Henry David Thoreau on When Civil Disobedience and Resistance Are Justified (1849)

in Philosophy, Politics | November 15th, 2016

His­to­ry is rife with exam­ples of oppres­sive gov­ern­ments. The present is rife with exam­ples of oppres­sive gov­ern­ments. You can name your own exam­ples. The ques­tion that presents itself to any oppo­si­tion is what is to be done? Go under­ground? Sab­o­tage? Take up arms? The like­li­hood of suc­cess in such cases—depending on the bel­liger­ence of the oppo­si­tion and the capa­bil­i­ties of the government—varies wide­ly. But I see no moral rea­son to con­demn peo­ple for fight­ing injus­tice, pro­vid­ed their cause itself is just. Nei­ther, of course, did Hen­ry David Thore­au, author of the 1849 essay “Civ­il Dis­obe­di­ence,” a doc­u­ment that every stu­dent of Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy 101 knows as an ur-text of mod­ern demo­c­ra­t­ic protest move­ments.

This is an essay we have become all-too famil­iar with by rep­u­ta­tion rather than by read­ing. Thoreau’s polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy is not pas­sive, as in the phrase “pas­sive resis­tance.” It is not mid­dle-of-the-road cen­trism dis­guised as rad­i­cal­ism. It lies instead at the water­ing hole where right lib­er­tar­i­an­ism and left anar­chism meet to have a drink. “I hearti­ly accept the mot­to, ‘That gov­ern­ment is best which gov­erns least,’” wrote Thore­au, and ulti­mate­ly “’That gov­ern­ment is best which gov­erns not at all.’”

Like many utopi­an the­o­rists of the 19th cen­tu­ry, Thore­au saw this as the inevitable future: “when men are pre­pared for it, that will be the kind of gov­ern­ment they will have.” Thore­au laments all restric­tions on trade and reg­u­la­tions on com­merce. He also denounces the use of a stand­ing army by “a com­par­a­tive­ly… few indi­vid­u­als.” And yet—despite these rad­i­cal positions—Thoreau has been enshrined in the his­to­ry of polit­i­cal thought both for his rad­i­cal tac­tics and his defense of pre­serv­ing gov­ern­ment, for the present.

“To speak prac­ti­cal­ly and as a cit­i­zen,” he wrote, “unlike those who call them­selves no-gov­ern­ment men, I ask for, not at once no gov­ern­ment, but at once a bet­ter gov­ern­ment.” He does not go to great lengths, as clas­si­cal philoso­phers were wont, to define the ide­al gov­ern­ment. It is rad­i­cal­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic, that we know. But as to what con­sti­tutes injus­tice, Thore­au is clear:

When the fric­tion comes to have its machine, and oppres­sion and rob­bery are orga­nized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer. In oth­er words, when a sixth of the pop­u­la­tion of a nation which has under­tak­en to be the refuge of lib­er­ty are slaves, and a whole coun­try is unjust­ly over­run and con­quered by a for­eign army, and sub­ject­ed to mil­i­tary law, I think that it is not too soon for hon­est men to rebel and rev­o­lu­tion­ize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the coun­try so over­run is not our own, but ours is the invad­ing army.

This peo­ple must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mex­i­co, though it cost them their exis­tence as a peo­ple.

The fig­ure he cites of “a sixth of the pop­u­la­tion” is not erro­neous. As W.E.B. Du Bois showed in one of his rev­o­lu­tion­ary 1900 soci­o­log­i­cal visu­al­iza­tions, dur­ing the time of Thoreau’s essay, one-sixth of the country’s pop­u­la­tion was indeed com­prised of peo­ple of African descent, most of them enslaved. Thore­au wrote dur­ing debates over the imped­ing Fugi­tive Slave Act, a law that put every per­son of col­or in the expand­ing country—free or escaped, in every state and territory—at risk of enslave­ment or impris­on­ment with­out any due process.

Thore­au found both this devel­op­ing night­mare and the Mex­i­can-Amer­i­can war too intol­er­a­bly unjust for the coun­try to bear. And he rec­og­nized the lim­i­ta­tions of elec­tions to resolve them: “All vot­ing is a sort of gam­ing… with a slight moral tinge to it,” he wrote, then observed with dev­as­tat­ing irony, giv­en total dis­en­fran­chise­ment of peo­ple who were prop­er­ty, that “Only his vote can has­ten the abo­li­tion of slav­ery who asserts his own free­dom by his vote.”

“Unjust laws exist,” writes Thore­au, “I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-fric­tion to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I con­demn.” Thore­au had put his dic­ta into prac­tice already many years before. He had stopped pay­ing his poll tax in 1842 to protest the war and the expan­sion of slav­ery. He was final­ly arrest­ed and jailed for the offense in 1846. The inci­dent hard­ly sparked a move­ment. He was bailed out, per­haps by his aunt, the fol­low­ing day. And as we well know, the Mex­i­can-Amer­i­can war and the cri­sis of slav­ery were both resolved with… war.

