An Animated Introduction to Voltaire: Enlightenment Philosopher of Pluralism & Tolerance

in Animation, Philosophy | December 29th, 2016

Got­tfried Wil­helm Leib­niz has the dis­tinc­tion of hold­ing promi­nent places in both math­e­mat­ics and phi­los­o­phy. A con­tem­po­rary of Isaac New­ton, a rival, and Baruch Spin­oza, an acquain­tance, Leib­niz will for­ev­er be asso­ci­at­ed with Enlight­en­ment Ratio­nal­ism. But thanks to French philoso­pher and writer Voltaire, he will also be asso­ci­at­ed with a strain of thought gen­er­al­ly tak­en much less seri­ous­ly: the phi­los­o­phy of Opti­mism.

In the Theod­i­cy, the only philo­soph­i­cal book he pub­lished in his life­time, Leib­niz attempts to rec­on­cile divine prov­i­dence, human free­dom, and the nature of evil. He con­cludes, more or less, that the world is a per­fect bal­ance between the three. As “an absolute­ly per­fect being,” God must have made the best pos­si­ble world, he rea­soned, and many con­ser­v­a­tive the­olo­gians then and now have agreed. But not Voltaire.

Draw­ing on a diverse body of genres—travel nar­ra­tive, Bil­dungsro­man, picaresque novel—the French writer’s rol­lick­ing satir­i­cal novel­la Can­dide, or the Opti­mist presents us with a com­i­cal­ly grotesque and hyper­bol­ic world that is nonethe­less much more like the vio­lent, chaot­ic one we actu­al­ly expe­ri­ence than like Leibniz’s ide­al­iza­tion. The novel’s hero, a gullible naïf, traipses through Europe and the Amer­i­c­as with his men­tor, Pro­fes­sor Pan­gloss, “the great­est philoso­pher of the Holy Roman Empire.” A broad car­i­ca­ture of Leib­niz, Pan­gloss insists—as the two run into dev­as­tat­ing earth­quakes, war, tor­ture, can­ni­bal­ism, vene­re­al dis­ease, and yet more earthquakes—that they live in “the best of all pos­si­ble worlds.”

The asser­tion comes to seem increas­ing­ly, out­ra­geous­ly absurd and will­ful­ly obtuse. In the end, the var­i­ous char­ac­ters come around to the idea that their grand meta­phys­i­cal ques­tions have no real pur­chase on human exis­tence, and that they would do best to prac­tice a kind of qui­etism, set­tling down to small farms to, as Can­dide says, “cul­ti­vate our gar­den.” The response does not enjoin us to pas­siv­i­ty, but rather to the use of our abil­i­ties for pur­pose­ful work rather than con­tentious spec­u­la­tion or in the ser­vice of blind faith. From his start as a writer, Voltaire fierce­ly attacked “fanati­cism, idol­a­try, super­sti­tion,” as Alain de Bot­ton says in the School of Life intro­duc­tion to Voltaire above, as the basis of peo­ple killing each oth­er “to defend some bit of reli­gious doc­trine which they scarce­ly under­stand.”

Voltaire found the phe­nom­e­non of reli­gious war “repel­lant,” and his age had seen its share of war. In the his­tor­i­cal back­ground of Can­dide’s com­po­si­tion were the Sev­en Years’ War, the glob­al impe­r­i­al con­flict that claimed the lives of eight mil­lion, and the Thir­ty Years’ War: the 17th cen­tu­ry reli­gious con­flict that spread vio­lent death, famine, and dis­ease all over the Euro­pean con­ti­nent. In addi­tion to these appalling events, Voltaire and his con­tem­po­raries were left reel­ing from the 1755 Lis­bon earth­quake, which his­to­ri­ans esti­mate may have killed upwards of 100,000 peo­ple. This nat­ur­al evil was whol­ly unre­lat­ed to any kind of human misbehavior—as Voltaire bit­ter­ly argued in his “Poem on the Lis­bon Dis­as­ter”—and so made Opti­mistic phi­los­o­phy and the­ol­o­gy seem cru­el and ridicu­lous.

The bawdy, bloody, and hilar­i­ous Can­dide has remained the most inci­sive lit­er­ary rep­re­sen­ta­tion of dis­il­lu­sion­ment in “best of all pos­si­ble worlds” theod­i­cy. It is by far Voltaire’s most pop­u­lar work—a best­seller from the day that it appeared in 1759—and is still giv­en to stu­dents to help them under­stand the philo­soph­i­cal Enlight­en­ment, or what is often called, as de Bot­ton says, “The Age of Voltaire.” With more clar­i­ty than even Jonathan Swift’s satires, Voltaire helps us grasp and remem­ber the major his­tor­i­cal, reli­gious, and philo­soph­i­cal con­flicts of the time. A “mas­ter at pop­u­lar­iz­ing dif­fi­cult mate­r­i­al,” Voltaire also used lit­er­ary tech­niques to explain the ideas of con­tem­po­rary thinkers like Locke and New­ton.

