­ing pub­lic. It was a hit in the UK, but a slow starter in the US, not real­ly catch­ing on until its appear­ance on Good Morn­ing, Viet­nam’s sound­track (1987).

Half a cen­tu­ry after its release, “What a Won­der­ful World” has entered the pan­theon, as any­one with a tele­vi­sion and ears can attest.

Its sim­ple lyrics involv­ing ros­es, rain­bows, and babies have result­ed in a num­ber of hideous­ly syrupy cov­ers. With so many choic­es, it’s almost impos­si­ble to pick a least-favorite. Their gooey­ness does a dis­ser­vice to the pow­er of the orig­i­nal.

What’s so poignant about the per­for­mance, above, are the moments where the dark­ness cuts through the trea­cle, ever so briefly. Check out Armstrong’s expres­sions at :25, :50, and 1:49, and inter­pret it how you will.

It’s worth not­ing that the night­ly news was monop­o­lized by reports of the war in Viet­nam and the strug­gle for civ­il rights at home. Arm­strong’s health was in decline. The real­i­ties of his own New Orleans child­hood were far more com­plex than the cray­on-bright vision paint­ed by the lyrics.

A mon­tage of bomb­ings and peace­ful demon­stra­tors being stomped under­foot would’ve seemed pre­ma­ture at such an ear­ly stage in the song’s his­to­ry, so Arm­strong smiled through, as he laid the ground­work for lat­er per­form­ers’ lay­ered inter­pre­ta­tions. Some of the ones we find most com­pelling are below:

Nick Cave & the Pogues’ Shane Mac­Gowan unhap­pi­ness has them reel­ing off their stools, even as they shake hands to com­ic effect.

Ministry’s sin­is­ter take opens with a love­ly lone­ly piano that, like the listener’s eardrums, gets plowed under by a mas­sive attack of indus­tri­al noise.

Joey Ramone had already been diag­nosed with the can­cer that cut his life short when he record­ed his ver­sion, that ends on a note of unabashed pop-punk joy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Clean­est Record­ings of 1920s Louis Arm­strong Songs You’ll Ever Hear

The Only Known Footage of Louis Arm­strong in a Record­ing Stu­dio: Watch the Recent­ly-Dis­cov­ered Film (1959)

“What a Won­der­ful World,” Louis Armstrong’s Clas­sic, Per­formed with Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

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

Montblanc Unveils a New Line of Miles Davis Pens … and (Kind of) Blue Ink

in Business, Music | May 1st, 2017

Got spare cash burn­ing a hole in your pock­et? An urge to com­mod­i­fy your favorite jazz artist? The need for an admit­ted­ly beau­ti­ful writ­ing instru­ment? All of the above, you say? Good, because Mont­blanc recent­ly unveiled a new line of Miles Davis pens. They’ve got the Miles Davis ball­point pen, foun­tain pen, and roller pen. But sure­ly the pièce de résis­tance is the Miles Davis Lim­it­ed Edi­tion 1926 Foun­tain Pen, which “tells the sto­ry of one of the great­est jazz per­son­al­i­ties.” “The sur­face of the cap and bar­rel is engraved with sym­bol­ic motifs that refer to the five major jazz peri­ods he helped to cre­ate.” What’s more, “a star, set with a dia­mond, is engraved on the bar­rel, and Miles Davis’s famous album Kind of Blue is reflect­ed in the blue col­or on the cone.” Swank.

