Buster Keaton: The Wonderful Gags of the Founding Father of Visual Comedy

in Film | November 25th, 2015

Tony Zhou’s video essay series, Every Frame a Paint­ing, returns with “Buster Keaton: The Art of the Gag.” Although his series nev­er dis­ap­points, this par­tic­u­lar install­ment may be one of Tony’s best, tak­ing you inside the comedic gags of Buster Keaton, a found­ing father of visu­al com­e­dy. If you’ve ever found it hard to appre­ci­ate the artistry of film­mak­ers from the silent era, then you will def­i­nite­ly want to give this a watch. And once you’ve tak­en it all in, you’ll like­ly want to spend time with our pre­vi­ous post: The Gen­er­al, “Per­haps the Great­est Film Ever Made,” and 20 Oth­er Buster Keaton Clas­sics Free Online. Also don’t miss this col­lec­tion fea­tur­ing anoth­er found­ing father of visu­al com­e­dy: 65 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Mak­ing Intel­li­gent Com­e­dy Movies: 8 Take-Aways from the Films of Edgar Wright

The Geo­met­ric Beau­ty of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Wes Anderson’s Films

The Film­mak­ing Craft of David Finch­er Demys­ti­fied in Two Video Essays

The Pow­er of Silent Movies, with The Artist­Di­rec­tor Michel Haz­anavi­cius

New Wave Music–DEVO, Talking Heads, Blondie, Elvis Costello–Gets Introduced to America by ABC’s TV Show, 20/20 (1979)

in Music, Television | November 24th, 2015

Giv­en the efforts of peo­ple like Mal­colm McLaren to turn punk rock into a viable com­mer­cial product—or at least a quick cash grab—it’s a lit­tle sur­pris­ing it took as long as it did for “pop punk” to find its prof­itable 90s/oughties teenage niche. Always a catch-all term for an eclec­tic vari­ety of styles, punk instead fur­ther diver­si­fied in the eight­ies into var­i­ous kinds of post-punk, hard­core, and new wave. The lat­ter devel­op­ment, how­ev­er, quick­ly found a com­mer­cial audi­ence, with its suc­cess­ful fusion of 70s pop, reg­gae, and dis­co ele­ments with punk’s wry, arty-out­sider sen­si­bil­i­ty. Artists like Gary Numan, Blondie, DEVO, Talk­ing Heads, and even The Clash emerged from the 70s with high­ly dance­able hits that set the tone for the sound of the next decade.

But first the pub­lic had to learn what new wave was, and many of them did in a sur­pris­ing­ly main­stream way, in the 1979 spe­cial pro­duced by ABC’s 20/20 in two parts here. By com­par­i­son with the num­ber of awk­ward­ly clue­less or bla­tant­ly sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic news reports on emerg­ing youth cul­tures over the decades, the show is “impres­sive­ly astute,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “for a news seg­ment on new music from one of the major TV net­works.” It fea­tures a num­ber of the above-named artists—DEVO, Blondie, Talk­ing Heads—and makes an inter­est­ing attempt to sit­u­ate the music on a con­tin­u­um with Chuck Berry, Bud­dy Hol­ly, and the Rolling Stones.

The seg­ment claims that new wave both sat­i­rized and updat­ed rock and pop—with DEVO’s cov­er of “(I Can’t Get No) Sat­is­fac­tion” as Exhib­it A. And while new wave would even­tu­al­ly glam it up with the best of the 70s dis­co acts—think Duran Duran or the bub­blegum pop of Flock of Seag­ulls or Kajagoogoo—in its first, post-punk phase, the music stripped things down to 50s sim­plic­i­ty. Elvis Costel­lo gets called in to rep­re­sent the revival­ism inher­ent in the nascent form, herald­ing a “redis­cov­ery of the rock and roll audi­ence.”

