Introduction to Psychology: A Free Course from Yale

in | December 17th, 2016

Taught by Yale pro­fes­sor Paul Bloom, this course offers an Intro­duc­tion to Psy­chol­o­gy, and cov­ers the fol­low­ing ground:

What do your dreams mean? Do men and women dif­fer in the nature and inten­si­ty of their sex­u­al desires? Can apes learn sign lan­guage? Why can’t we tick­le our­selves? This course tries to answer these ques­tions and many oth­ers, pro­vid­ing a com­pre­hen­sive overview of the sci­en­tif­ic study of thought and behav­ior. It explores top­ics such as per­cep­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, learn­ing, mem­o­ry, deci­sion-mak­ing, reli­gion, per­sua­sion, love, lust, hunger, art, fic­tion, and dreams. We will look at how these aspects of the mind devel­op in chil­dren, how they dif­fer across peo­ple, how they are wired-up in the brain, and how they break down due to ill­ness and injury.

You can watch the 20 lec­tures from the course above, or find them on YouTube and iTunes. To get more infor­ma­tion on the course, includ­ing the syl­labus, vis­it this Yale web­site.

The main texts used in this course include:

• Gray, Peter. Psy­chol­o­gy. New York: Worth Pub­lish­ers, 2007.
• Mar­cus, Gary, ed. The Nor­ton Psy­chol­o­gy Read­er. New York: W. W. Nor­ton & Com­pa­ny, 2006.

Intro­duc­tion to Psy­chol­o­gy will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. There you can find a spe­cial­ized list of Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy and Neu­ro­science Cours­es.

Human Emotions: A Free Course from Yale

in | December 17th, 2016

Taught by pro­fes­sor June Gru­ber, this Yale course explores the world of Human Emo­tion and cov­ers the fol­low­ing ground:

What are our emo­tions? What pur­pose do they serve? How do emo­tions relate to our thoughts, mem­o­ries, and behav­iors towards oth­ers? What hap­pens when our emo­tion­al respons­es go awry?

Although these ques­tions date back to ear­ly philo­soph­i­cal texts, only recent­ly have exper­i­men­tal psy­chol­o­gists begun to explore this vast and excit­ing domain of study. The course will begin by dis­cussing the evo­lu­tion­ary ori­gins of dis­tinct emo­tions such as love, anger, fear, and dis­gust. We will ask how emo­tions might col­or our cog­ni­tive process­es such as think­ing and mem­o­ry, the rela­tion­ship between emo­tions and the brain, devel­op­ment of emo­tions in child­hood, and how emo­tions shape our social rela­tion­ships. We will also con­sid­er how these meth­ods can be applied to study­ing men­tal ill­ness in both chil­dren and adults. The course will con­clude by study­ing the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness and well-being, try­ing to under­stand what makes us hap­py.

You can watch the 58 lec­tures from the course above, or find them on YouTube. Get more infor­ma­tion on the course at this ded­i­cat­ed web­site.

Human Emo­tion will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. There you can find a spe­cial­ized list of Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy and Neu­ro­science Cours­es.

Roman Architecture: A Free Online Course from Yale

in | December 17th, 2016

Taught by Yale pro­fes­sor Diana E. E. Klein­er, this course offers “an intro­duc­tion to the great build­ings and engi­neer­ing mar­vels of Rome and its empire, with an empha­sis on urban plan­ning and indi­vid­ual mon­u­ments and their dec­o­ra­tion, includ­ing mur­al paint­ing.”

The course descrip­tion con­tin­ues: “While archi­tec­tur­al devel­op­ments in Rome, Pom­peii, and Cen­tral Italy are high­light­ed, the course also pro­vides a sur­vey of sites and struc­tures in what are now North Italy, Sici­ly, France, Spain, Ger­many, Greece, Turkey, Croa­t­ia, Jor­dan, Lebanon, Libya, and North Africa. The lec­tures are illus­trat­ed with over 1,500 images, many from Pro­fes­sor Klein­er’s per­son­al col­lec­tion.”

You can watch the 24 lec­tures from the course above, or find them on YouTube and iTunes. To get more infor­ma­tion on the course, includ­ing the syl­labus, vis­it Yale’s web­site.