But Thore­au used his expe­ri­ence as the basis for “Civ­il Dis­obe­di­ence,” which he wrote to a local audi­ence in his home state of Mass­a­chu­setts, and which went on to direct­ly inspire the mas­sive­ly suc­cess­ful, nation­al grass­roots move­ments of Gand­hi, Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. and oth­er non-vio­lent Human Rights and Anti-War lead­ers around the world. So what did he rec­om­mend dis­senters do? Here are the basics of his pre­scrip­tions, with his words in quotes:

“I do not hes­i­tate to say, that those who call them­selves Abo­li­tion­ists should at once effec­tu­al­ly with­draw their sup­port, both in per­son and prop­er­ty, from the gov­ern­ment of Mass­a­chu­setts.” Thore­au then goes on to describe his par­tic­u­lar form of resis­tance, the non-pay­ment of tax. His the­sis here, how­ev­er, allows for any just refusals to rec­og­nize gov­ern­ment author­i­ty.

“Under a gov­ern­ment which impris­ons any unjust­ly, the true place for a just man is also in prison.” Thore­au him­self suf­fered lit­tle, it’s true, but mil­lions who came after him—dissidents on all con­ti­nents save Antarctica—have endured impris­on­ment, beat­ing, and death. “Sup­pose blood should flow,” writes Thore­au, “Is there not a sort of blood shed when the con­science is wound­ed?” As for the just­ness of dis­obe­di­ence, Thore­au makes a very log­i­cal case: “If a thou­sand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a vio­lent and bloody mea­sure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to com­mit vio­lence and shed inno­cent blood.”  

Thore­au goes on to intro­duce a good deal of nuance into the argu­ment, writ­ing that com­mu­ni­ty tax­es sup­port­ing high­ways and schools are eth­i­cal, but those sup­port­ing unjust war and enslave­ment are not. He rec­om­mends dis­cern­ing, thought­ful action. And he expect­ed that the poor would under­take most of the resis­tance, because the bur­dens fell heav­i­est on them, and “because they who assert the purest right, and con­se­quent­ly are the most dan­ger­ous to a cor­rupt State, com­mon­ly have not spent much time in accu­mu­lat­ing prop­er­ty.” This has gen­er­al­ly, through­out his­to­ry, been true.

The best thing a per­son of means can do, he writes, is “to endeav­or to car­ry out those schemes which he enter­tained when he was poor.” Or, pre­sum­ably, if one has nev­er been so, to fol­low the poors’ lead. The para­dox of Thoreau’s asser­tion that the least pow­er­ful present the great­est threat to the State resolves in his recog­ni­tion that the State’s pow­er rests not in its appeal to “sense, intel­lec­tu­al or moral” but in its “supe­ri­or phys­i­cal strength.” By sim­ply refus­ing to yield to threats, anyone—even ordi­nary, pow­er­less people—can deny the government’s author­i­ty, “until the State comes to rec­og­nize the indi­vid­ual as a high­er and inde­pen­dent pow­er, from which all its own pow­er and author­i­ty are derived.”

Read Thoreau’s com­plete essay, “Civ­il Dis­obe­di­ence,” here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

6 Polit­i­cal The­o­rists Intro­duced in Ani­mat­ed “School of Life” Videos: Marx, Smith, Rawls & More

Hear 21 Hours of Lec­tures & Talks by Howard Zinn, Author of the Best­selling A People’s His­to­ry of the Unit­ed States

‘Tired of Giv­ing In’: The Arrest Report, Mug Shot and Fin­ger­prints of Rosa Parks (Decem­ber 1, 1955)

Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. Writes a List of 16 Sug­ges­tions for African-Amer­i­cans Rid­ing New­ly-Inte­grat­ed Bus­es (1956)

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

An Animated, Monty Python-Style Introduction to the Søren Kierkegaard, the First Existentialist

in Philosophy | November 15th, 2016

When first I vis­it­ed Copen­hagen, I went over, as many tourists do, to the Assis­tens Ceme­tery to find the grave of Søren Kierkegaard. But for all of us who know the name of that 19th-cen­tu­ry Dan­ish philoso­pher, how many can claim even an acquain­tance with the ideas that made his into a near-house­hold name? The intro­duc­to­ry video from Alain de Bot­ton’s School of Life just above gets us start­ed on form­ing that acquain­tance with this “bril­liant, gloomy, anx­i­ety-rid­den, often hilar­i­ous” thinker in a man­ner rel­e­vant to the prob­lems of mod­ern life, high­light­ing three of Kierkegaard’s best-known works: 1843’s Either/Or and Fear and Trem­bling and 1849’s The Sick­ness Unto Death.

In the first two, says de Bot­ton in the role of the nar­ra­tor, “what Kierkegaard wants us to do, above all, is wake up, and give up our cozy, sen­ti­men­tal illu­sions. He sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly attacks the pil­lars of mod­ern life: our faith in fam­i­ly, our trust in work, our attach­ment to love, and our gen­er­al sense that life has pur­pose and mean­ing.” He quotes the philoso­pher him­self and his real­iza­tion that “the mean­ing of life was to get a liveli­hood. That the goal of life was to be a high-court judge. That the bright­est joy of love was to mar­ry a well-off girl. That wis­dom was what the major­i­ty said it was. That pas­sion was to give a speech. That courage was to risk being fined $10. That cor­dial­i­ty was to say ‘You’re wel­come’ after a meal, and that the fear of God was to go to Com­mu­nion once a year. That’s what I saw, and I laughed.”