There are prob­lems with the his­to­ry: punk gets labeled “an extreme ele­ment of new wave” and “a British phe­nom­e­non,” where it makes more sense to call it a pre­cur­sor with roots in Detroit and New York. It’s a nit­picky point, and one shouldn’t expect too much accu­ra­cy in a top-down net­work news report. The real treat here is the per­for­mance clips and rare inter­views. Even with the poor video qual­i­ty, they’re all well worth watch­ing, espe­cial­ly the extend­ed focus on the Talk­ing Heads in the sec­ond part above. As Dan­ger­ous Minds writes, “it takes an effort of will to remem­ber how weird David Byrne… must have seemed to a main­stream audi­ence in 1979.” Or not. He still comes off as pret­ty odd to me, and the music still fresh and inven­tive.

Note: Elvis Costel­lo has just pub­lished a new auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Unfaith­ful Music & Dis­ap­pear­ing Ink. And he nar­rates the audio­book ver­sion, which you can down­load for free (along with anoth­er audio­book) if you join Audible.com’s 30-day Free Tri­al pro­gram. Get details on the 30-day tri­al here. And get Elvis Costel­lo’s audio­book, by click­ing here and then click­ing the “Try Audi­ble Free” but­ton in the upper right.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of CBGB, the Ear­ly Home of Punk and New Wave

See Very Ear­ly Con­cert Footage of the B‑52s, When New Wave Music Was Actu­al­ly New (1978)

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

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

Picasso Makes Wonderful Abstract Art

in Art, Film | November 24th, 2015

Pablo Picas­so, as you may know, pro­duced a fair few mem­o­rable works in his long life­time. He also came up with a num­ber of quotable quotes. “Every act of cre­ation is first an act of destruc­tion” has par­tic­u­lar­ly stuck with me, but one does won­der what an artist who thinks this way actu­al­ly does when he cre­ates — or, rather, when he first destroys, then cre­ates. Luck­i­ly for us, we can watch Picas­so in action, in vin­tage footage from sev­er­al dif­fer­ent films–first, at the top of the post, in a clip from 1950’s Vis­ite à Picas­so by Bel­gian artist and film­mak­er Paul Hae­saerts (which you can watch online: part one, part two).

In it, Picas­so paints on glass in front of the cam­era, thus enabling us to see the painter at work from, in some sense, the paint­ing’s per­spec­tive. Just above, you can watch anoth­er, sim­i­lar­ly filmed clip from Vis­ite à Picas­so.

Both of them show how Picas­so could, with­out much in the way of appar­ent advance plan­ning or thought, sim­ply begin cre­at­ing art, lit­er­al­ly at a stroke — on which would fol­low anoth­er stroke, and anoth­er, and anoth­er. “Action is the foun­da­tion­al key to all suc­cess,” he once said, words even more wide­ly applic­a­ble than the obser­va­tion about cre­ation as destruc­tion, and here we can see his actions becom­ing art before our eyes.

It also hap­pens in the clip above, though this time cap­tured from a more stan­dard over-the-shoul­der per­spec­tive. “The pur­pose of art is wash­ing the dust of dai­ly life off our souls,” Picas­so also said, and one sens­es some­thing of that ablu­tion­ary rit­u­al (and not just because of how lit­tle cloth­ing the man has cho­sen to wear) in the footage below, where­in he lays down lines on a can­vas the size of an entire wall. It comes from Hen­ri-Georges Clouzot’s 1956 doc­u­men­tary The Mys­tery of Picas­so, which offers a wealth of close looks at Picas­so’s process.

You can watch the film online here, or see a few Picas­so paint­ings come togeth­er in time-lapse in the trail­er above. “The paint­ings cre­at­ed by Picas­so in this film can­not be seen any­where else,” the crawl at the end of the trail­er informs us. “They were destroyed upon com­ple­tion of the film.” So it seems that at least some acts of cre­ation, for Picas­so him­self, not only began with an act of destruc­tion, but end­ed with one too.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Footage of Picas­so and Jack­son Pol­lock Paint­ing … Through Glass

Watch Icon­ic Artists at Work: Rare Videos of Picas­so, Matisse, Kandin­sky, Renoir, Mon­et, Pol­lock & More

Guer­ni­ca: Alain Resnais’ Haunt­ing Film on Picasso’s Paint­ing & the Crimes of the Span­ish Civ­il War