Texts used in this course include:

• Ward-Perkins, John B. Roman Impe­r­i­al Archi­tec­ture. New Haven: Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1994.
• Clar­idge, Aman­da. Rome: An Oxford Archae­o­log­i­cal Guide, sec­ond edi­tion, Oxford and New York: Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2010.

Roman Archi­tec­ture will be added to our 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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Art & Art His­to­ry Cours­es

Free Online Clas­sics Cours­es

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

Architecture Studio: Building in Landscapes (A Free Course from MIT)

in | December 17th, 2016

Taught by Jan Wampler, pro­fes­sor of archi­tec­ture at MIT, this under­grad­u­ate course “intro­duces skills need­ed to build with­in a land­scape estab­lish­ing con­ti­nu­ities between the built and nat­ur­al world. Stu­dents learn to build appro­pri­ate­ly through analy­sis of land­scape and cli­mate for a cho­sen site, and to con­cep­tu­al­ize design deci­sions through draw­ings and mod­els.”

The 12 cours­es lec­tures can be viewed above, or found via playlists on YouTube. You can find more infor­ma­tion on the course, includ­ing course mate­ri­als and course syl­labus, on MIT’s web­site.

Archi­tec­ture Stu­dio: Build­ing in Land­scapes has been added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Roman Archi­tec­ture: A Free Course from Yale

Enroll in Harvard’s Free Online Archi­tec­ture Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the His­to­ry & The­o­ry of Archi­tec­ture

Free Art & Art His­to­ry Cours­es

Slavoj Žižek Answers the Question “Should We Teach Children to Believe in Santa Claus?”

in Life, Philosophy | December 16th, 2016

Local par­ent tells oth­er local par­ent how to raise their chil­dren: this sce­nario has pro­voked many a neigh­bor­hood list­serv flame­war, and maybe a street brawl or three. Unkempt and inflam­ma­to­ry philoso­pher Slavoj Žižek telling par­ents how to raise their chil­dren? Well… maybe a few hun­dred eye­rolls.

I exag­ger­ate. Žižek only address­es one small aspect of parenting—a benign, cul­tur­al­ly spe­cif­ic one at that, which ranks far beneath, say, health and edu­ca­tion and falls in line with whether one should pre­tend to be a noc­tur­nal crea­ture who lives on children’s teeth, or to see a giant rab­bit in the spring.

We’re talk­ing about San­ta Claus, and to lie or not to lie to your kids is the ques­tion posed to Žižek by stu­dents at SUNY Brock­port in the low-qual­i­ty video above. If you can adjust to the audio/video, you’ll hear the cul­tur­al the­o­rist give an inter­est­ing answer. I can’t vouch for its con­so­nance with child psy­chol­o­gy, but as a par­ent, I can say my tiny demo­graph­ic con­firms the insight.

Though he’s near­ly inaudi­ble at first, we even­tu­al­ly hear Žižek say­ing, “No… they will absolute­ly take it as this cyn­i­cal [rea­son?] of ‘let’s pre­tend that it’s real,’ no mat­ter how much you insist that you mean it lit­er­al­ly.” For those who might ago­nize over the ques­tion, it may be most kids aren’t near­ly as gullible as we imag­ine, just good sports who don’t want to let us down.

This would not be a Žižek answer if it did not veer into claims far more ambi­tious, or grandiose, than the ques­tion seems to war­rant. Sens­ing per­haps he’s on shaky ground with the whole par­ent­ing advice thing, he quick­ly moves on to the sub­ject of “what does it mean, real­ly, to believe?” Belief, says Žižek—in the sense of indi­vid­ual, inward assent to meta­phys­i­cal propositions—is a mod­ern inven­tion.

In attempt­ing to make Saint Nicholas believ­able to chil­dren, we’ve para­dox­i­cal­ly turned him into a car­toon char­ac­ter (and in the U.S. and else­where ban­ished his lov­able demon side­kick, Kram­pus). Kids see right through it, says Žižek in anoth­er inter­view above. And so, “You have a belief which is nobody’s belief! Nobody believes in the first per­son.”

Why, then, not just admit we’re all pre­tend­ing, and say “we’re enjoy­ing a sto­ry togeth­er”? We do it every night with chil­dren, this one just involves food, lights, fam­i­ly, gifts, sweaters, uncom­fort­able trav­el and maybe reli­gious cer­e­monies of your tra­di­tion. You can often hear Žižek opine on those kinds of beliefs as well. My only com­ment on the mat­ter is to say, sin­cere­ly, Hap­py Hol­i­days.