The anec­dote of the apple falling on Newton’s head, for exam­ple, “is due entire­ly to Voltaire,” who heard it from Newton’s niece and includ­ed it in his Let­ters Con­cern­ing the Eng­lish Nation. This work, com­posed dur­ing his two-year stay in Eng­land, implic­it­ly cri­tiques the intol­er­ance of French society—causing the book to be banned—and makes the case for some of the philoso­pher’s most cher­ished val­ues: plu­ral­ism, reli­gious tol­er­a­tion, mutu­al respect, and free inquiry. We find these ideals all through­out the works of Enlight­en­ment philoso­phers from all over the con­ti­nent, but nowhere do we find them artic­u­lat­ed with such force­ful wit and vivid style as in the work of Voltaire.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Voltaire: “Those Who Can Make You Believe Absur­di­ties, Can Make You Com­mit Atroc­i­ties”

Voltaire & the Lis­bon Earth­quake of 1755

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

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

Tuileries: The Coen Brothers’ Short Film About Steve Buscemi’s Very Bad Day in the Paris Metro

in Film | December 29th, 2016

All around the world, each pub­lic tran­sit sys­tem has its own rules. These come in both the offi­cial and unspo­ken vari­eties, the for­mer basi­cal­ly con­sis­tent from place to place, and the lat­ter usu­al­ly reflect­ing the mores of the soci­ety each sys­tem serves. The accept­abil­i­ty of talk­ing to one’s fel­low pas­sen­gers, for instance, tends to vary, and in some coun­tries even mak­ing eye con­tact counts as a no-no. You cer­tain­ly won’t try it in Paris after wit­ness­ing the con­se­quences when Steve Busce­mi breaks that rule in Tui­leries, this short direct­ed by the Coen broth­ers that first appeared in the anthol­o­gy film Paris, je t’aime.

“Paris is known as the City of Lights,” Buscemi’s appar­ent tourist reads in his guide­book as he sits await­ing a train in the sta­tion from which the film takes its name. “A city of cul­ture… of fine din­ing and mag­nif­i­cent archi­tec­ture. Paris is a city for lovers: lovers of art, lovers of his­to­ry, lovers of food, lovers of… love.”

Though he seems to be hav­ing a some­what less than love­ly time there, includ­ing get­ting pelt­ed by a pass­ing child’s spit­balls, he endures. Not five sec­onds after read­ing about the no-eye-con­tact cus­tom on Paris’ “rea­son­ably clean” sub­way (a laugh line for any Parisian) does he look fate­ful­ly up, catch­ing the eye of a girl across the tracks and send­ing her boyfriend into a jeal­ous rage.

For­eign­ers have long felt as intim­i­dat­ed by Paris as they’ve admired it, a mix­ture of emo­tions the Coen Broth­ers play on with­out leav­ing the Tui­leries plat­form, as does Alexan­der Payne in the alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence of the Amer­i­can alone in the City of Lights he essays at the end of Paris, je t’aime. In the decade since the movie came out, we’ve seen a few oth­er city-themed anthol­o­gy films, includ­ing New York, I Love You, Rio, Eu Te Amo, and the unre­lat­ed Tokyo!, albeit none with a sec­ond con­tri­bu­tion by the Coen broth­ers or a sec­ond appear­ance by Busce­mi — whose char­ac­ter may have yet to recov­er from from his trip to Paris any­way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Coen Broth­ers Sto­ry­board­ed Blood Sim­ple Down to a Tee (1984)

How the Coen Broth­ers Put Their Remark­able Stamp on the “Shot Reverse Shot,” the Fun­da­men­tal Cin­e­mat­ic Tech­nique

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

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

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.

Watch David Bowie & Marianne Faithfull Rehearse and Sing Sonny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe” (1973)

in Music, Television | December 28th, 2016

It was Octo­ber 1973 and three months ear­li­er David Bowie had stood before his fans at the Ham­mer­smith Odeon and announced–to the sur­prise of his band–that he was effec­tive­ly end­ing Zig­gy Star­dust and the Spi­ders from Mars. His alter-ego was done, and he had to break up the band.

But there would be one final swan song, a live spe­cial fea­tur­ing Bowie, set in a futur­is­tic cabaret, to be called The 1980 Floor Show (a pun on Orwell’s 1984, which the singer was try­ing to adapt into a con­cept album, and which would lat­er morph into Dia­mond Dogs). The loca­tion would be the famous Lon­don night­club the Mar­quee, but the show would be shot for Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion and a late-night rock and pop vari­ety show called The Mid­night Spe­cial, air­ing on NBC Fri­day nights after John­ny Carson’s The Tonight Show.

British fans who couldn’t make the film­ing were annoyed, and to this day, the full broad­cast has not been shown in the UK, and is still not offi­cial­ly avail­able.