The direc­tion in which this real­iza­tion took Kierkegaard’s thought pro­duced a body of work con­sid­ered a prece­dent of the Exis­ten­tial­ism explored in the 20th cen­tu­ry by the likes of Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre. “Mar­ry, and you will regret it,” Kierkegaard wrote in Either/Or. “Don’t mar­ry, you will also regret it. Mar­ry or don’t mar­ry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s fool­ish­ness, you will regret it. Weep over it, you’ll regret that, too. Hang your­self, you’ll regret it. Don’t hang your­self, and you’ll regret that, too. Whether you hang your­self or don’t hang your­self, you will regret both. This, gen­tle­men, is the essence of all phi­los­o­phy.”

Kierkegaard stressed the then-new idea of angst, “a con­di­tion where we under­stand how many choic­es we face, and how lit­tle under­stand­ing we can ever have, of how to exer­cise these choic­es wise­ly.” Some might turn to reli­gion for the solu­tion, and so, in a way, did Kierkegaard, who “adored the sim­ple truths of the Gospels” but “loathed the Chris­tian­i­ty of the estab­lished Dan­ish Church.” What an irony that his fam­i­ly name means “church­yard” in Dan­ish, let alone that he should be buried in such a famous one him­self. (Kierkegaard’s nephew protest­ed the bur­ial, which result­ed in a fine for dis­rupt­ing a funer­al.) But to the extent that the philoso­pher’s pres­ence there caus­es its pil­grims both casu­al and devot­ed to reflect seri­ous­ly on the irre­solv­able con­tra­dic­tions still at the core of our lives, his mis­sion (in de Bot­ton’s words) “to save him­self and, he thought, human­i­ty,” con­tin­ues.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

The Phi­los­o­phy of Kierkegaard, the First Exis­ten­tial­ist Philoso­pher, Revis­it­ed in 1984 Doc­u­men­tary

Down­load Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre & Mod­ern Thought (1960)

Get to Know Socrates, Camus, Kierkegaard & Oth­er Great Philoso­phers with the BBC’s Intel­li­gent Radio Show, In Our Time

Exis­ten­tial Phi­los­o­phy of Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus Explained with 8‑Bit Video Games

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

Who Wrote at Stand­ing Desks? Kierkegaard, Dick­ens and Ernest Hem­ing­way Too

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.

Free: Watch 92 Episodes of the Surrealist Cartoon, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Featuring Björk, Thom Yorke & More

in Comics/Cartoons, Television | November 15th, 2016

Head over to AdultSwim.com and you can watch online 92 episodes of Space Ghost Coast to Coast. Not famil­iar with the show? Here’s how Vox frames it:

One of the most decep­tive­ly influ­en­tial series of the past sev­er­al decades, Space Ghost took the char­ac­ters from a junky old Han­na-Bar­bera series and insert­ed them into the mid­dle of a talk-show set­ting, where they could have the most pos­si­bil­i­ty for utter strange­ness. Celebri­ties dropped by to be inter­viewed, while the rest of the show’s back­stage shenani­gans played out with an utter­ly straight face, even though one of the major char­ac­ters was an evil pray­ing man­tis named Zorak. Was it ter­ri­bly sophis­ti­cat­ed? No. But it invent­ed a whole new pro­gram­ming bloc — Adult Swim — and proved sur­re­al­ism could sell in late-night TV.

Con­se­quence of Sound is also quick to note that Space Ghost Coast to Coast “brought an impres­sive line­up of musi­cal guests to the table, includ­ing Pave­ment, Dave Grohl, Thurston Moore, David Byrne, Thom Yorke, Willie Nel­son, and Space Ghost’s “wife”, Björk.”

You can catch Björk and Radio­head­’s Thom Yorke in the clips above. Watch all episodes here. And spend a moment think­ing about the show’s ani­ma­tor, Clay Mar­tin Cro­ker, who recent­ly died at the all-too-young age of 54.

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!

via Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Over 22,000 Gold­en & Sil­ver Age Com­ic Books from the Com­ic Book Plus Archive

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Free Com­ic Books Turn Kids Onto Physics: Start with the Adven­tures of Niko­la Tes­la

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

The Pulp Fic­tion Archive: The Cheap, Thrilling Sto­ries That Enter­tained a Gen­er­a­tion of Read­ers (1896–1946) 

Carl Sagan’s Ambitious College Reading List: Plato, Shakespeare, Gide, and Plenty of Philosophy, Math & Physics (1954)

in Books, Science | November 14th, 2016

Carl Sagan may have passed away almost twen­ty years ago, but he con­tin­ues to influ­ence minds of all gen­er­a­tions through intel­lec­tu­al heirs like Neil DeGrasse Tyson (host of the remake of Sagan’s beloved 1980 TV series Cos­mos) as well as through the books he wrote in his life­time. But what books influ­enced Sagan, launch­ing him on the jour­ney toward astron­o­my, cos­mol­o­gy, astro­physics, astro­bi­ol­o­gy, and glob­al celebri­ty? Thanks to the Library of Con­gress’ Carl Sagan Archive, we now know at least forty titles from the no doubt volu­mi­nous amount of read­ing mate­r­i­al he digest­ed dur­ing his youth and edu­ca­tion.