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In His Lat­est Film, Slavoj Žižek Claims “The Only Way to Be an Athe­ist is Through Chris­tian­i­ty”

Slavoj Žižek: What Ful­fils You Cre­ative­ly Isn’t What Makes You Hap­py

Hermeneu­tics of Toi­lets by Slavoj Žižek: An Ani­ma­tion About Find­ing Ide­ol­o­gy in Unlike­ly Places

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

Hear a Great 4‑Hour Radio Documentary on the Life & Music of Jimi Hendrix: Features Rare Recordings & Interviews

in Music, Radio | December 15th, 2016

The lega­cy of Jimi Hendrix’s estate has been in con­flict in recent years. Since his father’s death in 2002, his sib­lings have squab­bled over his mon­ey and bat­tled unli­censed and boot­leg venders. But Hendrix’s musi­cal lega­cy con­tin­ues to amaze and inspire, as Janie Hen­drix—his step­sis­ter and CEO of the com­pa­ny that man­ages his music—has released album after album of rar­i­ties over the last cou­ple decades. Not all of these releas­es have pleased Hen­drix fans, who have called some of them mer­ce­nary and thought­less. But it is always a joy to dis­cov­er an unheard record­ing, whether a live per­for­mance, wob­bly stu­dio out­take, or semi-pol­ished demo, so many of which reveal the ter­ri­to­ry Hen­drix intend­ed to chart before he died.

In 1982, some of that unre­leased mate­r­i­al made it into a four-hour Paci­fi­ca Radio doc­u­men­tary, which you can hear in four parts here. Pro­duced by what the sta­tion calls “some of Pacifica’s finest” at its Berke­ley “flag­ship sta­tion 94.1 FM,” the doc­u­men­tary does an excel­lent job of plac­ing these record­ings in con­text.

With help from Hen­drix biog­ra­ph­er David Hen­der­son, the pro­duc­ers com­piled “pre­vi­ous­ly unheard and rare record­ings” and inter­views from Hen­drix, his fam­i­ly, Noel Red­ding, Ornette Cole­man, Ste­vie Won­der, John Lee Hook­er, John McLaugh­lin, Chas Chan­dler, and more. After a new­ly-record­ed intro­duc­tion and a col­lage of Hen­drix inter­view sound­bites, Part 1 gets right down to it with a live ver­sion of “Are You Expe­ri­enced?” that puls­es from the speak­ers in hyp­not­ic waves (lis­ten to it on a sol­id pair of head­phones if you can).

“I want to have stereo where the sound goes up,” says Hen­drix in a sound­bite, “and behind and under­neath, you know? But all you can get now is across and across.” Some­how, even in ordi­nary stereo, Hen­drix had a way of mak­ing sound sur­round his lis­ten­ers, envelop­ing them in warm fuzzy waves of feed­back and reverb. But he also had an equal­ly cap­ti­vat­ing way with lan­guage, and not only in his song lyrics. Though the received por­trait of Hen­drix is of a shy, retir­ing per­son who expressed him­self bet­ter with music, in many of these inter­views he weaves togeth­er detailed mem­o­ries and whim­si­cal dreams and fan­tasies, com­pos­ing imag­i­na­tive nar­ra­tives on the spot. Sev­er­al extem­po­ra­ne­ous lines could have eas­i­ly flow­ered into new songs.

Hen­drix briefly tells the sto­ry of his rise through the R&B and soul cir­cuit as an almost effort­less glide from the ranks of strug­gling side­men, to play­ing behind Sam Cooke, Lit­tle Richard, and Ike and Tina Turn­er to start­ing his solo career. We move through the most famous stages of Hen­drix’s life, with its icon­ic moments and cau­tion­ary tales, and by the time we get to Part 4, we start hear­ing a Hen­drix most peo­ple nev­er do, a pre­view of where his music might have gone into the seventies—with jazzy pro­gres­sions and long, wind­ing instru­men­tal pas­sages pow­ered by the shuf­fling beats of Bud­dy Miles.