And what’s a pen with­out ink? It’s blue, of course. Get a close up view of that here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Night When Miles Davis Opened for the Grate­ful Dead in 1970: Hear the Com­plete Record­ings

Watch Miles Davis Impro­vise Music for Ele­va­tor to the Gal­lows, Louis Malle’s New Wave Thriller (1958)

The Paint­ings of Miles Davis

The Career of Paul Thomas Anderson: A 5‑Part Video Essay on the Auteur of Boogie Nights, Punch-Drunk Love, The Master, and More

in Film | May 1st, 2017

For at least the past decade and a half, each of Paul Thomas Ander­son­’s movies has arrived in the­aters as a major cin­e­mat­ic event. By pure chance, I got an espe­cial­ly pow­er­ful taste of this a few years ago in Los Ange­les when, after a revival screen­ing of The Shin­ing, we in the audi­ence were told to stay right there in our seats for the rest of the night’s sur­prise dou­ble-fea­ture, the sec­ond half being Ander­son­’s as yet unre­leased and almost com­plete­ly unseen The Mas­ter — pro­ject­ed in 70-mil­lime­ter. Need­less to say, nobody left, so pal­pa­ble was the desire to expe­ri­ence the next phase of the cin­e­mat­ic vision of the auteur who has, to that point, giv­en us Hard Eight, Boo­gie Nights, Mag­no­lia, Punch-Drunk Love, and There Will Be Blood.

So what makes Ander­son­’s cin­e­mat­ic vision so com­pelling? Video essay­ist Cameron Beyl, cre­ator of The Direc­tors Series (whose explo­rations of Stan­ley Kubrick, David Finch­er, and the Coen broth­ers we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture), attempts an answer in this analy­sis of Ander­son­’s films, each of whose chap­ters reflect a chap­ter of the auteur’s jour­ney to his cur­rent promi­nence. The first of them finds him, at sev­en­teen after a child­hood in the San Fer­nan­do Val­ley, shoot­ing a porn-star mock­u­men­tary called The Dirk Dig­gler Sto­ry, ele­ments of which would lat­er shape his 1997 porn-indus­try epic Boo­gie Nights. Hav­ing ditched film school after just two days, the slight­ly old­er Ander­son set out to make Cig­a­rettes & Cof­fee, a short tale of low life told in high style that would expand into his first fea­ture, the mis­treat­ed but redis­cov­ered Hard Eight.

Beyl’s minis­eries of video essays, which runs near­ly three hours in total, con­tin­ues from Ander­son­’s ear­ly Sun­dance suc­cess (a suc­cess that did much to raise the pro­file of the fes­ti­val itself) to his much larg­er-bud­get “Cal­i­for­nia chron­i­cles” Boo­gie Nights and Mag­no­lia, his “con­cept come­dies” Punch-Drunk Love and var­i­ous oth­er shorts made at the time, his “por­traits of pow­er” There Will Be Blood and The Mas­ter, and his ascent to “high­er states” in the Thomas Pyn­chon adap­ta­tion Inher­ent Vice and the doc­u­men­tary Jun­jun.

Beyl describes Ander­son as unde­ni­ably “born to be a film­mak­er,” and so it stands to rea­son that, though his favorite themes includ­ing fam­i­ly, pow­er, and sex­u­al dys­func­tion remain con­stant, each new phase of the direc­tor’s life results in a new phase in his film­mak­ing — or indeed, the oth­er way around. And so every­one who takes film seri­ous­ly eager­ly awaits his next chap­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Hid­den Secrets in “Day­dream­ing,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s New Radio­head Music Video

Two Short Films on Cof­fee and Cig­a­rettes from Jim Jar­musch & Paul Thomas Ander­son

What Makes a Coen Broth­ers Movie a Coen Broth­ers Movie? Find Out in a 4‑Hour Video Essay on Bar­ton Fink, The Big Lebows­ki, Far­go, No Coun­try for Old Men & More

Dis­cov­er the Life & Work of Stan­ley Kubrick in a Sweep­ing Three-Hour Video Essay

How Did David Finch­er Become the Kubrick of Our Time? A New, 3.5 Hour Series of Video Essays Explains

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

An Animation of The Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning” … for Your Sunday Morning

in Animation, Music | April 30th, 2017

50 years ago, The Vel­vet Under­ground released their first album The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico. And while the album nev­er topped the charts, its influ­ence you can’t deny. In a 1982 inter­view with Musi­cian Mag­a­zine, Bri­an Eno famous­ly said:

I was talk­ing to Lou Reed the oth­er day and he said that the first Vel­vet Under­ground record sold 30,000 copies in the first five years. The sales have picked up in the past few years, but I mean, that record was such an impor­tant record for so many peo­ple. I think every­one who bought one of those 30,000 copies start­ed a band! So I con­sole myself think­ing that some things gen­er­ate their rewards in a sec­ond-hand way.