The Post­cards That Picas­so Illus­trat­ed and Sent to Jean Cocteau, Apol­li­naire & Gertrude Stein

Behold Pablo Picasso’s Illus­tra­tions of Balzac’s Short Sto­ry “The Hid­den Mas­ter­piece” (1931)

Pablo Picasso’s Ten­der Illus­tra­tions For Aristo­phanes’ Lysis­tra­ta (1934)

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, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Artist Turns a Crop Field Into a Van Gogh Painting, Seen Only From Airplanes

in Art | November 23rd, 2015

For­mal­ly Trained as an avant-garde, abstract expres­sion­ist painter, Stan Herd went on to become some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent — an earth­works artist who takes fields where crops are grown and turns them into sprawl­ing can­vas­es on which he makes art of his own. It has been said about him: “Herd is an unusu­al artist. His medi­um is the earth itself; his palette con­sists of soil, wheat, sun­flow­ers, and corn; his brush is a trac­tor; and his images can be seen only from an air­plane.”

Image by The Min­neapo­lis Insti­tute of Art

Many of his ear­ly cre­ations can be revis­it­ed in his 1994 book Crop Art and Oth­er Earth­works. To see his lat­est work, just click play on the video above. Com­mis­sioned by the Min­neapo­lis Insti­tute of Art, this earth­work fea­tures a ren­der­ing of an “Olive Tree” paint­ing that Van Gogh com­plet­ed as part of a larg­er series of Olive Tree paint­ings cre­at­ed while liv­ing in an asy­lum in Saint-Rémy in 1889.

Mr. Herd start­ed work on the project last spring, plant­i­ng dif­fer­ent crops in a field owned by Thom­son Reuters. By fall, pas­sen­gers fly­ing into Min­neapo­lis could catch a view of Herd’s Van Gogh–like the one you see above.

via This is Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Van Gogh’s 1888 Paint­ing, “The Night Cafe,” Ani­mat­ed with Ocu­lus Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Soft­ware

The Unex­pect­ed Math Behind Van Gogh’s “Star­ry Night”

Down­load 35,000 Works of Art from the Nation­al Gallery, Includ­ing Mas­ter­pieces by Van Gogh, Gau­guin, Rem­brandt & More

Mœbius & Jodorowsky’s Sci-Fi Masterpiece, The Incal, Brought to Life in a Tantalizing Animation

in Animation, Sci Fi | November 23rd, 2015

Last year we fea­tured art­work from the Dune movie that nev­er was, a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, the mys­ti­cism-mind­ed Chilean direc­tor of such oft-described-as-mind-blow­ing pic­tures as El Topo and The Holy Moun­tain, and the artist Jean Giraud, bet­ter known as Mœbius, cre­ator of oft-described-as-mind-blow­ing comics as Arzach, Blue­ber­ry, and The Air­tight Garage. If ever a meet­ing of two cre­ative minds made more sense, I haven’t heard about it. Alas, Jodor­owsky and Mœbius’ work did­n’t lead to their own Dune movie, but it did­n’t mark the end of their artis­tic part­ner­ship, as any­one who’s read The Incal knows full well.

Telling a meta­phys­i­cal, satir­i­cal, space-oper­at­ic sto­ry in the form of com­ic books orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished through­out the 1980s (with sequel and pre­quel series to come over the fol­low­ing 25 years), The Incal on the page became the fullest real­iza­tion of Jodor­owsky and Mœbius’ com­bined vision.

Its suc­cess made it a log­i­cal can­di­date for film adap­ta­tion, and so direc­tor Pas­cal Blais brought togeth­er artists from Heavy Met­al mag­a­zine (in which Mœbius first pub­lished some of his best known work) to make it hap­pen. It result­ed in noth­ing more than a trail­er, but what a trail­er; you can watch a recent­ly revamped edi­tion of the one Blais and his col­lab­o­ra­tors put togeth­er in the 1980s at the top of the post.