Sagan wrote this read­ing list (which a fan has tran­scribed with links and post­ed to Red­dit) in 1954, as an under­grad­u­ate at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. On it he iden­ti­fies the books, as a young Charles Dar­win once wrote on his own list, to be read, whether whol­ly, par­tial­ly, or as a part of his course­work:

In Whole

• The Immoral­ist — Andre Gide
• Death, Be Not Proud — John Gun­ther
• Out­line of Abnor­mal Psy­chol­o­gy - Gard­ner Mur­phy
• Who Speaks For Man — Nor­man Cousins
• Astron­o­my — Robert Bak­er
• Obser­va­tion­al Approach to Cos­mol­o­gy — Robert Hub­ble
• Can­cer
• Quan­ti­ta­tive Aspects of Car­cino­genic Radi­a­tion — Harold Thay­er Davis
• Star Short Sci­ence Fic­tion Nov­els #1
• New Biol­o­gy #15
• Young Archimedes — Aldous Hux­ley
• Julius Cae­sar — Shake­speare
• Sym­po­sium — Pla­to
• Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of An Une­d­u­cat­ed Man — Hutchins
• Timaeus — Pla­to

In Part

• Extra­or­di­nary Pop­u­lar Delu­sions — Charles MacK­ay
• But We Were Born Free — Elmer Davis
• Read­ings In Phi­los­o­phy
• His­to­ry of West­ern Phi­los­o­phy — W.T. Jones
• The Greek Read­er — W.H. Auden
• In the Mat­ter of J. Robert Oppen­heimer
• The Berlitz Ger­man Self-Teacher
• Sig­ma Galax­ies
• The Uses of the Past — Her­bert J. Muller
• Short Sto­ries for Study
• The Repub­lic — Pla­to
• The Bible — Anony­mous
• Sev­er­al Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­cans

Course Read­ings:

• Heat and Ther­mo­dy­nam­ics - Mark Wal­do Zeman­sky
• Ther­mo­dy­nam­ics, Kinet­ic The­o­ry, Sta­tis­ti­cal The­o­ry - Fran­cis W. Sears
• Kinet­ic The­o­ry of Gas­es — E.H. Ken­nard
• Ther­mo­dy­nam­ics: An Advanced Treat­ment — E.A. Guggen­heim
• Elec­tric­i­ty and Elec­tro­mag­net­ism — Horn­well
• The­o­ry of Func­tions (5 Vol­umes) — Kon­rad Knopp
• Advanced Cal­cu­lus (in part) — Wil­fred Kaplan
• Com­plex Analy­sis — Lars Ahlfors
• Vol. II, Dif­fer­en­tial and Inte­gral Cal­cu­lus — Richard Courant (Author)
• Elec­tric Fields — Rugers 
• Elec­tro­mag­net­ics — John Daniel Kraus
• Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Cir­cuit Fun­da­men­tals — Carl Edwin Smith

Pret­ty ambi­tious mate­r­i­al for a twen­ty-year-old, but remem­ber: we’re talk­ing about some­one who, around a decade ear­li­er, had already sketched out his ideas for human­i­ty’s space­far­ing future. It makes sense that such a child would grow up to read sci­ence fic­tion — and with the pub­li­ca­tion of Con­tact thir­ty years after that, write it — and even that he would take up math­e­mat­ics and physics as a course of aca­d­e­m­ic study.

But it takes a mind like Sagan’s not to lose sight of the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the non­spe­cial­ist pub­lic, as evi­denced by the pres­ence on his list of Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can and Extra­or­di­nary Pop­u­lar Delu­sions. Nor did he neglect, even before his career began, the need to con­tex­tu­al­ize sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies in the realm of human thought and feel­ing, which extends from Pla­to and the Bible to Shake­speare, André Gide, and John Gun­ther — that last writer’s work, and cer­tain oth­er vol­umes on his list, also show­ing an advanced con­scious­ness of human lim­i­ta­tions and mor­tal­i­ty. All of it placed Sagan well, despite his trun­cat­ed time on Earth, to do work that will out­last us all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Carl Sagan’s Child­hood Sketch­es of The Future of Space Trav­el

Carl Sagan Presents His “Baloney Detec­tion Kit”: 8 Tools for Skep­ti­cal Think­ing

Carl Sagan on the Virtues of Mar­i­jua­na (1969)

New Carl Sagan Archive Fea­tures His Dig­i­tized Home Movies, Stu­dent Jour­nal­ism, Draft of His Pale Blue Dot & More

What Did Charles Dar­win Read? See His Hand­writ­ten Read­ing List & Read Books from His Library Online

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

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 Dave Chappelle’s Saturday Night Live Monologue: “We’ve Elected an Internet Troll as Our President”

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Life | November 13th, 2016

Dave Chap­pelle host­ed SNL last night and gave us the com­ic relief we need­ed. And also a few heart­felt thoughts about what a Trump pres­i­den­cy means for our imper­iled nation. The most poignant part comes at the very end:

You know, before I go, I do want to say one thing, and this is not a joke. But I think it’s impor­tant that I say this, ’cause they’re march­ing up the street right now as we speak.