“Sun­day Morn­ing” was the last song VU record­ed for that album–a last ditch attempt to write a hit. Accord­ing to Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, the band’s patron, sug­gest­ed the theme for the song: “Andy said, ‘Why don’t you just make it a song about para­noia?’ I thought that was great so I came up with ‘Watch out, the world’s behind you, there’s always some­one watch­ing you,’ which I feel is the ulti­mate para­noid state­ment in that the world cares enough to watch you.” Writes Joe Har­vard, in his short book on the album, the song “calls to mind a sleepy, qui­et Sun­day so per­fect­ly that you can lis­ten to the song repeat­ed­ly before reg­is­ter­ing what it’s real­ly about: para­noia and dis­place­ment.”

Above, you watch a new ani­ma­tion cre­at­ed to com­mem­o­rate the 50th anniver­sary of The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico. Cre­at­ed by James Eads and Chris McDaniel, it’ll hope­ful­ly get your Sun­day under­way.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Sym­pho­ny of Sound (1966): Vel­vet Under­ground Impro­vis­es, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

The Vel­vet Under­ground & Andy Warhol Stage Pro­to-Punk Per­for­mance Art: Dis­cov­er the Explod­ing Plas­tic Inevitable (1966)

Hear Lost Acetate Ver­sions of Songs from The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

Inspiration from Charles Bukowski: You Might Be Old, Your Life May Be “Crappy,” But You Can Still Make Good Art

in Animation, Life, Literature, Poetry, Writing | April 28th, 2017

Now more than ever, there’s tremen­dous pres­sure to make it big while you’re young.

Pity the 31-year-old who fails to make it onto a 30-under-30 list…

The soon-to-grad­u­ate high school­er passed over for YouTube star­dom…

The great hordes who creep into mid­dle age with­out so much as a TED Talk to their names…

Social media def­i­nite­ly mag­ni­fies the sen­sa­tion that an unac­cept­able num­ber of our peers have been grant­ed first-class cab­ins aboard a ship that’s sailed with­out us. If we weren’t so demor­al­ized, we’d sue Insta­gram for cre­at­ing the impres­sion that every­one else’s #Van­Life is lead­ing to book deals and pro­files in The New York­er.

Don’t despair, dear read­er. Charles Bukows­ki is about to make your day from beyond the grave.

In 1993, at the age of 73, the late writer and self-described “spoiled old toad,” took a break from record­ing the audio­book of Run With the Hunt­ed to reflect upon his “crap­py” life.

Some of these thoughts made it into Drew Christie’s ani­ma­tion, above, a reminder that the smoothest road isn’t always nec­es­sar­i­ly the rich­est one.

In ser­vice of his ill-pay­ing muse, Bukows­ki logged decades in unglam­orous jobs —dish­wash­er, truck­driv­er and loader, gas sta­tion atten­dant, stock boy, ware­house­man, ship­ping clerk, park­ing lot atten­dant, Red Cross order­ly, ele­va­tor oper­a­tor, and most noto­ri­ous­ly, postal car­ri­er and clerk. These gigs gave him plen­ty of mate­r­i­al, the sort of real world expe­ri­ence that eludes those upon whom lit­er­ary fame and for­tune smiles ear­ly.

(His alco­holic mis­ad­ven­tures pro­vid­ed yet more mate­r­i­al, earn­ing him such hon­orifics as the ”poet lau­re­ate of L.A. lowlife” and “enfant ter­ri­ble of the Meat School poets.”)

