Why David Lynch’s Dune Went Wrong: A Comparison with Denis Villeneuve’s Hit Adaptation

in Film, Sci Fi | January 20th, 2025

Denis Vil­leneu­ve’s recent film adap­ta­tion of Dune is gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be supe­ri­or to the late David Lynch’s, from 1984 — though even accord­ing to many of Lynch’s fans, it could hard­ly have been worse. In a 1996 piece for Pre­miere mag­a­zine, David Fos­ter Wal­lace described Dune as “unques­tion­ably the worst movie of Lynch’s career,” not least due to the mis­cast­ing of the direc­tor him­self: “Eraser­head had been one of those sell-your-own-plas­ma-to-buy-the-film-stock mas­ter­pieces, with a tiny and large­ly unpaid cast and crew. Dune, on the oth­er hand, had one of the biggest bud­gets in Hol­ly­wood his­to­ry,” mar­shaled by super-pro­duc­er Dino De Lau­ren­ti­is. But could even a mas­ter block­buster crafts­man have made cin­e­mat­ic sense of Frank Her­bert’s orig­i­nal sto­ry, “which even in the nov­el is con­vo­lut­ed to the point of pain”?

With its two parts hav­ing been released in the twen­ty-twen­ties, Vil­leneu­ve’s Dune prac­ti­cal­ly cries out for Youtube video essays com­par­ing it to Lynch’s ver­sion. The one above from Archer Green first high­lights their dif­fer­ences through one scene that was mem­o­rable in the nov­el and both films: when, being put to the test by the Rev­erend Moth­er Gaius Helen Mohi­am, the young hero Paul Atrei­des, played in the old Dune by Kyle MacLach­lan and the new one by Tim­o­th­ée Cha­la­met, inserts his hand into a box that inflicts extreme pain. Super­fi­cial­ly sim­i­lar though they may appear, the two sequences reveal defin­ing qual­i­ties of each pic­ture’s look and feel — Vil­leneu­ve’s is shad­owy and full of ancient-look­ing details, while Lynch’s looks like a piece of retro-futur­is­tic Jacobean the­ater — as well as the con­trast between how they dra­ma­tize the source mate­r­i­al.

The new Dune is “a very mod­ern-look­ing film that goes for a real­is­tic and ground­ed aes­thet­ic, and it feels more like a seri­ous pres­tige sci-fi movie,” says Archer Green, “where­as old Dune is more sur­re­al­ist: it’s elab­o­rate, grungy, and ulti­mate­ly quite over the top.” Their hav­ing been made in dif­fer­ent eras explains some of this, but so does their hav­ing been made at dif­fer­ent scales of time. Viewed back-to-back, Vil­leneu­ve’s Dune movies run just over five and a half hours. Lynch open­ly admit­ted that he’d “sold out” his right to the final cut in exchange for a major Hol­ly­wood project, but he also sel­dom failed to men­tion that the stu­dio demand­ed that the film be “squeezed” to two hours and 17 min­utes in order to guar­an­tee a cer­tain min­i­mum num­ber of dai­ly screen­ings.

This pres­sure to get the run­time down must have moti­vat­ed some of what even in the nine­teen-eight­ies felt old-fash­ioned about Lynch’s Dune, like its extend­ed “expo­si­tion dumps” and its “hav­ing char­ac­ters’ thoughts audi­bi­lized on the sound­track while the cam­era zooms in on the char­ac­ter mak­ing a think­ing face,” as Wal­lace put it. The film’s fail­ure “could eas­i­ly have turned Lynch into an embit­tered hack, doing effects-inten­sive gorefests for com­mer­cial stu­dios” or “sent him scur­ry­ing to the safe­ty of acad­eme, mak­ing obscure, plot­less 16mm’s for the pipe-and-beret crowd.” Instead, he took the pal­try deal sub­se­quent­ly offered him by De Lau­ren­ti­is and made Blue Vel­vet, whose suc­cess he rode to become a major cul­tur­al fig­ure. In a way, Lynch’s Dune fias­co gave Cha­la­met the even­tu­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to become the defin­i­tive Paul Atrei­des — and MacLach­lan, to become Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Side-by-Side, Shot-by-Shot Com­par­i­son of Denis Villeneuve’s 2020 Dune and David Lynch’s 1984 Dune

Hear Bri­an Eno’s Con­tri­bu­tion to the Sound­track of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

The Dune Col­or­ing & Activ­i­ty Books: When David Lynch’s 1984 Film Cre­at­ed Count­less Hours of Pecu­liar Fun for Kids

The Glos­sary Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios Gave Out to the First Audi­ences of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

The 14-Hour Epic Film, Dune, That Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Pink Floyd, Sal­vador Dalí, Moe­bius, Orson Welles & Mick Jag­ger Nev­er Made