Any Incal fan who watch­es this spruced-up trail­er will imme­di­ate­ly want noth­ing more in this life than to see a fea­ture-film ver­sion of dis­solute pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor John DiFool, his con­crete seag­ull Deepo, and the tit­u­lar all-pow­er­ful crys­tal that sets the sto­ry in motion. And any­one not yet ini­ti­at­ed into the sci­ence-fic­tion “Jodoverse” for which The Incal forms the basis will want to plunge into the com­ic books at the ear­li­est oppor­tu­ni­ty. Per­haps Blais will one day ful­ly revive the project; until then, we’ll have to con­tent our­selves with Luc Besson’s The Fifth Ele­ment (with its Mœbius-devel­oped pro­duc­tion design, sim­i­lar enough to The Incal’s to have sparked a law­suit) and maybe, just maybe, a live-action adap­ta­tion from Dri­ve direc­tor Nicholas Wind­ing Refn.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Moe­bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

The Inscrutable Imag­i­na­tion of the Late Com­ic Artist Mœbius

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

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

Mœbius Illus­trates Paulo Coelho’s Inspi­ra­tional Nov­el The Alchemist (1998)

Mœbius Illus­trates Dante’s Par­adiso

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, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Great Depression Cooking: Get Budget-Minded Meals from the Online Cooking Show Created by 93-Year-Old Clara Cannucciari

in Food & Drink, History, Life | November 23rd, 2015

“The Depres­sion was not fun,” the late YouTube star, Clara Can­nuc­cia­ri, states in the very first episode of her Great Depres­sion Cook­ing web series, above. Her first recipe—Pasta with Peas—would like­ly give your aver­age urbane food­ie hives, as would her knife skills, but Clara, who start­ed mak­ing these videos when she was 93, takes obvi­ous sat­is­fac­tion in the out­come.

Her film­mak­er grand­son Christo­pher Can­nuc­cia­ri wise­ly kept Clara in her own kitchen, rather than relo­cat­ing her to a more san­i­tized kitchen set. Her plas­tic paper tow­el hold­er, linoleum lined cab­i­nets, and teapot-shaped spoon rest kept things real for sev­er­al years worth of step-by-step, low bud­get, most­ly veg­e­tar­i­an recipes.

Her fruit-and-ging­ham ceram­ic salt and pep­per shak­ers remained con­sis­tent through­out.

How many tele­vi­sion chefs can you name who would allow the cam­era crew to film the stained tin­foil lin­ing the bot­tom of their ovens?

Nona­ge­nar­i­an Clara appar­ent­ly had noth­ing to hide. Each episode includes a cou­ple of anec­dotes about life dur­ing the Great Depres­sion, the peri­od in which she learned to cook from her thrifty Ital­ian moth­er.

She ini­tial­ly dis­liked being filmed, agree­ing to the first episode only because that was grand­son Christopher’s price for shoot­ing a pre-need funer­al por­trait she desired. She turned out to be a nat­ur­al. Her celebri­ty even­tu­al­ly led to a cook­book (Clara’s Kitchen: Wis­dom, Mem­o­ries, and Recipes from the Great Depres­sion), as well as a video where­in she answered view­er ques­tions with char­ac­ter­is­tic frank­ness.

To what did she attribute her youth­ful appear­ance?

Clean liv­ing and large quan­ti­ties of olive oil (poured from a ves­sel the size and shape of a cof­fee pot).

How to avoid anoth­er Great Depres­sion?

“At my age, I don’t real­ly care,” Clara admit­ted, “But for the younger gen­er­a­tion it’s bad.” In the worst case sce­nario, she coun­sels stick­ing togeth­er, and not wish­ing for too much. The Depres­sion, as we’ve men­tioned, was not fun, but she got through it, and so, she implies, would you.

The series can be enjoyed on the strength of Clara’s per­son­al­i­ty alone, but Great Depres­sion Cook­ing has a lot to offer col­lege stu­dents, undis­cov­ered artists, and oth­er fledg­ling chefs.

Her recipes may not be pro­fes­sion­al­ly styled, but they’re sim­ple, nutri­tious, and unde­ni­ably cheap (espe­cial­ly Dan­de­lion Sal­ad).

Home­made Piz­za—Clara’s favorite—is the antithe­sis of a 99¢ slice.