One might also take com­fort in hear­ing a writer as prodi­gious as Bukows­ki reveal­ing that he didn’t hold him­self to the sort of dai­ly writ­ing reg­i­men that can be dif­fi­cult to achieve when one is jug­gling day jobs, stu­dent loans, and/or a fam­i­ly. Also appre­ci­at­ed is the far-from-cur­so­ry nod he accords the ther­a­peu­tic ben­e­fits that are avail­able to all those who write, regard­less of any pub­lic or finan­cial recog­ni­tion:

Three or four nights out of sev­en. If I don’t get those in, I don’t act right. I feel sick. I get very depressed. It’s a release. It’s my psy­chi­a­trist, let­ting this shit out. I’m lucky I get paid for it. I’d do it for noth­ing. In fact, I’d pay to do it. Here, I’ll give you ten thou­sand a year if you’ll let me write. 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4 Hours of Charles Bukowski’s Riotous Read­ings and Rants

Hear 130 Min­utes of Charles Bukowski’s First-Ever Record­ed Read­ings (1968)

Rare Record­ings of Bur­roughs, Bukows­ki, Gins­berg & More Now Avail­able in a Dig­i­tal Archive Cre­at­ed by the Mary­land Insti­tute Col­lege of Art (MICA)

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

Metamorfosis: Franz Kafka’s Best-Known Short Story Gets Adapted Into a Tim Burtonesque Spanish Short Film

in Film, Literature | April 28th, 2017

In one sense, giv­en their spare set­tings and alle­gor­i­cal feel, the sto­ries of Franz Kaf­ka could play out any­where. But in anoth­er, one can only with dif­fi­cul­ty sep­a­rate those sto­ries from the late 19th- and ear­ly 2oth-cen­tu­ry cen­tral Europe in which Kaf­ka him­self spent his short life. This simul­ta­ne­ous con­nec­tion to place and place­less­ness (and also, per David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s inter­pre­ta­tion, play­ful­ness, or at least humor of some kind) has made Kafka’s work appeal­ing mate­r­i­al indeed for ani­ma­tors, some of whose work we’ve fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture before.

When film­mak­ers try their hands at live-action Kaf­ka adap­ta­tions, though, they tend to find them­selves per­form­ing acts of not just artis­tic but cul­tur­al trans­plan­ta­tion. Just last year we post­ed Dominic Allen’s Two Men, an award-win­ning short film that relo­cates Kafka’s para­ble “Passers-by” to a remote sec­tion of West­ern Aus­tralia.

Work­ing with a much longer and bet­ter-known piece of the Kaf­ka canon, direc­tor Fran Estévez’s Meta­mor­fo­s­is brings the tale of Gre­gor Sam­sa’s sud­den trans­for­ma­tion into a large insect to Spain — or into the Span­ish lan­guage, any­way.

The recip­i­ent of quite a few awards itself in South Amer­i­ca and Europe (includ­ing a fes­ti­val in Kafka’s own birth­place, the cur­rent Czech Repub­lic), Meta­mor­fo­s­is com­bines Kafka’s still-star­tling man-turned-bug first-per­son nar­ra­tion with both stark black-and-white footage and illus­tra­tions to cre­ate just the right claus­tro­pho­bic, askew atmos­phere. The set design, which at cer­tain moments feels right out of ear­ly Tim Bur­ton, under­scores the fairy-tale aspect of this grim work of imag­i­na­tion. But then, at the very end, the aes­thet­ic ceil­ing lifts, widen­ing the view­er’s per­spec­tive on not just the movie’s fore­go­ing six­teen min­utes but on the nature of The Meta­mor­pho­sis, Kafka’s orig­i­nal sto­ry, itself — though, alas, things still don’t end par­tic­u­lar­ly well for poor old Gre­gor Sam­sa.