The Wide-Rang­ing Cre­ative Genius of David Lynch (RIP): Dis­cov­er His Films, Music Videos, Car­toons, Com­mer­cials, Paint­ings, Pho­tog­ra­phy & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Fred Armisen & Bill Hader’s Comedic Take on the History of Simon and Garfunkel

in Comedy, Random | January 20th, 2025

Dur­ing their days film­ing Doc­u­men­tary Now!, a mock­u­men­tary series that aired on IFC, Fred Armisen and Bill Had­er teamed up and cre­at­ed a fic­tion­al­ized “his­to­ry” of Simon and Gar­funkel, telling the “real” sto­ry behind the mak­ing of “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water” and “Mrs. Robinson”–stories you’ve assured­ly nev­er heard before. Have a laugh. Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Paul Simon Tells the Sto­ry of How He Wrote “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water” (1970)

Fred Armisen Teach­es a Short Sem­i­nar on the His­to­ry of Punk

Paul Simon Decon­structs “Mrs. Robin­son” (1970)

Clas­sic Punk Rock Sketch­es from Sat­ur­day Night Live, Cour­tesy of Fred Armisen

Art Gar­funkel Lists 1195 Books He Read Over 45 Years, Plus His 157 Favorites (Many Free)

Watch Simon & Gar­funkel Sing “The Sound of Silence” 45 Years After Its Release, and Just Get Haunt­ing­ly Bet­ter with Time

The Wide-Ranging Creative Genius of David Lynch (RIP): Discover His Films, Music Videos, Cartoons, Commercials, Paintings, Photography & More

in Art, Film | January 16th, 2025

Image by Sasha Kar­galt­sev via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

As every cinephile has by now heard, and lament­ed, we’ve just lost a great Amer­i­can film­mak­er. From Eraser­head to Blue Vel­vet to Mul­hol­land Dri­ve to Inland Empire, David Lynch’s fea­tures will sure­ly con­tin­ue to bewil­der and inspire gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of aspir­ing young auteurs. (There seems even to be a re-eval­u­a­tion under­way of his adap­ta­tion of Dune, the box-office cat­a­stro­phe that turned him away from the Hol­ly­wood machine.) But Lynch was nev­er exact­ly an aspir­ing young auteur him­self. He actu­al­ly began his career as a painter, just one of the many facets of his artis­tic exis­tence that we’ve fea­tured over the years here at Open Cul­ture.

Lynch stud­ied paint­ing at the Penn­syl­va­nia Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in the mid-nine­teen-six­ties, and the urban decay of Philadel­phia at the time did a great deal to inspire the aes­thet­ic of Eraser­head, which made his name on the mid­night-movie cir­cuit a decade lat­er. When the MTV era fired up in just a few years, he found his sig­na­ture blend of grotes­querie and hyper-nor­mal­i­ty — what would soon be termed “Lynchi­an” — in demand from cer­tain like-mind­ed record­ing artists. It was around that same time that he launched a side career as a com­ic artist, or in any case a com­ic writer, con­tribut­ing a thor­ough­ly sta­t­ic yet com­pelling­ly var­ied strip called The Angri­est Dog in the World to the LA Read­er from the ear­ly eight­ies through the ear­ly nineties.

In 1987, the year after the art-house block­buster that was Blue Vel­vet set off what Guy Maddin lat­er called “the last real earth­quake in Amer­i­can cin­e­ma,” Lynch host­ed a BBC tele­vi­sion series on the his­to­ry of sur­re­al­ist film. That ultra-mass medi­um would turn out to be a sur­pris­ing­ly recep­tive venue for his high­ly idio­syn­crat­ic art: first he made com­mer­cials, then he co-cre­at­ed with Mark Frost the ABC mys­tery series Twin Peaks, which prac­ti­cal­ly over­took Amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture when it debuted in 1990. (See also these video essays on the mak­ing and mean­ing of the show.) Not that the phe­nom­e­non was lim­it­ed to the U.S., as evi­denced by Lynch’s going on to direct a mini-sea­son of Twin Peaks in the form of canned-cof­fee com­mer­cials for the Japan­ese mar­ket.

Even Mul­hol­land Dri­ve, the pic­ture many con­sid­er to be Lynch’s mas­ter­piece, was con­ceived as a pilot for a TV show. Not long after its release, he put out more work in ser­i­al form, includ­ing the sav­age car­toon Dum­b­land and the har­row­ing sit­com homage Rab­bits (lat­er incor­po­rat­ed into Inland Empire, his final film). In the late two-thou­sands, he pre­sent­ed Inter­view Project, a doc­u­men­tary web series co-cre­at­ed by his son; in the ear­ly twen­ty-tens, he put out his first (but not last) solo music album, Crazy Clown Time. That same decade, his pho­tographs of old fac­to­ries went on dis­play, his line of organ­ic cof­fee came onto the mar­ket, his auto­bi­og­ra­phy was pub­lished, and his Mas­ter­Class went online.