As has become abun­dant­ly clear in the almost four decades since Hen­drix’s death, he had a tremen­dous amount of new music left in him, stretch­ing in direc­tions he nev­er got to pur­sue. But the bit of it he left behind offers proof of just how influ­en­tial he was not only on rock gui­tarists but also on blues and jazz fusion play­ers of the fol­low­ing decade. His pio­neer­ing record­ing style (best heard on Elec­tric Lady­land) also drove for­ward, and in some cas­es invent­ed, many of the stu­dio tech­niques in use today. Process­es that can now be auto­mat­ed in min­utes might took hours to orches­trate in the late six­ties. Watch­ing Hen­drix mix in the stu­dio “was like watch­ing a bal­let,” says pro­duc­er Elliot Maz­er.

This doc­u­men­tary keeps its focus square­ly on Hen­drix’s work, phe­nom­e­nal tal­ent, and unique­ly inno­v­a­tive cre­ative thought, and as such it pro­vides the per­fect set­ting for the rare and then-unre­leased record­ings you may not have heard before. Paci­fi­ca re-released the doc­u­men­tary last year as part of its annu­al fundrais­ing cam­paign. The sta­tion is again solic­it­ing funds to help main­tain its impres­sive archives and dig­i­tize many more hours of tape like the Hen­drix pro­gram, so stop by and make a dona­tion if you can.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hen­drix Plays “Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band” for The Bea­t­les, Just Three Days After the Album’s Release (1967)

Jimi Hen­drix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Gui­tar in 1968, and Jams with His Blues Idols, Bud­dy Guy & B.B. King

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1970: Lis­ten to the Com­plete Audio

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

“Every Country in the World”–Two Videos Tell You Curious Facts About 190+ Countries

in Random | December 15th, 2016

From Wen­dover Productions–a Youtube chan­nel ded­i­cat­ed to explain­ing how our world works, from trav­el, to eco­nom­ics, to geography–comes a two part series called “Every Coun­try in the World.”

In 30 min­utes, the videos tra­verse the world, telling you curi­ous facts about 190+ coun­tries, start­ing with this: Chi­na, despite being so vast, does­n’t have time zones. It’s the same time across the entire coun­try. Mean­while it’s neigh­bor, Afghanistan is “off­set from Green­wich Mean Time by a 30 minute inter­val.” When it’s 9 am in San Fran­cis­co and 5:00 pm in Lon­don, it’s actu­al­ly 9:30 pm in Kab­ul.

How about anoth­er fac­toid: Cana­da is so geo­graph­i­cal­ly large that it’s east­ern bor­der is clos­er to Croa­t­ia than Van­cou­ver. Get the gist?

You can watch “Every Coun­try in the World” above and below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Lets You Down­load Thou­sands of Maps from the Unit­ed States Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy, the “Most Ambi­tious Overview of Map Mak­ing Ever,” Now Free Online

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

From Caligari to Hitler: A Look at How Cinema Laid the Foundation for Tyranny in Weimar Germany

in Film | December 15th, 2016

When I first got into film crit­i­cism and was final­ly in a col­lege town with a decent used book­shop, Siegfried Kracauer’s From Cali­gari to Hitler: A Psy­cho­log­i­cal His­to­ry of the Ger­man Film was in that first huge batch of books I bought to place on my shelf. I had just watched The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari (watch it online here) for the first time, and had seen the book ref­er­enced often. Alas, it also sat on my shelf unread, along with some oth­er thick crit­i­cal tomes.

But need­less to say, I guess I’m okay with that now, for Kyle Kall­gren’s 16 minute dis­til­la­tion of Kracauer’s influ­en­tial 1947 book does an amaz­ing job of explain­ing the critic’s main thesis–that the kinds of heroes and vil­lains, along with the kind of sto­ries that were suc­cess­ful in Weimar-era Ger­many, were lay­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cal ground­work for the rise of fas­cism and Hitler. Because films are a mass medi­um that take a mass of peo­ple to make and con­sume, they reveal the sub­con­scious mind of its soci­ety. Kra­cauer was­n’t say­ing that the cre­ators were anti-Semit­ic or Nazi sym­pa­thiz­ers. In fact, Weimar’s best known direc­tors fled the Nazis and made films in Amer­i­ca. But there was some­thing in the air, so to speak, that in ret­ro­spect made Hitler seem like an inevitable real-world out­come of these var­i­ous forces.