Invi­ta­tion only, the audi­ence com­prised mem­bers of the David Bowie fan club, the rock press, musi­cians, and oth­er lucky peo­ple. This would turn out to be the very last time that Mick Ron­son and Trevor Bold­er would play with Bowie as the Spi­ders. Join­ing the band was pianist Mike Gar­son, who had been a part of the Zig­gy tour and the recent­ly released Aladdin Sane, and whose sound is unmis­tak­able here. Bowie also has three black back-up singers, a first sign of the sounds he would explore in Young Amer­i­cans. And he invit­ed The Trog­gs to play their hit, “Wild Thing.”

Unlike a con­cert run-through, the three days of film­ing fea­tured each num­ber rehearsed sep­a­rate­ly and filmed mul­ti­ple times. For one thing, it allowed Bowie the chance to change cos­tumes for each song, wear­ing some of the most out­landish out­fits of his Zig­gy era, designed by Fred­die Bur­ret­ti.

By 1973, Mar­i­anne Faith­full had gone from Mick Jagger’s girl­friend and pop chanteuse to a hero­in addict, but Bowie’s invi­ta­tion to join him helped her on her road to recov­ery. She sang “As Tears Go By” solo for the show wear­ing an angel­ic white dress and then “20th Cen­tu­ry Blues” dressed in a red dress, wear­ing a tow­er­ing pur­ple feath­er hat and backed by male dancers.

For the finale, Bowie joined her onstage. (You can watch their ulti­mate per­for­mance here.) Dressed as deca­dent nun with a ful­ly exposed back, Faith­full stood next to Bowie, dressed as “the Angel of Death” accord­ing to him, and had a go at the 1965 Son­ny and Cher song “I Got You Babe.” The two real­ly hadn’t rehearsed the song until that day. Faithfull’s voice was already head­ing towards the low, Nico-esque tones she’d devel­op lat­er in the decade. The video con­tains two full rehearsals of the song, a non-”Wild Thing” num­ber from the Trog­gs, and once again Bowie with “Space Odd­i­ty” and “I Can’t Explain.”

Also on the tape are intro­duc­tions from one Aman­da Lear, a vel­vet-voiced blonde who had a very intrigu­ing career–Sal­vador Dali pro­tege, Rolling Stone groupie, David Bowie lover, Ita­lo-dis­co star, nude mod­el, pos­si­ble trans­sex­u­al. So yes, a per­fect host for what was at that time both a high-water mark for glam rock and a vis­it to the future.

As we approach the one year anniver­sary of David Bowie’s death, which seemed to send the Grim Reaper on a killing spree, there’s plen­ty of the Star­man’s career to dis­cov­er and re-discover…and to be released.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jean-Luc Godard Shoots Mar­i­anne Faith­full Singing “As Tears Go By” (1966)

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

David Bowie Remem­bers His Zig­gy Star­dust Days in Ani­mat­ed Video

Lego Video Shows How David Bowie Almost Became “Cob­bler Bob,” Not “Aladdin Sane”

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.

Watch a Young Carrie Fisher (RIP) Audition for Star Wars (1975)

in Film | December 27th, 2016

Car­rie Fish­er, the actress who played Princess Leia in Star Wars, has died. She was only 60 years old.

Last week, she suf­fered a mas­sive heart attack on a flight from Lon­don to LA. News reports ini­tial­ly indi­cat­ed that her con­di­tion was improv­ing. But alas fate then moved things in anoth­er direc­tion.

Above, you can watch a young Car­rie Fisher–only 19 years old–audition for the part that made her famous. (On YouTube, see oth­er audi­tion footage fea­tur­ing Mark Hamill, Har­ri­son Ford, and Kurt Rus­sell.) Last month, while pro­mot­ing her brand new mem­oir The Princess Diarist, Fish­er talked with NPR’s Ter­ry Gross about the chal­lenge of mak­ing that first Star Wars film. “I think I sort of felt iso­lat­ed. I did­n’t real­ly have any­one. I did­n’t con­fide in men. [The cast and film­mak­ers were all men.] I did­n’t con­fide in any­one then.” “I was so inse­cure.” But she kept it well hid­den. Only poise and con­fi­dence are on dis­play here.

Note: You can down­load The Princess Diarist as a free audio­book from Audible.com if you take part in their no-strings-attached free tri­al pro­gram. Get more details on 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:

Hard­ware Wars: The Moth­er of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Prof­itable Short Film Ever Made)

The Com­plete Star Wars “Fil­mu­men­tary”: A 6‑Hour, Fan-Made Star Wars Doc­u­men­tary, with Behind-the-Scenes Footage & Com­men­tary

16 Great Star Wars Fan Films, Doc­u­men­taries & Video Essays to Get You Ready for Star Wars: The Force Awak­ens

Learn to Code with Star Wars: The Force Awak­ens and Minecraft

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films

When Ayn Rand Collected Social Security & Medicare, After Years of Opposing Benefit Programs

in Economics, Politics | December 27th, 2016

Image via YouTube, 1959 inter­view with Mike Wal­lace

A robust social safe­ty net can ben­e­fit both the indi­vid­u­als in a soci­ety and the soci­ety itself. Free of the fear of total impov­er­ish­ment and able to meet their basic needs, peo­ple have a bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ty to pur­sue long-term goals, to invent, cre­ate, and inno­vate. Of course, there are many who believe oth­er­wise. And there are some, includ­ing the acolytes of Ayn Rand, who believe as Rand did: that those who rely on social sys­tems are—to use her ugly term—“parasites,” and those who amass large amounts of pri­vate wealth are hero­ic super­men.