Meta­mor­fo­s­is will be added to our list, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Read Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis

Four Franz Kaf­ka Ani­ma­tions: Enjoy Cre­ative Ani­mat­ed Shorts from Poland, Japan, Rus­sia & Cana­da

Franz Kaf­ka Sto­ry Gets Adapt­ed into an Award-Win­ning Aus­tralian Short Film: Watch Two Men

Franz Kaf­ka Says the Insect in The Meta­mor­pho­sis Should Nev­er Be Drawn; Vladimir Nabokov Draws It Any­way

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The First 100 Days of Fascist Germany: A New Online Project from Emory University

in Current Affairs, History | April 28th, 2017

From Emory Uni­ver­si­ty comes The First 100 Days of Fas­cist Ger­many, an attempt to doc­u­ment online what hap­pened on each day–from Jan­u­ary 30, 1933 through May 9, 1933–when Hitler was named Reich­skan­zler of Ger­many.

As you can per­haps imag­ine, the moti­va­tion for the project isn’t entire­ly divorced from cur­rent events. The grad stu­dents behind The First 100 Days explain:

Dur­ing the high­ly con­tentious polit­i­cal cli­mate in this coun­try, the terms “fas­cism” and “Nazi Ger­many” have been tossed around quite freely by both sides of the polit­i­cal spec­trum. As a response to this and in an effort to pro­vide some clar­i­ty of what fas­cism in Nazi Ger­many actu­al­ly looked like, we at the Emory Uni­ver­si­ty Ger­man Depart­ment ini­ti­at­ed a research project that aims to doc­u­ment the first 100 days of Nation­al Social­ism- from the day that Adolf Hitler was named Reich­skan­zler on Jan­u­ary 30, 1933 until May 9, 1933.

They con­tin­ue:

The gen­er­al plan for our project is that our research team will work its way through the 100 days, inves­ti­gat­ing and doc­u­ment­ing the events of each day and then post­ing the find­ings on a dai­ly basis for pub­lic con­sump­tion.

As the dai­ly cal­en­dar shows, Hitler did­n’t waste a lot of time. By Day 51, Dachau–one of the first con­cen­tra­tion camps–opened and received its first pris­on­ers, notes Emory News. By Day 60, all new sto­ries crit­i­cal of the gov­ern­ment were cen­sored. And, by Day 88, the press expelled from its ranks all Marx­ists and Jews. That was just the begin­ning.

Mean­while, on Day 88 over here, Trump’s ini­tia­tives (some rel­a­tive­ly innocu­ous, some alarm­ing) have met civ­il, judi­cial and polit­i­cal resis­tance, or col­lapsed under their own weight. The con­cern of Jan­u­ary has giv­en way to com­e­dy in April. So far, it’s more farce than fas­cism:

But don’t get com­pla­cent, ter­ror might be the oper­a­tive word in May.

You can learn more about Emory’s his­tor­i­cal project here.

via John McMur­trie

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:

Har­vard Stu­dents Launch a Free Course on How to Resist Trump

Hitler Was ‘Blitzed’ On Cocaine & Opi­ates Dur­ing World War II: Hear a Wide-Rang­ing Inter­view with Best-Sell­ing Author Nor­man Ohler

Fritz Lang Tells the Riv­et­ing Sto­ry of the Day He Met Joseph Goebbels and Then High-Tailed It Out of Ger­many

How Did Hitler Rise to Pow­er? : New TED-ED Ani­ma­tion Pro­vides a Case Study in How Fas­cists Get Demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly Elect­ed

The New York Times’ First Pro­file of Hitler: His Anti-Semi­tism Is Not as “Gen­uine or Vio­lent” as It Sounds (1922)

Leni Riefenstahl’s Tri­umph of the Will Wasn’t a Cin­e­mat­ic Mas­ter­piece; It Was a Stag­ger­ing­ly Effec­tive Piece of Pro­pa­gan­da

Artist is Creating a Parthenon Made of 100,000 Banned Books: A Monument to Democracy & Intellectual Freedom

in Art, Current Affairs, Politics | April 27th, 2017

With the rise of Far Right can­di­dates in Europe and in Amer­i­ca, along with creep­ing dic­ta­tor­ship in Turkey and author­i­tar­i­an­ism in the Philip­pines, the idea of democ­ra­cy and free­dom of speech feels under threat more than ever. While we don’t talk about polit­i­cal solu­tions here on Open Cul­ture, we do believe in the pow­er of art to illu­mi­nate.