A few weeks ago I went to the White House for a par­ty. It was the first time I’ve been there in many years and it was very excit­ing. And BET spon­sored the par­ty, so every­one there was black. And it was beau­ti­ful. I walked through the gates — you know, I’m from Wash­ing­ton, so I saw the bus stop, or the cor­ner where the bus stop used to be, where I used to catch the bus to school and dream about nights like tonight.

It was a real­ly, real­ly beau­ti­ful night. At the end of the night every­one went into the West Wing of the White House and it was a huge par­ty. And every­body in there was black — except for Bradley Coop­er, for some rea­son.

And on the walls were pic­tures of all the pres­i­dents, of the past. Now, I’m not sure if this is true, but to my knowl­edge the first black per­son that was offi­cial­ly invit­ed to the White House was Fred­er­ick Dou­glass. They stopped him at the gates. Abra­ham Lin­coln had to walk out him­self and escort Fred­er­ick Dou­glass into the White House, and it didn’t hap­pen again, as far as I know, until Roo­sevelt was pres­i­dent. Roo­sevelt was pres­i­dent, he had a black guy over and got so much flack from the media that he lit­er­al­ly said, “I will nev­er have a n—-r in this house again.”

I thought about that, and I looked at that black room, and saw all those black faces, and Bradley, and I saw how hap­py every­body was. These peo­ple who had been his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­en­fran­chised. It made me feel hope­ful and it made me feel proud to be an Amer­i­can and it made me very hap­py about the prospects of our coun­try.

So, in that spir­it, I’m wish­ing Don­ald Trump luck. And I’m going to give him a chance, and we, the his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­en­fran­chised, demand that he give us one too. Thank you very much.

You also should­n’t miss Kate McK­in­non’s two-for-one trib­ute to Hillary Clin­ton and Leonard Cohen. What a tal­ent she is.

And for any edu­cat­ed white lib­er­al, this skit will sure­ly hit home:

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer 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:

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

Pres­i­dent Obama’s 2016 Stand-Up Com­e­dy Rou­tine

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

Alec Bald­win Does a Per­fect Don­ald Trump: Watch SNL’s Spoof of the Trump-Clin­ton Debate

David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel” Performed Live by The Biggest Rock Band on Earth (1,000 Musicians in Total)

in Life | November 13th, 2016

Feel­ing a lit­tle rebel­lious today? Ready to take on the great con? This will help get you going.

Above, watch the biggest rock band on earth–1,000 mem­bers strong–perform a rous­ing ver­sion of David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel” (1974). This crack­ing per­for­mance took place last sum­mer in Cese­na, Italy–roughly a year after the col­lec­tive gave a sim­i­lar treat­ment to the Foo Fight­ers’ “Learn­ing to Fly.” Hope­ful­ly oth­er songs record­ed that night will even­tu­al­ly appear on Rockin’ 1000’s YouTube chan­nel. Who knows, maybe there’s a ver­sion of the Stones’ “Street Fight­ing Man” still to come.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Musi­cians Per­form Foo Fight­ers’ “Learn to Fly” in Uni­son in Italy

Dave: The Best Trib­ute to David Bowie That You’re Going to See

David Bowie & Bri­an Eno’s Col­lab­o­ra­tion on “Warsza­wa” Reimag­ined in Com­ic Ani­ma­tion

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

Watch Moebius and Miyazaki, Two of the Most Imaginative Artists, in Conversation (2004)

in Animation, Art, Film | November 11th, 2016

The worlds so thor­ough­ly imag­ined by the French com­ic artist Jean Giraud, bet­ter known as Moe­bius, and the Japan­ese ani­ma­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki, imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized the world over by his fam­i­ly name alone, could have arisen from no oth­er artis­tic minds. It stands to rea­son not only that appre­ci­a­tors of one would appre­ci­ate the oth­er, but that the two men would hold each oth­er’s work in high regard. “Japan­ese ani­ma­tion is impres­sive,” Moe­bius once said to Miyaza­ki as the two expressed their mutu­al appre­ci­a­tion. “I real­ly think it is the best in the world, and Miyaza­k­i’s work is top in Japan.”

“Moe­bius first dis­cov­ered Miyaza­k­i’s work in 1986, when his son Julien (then a school­boy) showed him a pirate copy of a video con­tain­ing a title­less, author­less, and undubbed ani­mat­ed fea­ture,” writes Dani Cav­al­laro in The Ani­me Art of Hayao Miyaza­ki. “The French artist was instant­ly seduced by the film’s graph­ic vig­or and tech­ni­cal inven­tive­ness but took it to be the one-off accom­plish­ment of an unfamed ani­ma­tor. When he even­tu­al­ly dis­cov­ered that the film’s name was Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind and that its cre­ator’s name was Hayao Miyaza­ki, Moe­bius endeav­ored to delve deep­er into the Japan­ese ani­ma­tor’s oeu­vre and to pub­licly voice his admi­ra­tion.”