Lynch remained pro­lif­ic through the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic of the twen­ty-twen­ties, in part by post­ing Los Ange­les weath­er reports from his home to his YouTube chan­nel. In recent years, he announced that he would nev­er retire, despite liv­ing with a case of emphy­se­ma so severe that he could no longer direct in any con­ven­tion­al man­ner. Such are the wages, as he acknowl­edged, of hav­ing smoked since age sev­en, though he also seemed to believe that every habit and choice in life con­tributed to his work. Per­haps the smok­ing did its part to inspire him, like his long prac­tice of Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion or his dai­ly milk­shake at Bob’s Big Boy, about all of which he spoke open­ly in life. But if there’s any par­tic­u­lar secret of his for­mi­da­ble cre­ativ­i­ty, it feels as if he’s tak­en it with him.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Twin Peaks Actu­al­ly Explained: A 4‑Hour Video Essay Demys­ti­fies It All

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Strange, Sur­re­al­ist Video

David Lynch Being a Mad­man for a Relent­less 8 Min­utes and 30 Sec­onds

David Lynch Explains Why Depres­sion Is the Ene­my of Cre­ativ­i­ty — and Why Med­i­ta­tion Is the Solu­tion

David Lynch Mus­es About the Mag­ic of Cin­e­ma & Med­i­ta­tion in a New Abstract Short Film

David Lynch Tries to Make a List of the Good Things Hap­pen­ing in the World … and Comes Up Blank

Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks’ “Love Theme”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Freddie Mercury & David Bowie’s Isolated Vocals for Queen’s “Under Pressure” (1981)

in Music | January 16th, 2025

In the sum­mer of 1981, the British band Queen was record­ing tracks for their tenth stu­dio album, Hot Space, at Moun­tain Stu­dios in Mon­treux, Switzer­land. As it hap­pened, David Bowie had sched­uled time at the same stu­dio to record the title song for the movie Cat Peo­ple. Before long, Bowie stopped by the Queen ses­sions and joined in. The orig­i­nal idea was that he would add back­up vocals on the song “Cool Cat.” “David came in one night and we were play­ing oth­er peo­ple’s songs for fun, just jam­ming,” says Queen drum­mer Roger Tay­lor in Mark Blake’s book Is This the Real Life?: The Untold Sto­ry of Fred­die Mer­cury and Queen. “In the end, David said, ‘This is stu­pid, why don’t we just write one?’ ”

And so began a marathon ses­sion of near­ly 24 hours, fueled, accord­ing to Blake, by wine and cocaine. Built around John Dea­con’s dis­tinc­tive bass line, the song was most­ly writ­ten by Mer­cury and Bowie. Blake describes the scene, begin­ning with the rec­ol­lec­tions of Queen’s gui­tarist:

‘We felt our way through a back­ing track all togeth­er as an ensem­ble,’ recalled Bri­an May. ‘When the back­ing track was done, David said, “Okay, let’s each of us go in the vocal booth and sing how we think the melody should go–just off the top of our heads–and we’ll com­pile a vocal out of that.” And that’s what we did.’ Some of these impro­vi­sa­tions, includ­ing Mer­cury’s mem­o­rable intro­duc­to­ry scat­ting vocal, would endure on the fin­ished track. Bowie also insist­ed that he and Mer­cury should­n’t hear what the oth­er had sung, swap­ping vers­es blind, which helped give the song its cut-and-paste feel.

“It was very hard,” said May in 2008, “because you already had four pre­co­cious boys and David, who was pre­co­cious enough for all of us. Pas­sions ran very high. I found it very hard because I got so lit­tle of my own way. But David had a real vision and he took over the song lyri­cal­ly.” The song was orig­i­nal­ly titled “Peo­ple on Streets,” but Bowie want­ed it changed to “Under Pres­sure.” When the time came to mix the song at Pow­er Sta­tion stu­dios in New York, Bowie insist­ed on being there. “It did­n’t go too well,” Blake quotes Queen’s engi­neer Rein­hold Mack as say­ing. “We spent all day and Bowie was like, ‘Do this, do that.’ In the end, I called Fred­die and said, ‘I need help here,’ so Fred came in as a medi­a­tor.” Mer­cury and Bowie argued fierce­ly over the final mix.

At one point Bowie threat­ened to block the release of the song, but it was issued to the pub­lic on Octo­ber 26, 1981 and even­tu­al­ly rose to Num­ber One on the British charts. It was lat­er named the num­ber 31 song on VH1’s list of the 100 great­est songs of the 1980s. “ ‘Under Pres­sure’ is a sig­nif­i­cant song for us,” May said in 2008, “and that is because of David and its lyri­cal con­tent. I would have found that hard to admit in the old days, but I can admit it now.… But one day, I would love to sit down qui­et­ly on my own and re-mix it.”