The tight belts of the Great Depres­sion did not pre­clude the occa­sion­al treat like hol­i­day bis­cot­ti or Ital­ian Ice.

Those on a lean Thanks­giv­ing bud­get might con­sid­er mak­ing Clara’s Poor Man’s Feast: lentils and rice, thin­ly sliced fried steak, plain sal­ad and bread.

Right up until her final, touch­ing appear­ance below at the age of 96, her hands were nim­ble enough to shell almonds, pur­chased that way to save mon­ey, though crack­ing also put her in a hol­i­day mood. Food­ies who shud­der at Pas­ta with Peas should find no fault with her whole­some recipe for her mother’s home­made toma­to sauce (and by exten­sion, paste).

You can watch all of Clara’s video’s on the Great Depres­sion Cook­ing chan­nel. Or find Sea­sons 1 and 2 below.

Sea­son 1:

Sea­son 2:

Sea­son 3:

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New York Times Makes 17,000 Tasty Recipes Avail­able Online: Japan­ese, Ital­ian, Thai & Much More

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Harvard’s Free Course on Mak­ing Cakes, Pael­la & Oth­er Deli­cious Food

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Food All at Once (Free Online Course)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She recent­ly co-authored a com­ic about epilep­sy with her 18-year-old daugh­ter. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Rita Hayworth, 1940s Hollywood Icon, Dances Disco to the Tune of The Bee Gees Stayin’ Alive: A Mashup

in Dance, Film, Music | November 20th, 2015

Disco’s been dead for decades, yet dis­co bash­ing nev­er seems to go out of style. The sleazy fash­ions, the soul­less music, the lumpen­pro­le­tari­at stream­ing ‘cross bridge and tun­nel to shake their sweaty, poly­ester-clad booties like cut rate Tra­voltas… it’s over, and yet it isn’t.

But even the most sav­age­ly anti-dis­co rock­er should allow that its lead prac­ti­tion­ers were pos­sessed of a cer­tain glam­our and grace, their high­ly refined dance moves exe­cut­ed with the pre­ci­sion of Fred Astaire.

It’s a point a Ger­man film buff known on YouTube as “et7waage1” dri­ves home by set­ting a mix of screen siren Rita Hay­worth’s most mem­o­rable dance scenes from the ‘40s and ‘50s to one of disco’s best known anthems, ’ “Stayin’ Alive.”

It’s easy to imag­ine Rita and any of her co-stars (includ­ing Astaire) would have part­ed the crowds at Brooklyn’s leg­endary 2001 Odyssey, the scene of Sat­ur­day Night Fever’s famous light­ed Plex­i­glass floor. Her cel­e­brat­ed stems are well suit­ed to the demands of dis­co, even when her twirly skirt is trad­ed in for pjs and fuzzy slip­pers or a dowdy turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry swim­ming cos­tume.

Here, for comparison’s sake are the stars of Sat­ur­day Night Fever, John Tra­vol­ta and Karen Lynn Gomey, cut­ting the rug, urm, flash­ing floor in 1977 to the Bee Gees’ much more sedate “More Than a Woman.”

Hay­worth films fea­tured in the dis­co-scored revamp are:

“Down to Earth”: 0:00 / 1:03 / 2:46 / 4:20

“You’ll Nev­er Get Rich”: 0:14 / 0:24 / 0:28 / 0:46 / 2:35 / 3:16 / 3:49

“Tonight and Every Night”: 0:20 / 1:11 / 1:22 / 1:36 / 1:54 / 1:55

“Cov­er Girl”: 0:34 / 0:38 / 1:13 / 1:48 / 2:13 / 3:07 / 3:29 / 3:31 / 3:54 / 4:06 / 4:31

“You Were Nev­er Love­li­er”: 0:50 / 2:20 / 2:42 / 3:00 / 4:10 / 4:38

“Gil­da”: 1:17 / 2:04

“Miss Sadie Thomp­son”: 1:38 / 1:46 / 4:28

“My Gal Sal”: 1:42 / 3:23 / 3:35

“Pal Joey”: 2:00 / 3:20 / 3:41

“Affair in Trinidad”: 2:05 / 2:52 / 3:04

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­co Saves Lives: Give CPR to the The Beat of Bee Gees “Stayin’ Alive”