And Miyaza­ki turns out to have drawn inspi­ra­tion from Moe­bius when he focused on ani­ma­tion. Miyaza­ki, who began as a com­ic artist him­self, remem­bers dis­cov­er­ing Moe­bius through Arzach, his series of word­less visu­al sto­ries of a hero who rides a ptero­dactyl through oth­er­word­ly and for­bid­ding­ly sub­lime land­scapes. “It was a big shock,” says Miyaza­ki. “Not only for me. All man­ga authors were shak­en by this work. Unfor­tu­nate­ly when I dis­cov­ered it, I already had a con­sol­i­dat­ed style. So I could­n’t use his influ­ence to enrich my draw­ing. Though, even today, I think he has an awe­some sense of space. I direct­ed Nau­si­caä under Moe­bius’ influ­ence.”

In 2004, the exhi­bi­tion Miyazaki/Moebius pre­sent­ed brought them togeth­er in Paris. Cav­al­laro describes it as “a panoram­ic sur­vey of the two artists’ careers through 300 works includ­ing water­col­ors sto­ry­boards, cels and con­cept designs, the­mat­i­cal­ly arranged, drawn from their per­son­al col­lec­tions,” includ­ing a draw­ing of Nau­si­caä by Moe­bius and one of Arzach by Miyaza­ki. They also sat down there for the con­ver­sa­tion record­ed in the video above. “The 21st cen­tu­ry is a tricky time,” says Miyaza­ki. “Our future isn’t clear. We need to re-exam­ine many things we’ve tak­en for grant­ed, whether it’s our com­mon sense or our way of think­ing.” The sheer imag­i­na­tive pow­er of artists like the both of them con­tin­ues to show us the way for­ward.

You can read tran­scripts of their record­ed con­ver­sa­tions here and here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In Search of Mœbius: A Doc­u­men­tary Intro­duc­tion to the Inscrutable Imag­i­na­tion of the Late Com­ic Artist Mœbius

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

Moe­bius Gives 18 Wis­dom-Filled Tips to Aspir­ing Artists (1996)

Watch Hayao Miyaza­ki Ani­mate the Final Shot of His Final Fea­ture Film, The Wind Ris­es

Watch Ground­break­ing Com­ic Artist Mœbius Draw His Char­ac­ters in Real Time

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.

Say Goodbye to Leonard Cohen Through Some of His Best-Loved Songs: “Hallelujah,” “Suzanne” and 235 Other Tracks

in Music | November 11th, 2016

Anoth­er epi­taph for anoth­er fall­en star, anoth­er beloved icon, anoth­er bril­liant musi­cian who was also a bril­liant human being. I do not want to tell you what you already know, that Leonard Cohen died last night at age 82. Cohen, it seems, accept­ed it, just as David Bowie accept­ed his death, and both poured their accep­tance into one final record. Will we talk about You Want It Dark­er in the same awed tones as David Bowie’s Black­star—as a know­ing last let­ter of mixed hope and despair, a cryp­tic time cap­sule that opens a lit­tle bit more as the months ahead wear on?

If you are the deal­er, I’m out of the game

If you are the heal­er, it means I’m bro­ken and lame

If thine is the glo­ry then mine must be the shame

You want it dark­er

We kill the flame

.… I’m ready, my lord

No mat­ter what he had in mind, we can­not but see these lines now as a last tes­ta­ment. Cohen not only faced his own mor­tal­i­ty, but this year lost his long­time lover and muse Mar­i­anne Ihlen to can­cer. “I think I will fol­low you soon,” he wrote to her just before her death. “You Want It Dark­er” ties togeth­er the per­son­al, the polit­i­cal, the spir­i­tu­al, and the lit­er­ary in a prophet­ic lament, weav­ing his strug­gle into all of ours. There are no answers, but “There’s a lul­la­by for suf­fer­ing,” Cohen writes, then warns, “And a para­dox to blame.” The com­pres­sion of these lines belies a tremen­dous depth of reli­gious and philo­soph­i­cal sen­ti­ment, the weight—it feels in Cohen’s last album—of the world.

But then this describes the music he made 30 years ago. And 50 years ago. “Cohen’s songs are death-haunt­ed,” writes David Rem­nick, “but then they have been since his ear­li­est vers­es.” He released his first album in 1967, fol­lowed two years lat­er by Songs from a Room, the hal­lowed doc­u­ment of some of his best-loved songs: “Bird on the Wire,” “Sto­ry of Isaac,” “Tonight Will Be Fine,” and “The Par­ti­san.” Cohen did not write that last one, and yet, though he “is often incor­rect­ly cred­it­ed as the com­pos­er of the song,” writes Alex Young at Con­se­quence of Sound, “he is cer­tain­ly respon­si­ble for its sur­vival.”

Cohen uni­ver­sal­izes the orig­i­nal French ver­sion; “the Eng­lish lyrics con­tain no ref­er­ences to France or the Nazi occu­pa­tion.” It spoke direct­ly to the bro­ken par­ti­sans in both France and the U.S. post-1968, a year very much like this one, wracked with vio­lence, upheaval, tragedy, and resis­tance. Few song­writ­ers have been able to con­sis­tent­ly address the irra­tional pas­sion, vio­lence, and almost crush­ing deter­mi­na­tion of so much human expe­ri­ence with as much wis­dom as Cohen, even if he down­played what Rem­nick calls “the mys­ter­ies of cre­ation” in his work, telling the New York­er edi­tor in one of his final inter­views last month, “I have no idea what I am doing.”