Rand dis­ci­ple Alan Greenspan, for exam­ple, ini­ti­at­ed the era of “Reaganomics” in the ear­ly 1980s by engi­neer­ing “an increase in the most regres­sive tax on the poor and mid­dle class,” writes Gary Weiss, “the Social Secu­ri­ty pay­roll tax—combined with a cut in ben­e­fits.” For Greenspan, “this was no con­tra­dic­tion. Social Secu­ri­ty was a sys­tem of altru­ism at its worst. Its ben­e­fi­cia­ries were loot­ers. Rais­ing their tax­es and cut­ting their ben­e­fits was no loss to soci­ety.”

One prob­lem with Rand’s rea­son­ing is this: whether “par­a­site” or titan of indus­try, none of us is any­thing more than human, sub­ject to the same kinds of cru­el twists of fate, the same exis­ten­tial uncer­tain­ty, the same ill­ness and dis­ease. Suf­fer­ing may be unequal­ly dis­trib­uted to a great degree by human agency, but nature and cir­cum­stance often have a way of evening the odds. Rand her­self expe­ri­enced such a lev­el­ing effect in her retire­ment. After under­go­ing surgery in 1974 for lung can­cer caused by her heavy smok­ing, she found her­self in strait­ened cir­cum­stances.

Two years lat­er, she was paired with social work­er Evva Pry­or, who gave an inter­view in 1998 about their rela­tion­ship. “Rarely have I respect­ed some­one as much as I did Ayn Rand,” said Pry­or. When asked about their philo­soph­i­cal dis­agree­ments, she replied, “My back­ground was social work. That should tell you all you need to know about our dif­fer­ences.” Pry­or was tasked with per­suad­ing Rand to accept Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare to help with mount­ing med­ical expens­es.

I had read enough to know that she despised gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence, and that she felt that peo­ple should and could live inde­pen­dent­ly. She was com­ing to a point in her life where she was going to receive the very thing she didn’t like.… For me to do my job, she had to rec­og­nize that there were excep­tions to her the­o­ry.… She had to see that there was such a thing as greed in this world.… She could be total­ly wiped out by med­ical bills if she didn’t watch it. Since she had worked her entire life and had paid into Social Secu­ri­ty, she had a right to it. She didn’t feel that an indi­vid­ual should take help.

Final­ly, Rand relent­ed. “Whether she agreed or not is not the issue,” said Pry­or, “She saw the neces­si­ty for both her and [her hus­band] Frank.” Or as Weiss puts it, “Real­i­ty had intrud­ed upon her ide­o­log­i­cal pipedreams.” That’s one way of inter­pret­ing the con­tra­dic­tion: that Rand’s phi­los­o­phy, Objec­tivism, “has no prac­ti­cal pur­pose except to pro­mote the eco­nom­ic inter­ests of the peo­ple bankrolling it”—the sole func­tion of her thought is to jus­ti­fy wealth, explain away pover­ty, and nor­mal­ize the sort of Hobbe­sian war of all against all Rand saw as a soci­etal ide­al.

Rand taught “there is no such thing as the pub­lic inter­est,” that pro­grams like Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare steal from “cre­ators” and ille­git­i­mate­ly redis­trib­ute their wealth. This was a “sub­lime­ly entic­ing argu­ment for wealthy busi­ness­men who had no inter­est what­ev­er in the pub­lic inter­est.… Yet the tax­pay­ers of Amer­i­ca paid Rand’s and Frank O’Con­nor’s med­ical expens­es.” Ran­di­ans have offered many con­vo­lut­ed expla­na­tions for what her crit­ics see as sheer hypocrisy. We may or may not find them per­sua­sive.

In the sim­plest terms, Rand dis­cov­ered at the end of her life that she was only human and in need of help. Rather than starve or drop dead—as she would have let so many oth­ers do—she took the help on offer. Rand died in 1982, as her admir­er Alan Greenspan had begun putting her ideas into prac­tice in Reagan’s admin­is­tra­tion, mak­ing sure, writes Weiss, that the sys­tem was “more favor­able to the cre­ators and entre­pre­neurs who were more valu­able to soci­ety,” in his Ran­di­an esti­ma­tion, “than peo­ple low­er down the lad­der of suc­cess.” After well over three decades of such poli­cies, we can draw our own con­clu­sions about the results.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ayn Rand Helped the FBI Iden­ti­fy It’s A Won­der­ful Life as Com­mu­nist Pro­pa­gan­da