After lis­ten­ing to the iso­lat­ed vocal track above, you can hear the offi­cial­ly released 1981 mix below:

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch David Bowie & Annie Lennox in Rehearsal, Singing “Under Pres­sure,” with Queen (1992)

The Mak­ing of Queen and David Bowie’s 1981 Hit “Under Pres­sure”: Demos, Stu­dio Ses­sions & More

An Opera Singer & Cabaret Artist Record an Aston­ish­ing Ver­sion of David Bowie & Queen’s “Under Pres­sure”

200 Bassists Play the Famous Bass Line of Queen & Bowie’s “Under Pres­sure”

10,000+ Free Online Certificates & Badges: A Resource for Lifelong Learners

in Online Courses | January 15th, 2025

For those look­ing to boost their skills or explore new fields with­out break­ing the bank, Class Cen­tral has done the heavy lift­ing. Known as a search engine for online cours­es, Class Cen­tral has com­piled what might be the largest col­lec­tion of free online cer­tifi­cates and badges avail­able any­where. From tech giants like Google and Microsoft to elite uni­ver­si­ties like Har­vard and Stan­ford, this list cov­ers a diverse range of sub­jects and skill sets.

There was a time when the world’s top uni­ver­si­ties used to offer free cer­tifi­cates for com­plet­ing online cours­es. While most of those cer­tifi­cates are no longer free, many of the cours­es them­selves remain open to learn­ers, cov­er­ing top­ics like Com­put­er Sci­ence, Lit­er­a­ture, and Busi­ness.

Cer­tifi­cates can serve as both moti­va­tion and proof of achieve­ment for com­plet­ing online cours­es. While plat­forms like Cours­era and edX have moved toward paid cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, a sur­pris­ing num­ber of free options remain — if you know where to look. Thank­ful­ly, Class Central’s guide makes it easy to find these oppor­tu­ni­ties.

What’s Includ­ed in the Guide?

The arti­cle orga­nizes free cer­tifi­cate offer­ings by providers, includ­ing:

• Google: Over 1,000 free cer­tifi­cates and badges in top­ics like dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, Android devel­op­ment, and AI.
• Har­vard: Free cer­tifi­cates for their pop­u­lar CS50 series and oth­er online cours­es.
• Stan­ford Med­i­cine: Med­ical cours­es offer­ing free cer­tifi­cates and CME cred­it.
• LinkedIn Learn­ing: 110+ hours of free cer­ti­fi­ca­tions in busi­ness, tech­nol­o­gy, and design.
• Sem­rush Acad­e­my: 90+ cours­es with free cer­tifi­cates focused on mar­ket­ing and SEO.
• CodeS­ig­nal: 700+ free skill cer­ti­fi­ca­tions to val­i­date cod­ing, tech­ni­cal abil­i­ties, and soft skills.

If you’re ready to explore the full list of free cours­es and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, head over to Class Central’s detailed guide: Mas­sive List of Thou­sands of Free Cer­tifi­cates and Badges. It’s a trea­sure trove for any­one look­ing to learn some­thing new, enhance their resume, or sim­ply sat­is­fy their curios­i­ty — all for free!

Do You Really Need to Take 10,000 Steps a Day?

in Health | January 15th, 2025

We are reg­u­lar­ly urged to take 10,000 steps a day. How­ev­er, it turns out 10,000 isn’t exact­ly a num­ber anchored in sci­ence. Rather, it’s a prod­uct of mar­ket­ing. Accord­ing to a Har­vard med­ical web­site, that fig­ure goes back to “1965, when a Japan­ese com­pa­ny made a device named Man­po-kei, which trans­lates to ’10,000 steps meter.’ ” 10,000 like­ly sound­ed bet­ter than a more pre­cise num­ber. And so it began.

So this rais­es the ques­tion: what’s the ide­al num­ber of steps accord­ing to sci­ence? Dr. I‑Min Lee, a pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine at Har­vard Med­ical School, focused on that ques­tion and deter­mined that mor­tal­i­ty rates decline when women increase their steps from low­er lev­els (e.g., 2,000 steps) to 4,400 steps per day, with gains increas­ing until they reach 7,500 steps. From there, the gains lev­el out. (Read the JAMA study here.) Mean­while, a Euro­pean study, which mon­i­tored 226,000 par­tic­i­pants, found that peo­ple who walked more than 2,337 steps dai­ly could start low­er­ing their risk of dying from heart dis­ease. And peo­ple who walked more than 3,867 steps dai­ly could start reduc­ing their risk of dying from any cause over­all. How­ev­er, unlike the Har­vard study, the Euro­pean study found that adding more steps con­tin­ues to low­er mor­tal­i­ty rates, with gains accru­ing past 7,500 steps, and per­haps beyond 20,000 steps. What’s the exact sweet spot? We’ll need more research to fig­ure that out. Until then, the exist­ing research sug­gests that it pays to spend time with your walk­ing shoes.