Yet, almost no song­writer has inspired so much vol­u­bil­i­ty from Bob Dylan, who spoke to Rem­nick at length about the fine intri­ca­cies of Cohen’s “coun­ter­point lines.” “His gift or genius,” said Dylan, “is in his con­nec­tion to the music of the spheres.” Cohen’s lyri­cal sophis­ti­ca­tion chart­ed his het­ero­dox embrace of Judaism and Zen Bud­dhism, and his fas­ci­na­tion with Chris­tian­i­ty. But before he arrived in New York as a “musi­cal novice” at thir­ty-two and became a mys­ti­cal folk trou­ba­dour, he was a high­ly-regard­ed and con­tro­ver­sial poet and nov­el­ist, a “bohemi­an with a cush­ion” from a Mon­tre­al Jew­ish fam­i­ly “both promi­nent and cul­ti­vat­ed.” He even had a doc­u­men­tary about him made in 1965.

Cohen began pub­lish­ing poet­ry in col­lege and put out his first col­lec­tion at 22, then moved to the Greek island of Hydra, where he met Mar­i­anne and pub­lished sev­er­al more col­lec­tions and two nov­els. Lat­er while liv­ing in Lon­don, he wrote to his pub­lish­er about his desire to write for “inner-direct­ed ado­les­cents, lovers in all degree of anguish, dis­ap­point­ed Pla­ton­ists, pornog­ra­phy-peep­ers, hair-hand­ed monks and Popists.” (His one­time lover Joni Mitchell dis­missed him as a “boudoir poet.”) Cohen more than achieved this aim as a song­writer, doing as much, per­haps, as Nico—whom he once pined for and maybe part­ly imitated—to inspire 80s Goths and New Roman­tics.

The dark eroti­cism in his work did not recede when, “frus­trat­ed by poor book sales,” writes Rolling Stone, “Cohen vis­it­ed New York in 1966 to inves­ti­gate the city’s robust folk-rock scene.” There, under the encour­age­ment of Judy Collins, he “quick­ly became the songwriter’s song­writer of choice for artists like Collins, James Tay­lor, Willie Nel­son and many oth­ers.” His first hit, “Suzanne,” above, vivid­ly imag­ines Renais­sance love scenes and echoes with the refrain “her per­fect body,” while also imbu­ing its fleet­ing moments with the depth of sad­ness Cohen’s spa­cious bari­tone con­tained. Lat­er albums like the Phil Spec­tor-pro­duced (and unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly loud) Death of a Ladies’ Man treat with sneer­ing irony his “unbri­dled sex­u­al­i­ty and bru­tal voyeurism.”

Cohen looked unflinch­ing­ly and with monk­ish inten­si­ty at his own excess­es and weak­ness, and at ours, and saw them, trag­ic and beau­ti­ful, as our only strengths. “There is a crack in every­thing,” he sang in 1992’s “Anthem”—live in Lon­don below—“that’s how the light gets in.” No trib­ute can leave out his most beloved and most cov­ered song—one of the most cov­ered and beloved songs ever writ­ten— “Hal­lelu­jah.” From its best-known Jeff Buck­ley ver­sion in 1994 to Rufus Wain­wright’s and count­less oth­ers, the song instant­ly con­jures grav­i­tas and stirs deep wells of emo­tion in the sec­u­lar and reli­gious alike. First released in 1984 on Cohen’s album Var­i­ous Posi­tions, it attract­ed lit­tle atten­tion at first.

His ver­sion lacks the high gospel dra­ma of many inter­pre­ta­tions, despite the back­ing gospel choir, but his lop­ing bar­room deliv­ery and lounge-pop back­ing music work in hyp­not­ic dis­so­nance. It’s a song that took him five years to write. (Mal­colm Glad­well has a whole pod­cast ded­i­cat­ed to the writ­ing of the song.) “He draft­ed dozens of vers­es,” writes Rem­nick, around 80, “and then it was years before he set­tled on a final ver­sion.” Dylan per­formed the song in the late eight­ies, “as a roughshod blues.” In con­ver­sa­tion with Rem­nick, Dylan paused his very detached eval­u­a­tion of Cohen’s tech­ni­cal genius to remark it’s “the point-blank I‑know-you-bet­ter-than-you-know-your­self aspect of the song [that] has plen­ty of res­o­nance for me.” I think we’ll find that to be true of Leonard Cohen the more we unpack his aus­tere, sen­su­al, pro­found­ly lyri­cal-in-the-most-ancient-of-ways body of work.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mal­colm Glad­well on Why Genius Takes Time: A Look at the Mak­ing of Elvis Costello’s “Depor­tee” & Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah”

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

Leonard Cohen Recounts “How I Got My Song,” or When His Love Affair with Music Began

The Poet­ry of Leonard Cohen Illus­trat­ed by Two Short Films

Rufus Wain­wright and 1,500 Singers Sing Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah”

Leonard Cohen Reads The Great World War I Poem, “In Flan­ders Fields”

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

An Animated Version of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner Made of 12,597 Watercolor Paintings

in Art, Film | November 10th, 2016

Three years ago Swedish artist Anders Ram­sell cre­at­ed this 35 minute con­densed ver­sion of Blade Run­ner, frame by frame, using water­col­ors. Blade Run­ner: The Aquarelle Edi­tion con­tains 12,597 impres­sion­is­tic works on water­logged artist paper that togeth­er present, if not a faith­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Rid­ley Scott’s film, then a remem­brance of the film.