Free Audio: Ayn Rand’s 1938 Dystopi­an Novel­la Anthem

In Her Final Speech, Ayn Rand Denounces Ronald Rea­gan, the Moral Major­i­ty & Anti-Choicers (1981)

Flan­nery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand (1960)

Ayn Rand Argues That Believ­ing in God Is an Insult to Rea­son on The Phil Don­ahue Show (Cir­ca 1979)

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

Watch the First Surf Movie Ever Made: A 1906 Thomas Edison Film Shot in Hawaii

in History, Life, Sports | December 27th, 2016

Above you can watch what was arguably the first surf movie ever made–the very begin­ning of a long cin­e­mat­ic tra­di­tion that gave us Gid­get in 1959, and The End­less Sum­mer in 1966. And lest you think the surf movie reached its zenith dur­ing those hal­cy­on days, some would argue that the best surf films were lat­er pro­duced dur­ing the aughts–Thick­er Than Water (2000), Blue Crush (2002), Step Into Liq­uid (2003), Rid­ing Giants (2004), etc. And don’t for­get this great lit­tle short, “Dark Side of the Lens.”

In 1906, smack in the mid­dle of the aughts of last cen­tu­ry, Thomas Edi­son sent the pio­neer­ing cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Robert K. Bonine to shoot an ‘Actu­al­i­ty’ doc­u­men­tary about life in the Poly­ne­sian islands. The blurb accom­pa­ny­ing this video describes the scene above: “The first mov­ing pic­tures of surfers rid­ing waves — Surf Rid­ers, Waiki­ki Beach, Hon­olu­lu — shows a minute of about a dozen surfers on ala­ia boards in head-high, off­shore surf at what is prob­a­bly Canoes. These surfers are shot too far away to detail what they were wear­ing, but they all appear to be in tanksuits.”

If you’re inter­est­ed in tak­ing a deep dive into Hawai­i’s surf­ing scene, I’d def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend pick­up up a copy of Bar­bar­ian Days: A Surf­ing Life, the mem­oir by New York­er writer William Finnegan. It won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thomas Edison’s Silent Film of the “Fartiste” Who Delight­ed Crowds at Le Moulin Rouge (1900)

Dark Side of the Lens: A Poet­ic Short Film by Surf Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mick­ey Smith

Watch the Very First Fea­ture Doc­u­men­tary: Nanook of the North by Robert J. Fla­her­ty (1922)

Watch Nina Simone Sing the Black Pride Anthem, “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” on Sesame Street (1972)

in Music, Television | December 27th, 2016

In her brief 34 years, Lor­raine Hans­ber­ry left a for­mi­da­ble lega­cy as the first African-Amer­i­can and the youngest play­wright to win the cov­et­ed New York Crit­ics’ Cir­cle Award for A Raisin in the Sun. (It was also the first play by a black writer to be pro­duced on Broad­way.) What’s more, Hans­ber­ry was a com­mit­ted civ­il rights cam­paign­er, from a fam­i­ly who had fought hous­ing seg­re­ga­tion in the Supreme Court. She her­self orga­nized with Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., Har­ry Bela­fonte, Lena Horne, James Bald­win, and many oth­ers; wrote for Paul Robeson’s Free­dom; and joined the first les­bian civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tion, the Daugh­ters of Bili­tis, con­tribut­ing to their mag­a­zine, The Lad­der.

Hans­ber­ry was indeed “Young, Gift­ed, and Black,” which also hap­pens to be the title of an auto­bi­og­ra­phy pub­lished after her death from pan­cre­at­ic can­cer in 1965, and of a posthu­mous­ly pro­duced play. But the title has maybe most famous­ly lived on in a trib­ute to Hans­ber­ry by her friend, the prodi­gious­ly gift­ed Nina Simone. Among Simone’s many men­tors, Hans­ber­ry “offered her a spe­cial bond,” writes Clau­dia Roth Pier­pont at The New York­er, and pushed her into activism. “We nev­er talked about men or clothes,” Simone wrote in her mem­oir, I Put a Spell on You, “It was always Marx, Lenin and revolution—real girls’ talk.” After the 1963 Bap­tist Church bomb­ing in Birm­ing­ham, Simone ded­i­cat­ed her­self to the move­ment with a pas­sion for jus­tice and lib­er­a­tion.

And yet, “for every lyric about lynch­ings and the strug­gle for equal­i­ty,” notes the Blan­ton Muse­um, “Simone would write anoth­er about free­dom and black pride, rein­forc­ing her belief that African Amer­i­can men and women should know the beau­ty of their black­ness.” As she put it in an inter­view, “My job is to some­how make [black peo­ple] curi­ous enough, or per­suade them, by hook or crook, to get them more aware of them­selves and where they came from and what is already there.” What was already there includ­ed the work of friends like James Bald­win and Lor­raine Hans­ber­ry, from whom Simone drew “To Be Young, Gift­ed and Black,” one of the “most tri­umphant anthems of the black pride move­ment of the 1970s.”