Argen­tine artist Mar­ta Min­u­jín is cre­at­ing a large-scale art­work called The Parthenon of Books that will be con­struct­ed on Friedrich­splatz in Kas­sel, Ger­many, and will be con­struct­ed from as many as 100,000 banned books from all over the world.

The loca­tion has been cho­sen for its his­tor­i­cal impor­tance. In 1933, the Nazis burned two-thou­sand books there dur­ing the so-called “Aktion wider den undeutschen Geist” (Cam­paign against the Un-Ger­man Spir­it), destroy­ing books by Com­mu­nists, Jews, and paci­fists, along with any oth­ers deemed un-Ger­man.

Min­u­jín chose the Parthenon—one of the great struc­tures of Ancient Greece—for its con­tin­u­ing sym­bol­ism of the endur­ing pow­er of democ­ra­cy through­out the ages.

When it comes to mate­ri­als, she using a list of 100,000 books that have been, or still are, banned in coun­tries across the world, going all the way back to the year 1500. You can browse that list here, but for less eye-strain, try this short­er list of 170 or so titles. New titles can be sug­gest­ed for the project here.

Some of the books that have been banned over the years include Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Lit­tle Prince (banned in Argenti­na), Lewis Car­rol­l’s Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land (banned in Chi­na), and Nor­man Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead (banned in Cana­da).

Min­u­jín con­struct­ed a sim­i­lar Parthenon in 1983 after the fall of her country’s dic­ta­tor­ship. The orig­i­nal El Partenón de libros fea­tured the books that the for­mer gov­ern­ment had banned, and, at the end of the instal­la­tion, Min­u­jín let the pub­lic take what they want­ed home. (She will be allow­ing the same thing to hap­pen this time.)

Her peo­ple, as she says in the video above, didn’t know what democ­ra­cy was after years of mil­i­tary rule. We might be on the oppo­site side of the spec­trum: we won’t know what democ­ra­cy is until we lose it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

It’s Banned Books Week: Lis­ten to Allen Gins­berg Read His Famous­ly Banned Poem, “Howl,” in San Fran­cis­co, 1956

John Waters Reads Steamy Scene from Lady Chatterley’s Lover for Banned Books Week (NSFW)
Read 14 Great Banned & Cen­sored Nov­els Free Online: For Banned Books Week 2014

The Cov­er of George Orwell’s 1984 Becomes Less Cen­sored with Wear and Tear

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

George Saunders Tries to Order One Mousetrap Over The Phone

in Random | April 27th, 2017

This adven­ture in mod­ern shop­ping is brought to you by Click­hole.

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:

How to Tell a Good Sto­ry, as Explained by George Saun­ders, Ira Glass, Ken Burns, Scott Simon, Cather­ine Burns & Oth­ers

George Saun­ders Demys­ti­fies the Art of Sto­ry­telling in a Short Ani­mat­ed Doc­u­men­tary

10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, Author of Tenth of Decem­ber, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

The News Is Broken, and Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales Plans to Fix It With His New Site, Wikitribune

in Media | April 27th, 2017

“The news is bro­ken and we can fix it.” That’s the idea dri­ving the cre­ation of Wik­itri­bune, a news plat­form being built by Wikipedia founder Jim­my Wales.

Bor­row­ing tools and con­cepts from the influ­en­tial online ency­clo­pe­dia, Wik­itri­bune will be free and sup­port­ed by read­ers, not ads. It will fea­ture pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ists and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, work­ing side by side, to pro­duce fact-checked jour­nal­ism that’s read­i­ly sup­port­ed by evi­dence and sources. And any­one can flag mis­takes or sub­mit revi­sions for review.

Watch Wales out­line the vision for Wik­itri­bune in the Kir­by Fer­gu­son-made video above. Then, con­sid­er mak­ing a finan­cial con­tri­bu­tion to the new news plat­form here. They’re now rais­ing mon­ey to get oper­a­tions start­ed and hire 10 jour­nal­ists.

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