The Ori­gins of Michael Jackson’s Moon­walk: Vin­tage Footage of Cab Cal­loway, Sam­my Davis Jr., Fred Astaire & More

James Brown Gives You Danc­ing Lessons: From The Funky Chick­en to The Booga­loo

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, is now play­ing New York City. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Nietzsche’s Concept of Superman Explained with Monty Python-Style Animation

in Animation, Philosophy | November 20th, 2015

Friedrich Niet­zsche first intro­duced the con­cept of the Über­men­sch — often trans­lat­ed in Eng­lish as “The Super­man” — in his influ­en­tial philo­soph­i­cal work, Thus Spake Zarathus­tra (1883), writ­ing:

I TEACH YOU THE SUPERMAN. Man is some­thing that is to be sur­passed. What have ye done to sur­pass man?

All beings hith­er­to have cre­at­ed some­thing beyond them­selves: and ye want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than sur­pass man?…

Lo, I teach you the Super­man!

The Super­man is the mean­ing of the earth. Let your will say: The Super­man SHALL BE the mean­ing of the earth!

I con­jure you, my brethren, REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH, and believe not those who speak unto you of super­earth­ly hopes! Poi­son­ers are they, whether they know it or not.

Despis­ers of life are they, decay­ing ones and poi­soned ones them­selves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them!

Once blas­phe­my against God was the great­est blas­phe­my; but God died, and there­with also those blas­phe­mers. To blas­pheme the earth is now the dread­fulest sin, and to rate the heart of the unknow­able high­er than the mean­ing of the earth!

As Eva Cybul­s­ka observes in an arti­cle on Phi­los­o­phy Now, Niet­zsche nev­er quite spelled out what he meant by Übermensch/The Super­man, leav­ing it to lat­er inter­preters to fill in the blanks. She notes: “RJ Holling­dale (in Niet­zsche) saw in Über­men­sch a man who had organ­ised the chaos with­in; [Wal­ter] Kauf­mann (Niet­zsche) a sym­bol of a man that cre­at­ed his own val­ues, and Carl Jung (Zarathustra’s Sem­i­nars) a new ‘God’. For Hei­deg­ger it rep­re­sent­ed human­i­ty that sur­passed itself, whilst for the Nazis it became an emblem of the mas­ter race.”

You can now add to the list of inter­pre­ta­tions anoth­er by Alain de Bot­ton’s School of Life. In a new­ly-released ani­mat­ed video, de Bot­ton treats The Super­man as the incar­na­tion of human per­fec­tion. Embody­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics pos­sessed by Goethe, Mon­taigne, Voltaire and Napoleon (peo­ple who came clos­est to achiev­ing per­fec­tion in Niet­zsche’s mind), the Übermenschen/Supermen will live by their own val­ues (Pagan in nature); delight in their supe­ri­or­i­ty and take pity on the weak; per­haps hurt peo­ple in the name of achiev­ing great things; accept that suf­fer­ing can be a nec­es­sary evil; use cul­ture to raise the men­tal­i­ty of the soci­ety around them; and beyond.

Whether you see The Super­man dif­fer­ent­ly is anoth­er ques­tion. You can down­load Thus Spake Zarathus­tra from our Dig­i­tal Niet­zsche col­lec­tion and come up with your own take.