The new video above come from TED-Ed.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent 

How Walk­ing Fos­ters Cre­ativ­i­ty: Stan­ford Researchers Con­firm What Philoso­phers & Writ­ers Have Always Known

British Doc­tors To Pre­scribe Arts & Cul­ture to Patients: “The Arts Are Essen­tial to our Health and Well­be­ing”

This Is Your Brain on Exer­cise: Why Phys­i­cal Exer­cise (Not Men­tal Games) Might Be the Best Way to Keep Your Mind Sharp

Watch Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo and Gertie the Dinosaur, and Witness the Birth of Modern Animation (1911–1914)

in Animation, Film, History | January 14th, 2025

“Con­sid­er­ing that, in a car­toon, any­thing can hap­pen that the mind can imag­ine, the comics have gen­er­al­ly depict­ed pret­ty mun­dane worlds,” writes Calvin and Hobbes cre­ator Bill Wat­ter­son. “Sure, there have been talk­ing ani­mals, a few space­ships and what­not, but the comics have rarely shown us any­thing tru­ly bizarre. Lit­tle Nemo’s dream imagery, how­ev­er, is as mind-bend­ing today as ever, and Win­sor McCay remains one of the great­est inno­va­tors and manip­u­la­tors of the com­ic strip medi­um.” And Lit­tle Nemo, which sprawled across entire news­pa­per pages in the ear­ly decades of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, pushed artis­tic bound­aries not just as a com­ic, but also as a film.

When first seen in 1911, the twelve-minute short Lit­tle Nemo was titled Win­sor McCay, the Famous Car­toon­ist of the N.Y. Her­ald and His Mov­ing Comics. A mix­ture of live action and ani­ma­tion, it dra­ma­tizes McCay mak­ing a gen­tle­man’s wager with his col­leagues that he can draw fig­ures that move — an idea that might have come with a cer­tain plau­si­bil­i­ty, giv­en that speed-draw­ing was already a suc­cess­ful part of his vaude­ville act. Meet­ing this chal­lenge entails draw­ing 4,000 pic­tures, a task as demand­ing for McCay the char­ac­ter as it was for McCay the real artist. This labor adds up to the four min­utes that end the film, which con­tains moments of still-impres­sive flu­id­i­ty, tech­nique, and humor.

Clear­ly pos­sessed of a sense of ani­ma­tion’s poten­tial as an art form, McCay went on to make nine more films, and ulti­mate­ly con­sid­ered them his proud­est work. Like the Lit­tle Nemo movie, he used his sec­ond such effort, Ger­tie the Dinosaur, in his vaude­ville act, per­form­ing along­side the pro­jec­tion to cre­ate the effect of his giv­ing the tit­u­lar pre­his­toric crea­ture com­mands. “In some ways, McCay was the fore­run­ner of Walt Dis­ney in terms of Amer­i­can ani­ma­tion,” writes Lucas O. Seastrom at The Walt Dis­ney Fam­i­ly Muse­um. “In order to cre­ate a lov­able dinosaur and accom­plish these seem­ing­ly mag­i­cal feats, McCay used math­e­mat­i­cal pre­ci­sion and ground­break­ing tech­niques, such as the process of inbe­tween­ing, which lat­er became a Dis­ney stan­dard.”

More than once, McCay the ani­ma­tor drew inspi­ra­tion from the work of McCay the news­pa­per artist: in 1921, he made a cou­ple of motion pic­tures out of his pre-Lit­tle Nemo sleep-themed com­ic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. But for his most ambi­tious ani­mat­ed work, he turned toward his­to­ry — and, at the time, rather recent his­to­ry — to re-cre­ate the sink­ing of the RMS Lusi­ta­nia, an event that his employ­er, the news­pa­per mag­nate William Ran­dolph Hearst, had insist­ed on down­play­ing at the time due to his stance against the U.S.’ join­ing the Great War. Decades there­after, Looney Tunes ani­ma­tor Chuck Jones said that “the two most impor­tant peo­ple in ani­ma­tion are Win­sor McCay and Walt Dis­ney, and I’m not sure which should go first.” Watch these and McCay’s oth­er sur­viv­ing films on this Youtube playlist, and you can decide for your­self.