Kracauer’s the­sis was influ­enced by the writ­ers and philoso­phers of the Frank­furt School, who posit­ed that a “cul­ture indus­try” of mass-pro­duced art helped rein­force a stamp­ing out of iden­ti­ty. Anti-Marx­ists may call this passé, but we still talk about these ideas when­ev­er there’s a think piece about vio­lence in the movies reflect­ing a vio­lent culture—but usu­al­ly the wrong way around, sug­gest­ing that vio­lent movies cre­ate vio­lent peo­ple. Or look at how each ver­sion of Bat­man is seen as reflect­ing con­cerns of the time in which it is made.

As Kall­gren says in his brief video descrip­tion, “I felt a strong need to make this one.” After he sums up Kracauer’s work he tracks the paths of those direc­tors and stars of Weimar Germany—I for­got that the sleep­walk­ing Cesare of Cali­gari was played by the same actor who plays the Nazi major in Casablan­ca—he turns to Amer­i­ca, cir­ca 2016, in par­tic­u­lar post-elec­tion. This is not explic­it­ly to com­pare a cer­tain per­son to Hitler, going full God­win. But rather, Kall­gren looks to our own block­busters, our sto­ries, our own cul­ture indus­try to see what greater nar­ra­tive is going on here. The con­tra­dic­tions come thick and fast at the end, and will pro­vide much to debate.

As a side note, Kallgren’s work shows the pow­er of video essays to bring alive and resus­ci­tate major works of cul­tur­al crit­i­cism. We hope he and oth­ers start to adapt oth­er works in the future.

Many of the films ref­er­enced in this video essay– like Cali­gari, Nos­fer­atu and Metrop­o­lis–can be found in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Metrop­o­lis: Watch Fritz Lang’s 1927 Mas­ter­piece

Watch Nos­fer­atu, the Sem­i­nal Vam­pire Film, Free Online (1922)

Watch The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari, the Influ­en­tial Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Film (1920)

How Ger­man Expres­sion­ism Influ­enced Tim Bur­ton: A Video Essay

Where Hor­ror Film Began: The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

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

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.

The Surreal Filmmaking of David Lynch Explained in 9 Video Essays

in Film | December 14th, 2016

The inter­net is full of peo­ple who don’t under­stand David Lynch movies: some ask for appre­ci­a­tion assis­tance on Quo­ra, oth­ers defend their dis­taste on Red­dit, and oth­ers still sim­ply declare both the film­mak­er and his fans a lost cause. But the inter­net is also full of peo­ple who, whether they claim to under­stand them or not, gen­uine­ly love David Lynch movies, and some of them make video essays explain­ing, or at least shed­ding addi­tion­al light on, just what makes the seem­ing­ly inscrutable likes of Eraser­head, Blue Vel­vet, Mul­hol­land Dri­ve, and the tele­vi­sion series Twin Peaks (as well as Lynch’s less-acclaimed projects) such high cin­e­mat­ic achieve­ments.

The lat­est, “David Lynch — The Elu­sive Sub­con­scious,” comes from Lewis Bond’s Chan­nel Criswell, the source for video essays on Andrei Tarkovsky, Yasu­jiro Ozu, Stan­ley Kubrick, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, and the hor­ror genre pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. It includes a clip of Char­lie Rose ask­ing Lynch him­self the mean­ing of the word “Lynchi­an.” The direc­tor’s reply: “I haven’t got a clue. When you’re inside of it, you can’t see it.”

Bond looks for Lynchi­an by div­ing right in, find­ing how Lynch’s movies go about their sig­na­ture work of “pro­duc­ing the unfa­mil­iar­i­ty in that which was once famil­iar” by using just the right kinds of vague­ness, ambi­gu­i­ty, incom­plete­ness, incon­sis­ten­cy, unpre­dictabil­i­ty, and dual­ism in their images, sounds and sto­ries to pro­duce just the right kinds of doubt, fear, and dis­tress in their char­ac­ters and view­ers alike.