And, tan­gen­tial­ly, you can watch The Orig­i­nal 1940s Super­man Car­toon Free Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

The Dig­i­tal Niet­zsche: Down­load Nietzsche’s Major Works as Free eBooks

Hear Clas­si­cal Music Com­posed by Friedrich Niet­zsche: 43 Orig­i­nal Tracks

How Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. Used Hegel, Kant & Niet­zsche to Over­turn Seg­re­ga­tion in Amer­i­ca

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a Free eBook & Audio Book

in | November 19th, 2015

“All mod­ern Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huck­le­ber­ry Finn. Amer­i­can writ­ing comes from that. There was noth­ing before. There has been noth­ing as good since.” That’s what Ernest Hem­ing­way, had to say about Mark Twain’s 1885 nov­el, The Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn. The book, now in the pub­lic domain, can be down­load for free in ebook and audio­books for­mats. Find them here:

eBooks: iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats — Read Online Now

Audio Books: Free MP3 — Free MP3 Zip File — Free iTunes — Spo­ti­fy ver­sion

Find many more great clas­sics in our twin col­lec­tions: 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices and 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. And if you are look­ing for a pro­fes­sion­al­ly read ver­sion of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn, you might also want to explore down­load­ing one for free from Audible.com. They have 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.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es

Bill Mur­ray Gives a Delight­ful Read­ing of Twain’s Huck­le­ber­ry Finn (1996)

Nor­man Rock­well Illus­trates Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer & Huck­le­ber­ry Finn (1936–1940)

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Spe­cial Friend­ship: He Treat­ed Me Not as a Freak, But as a Per­son Deal­ing with Great Dif­fi­cul­ties

Hear Ray Bradbury’s Classic Sci-Fi Story Fahrenheit 451 as a Radio Drama

in Audio Books, Books, Literature, Radio | November 19th, 2015

Last week we fea­tured a list of 100 nov­els all kids should read before grad­u­at­ing from high school. Cho­sen by 500 Eng­lish teach­ers from all over Britain, the list hap­pens to have a lot of over­lap with many oth­ers like it. Invari­ably, these kinds of young adult read­ing lists include Ray Bradbury’s nov­el of dystopi­an cen­sor­ship and anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism, Fahren­heit 451.  Why, I’ve always won­dered, should this nov­el be pitched almost exclu­sive­ly at teenagers, so much so that it seems like one of those books many of us read in high school, then nev­er read again, even if we are fans of Bradbury’s work?

A strange dis­con­nect emerges when we look at the his­to­ry of Bradbury’s nov­el as a teach­ing tool. Although most high school stu­dents are pre­sent­ed with free­think­ing as an ide­al, and giv­en cau­tion­ary tales of its sup­pres­sion, their own edu­ca­tions are just as often high­ly cir­cum­scribed by adults who fret about the effects of var­i­ous bad influ­ences.

Whether, as a stu­dent, you read the bowd­ler­ized or the “adult” ver­sion of Bradbury’s nov­el, per­haps it’s time to revis­it Fahren­heit 451, par­tic­u­lar­ly now that free­doms of thought, belief, and expres­sion have again come under intense scruti­ny. And in addi­tion to re-read­ing Bradbury’s nov­el, you can lis­ten to the 1971 radio play above. Pro­duced in Van­cou­ver by the CBC (and re-broad­cast in recent years by the Radio Enthu­si­asts of Puget Sound pod­cast), the abridged, one-hour adap­ta­tion by neces­si­ty changes the source mate­r­i­al, though for dra­mat­ic pur­pos­es, not to express­ly soft­en the mes­sage. Ray Brad­bury’s rep­u­ta­tion may have been tamed over the decades. He became late in life an avun­cu­lar sci-fi mas­ter, pri­mar­i­ly known as a writer of books for high school stu­dents. But at one time, his work—and sci­ence fic­tion in general—were so sub­ver­sive that the FBI kept close tabs on them.

If you like the Fahren­heit 451 adap­ta­tion, you can hear many more Brad­bury sto­ries adapt­ed into clas­sic radio plays at our pre­vi­ous post.

Also note: Tim Rob­bins has nar­rat­ed a new, unabridged audio ver­sion of Fahren­heit 451. It’s avail­able via Audible.com. You can get it for free with Audi­ble’s 30-day free tri­al. Get more details on that here.

via SFF

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who Was Afraid of Ray Brad­bury & Sci­ence Fic­tion? The FBI, It Turns Out (1959)

Sci-Fi Leg­end Ray Brad­bury Cre­ates a Vision­ary Plan to Redesign Los Ange­les

Ray Brad­bury: “The Things That You Love Should Be Things That You Do.” “Books Teach Us That”

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

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