H/T Izzy

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Evo­lu­tion of Ani­ma­tion, 1833–2017: From the Phenakistis­cope to Pixar

Vis­it the World of Lit­tle Nemo Artist Win­sor McCay: Three Clas­sic Ani­ma­tions

Watch Fan­tas­magorie, the World’s First Ani­mat­ed Car­toon (1908)

Win­sor McCay Ani­mates the Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia in the Ear­li­est Ani­mat­ed Pro­pa­gan­da Film (1918)

The Beau­ti­ful Anar­chy of the Ear­li­est Ani­mat­ed Car­toons: Explore an Archive with 200+ Ear­ly Ani­ma­tions

The Ori­gins of Ani­me: Watch Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions (1917 to 1931)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Discover the Playful Drawings That Charles Darwin’s Children Left on His Manuscripts

in History, Science | January 13th, 2025

Charles Dar­win’s work on hered­i­ty was part­ly dri­ven by trag­ic loss­es in his own fam­i­ly. Dar­win had mar­ried his first cousin, Emma, and “won­dered if his close genet­ic rela­tion to his wife had had an ill impact on his children’s health, three (of 10) of whom died before the age of 11,” Kather­ine Har­mon writes at Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can. (His sus­pi­cions, researchers sur­mise, may have been cor­rect.) He was so con­cerned about the issue that, in 1870, he pres­sured the gov­ern­ment to include ques­tions about inbreed­ing on the cen­sus (they refused).

Darwin’s chil­dren would serve as sub­jects of sci­en­tif­ic obser­va­tion. His note­books, says Ali­son Pearn of the Dar­win Cor­re­spon­dence Project at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Library, show a curi­ous father “prod­ding and pok­ing his young infant,” Charles Eras­mus, his first child, “like he’s anoth­er ape.” Com­par­isons of his children’s devel­op­ment with that of orang­utans helped him refine ideas in On the Ori­gin of Species, which he com­plet­ed as he raised his fam­i­ly at their house in rur­al Kent, and inspired lat­er ideas in Descent of Man.

But as they grew, the Dar­win chil­dren became far more than sci­en­tif­ic curiosi­ties. They became their father’s assis­tants and appren­tices. “It’s real­ly an envi­able fam­i­ly life,” Pearn tells the BBC. “The sci­ence was every­where. Dar­win just used any­thing that came to hand, all the way from his chil­dren right through to any­thing in his house­hold, the plants in the kitchen gar­den.” Steeped in sci­en­tif­ic inves­ti­ga­tion from birth, it’s lit­tle won­der so many of the Dar­wins became accom­plished sci­en­tists them­selves.

Down House was “by all accounts a bois­ter­ous place,” writes McKen­na Staynor at The New York­er, “with a wood­en slide on the stairs and a rope swing on the first-floor land­ing.” Anoth­er archive of Darwin’s prodi­gious writ­ing, Cambridge’s Dar­win Man­u­scripts Project, gives us even more insight into his fam­i­ly life, with graph­ic evi­dence of the Dar­win brood’s curios­i­ty in the dozens of doo­dles and draw­ings they made in their father’s note­books, includ­ing the orig­i­nal man­u­script copy of his mag­num opus.

The project’s direc­tor, David Kohn, “doesn’t know for cer­tain which kids were the artists,” notes Staynor, “but he guess­es that at least three were involved: Fran­cis, who became a botanist; George, who became an astronomer and math­e­mati­cian; and Horace, who became an engi­neer.” One imag­ines com­pe­ti­tion among the Dar­win chil­dren must have been fierce, but the draw­ings, “though exact­ing, are also play­ful.” One depicts “The Bat­tle of Fruits and Veg­eta­bles.” Oth­ers show anthro­po­mor­phic ani­mals and illus­trate mil­i­tary fig­ures.

There are short sto­ries, like “The Fairies of the Moun­tain,” which “tells the tale of Poly­tax and Short Shanks, whose wings have been cut off by a ‘naughty fairy.’” Imag­i­na­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty clear­ly had a place in the Dar­win home. The man him­self, Maria Popo­va notes, felt sig­nif­i­cant ambiva­lence about father­hood. “Chil­dren are one’s great­est hap­pi­ness,” he once wrote, “but often & often a still greater mis­ery. A man of sci­ence ought to have none.”

It was an atti­tude born of grief, but one, it seems, that did not breed aloof­ness. The Dar­win kids “were used as vol­un­teers,” says Kohn, “to col­lect but­ter­flies, insects, and moths, and to make obser­va­tions on plants in the fields around town.” Fran­cis fol­lowed his father’s path and was the only Dar­win to co-author a book with his father. Darwin’s daugh­ter Hen­ri­et­ta became his edi­tor, and he relied on her, he wrote, for “deep crit­i­cism” and “cor­rec­tions of style.”