A fur­ther def­i­n­i­tion of the Lynchi­an comes in “What is ‘Lynchi­an’?” by Fan­dor’s Kevin B. Lee, which adapts a sec­tion of film crit­ic and Lynch schol­ar Den­nis Lim’s David Lynch: The Man from Anoth­er Place. It, too, draws on an episode of Char­lie Rose, though not any of Lynch’s appear­ances at the table but David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s. “What the real­ly great artists do is, they’re entire­ly them­selves,” Wal­lace says in response to a ques­tion about his inter­est in Lynch’s work. “They’ve got their own vision, their own way of frac­tur­ing real­i­ty, and if it’s authen­tic and true, you will feel it in your nerve end­ings. And this is what Blue Vel­vet did for me.”

Wal­lace had appeared on the show osten­si­bly to pro­mote his essay col­lec­tion A Sup­pos­ed­ly Fun Thing I’ll Nev­er Do Again, which con­tains the expand­ed ver­sion of “David Lynch Keeps His Head,” the 1996 Pre­miere mag­a­zine arti­cle that took him to the set of Lost High­way and on the intel­lec­tu­al mis­sion of pin­ning down what, exact­ly, gives Lynch’s work at its best so much and so strange a pow­er. Lee, via Lim, quotes Wal­lace’s work­ing def­i­n­i­tion of “Lynchi­an,” which for many fans remains the best any­one has ever come up with: that it “refers to a par­tic­u­lar kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mun­dane com­bine in such a way as to reveal the for­mer’s per­pet­u­al con­tain­ment with­in the lat­ter.”

As one of the most visu­al­ly ori­ent­ed of all liv­ing film­mak­ers, Lynch express­es this par­tic­u­lar kind of irony much less in words than in imagery, specif­i­cal­ly the kind of imagery that view­ers describe in terms of dreams — and not always the good kind. “Beau­ti­ful Night­mares: David Lynch’s Col­lec­tive Dream” by Indiewire’s Nel­son Car­va­jal gath­ers some of the ele­ments of Lynch’s visions: the danc­ing, the pick­et-fence domes­tic­i­ty, the red cur­tains, the blondes, the creepy stares, the dis­fig­ure­ment, the voyeurism. “I grew up in the north­west, in a very, very beau­ti­ful world,” says Lynch, fair­ly sum­ming up the expe­ri­ence of his own movies in the video’s only spo­ken words. “A lot of my life has been dis­cov­er­ing this strange sick­ness. It’s got a fas­ci­na­tion to me. I love the idea of going into some­thing and dis­cov­er­ing a world, being able to watch it and expe­ri­ence it. It’s a dis­turb­ing thing, because it’s a trip beneath a beau­ti­ful sur­face, but to a fair­ly uneasy inte­ri­or.”

Sev­er­al of Lynch’s tech­niques come in for more thor­ough analy­sis in a tril­o­gy of video essays Andreas Hal­skov made for the Dan­ish film-stud­ies jour­nal 16:9. “Between Two Worlds” deals with the host of “com­pet­ing moods, gen­res and tonal­i­ties” that man­i­fest in each one of his films and pro­duce “an ambiva­lent or uncan­ny expe­ri­ence on the part of the view­er.” “What’s the Fre­quen­cy, David?” explores the pres­ence in Lynch’s work of “noise and faulty wiring, hic­cups and mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion,” and “elec­tron­ic devices that don’t work,” all of which illus­trate “the con­stant bat­tle between the con­scious and the uncon­scious world” so impor­tant to his sto­ries. “Mov­ing Pic­tures” iden­ti­fies the influ­ence of painters like René Magritte, Fran­cis Bacon, Edward Hop­per, Vil­helm Ham­mer­shøi, and Sal­vador Dalí on Lynch who, hav­ing start­ed out as a painter him­self, begins his films not with sto­ries but images and builds them from there.

What­ev­er has influ­enced Lynch’s movies, Lynch’s movies have exert­ed plen­ty of influ­ence of their own. Crit­ic Pauline Kael called Lynch “the first pop­u­lar sur­re­al­ist,” and with that pop­u­lar­i­ty has come an inte­gra­tion of his brand of sur­re­al­ism into the wider cin­e­mat­ic zeit­geist. Jacob T. Swin­ney’s “Not Direct­ed By David Lynch” cuts togeth­er five min­utes’ worth of espe­cial­ly Lynchi­an moments from oth­er direc­tors’ movies over the past quar­ter-cen­tu­ry, a for­mi­da­ble selec­tion includ­ing Adri­an Lyne’s Jacob’s Lad­der, Dar­ren Aronof­sky’s Pi and Requiem for a Dream, Richard Kel­ly’s Don­nie Darko, Gas­par Noé’s Irréversible and Jonathan Glaz­er’s Under the Skin.