At the top of the post, you can see Simone sing the song to four young kids on a 1972 episode of Sesame Street, bring­ing them the news: “There’s a world wait­ing for you.” As she announces in the song itself, “We must begin to tell our young” the impor­tance of their cul­ture and his­to­ry. The young respond­ed with grat­i­tude for Simone’s advo­ca­cy. In the short Sesame Street clip, the four adorable kids look on admir­ing­ly, and one girl sings along. The inspi­ra­tion for the song came not only from Hansberry’s influ­ence on Simone’s polit­i­cal con­scious­ness, but also from a pho­to­graph of Hans­ber­ry she saw in the New York Times.

The pic­ture, “caught hold of me,” Simone says in the brief inter­view clip above, “I remem­ber get­ting a feel­ing in my body.… I knew what I want­ed it to say in essence.… I real­ly think that she gave it to me.” After the short inter­view, you can see Simone per­form the song in a 1969 ses­sion at More­house Col­lege, to rap­tur­ous applause from the audi­ence. “To Be Young, Gift­ed and Black” has been cov­ered by duo Bob & Mar­cia, Don­ny Hath­away, Aretha Franklin, and—most recent­ly, Solange Knowles. Though none of these artists have had the inti­mate, per­son­al con­nec­tion to the lyrics and their inspi­ra­tion that Nina Simone did, all of them have helped trans­mit her mes­sage. Even in the face of gross injus­tice and seem­ing­ly implaca­ble oppo­si­tion to equal­i­ty and civ­il rights, “There’s a world wait­ing for you / This is a quest that’s just begun.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nina Simone Sings Her Break­through Song, ‘I Loves You Por­gy,’ in 1962

Watch a New Nina Simone Ani­ma­tion Based on an Inter­view Nev­er Aired in the U.S. Before

Chris Rock Reads James Baldwin’s Still Time­ly Let­ter on Race in Amer­i­ca: “We Can Make What Amer­i­ca Must Become”

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

Edward Hopper’s Iconic Painting Nighthawks Explained in a 7‑Minute Video Introduction

in Art, History | December 26th, 2016

If any one paint­ing stands for mid-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca, Nighthawks does. In fact, Edward Hop­per’s 1942 can­vas of four fig­ures in a late-night New York City din­er may qual­i­fy as the most vivid evo­ca­tion of that coun­try and time in any form. For Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the video essay­ist Nerd­writer, the expe­ri­ence of Nighthawks goes well beyond the visu­al realm. “I’ve always thought of him in a sort of aro­mat­ic way,” says Puschak of the artist, “because his paint­ings evoke the same kinds of feel­ings and mem­o­ries that I get from the sense of smell, as if he was chan­nel­ing direct­ly into my lim­bic sys­tem, exca­vat­ing moments that were stored deeply away.”

But Puschak would­n’t have expe­ri­enced the ear­ly 1940s first-hand, much less the turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry peri­od in which Hop­per grew up. Nor would have most of the peo­ple cap­ti­vat­ed by Nighthawks today, much less those count­less appre­ci­a­tors as yet unborn. How does Hop­per, in his most famous paint­ing and many oth­ers, at once cap­ture a time and a place while also res­onat­ing on a deep­er, more uni­ver­sal­ly human lev­el?

Puschak takes up that ques­tion in “Look through the Win­dow,” a video essay that exam­ines the pow­er of Hop­per’s art, “clean, smooth, and almost too real,” through a break­down of Nighthawks, an expres­sion of all of the artist’s themes: “lone­li­ness, alien­ation, voyeurism, qui­et con­tem­pla­tion, and more.”

The effec­tive­ness of the paint­ing’s com­po­si­tion, in Puschak’s analy­sis, comes from such ele­ments as the ambi­gu­i­ty of the rela­tion­ships between its char­ac­ters, the strong diag­o­nal lines of the din­er’s archi­tec­ture, the use of light in the dark­ness, and the win­dows so clear as to look “as if they’re not even there,” all so mem­o­rably real­ized by Hop­per’s painstak­ing ded­i­ca­tion to his work. (His long and involved process, which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here, even includ­ed a kind of sto­ry­board­ing.) “As slow­ly and delib­er­ate­ly as he paint­ed,” Puschak says, “he want­ed us to look — real­ly look, and to be made vul­ner­a­ble, as a view­er always is.”

Many Amer­i­cans must have felt such vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty with a spe­cial acute­ness at the time Hop­per fin­ished paint­ing Nighthawks, “the weeks and days fol­low­ing the bomb­ing of Pearl Har­bor, when every­one in New York City was para­noid about anoth­er attack.” Every­one, that is, except Edward Hop­per, who kept his stu­dio light on and kept on paint­ing beneath it. “The future was very uncer­tain at this moment in time, as uncer­tain as the dark­ness that frames the patrons of this din­er, a dark­ness they’re launched into by Hop­per’s com­po­si­tion and our gaze.” Some might say that times, in Amer­i­ca and else­where, haven’t become much more cer­tain since. We, like Hop­per, could do much worse than con­tin­u­ing to cre­ate ever more delib­er­ate­ly, and to see ever more clear­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Edward Hop­per “Sto­ry­board­ed” His Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks

Painters Paint­ing: The Defin­i­tive Doc­u­men­tary Por­trait of the New York Art World (1940–1970)

Whit­ney Muse­um Puts Online 21,000 Works of Amer­i­can Art, By 3,000 Artists

The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Puts Online 65,000 Works of Mod­ern Art

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.

Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner: A Free Yale Course

in Literature, Online Courses, Yale | December 26th, 2016

This course taught by Yale pro­fes­sor Wai Chee Dimock exam­ines major works by three icon­ic Amer­i­can authors–Ernest Hem­ing­way, F. Scott Fitzger­ald, and William Faulkn­er. Along the way, Dimock explores these authors’ “inter­con­nec­tions on three ana­lyt­ic scales: the macro his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States and the world; the for­mal and styl­is­tic inno­va­tions of mod­ernism; and the small details of sen­so­ry input and psy­chic life.” You can access the 24 lec­tures in Hem­ing­way, Fitzger­ald, Faulkn­er on YouTube, or on iTunes in video and audio. Texts dis­cussed in the course include:

Faulkn­er, William. As I Lay Dying.

Faulkn­er, William. Light in August.

Faulkn­er, William. The Sound and the Fury.

Fitzger­ald, F. Scott. The Great Gats­by.

Fitzger­ald, F. Scott. The Short Sto­ries of F. Scott Fitzger­ald: A New Col­lec­tion.

Fitzger­ald, F. Scott. Ten­der is the Night.

Hem­ing­way, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Hem­ing­way, Ernest. In Our Time.

Hem­ing­way, Ernest. To Have and Have Not.

Find more infor­ma­tion about this course, includ­ing the syl­labus, over at this Yale site.

Hem­ing­way, Fitzger­ald, Faulkn­er has been added to our list of Free Online Lit­er­a­ture cours­es, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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!

How Leo Tolstoy Became a Vegetarian and Jumpstarted the Vegetarian & Humanitarian Movements in the 19th Century

in Food & Drink, Literature, Philosophy, Politics, Religion | December 26th, 2016

Leo Tol­stoy is remem­bered as both a tow­er­ing pin­na­cle of Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture and a fas­ci­nat­ing exam­ple of Chris­t­ian anar­chism, a mys­ti­cal ver­sion of which the aris­to­crat­ic author pio­neered in the last quar­ter cen­tu­ry of his life. After a dra­mat­ic con­ver­sion, Tol­stoy reject­ed his social posi­tion, the favored vices of his youth, and the dietary habits of his cul­ture, becom­ing a vocal pro­po­nent of veg­e­tar­i­an­ism in his ascetic quest for the good life. Thou­sands of his con­tem­po­raries found Tolstoy’s exam­ple deeply com­pelling, and sev­er­al com­munes formed around his prin­ci­ples, to his dis­may. “To speak of ‘Tol­stoy­ism,’” he wrote, “to seek guid­ance, to inquire about my solu­tion of ques­tions, is a great and gross error.”

“Still,” writes Kelsey Osgood at The New York­er, “peo­ple insist­ed on seek­ing guid­ance from him,” includ­ing a young Mahat­ma Gand­hi, who struck up a live­ly cor­re­spon­dence with the writer and in 1910 found­ed a com­mu­ni­ty called “Tol­stoy Farm” near Johan­nes­burg.

Though uneasy in the role of move­ment leader, the author of Anna Karen­i­na invit­ed such treat­ment by pub­lish­ing dozens of philo­soph­i­cal and the­o­log­i­cal works, many of them in oppo­si­tion to a con­trary strain of reli­gious and moral ideas devel­op­ing in the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. Often called “mus­cu­lar Chris­tian­i­ty,” this trend respond­ed to what many Vic­to­ri­ans thought of as a cri­sis of mas­culin­i­ty by empha­siz­ing sports and war­rior ideals and rail­ing against the “fem­i­niza­tion” of the cul­ture.

Tol­stoy might be said to rep­re­sent a “veg­etable Christianity”—seeking har­mo­ny with nature and turn­ing away from all forms of vio­lence, includ­ing the eat­ing of meat. In “The First Step,” an 1891 essay on diet and eth­i­cal com­mit­ment, he char­ac­ter­ized the pre­vail­ing reli­gious atti­tude toward food:

I remem­ber how, with pride at his orig­i­nal­i­ty, an Evan­gel­i­cal preach­er, who was attack­ing monas­tic asceti­cism, once said to me “Ours is not a Chris­tian­i­ty of fast­ing and pri­va­tions, but of beef­steaks.” Chris­tian­i­ty, or virtue in general—and beef­steaks!