It’s as if you boot­ed up a repli­cant film fan and had them try to recon­struct Blade Run­ner from mem­o­ry. (Ram­sell him­self calls it a “para­phrase” of the film.) It’s rec­og­niz­able, but due to the light­ness and fuzzy lines of water­col­or, there’s also a mag­ic to these images. (This is also due to the small size of each frame, 1.5 x 3 cm.)

The film is a jump for­ward from Ramsell’s oth­er works. Before 2011, he was dab­bling in var­i­ous media: nudes in ink on can­vas, abstract acrylic splotch­es, sur­re­al draw­ings that explore hors­es and preg­nan­cy. Div­ing into Blade Run­ner and the amaz­ing amount of work to pro­duce this film did the trick. Ram­sell has tak­en on this tech­nique as wor­thy of fur­ther explo­ration and made a new­er film, Gen­der­ness, which explores trans­sex­u­al­i­ty, and fea­tures a nar­ra­tion by none oth­er than Rut­ger Hauer, who decid­ed to work with Ram­sell after see­ing, Blade Run­ner: The Aquarelle Edi­tion. Watch it above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Blade Run­ner Sketch­book Fea­tures The Orig­i­nal Art of Syd Mead & Rid­ley Scott (1982)

Blade Run­ner is a Waste of Time: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

Wes Ander­son Movie Sets Recre­at­ed in Cute, Minia­ture Dio­ra­mas

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based 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.

Young Frank Zappa Plays the Bicycle on The Steven Allen Show (1963)

in Music | November 10th, 2016

Artists in tur­bu­lent times often must resort to extreme mea­sures to com­pen­sate for the gen­er­al state of cul­tur­al dis­or­der. How can one be heard over the sounds of civ­il unrest? Dada and sur­re­al­ist artists adopt­ed an arch­ly gib­ber­ish music hall idiom dur­ing World War I. Amidst the tumult of the 60s, some avant-gardists like Frank Zap­pa used more pop­ulist means, an osten­si­bly rock and roll for­mat and image, as a vehi­cle for his influ­en­tial clas­si­cal-prog-jazz.

Like the first Dadaists, how­ev­er, Zap­pa was a phys­i­cal artist. He start­ed small in the ear­ly six­ties, if you can call an appear­ance on the Steve Allen Show small. The act cer­tain­ly seems so at first. A young Zap­pa, clean-shaven with a well-tai­lored suit and dap­per hair­cut, appears solo on Allen’s show. He’s tac­i­turn at first dur­ing the inter­view, admit­ting that he can play gui­tar, vibes, bass, and drums. He has cho­sen, how­ev­er, to help the audi­ence recov­er what he sug­gests is a child­hood delight, play­ing the bicy­cle. “How long have you been play­ing bike, Frank?” Allen asks. “About two weeks,” says Zap­pa, get­ting his first big laugh.

Zap­pa also talks about an ear­ly, pre-Moth­ers of Inven­tion project, scor­ing the 1962 film The World’s Great­est Sin­ner, which he calls “the world’s worst movie.” The film, it turned out, didn’t air until 50 years lat­er (Mar­tin Scors­ese names it as a favorite). But the men­tion gives Zap­pa a chance to show off how much he knows about com­pos­ing for a 55-piece orches­tra. Allen seems unim­pressed, and remains so when Zap­pa begins his per­for­mance art. Then the gag strays into a Sal­vador Dali spoof via a John Cage per­for­mance, with Zap­pa as the weird, debonair straight man to Allen’s mouthy com­ic.

Zap­pa plays both the right-side-up and the upside-down bike, which involve dif­fer­ent tech­niques. Though it all, he keeps up the pat­ter of a sea­soned show­man, the direct­ness of a deter­mined band­leader, and a straight face. And per­haps that’s real­ly what’s on dis­play here—not the bicy­cle as a musi­cal instru­ment, but the phys­i­cal act of play­ing and con­duct­ing, using pre­cise move­ments and sequences to elic­it spe­cif­ic effects. For all the humor, there’s no rea­son not to think Zap­pa isn’t com­plete­ly seri­ous about all of this, as it expands into the kind of orga­nized chaos only he could so mas­ter­ly orches­trate.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Frank Zappa’s Exper­i­men­tal Adver­tise­ments For Luden’s Cough Drops, Rem­ing­ton Razors & Port­land Gen­er­al Elec­tric

The Bizarre Time When Frank Zappa’s Entire­ly Instru­men­tal Album Received an “Explic­it Lyrics” Stick­er

Hear the Musi­cal Evo­lu­tion of Frank Zap­pa in 401 Songs

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