But while some film­mak­ers have con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly drawn inspi­ra­tion from or paid homage to Lynch, oth­er film­mak­ers have tried to cash in on the pop­u­lar­i­ty of his style in much less cre­ative ways. Or at least so argues “David Lynch’s Lost High­way as a Com­men­tary on Oth­er Direc­tors” by Jeff Keel­ing, a video essay that puts Lynch’s 1997 neo-noir up against a few oth­er pieces of film and tele­vi­sion that came out in the years pre­ced­ing it, espe­cial­ly the Oliv­er Stone-direct­ed fea­ture Nat­ur­al Born Killers and the Oliv­er Stone-pro­duced series Wild Palms. Point­ing out the numer­ous ways in which Lynch ref­er­ences the too-direct bor­row­ings that Stone and oth­ers had recent­ly made from his own work, Keel­ing not uncon­vinc­ing­ly frames Lost High­way as, among oth­er things, a cin­e­mat­ic j’ac­cuse.

Though poor­ly reviewed upon its orig­i­nal release, Lost High­way has put togeth­er a decent fol­low­ing in the near­ly two decades since. But what­ev­er acclaim it now draws can’t com­pare to the praise lav­ished upon Lynch’s 2001 tele­vi­sion-pilot-turned-fea­ture-film Mul­hol­land Dri­ve, which a BBC crit­ics poll recent­ly named the best movie of the 21st cen­tu­ry so far. In “Mul­hol­land Dri­ve: How Lynch Manip­u­lates You,” Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, breaks down how it sub­verts the expec­ta­tions we’ve devel­oped through moviego­ing itself, one of the sto­ry­telling strate­gies Lynch uses to make this par­tic­u­lar tale of death, sex, Hol­ly­wood, the sud­den loss of iden­ti­ty (and, need­less to say, a plat­inum-haired ingenue, men­ac­ing heav­ies, and a mys­te­ri­ous dwarf) so very com­pelling indeed.

If, how­ev­er, none of these video essays get you believ­ing in Lynch as a cre­ative genius, then you’ll sure­ly enjoy a hearty laugh with Joe McClean’s “How to Make a David Lynch Film,” a short but elab­o­rate satire of the tropes of Lynchi­an­ism pre­sent­ed as an instruc­tion­al film — made in the style of Lynch’s beloved 1950s — inside the set­ting of Lost High­way. Its com­mand­ments, many of which over­lap in one way or anoth­er with the points made in the ana­lyt­i­cal video essays high­er above, include “Start by hav­ing dra­mat­ic paus­es between every line of dia­logue,” “There must be omi­nous music or sounds in every scene,” “When in doubt, add close-ups of lips and eyes,” and “There should be nudi­ty for absolute­ly no rea­son.” (The video con­tains some poten­tial­ly NSFW con­tent, though only in ser­vice of par­o­dy­ing the NSFW con­tent of Lynch’s movies them­selves.)

“I watch David Lynch movies and I just don’t under­stand them,” writes McClean. “I decid­ed I was going to try and fig­ure them out so I sta­pled my eyes open and had a Lynch-a-thon. It didn’t help. I thought if I forced myself to watch, at some point it would just click and it would all make since. That nev­er hap­pened.” But per­haps he tried too hard to under­stand them, rather than not enough. Lynch, in the words of Lewis Bond, “inten­tion­al­ly mis­guides our per­cep­tions through offer­ing plots that embrace a sub­con­scious man­ner of sto­ry­telling. Our expec­ta­tions so often go unful­filled in his movies because he shows that we expect so much from life, yet know so lit­tle.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young David Lynch Talks About Eraser­head in One of His First Record­ed Inter­views (1979)

The Incred­i­bly Strange Film Show: Revis­it 1980s Doc­u­men­taries on David Lynch, John Waters, Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky & Oth­er Film­mak­ers

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

An Intro­duc­tion to Jean-Luc Godard’s Inno­v­a­tive Film­mak­ing Through Five Video Essays

A Com­plete Col­lec­tion of Wes Ander­son Video Essays

Four Video Essays Explain the Mas­tery of Film­mak­er Abbas Kiarosta­mi (RIP)

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.