Despite his ear­ly fears for their genet­ic fit­ness, Darwin’s pro­fes­sion­al life became inti­mate­ly bound to the suc­cess­es of his chil­dren. The Dar­win Man­u­scripts Project, which aims to dig­i­tize and make pub­lic around 90,000 pages from the Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Library’s Dar­win col­lec­tion will have a pro­found effect on how his­to­ri­ans of sci­ence under­stand his impact. “The scope of the enter­prise, of what we call evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy,” says Kohn, “is defined in these papers. He’s got his foot in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.”

The archive also shows the devel­op­ment of Darwin’s equal­ly impor­tant lega­cy as a par­ent who inspired a bound­less sci­en­tif­ic curios­i­ty in his kids. See many more of the dig­i­tized Dar­win children’s draw­ings at The Mar­gin­a­lian.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2020.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

16,000 Pages of Charles Darwin’s Writ­ing on Evo­lu­tion Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

Hear Carl Sagan Art­ful­ly Refute a Cre­ation­ist on a Talk Radio Show: “The Dar­win­ian Con­cept of Evo­lu­tion is Pro­found­ly Ver­i­fied”

Read the Orig­i­nal Let­ters Where Charles Dar­win Worked Out His The­o­ry of Evo­lu­tion

Charles Dar­win Cre­ates a Hand­writ­ten List of Argu­ments for and Against Mar­riage (1838)

Everything You Need to Know About Saturday Night Live: A Deep Dive into Every Season of the Iconic Comedy Show

in Comedy, History, Television | January 13th, 2025

Sat­ur­day Night Live began its 50th sea­son last fall, around the same time as the pre­miere of Jason Reit­man’s film Sat­ur­day Night, which dra­ma­tizes the pro­gram’s 1975 debut. All of this has put fans into some­thing of a ret­ro­spec­tive mood, espe­cial­ly if they hap­pen to have been tun­ing in since the very begin­ning. For oth­ers, SNL is a show they haven’t been watch­ing all that long, used to watch, or watched at one time and have start­ed watch­ing again. With its ever-chang­ing cast, writ­ers, sketch con­cepts, and over­all comedic sen­si­bil­i­ty, it’s nev­er remained the same for too long at a stretch, and though many view­ers have their favorite sea­sons, few grasp the full sweep of its his­to­ry as a tele­vi­sion insti­tu­tion.

Now, any­one can get a sense of SNL in its entire­ty with Every­thing You NEED to Know About Sat­ur­day Night Live, a YouTube series that, true to its title, recounts the show’s most notable per­form­ers, char­ac­ters, inno­va­tions, trou­bles, and moments planned or oth­er­wise (often the lat­ter, giv­en the nature of the broad­cast). Each sea­son gets its own episode, start­ing with the first, whose Not Ready for Prime Time Play­ers includ­ed such young up-and-com­ers as Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, and Gil­da Rad­ner.

As that list of names would imply, this “hip com­e­dy vari­ety pro­gram for baby boomers that dared to stay up late” soon became a ver­i­ta­ble force of era-defin­ing fun­ny­men and fun­ny­women. Then as now, SNL tends to send its break­out stars to Hol­ly­wood, albeit with vary­ing results.

That con­tributes to the con­stant churn that has brought onto the show’s ros­ter such house­hold-names-to-be as Bill Mur­ray, Eddie Mur­phy, Bil­ly Crys­tal, Adam San­dler, and Tina Fey, while also fea­tur­ing non-cast-mem­bers like Penn and Teller or guest hosts like Steve Mar­tin, whose appear­ances great­ly raised their own pro­files. To watch through these encap­su­la­tions, which as of this writ­ing have reached sea­son nine­teen (1993–94), is to take a jour­ney through Amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture itself. Cre­ator Lorne Michaels’ recent­ly declared lack of intent to step down any time soon bol­sters SNL’s aura of unstop­pa­bilty, built up over five decades of influ­en­tial per­son­al­i­ties, still-quot­ed gags, and instant­ly rec­og­niz­able char­ac­ters — if also the occa­sion­al unco­op­er­a­tive host, chem­istry-free cast, or acci­den­tal­ly uttered bit of pro­fan­i­ty. But what’s the fun of doing half a cen­tu­ry of live TV if it goes with­out a hitch?