While he con­fessed him­self “not hor­ri­fied by this asso­ci­a­tion,” it is only because “there is no bad odor, no sound, no mon­stros­i­ty, to which man can­not become so accus­tomed that he ceas­es to remark what would strike a man unac­cus­tomed to it.” The killing and eat­ing of ani­mals, Tol­stoy came to believe, is a hor­ror to which—like war and serfdom—his cul­ture had grown far too accus­tomed. Like many an ani­mal rights activist today, Tol­stoy con­veyed his hor­ror of meat-eat­ing by describ­ing a slaugh­ter­house in detail, con­clud­ing:

[I]f he be real­ly and seri­ous­ly seek­ing to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of ani­mal food, because, to say noth­ing of the exci­ta­tion of the pas­sions caused by such food, its use is sim­ply immoral, as it involves the per­for­mance of an act which is con­trary to the moral feeling—killing.

[W]e can­not pre­tend that we do not know this. We are not ostrich­es, and can­not believe that if we refuse to look at what we do not wish to see, it will not exist.… [Y]oung, kind, unde­praved people—especially women and girls—without know­ing how it log­i­cal­ly fol­lows, feel that virtue is incom­pat­i­ble with beef­steaks, and, as soon as they wish to be good, give up eat­ing flesh.

The idea of veg­e­tar­i­an­ism of course pre­ced­ed Tol­stoy by hun­dreds of years of Hin­du and Bud­dhist prac­tice. And its grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty in Europe and Amer­i­ca pre­ced­ed him as well. “Tol­stoy became an out­spo­ken veg­e­tar­i­an at the age of 50,” writes Sam Pavlenko, “after meet­ing the pos­i­tivist and veg­e­tar­i­an William Frey, who, accord­ing to Tolstoy’s son Sergei Lvovich, vis­it­ed the great writer in the autumn of 1885.” Tolstoy’s dietary stance fit in with what Char­lotte Alston describes as an “increas­ing­ly orga­nized” inter­na­tion­al veg­e­tar­i­an move­ment tak­ing shape in the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry.

Like Tol­stoy in “The First Step,” pro­po­nents of veg­e­tar­i­an­ism argued not only against cru­el­ty to ani­mals, but also against “the bru­tal­iza­tion of those who worked in the meat indus­try, as butch­ers, slaugh­ter­men, and even shep­herds and drovers.” But veg­e­tar­i­an­ism was only one part of Tolstoy’s reli­gious phi­los­o­phy, which also includ­ed chasti­ty, tem­per­ance, the rejec­tion of pri­vate prop­er­ty, and “a com­plete refusal to par­tic­i­pate in vio­lence or coer­cion of any kind.” This marked his dietary prac­tice as dis­tinct from many con­tem­po­raries. Tol­stoy and his fol­low­ers “made the link between veg­e­tar­i­an­ism and a wider human­i­tar­i­an­ism explic­it.”

“How was it pos­si­ble,” Alston sum­ma­rizes, “to regard the killing of ani­mals for food as evil, but not to con­demn the killing of men through war and cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment? Not all mem­bers of the veg­e­tar­i­an move­ment agreed.” Some saw “no con­nec­tion between the ques­tions of war and diet.” Tolstoy’s philo­soph­i­cal argu­ment against all forms of vio­lence was not orig­i­nal to him, but it res­onat­ed all over the world with those who saw him as a shin­ing exam­ple, includ­ing his two daugh­ters and even­tu­al­ly his wife Sophia, who all adopt­ed the prac­tice of veg­e­tar­i­an­ism. A book of their recipes was pub­lished in 1874, and adapt­ed by Pavlenko for his Leo Tol­stoy: A Vegetarian’s Tale. (See one exam­ple here—a fam­i­ly recipe for mac­a­roni and cheese.)

In her study Tol­stoy and His Dis­ci­ples, Alston details the Russ­ian great’s wide influ­ence through not only his diet but the total­i­ty of his spir­i­tu­al prac­tices and unique polit­i­cal and reli­gious views. Inter­est­ing­ly, unlike many ani­mal rights activists of his day and ours, Tol­stoy refused to endorse leg­is­la­tion to pun­ish ani­mal cru­el­ty, believ­ing that pun­ish­ment would only result in the per­pet­u­a­tion of vio­lence. “Non-vio­lence, non-resis­tance and broth­er­hood were the prin­ci­ples that lay at the basis of Tol­stoy­an veg­e­tar­i­an­ism,” she observes, “and while these prin­ci­ples meant that Tol­stoy­ans coop­er­at­ed close­ly with veg­e­tar­i­ans, they also kept them in many ways apart.”

via His­to­ry Buff

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leo Tolstoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe for Mac­a­roni and Cheese

Watch Glass Walls, Paul McCartney’s Case for Going Veg­e­tar­i­an

Tol­stoy and Gand­hi Exchange Let­ters: Two Thinkers’ Quest for Gen­tle­ness, Humil­i­ty & Love (1909)

Leo Tolstoy’s Masochis­tic Diary: I Am Guilty of “Sloth,” “Cow­ardice” & “Sissi­ness” (1851)

Leo Tol­stoy Cre­ates a List of the 50+ Books That Influ­enced Him Most (1891)

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