Frank Zappa Gets Surprised & Serenaded by the U.S. Navy Band at the San Francisco Airport (1980)

in Music | December 14th, 2016

Who the f*@% is Frank Zap­pa? Do we need to answer that ques­tion? Maybe so. As com­menter Kat­tul­lus remarks on a recent Zap­pa-relat­ed MetaFil­ter post, “When I was a kid… he was one of those rock stars that pret­ty much every­one knew. Now he’s almost van­ished from pop­u­lar cul­ture.” He has also van­ished from his mor­tal coil, as of 1993, and so it’s maybe no won­der we don’t hear that much about him. But it’s a shame all the same. Those who know and love Zap­pa know he was a musi­cal genius and more—“a mas­ter show­man,” says Alex Win­ter, direc­tor of the new crowd­fund­ed doc­u­men­tary Who the F*@% is Frank Zap­pa.

Win­ter calls Zap­pa a “per­former, ora­tor, wit, polit­i­cal pun­dit, etc.” And in dis­cussing the clip above, the direc­tor (best known as Bill in Bill & Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture) reminds us that Frank Zap­pa was also a reg­u­lar guy with reg­u­lar emo­tions. The footage comes from April, 1980, when Zap­pa was greet­ed at the San Fran­cis­co air­port by the Navy Band play­ing his song “Joe’s Garage.” Win­ter enthus­es about Zappa’s response to the sur­prise. The com­pos­er and gui­tarist, he says, “was so rarely him­self in pub­lic… In this clip, Frank is gen­uine­ly and pro­found­ly moved by the band’s per­for­mance of his music, and so we get to see him unpre­pared and just being him­self.”

Indeed, Zap­pa played char­ac­ters in pub­lic, though each one at the core con­tained his wry sar­don­ic wit. And the fact that he always came pre­pared is part of what made him seem so effort­less­ly great at every­thing he did. So this moment is rare for its can­dor, on the part of both Zap­pa and the Navy Band mem­bers. Zap­pa, “it turns out,” writes Navy Times, “was a huge fan of the Navy Band.” That love was requit­ed. Half the fun of the clip is watch­ing “the joy, con­cern, ner­vous­ness and rev­er­ence of these musi­cians, doing a fan­tas­tic job of play­ing a dif­fi­cult piece for the noto­ri­ous­ly dis­cern­ing com­pos­er.” The musi­cians occa­sion­al­ly stum­ble or hit a sour note, but like Pat­ti Smith’s heart­felt trib­ute to Bob Dylan at the Nobel Cer­e­mo­ny, these mis­takes make the per­for­mance all the more endear­ing.

Zap­pa, notes Rolling Stone, “liked the clip so much that he dupli­cat­ed the mas­ter onto his own tapes.” The clip we have at the top was record­ed from a mon­i­tor in the Zap­pa Vault (to the left, you can see the edge of a poster for the Zap­pa-direct­ed film 200 Motels). Zappa’s dada pos­es and vir­tu­oso musi­cal the­ater seemed to offer the ide­al response to the repres­sion of the Nixon-era six­ties, and the Rea­gan-era 80s, when he became a vocal crit­ic of Tip­per Gore’s PMRC. Per­haps, after all, as Kat­tul­lus says, he’s “due for a resur­gence.”

If so, we can learn a good deal about not only Zap­pa the musi­cian, but Zap­pa the per­son, through his fam­i­ly archive of art­work, pho­tos, per­son­al let­ters, etc., all of which Win­ter and his col­leagues have raised mon­ey to help pre­serve. See the doc­u­men­tary project’s ful­ly-fund­ed Kick­starter page here, where the top prize, for a dona­tion of 9 mil­lion dol­lars, is “Frank Zappa’s actu­al f*@%ing house” in the Hol­ly­wood Hills.

via MetaFil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­mat­ed: Frank Zap­pa on Why the Cul­tur­al­ly-Bereft Unit­ed States Is So Sus­cep­ti­ble to Fads (1971)

Frank Zap­pa Explains the Decline of the Music Busi­ness (1987)

Frank Zappa’s Amaz­ing Final Con­certs: Prague and Budapest, 1991

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