Fol­low Every­thing You NEED to Know About Sat­ur­day Night Live here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Lorne Michaels Intro­duces Sat­ur­day Night Live and Its Bril­liant First Cast for the Very First Time (1975)

Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Very First Sketch: Watch John Belushi Launch SNL in Octo­ber, 1975

Cre­at­ing Sat­ur­day Night Live: Behind-the Scenes Videos Reveal How the Icon­ic Com­e­dy Show Gets Made

Clas­sic Punk Rock Sketch­es from Sat­ur­day Night Live, Cour­tesy of Fred Armisen

RIP Nor­man Lear: Watch Full Episodes of His Dar­ing 70s Sit­coms, Includ­ing All in the Fam­i­ly, Maude, The Jef­fer­sons, and More

Revis­it Turn-On, the Inno­v­a­tive TV Show That Got Can­celed Right in the Mid­dle of Its First Episode (1969)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

In 1894, A French Writer Predicted the End of Books & the Rise of Portable Audiobooks and Podcasts

in Books, History, Technology | January 10th, 2025

The end of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry is still wide­ly referred to as the fin de siè­cle, a French term that evokes great, loom­ing cul­tur­al, social, and tech­no­log­i­cal changes. Accord­ing to at least one French mind active at the time, among those changes would be a fin des livres as human­i­ty then knew them. “I do not believe (and the progress of elec­tric­i­ty and mod­ern mech­a­nism for­bids me to believe) that Guten­berg’s inven­tion can do oth­er­wise than soon­er or lat­er fall into desue­tude,” says the char­ac­ter at the cen­ter of the 1894 sto­ry “The End of Books.” “Print­ing, which since 1436 has reigned despot­i­cal­ly over the mind of man, is, in my opin­ion, threat­ened with death by the var­i­ous devices for reg­is­ter­ing sound which have late­ly been invent­ed, and which lit­tle by lit­tle will go on to per­fec­tion.”

First pub­lished in an issue of Scrib­n­er’s Mag­a­zine (view­able at the Inter­net Archive or this web page), “The End of Books” relates a con­ver­sa­tion among a group of men belong­ing to var­i­ous dis­ci­plines, all of them fired up to spec­u­late on the future after hear­ing it pro­claimed at Lon­don’s Roy­al Insti­tute that the end of the world was “math­e­mat­i­cal­ly cer­tain to occur in pre­cise­ly ten mil­lion years.” The par­tic­i­pant fore­telling the end of books is, some­what iron­i­cal­ly, called the Bib­lio­phile; but then, the sto­ry’s author Octave Uzanne was famous for just such enthu­si­asms him­self. Believ­ing that “the suc­cess of every­thing which will favor and encour­age the indo­lence and self­ish­ness of men,” the Bib­lio­phile asserts that sound record­ing will put an end to print just as “the ele­va­tor has done away with the toil­some climb­ing of stairs.”

These 130 or so years lat­er, any­one who’s been to Paris knows that the ele­va­tor has yet to fin­ish that job, but much of what the Bib­lio­phile pre­dicts has indeed come true in the form of audio­books. “Cer­tain Nar­ra­tors will be sought out for their fine address, their con­ta­gious sym­pa­thy, their thrilling warmth, and the per­fect accu­ra­cy, the fine punc­tu­a­tion of their voice,” he says. “Authors who are not sen­si­tive to vocal har­monies, or who lack the flex­i­bil­i­ty of voice nec­es­sary to a fine utter­ance, will avail them­selves of the ser­vices of hired actors or singers to ware­house their work in the accom­mo­dat­ing cylin­der.” We may no longer use cylin­ders, but Uzan­ne’s descrip­tion of a “pock­et appa­ra­tus” that can be “kept in a sim­ple opera-glass case” will sure­ly remind us of the Walk­man, the iPod, or any oth­er portable audio device we’ve used.

All this should also bring to mind anoth­er twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry phe­nom­e­non: pod­casts. “At home, walk­ing, sight­see­ing,” says the Bib­lio­phile, “for­tu­nate hear­ers will expe­ri­ence the inef­fa­ble delight of rec­on­cil­ing hygiene with instruc­tion; of nour­ish­ing their minds while exer­cis­ing their mus­cles.” This will also trans­form jour­nal­ism, for “in all news­pa­per offices there will be Speak­ing Halls where the edi­tors will record in a clear voice the news received by tele­phon­ic despatch.” But how to sat­is­fy man’s addic­tion to the image, well in evi­dence even then? “Upon large white screens in our own homes,” a “kine­to­graph” (which we today would call a tele­vi­sion) will project scenes fic­tion­al and fac­tu­al involv­ing “famous men, crim­i­nals, beau­ti­ful women. It will not be art, it is true, but at least it will be life.” Yet how­ev­er strik­ing his pre­science in oth­er respects, the Bib­lio­phile did­n’t know – though Uzanne may have — that books would per­sist through it all.

via the Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed con­tent:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

How the Year 2440 Was Imag­ined in a 1771 French Sci-Fi Nov­el

In 1922, a Nov­el­ist Pre­dicts What the World Will Look Like in 2022: Wire­less Tele­phones, 8‑Hour Flights to Europe & More

A 1947 French Film Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed Our 21st-Cen­tu­ry Addic­tion to Smart­phones

Mar­shall McLuhan Pre­dicts That Elec­tron­ic Media Will Dis­place the Book & Cre­ate Sweep­ing Changes in Our Every­day Lives (1960)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.